“I take my responsibilities seriously. I did not lie” - UK politics June 23 on

Tories are in massive trouble and it looks like Sunak has chosen to lash out at trans/non-binary people. Horrible.

Probably because you can't get away with open homophobia nowadays, so they choose the next marginal group down the list. Not helped by all the smug JKR-type transphobes slowly but surely pivoting to the far right!

Absolute depressing filth, what else is there to be said?

i'd say the increasing screeching about Pride covers getting away with open homophobia, albeit this has been enabled by transphobic legitimate concerners all the way

i've worked with trans kids in the past and some of them need protection from their parents, not subjection to their whims

good to see government concerned about the sanctity of competitive sports in schools, because teens have been so well served by existing opportunities

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/mar/07/uk-girls-lose-interest-in-sport-as-teenagers-women-in-sport-survey

Probably teach them to be better at evading authority, if anything. But yeah they’ve been going hard for Gillick for a while now and nobody in the press gives a fuck about it cos pRoNoUnS

there are thousands of young people, not just trans kids but obviously including them, for whom school is a refuge from the fuckery of their home lives. obviously this needs to be stopped

Mis-gendering is widespread irrespective of parental awareness and acceptance and not sure what kids can do about staff or peers not respecting their wish about pretty much anything. On uniform I suppose this is to some extent also about 'protecting' centuries of related bullshit like girls not allowed to wear trousers.

'No hiding changes from parents' is gibberish or maybe implies school staff are expected to snoop and ask parents if they know their kid has 'changed' in some way that might not be obvious to them but sounds (intentionally?) unworkable.

It seems parents are a bit like the market, they know best.

There's an article a few days ago in noted left-wing rag the Daily Mail where the Chief Rabbi points out that "schools must tell parents" is an enormous safeguarding failure.

He's still gonna vote Tory tho

child liberation now

parents are inherently reactionary as a political bloc and anything that empowers them abuses children by design

when I was 17 my stepdad threw me out the house for two nights upon learning of my homosexuality. I was lucky to have friends whose parents welcomed me in with open arms and didn't have any issue with it, and I went home on the condition that it was to be kept secret and not mentioned in case anyone else was embarassed by it. I only ever thought of myself as "lucky" in the few years after that, because my perspective was that it could have been (and I expected it to be) a lot worse, and it's only when I got I realised that actually, it was just shit and not something to ever forgive.

This is worse than Section 28, because Section 28 didn't come with a mandate to out me to my parents. If a teacher had told my stepdad there was a whiff of gayness about me I can only imagine how difficult my life would have become.

Yeah, the idea they could "nip it in the bud" right?

Probably because you can't get away with open homophobia nowadays, so they choose the next marginal group down the list.

This is the dynamic in the U.S., without a doubt.

It will be easy to fuck Starmer over bcz he won't have great answers to these. Johnson is a liar but he proved he could get Brexit over the line. What can Starmer offer?

OTOH we might be in a recession by then.

One frontbencher says a current online video of Starmer’s flip-flops is a taste of things to come.

"The general election campaign is going to be full of videos of Keir, ‘he said this, now he’s says that’.”pic.twitter.com/BK0IO7DkRC

— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) April 8, 2023

the election campaigns, when they come, are likely to reflect badly on Sunak and Kieth because they're both terrible politicians (never mind terrible people). i can't see any result hinging on that, so it'll come down to the perceived state of the economy come the time, and the narrative that the media spin on that. anything Labour says between now and then will be focused on trying to keep the press onside

otm

If only more people were like Waterstones Dad. I think my (popular nonfiction) book is a story of what happens when people decide that someone is a social problem for reading too much Steven Pinker. https://t.co/Y6SA4aNvRq

— Daniel Finkelstein (@Dannythefink) June 21, 2023

that 'Waterstones Dad' article doesn't seem like much more than low-effort reheated 2017 centrist dad discourse, but I think it's justifies its existence by prompting this insane tweet (Finkelstein's book is about how members of his family were persecuted in Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia btw)

What’s this post got to do with anything

anything Labour says between now and then will be focused on trying to keep the press onside

― two grills one tap (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 20 June 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Saw a post on twitter saying it's widely believed the Times will go for Labour but it's not the win that it might've been in the mid-90s.

