James Kirkup: On bomb threats to WPUK meetings: apathy or fear or speaking out?

BabyItsAWildWorld excellent!

Good luck, BabyItsAWildWorld!

I sent the article to my MP and asked for a meeting.
Now have one for early July!

It's going to be interesting for me as he's a Tory male, but one I rate as being bold and prepared to be controversial if it's what he believes... this will be a test of that!

Am preparing for disappointment , but can't help but hope.

Another excellent James Kirkup article!

Interestingly, to me anyway, is that the passport thing has peaktransed my dh, whom I thought had no interest in it at all; in fact, he said exactly that to me last time I mentioned trans issues: "it doesn't affect me, it'll make no difference to me and I'm just not interested" were his words. I am quite delighted to find that he was so wrong. I may not have to divorce him after all (was seriously considering it).

My MP has stopped replying to me since I first contacted him on this subject - actually, though it's an outrageous attitude on his part, I find this obvious show of cowardice hilarious. He's a Tory, in the Cabinet, and too afraid to reply to some mad woman in his constituency!

Anyway, I'm sending him a l8nk to the JK article and asking him for his thoughts. I wonder if he'll reply?

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/22/khawla-barghouthi-jailed-not-alerting-uk-authorities-terrorist-plot

The vast, vast majority of British voters, both rural and city based, see Westminster as a bizarre metropolitan bubble that has no connection to or genuine interest in their lives. They are perfectly happy to put the boot in when needed.

Absolutely.

It was actually quite a deliberate strategy from the Tories in 2015 - we don’t need to persuade everyone, just x number of voters in y constituencies. But the obvious end point is that we’ve reached a political stalemate which is becoming more entrenched.

I didn't know about that strategy, but that's where the targeted advertising on social media plus mainstream media's collusion worked wonders with Trump and Brexit -all enabled by toerags like Lynton Crosby.

They play with fire - most distracted and divided, arguing about anything other than the elephant in the room. Keeping people lean and mean is a great strategy for dominators.

Nature abhors a vaccum - and the vacuum created by the lack of moral leadership since the neo-cons started their ascent back in the 70s is being filled by evil and malign forces, who want to divide and conquer - because they can get on with stealing the family silver out of the back door, whilst everyone else is distracted by arguing semantics

If MPs don't want the far right to hoover up a large number of Ednas, they are going to have to be proactive opinion formers, not reactive lobby group slaves. I have no sympathy with them at all.

I’ve seen this happen. I used to live in Sweden - the SD (who are genuinely extreme right, not the sort of UKIP shambolic rubbish) got 13% of the vote on the single issue of immigration. At one point it looked like they’d get 20%.
I have close family in Austria