I enjoyed the new centrist dad or w/e article a great deal, however this was 95% because it's in the new statesman and describes their own readers.

How is this different from £50 FOPP man?

xp: it was also a copy of a years old joke tweet

What’s this post got to do with anything

― half the population ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (gyac), Wednesday, 21 June 2023 13:29 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

why do you talk to everyone here like you're their line manager doing a performance review?

This is communism, John:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/21/britain-mortgage-banks-bailout-profits-homeowners

xp sorry for posting a question on a thread

As a renter this country is far more interested in houses. They are more likely to have families, people in full-time work or the retired who have paid into the system.

The way people talk about the mortgage crisis compared to the rental crisis is so revealing. (Full disclosure: I have a mortgage)

Mortgage crisis: talk of the horrors of costs going up by hundreds of £ a month and the threat of people "losing their homes". Rental crisis: silence

— Rachel Cunliffe (@RMCunliffe) June 22, 2023

I only click on New Statesman articles because I actively enjoy the way it just fades into white after a few lines.

"I read it for the article limits"

🚨BREAKING: Junior doctors in England to escalate strike action.

Five-day strike from Thursday 13th July to Tuesday 18th July.

This will be the longest single period of industrial action in the history of the NHS.

— Taj Ali (@Taj_Ali1) June 23, 2023

Also three day rail strike

worth pointing out that this is not going to reduce the pain at all. people notoriously prioritise mortgages over all other bills; someone who is skipping mortgage payments will have cut consumption to the bone https://t.co/HNG3O4XY3P

— Dan Davies (@dsquareddigest) June 23, 2023

Long enough to cover the next election campaign of course

The chief secretary to the treasury when we fell into our biggest financial crash post war, and the asshole who dug us into an even bigger hole by slashing govt spending after that crash want to give us lectures on economics? Like taking medical lectures off Shipman. https://t.co/BVq17bdOcE

— Chris Corney (@ChrisCorney1) June 29, 2023

seriously, these two ghouls should be sent on an enforced mariana trench trip in a carbon fiber submersible for all the damage they've done. A podcast for non-sentient economy thinktank molluscs, not for human beings who have had to live with the damage caused by these cunts.

if a meteor has to crash into a podcast studio then I can't think of a better one.

will be interesting to see which supposedly centre-left "tory-hating" commentators express any kind of objection to this.

they could have called it "FAILING UP" maybe then somebody would listen

I'm just trying to think about what they'd politically disagree on, possibly Trump would be a dividing line and that's probably about it.

Rwanda asylum plan ruled unlawful... again.

... by Court of Appeal this time.

I'm just trying to think about what they'd politically disagree on, possibly Trump would be a dividing line and that's probably about it.

Osborne would want the NHS to be entirely privatized (and his mates get all the money), Balls would want there to be a public-private partnership (in which Osborne's mates get all the money).

the ideological differences of the UK political spectrum laid bare

Balls thinks Osborne's titanium tax doesn't go too far enough

I'm learning about grown up economics from the UK media commentariat today. It's bad for water companies to be nationalised because the taxpayer foots the bill and it requires govts to borrow heavily for infrastructure investment. It's good for water companies to borrow heavily/increase bills/cut infrastructure investment so they can pay £72 billion in shareholder dividends, because at least it doesn't require govt funding. That is until the hollowed out, heavily leveraged shell of the water company has run completely dry.

Usually my TheyWorkForYou e-mails show a clean record of Abbott voting on the losing side of every vote, but today I was surprised that she voted yes on something that went through - apparently a bill allowing the Secretary of State to use funds to build a memorial in rememberance of the holocaust, as well as an associated learning centre. 10 votes against, by the way - 9 tories and one DUP.

for a second there I thought you meant she'd voted against it!

surprisingly despite the shameful anti-semitism that holds hegemony over the labour left they all voted for it

Dead on arrival.

I wrote for the @NewStatesman about the lessons Keir Starmer should learn if he wants to avoid ending up like François Hollandehttps://t.co/N8PTorFm5X

— David Klemperer (@dmk1793) June 29, 2023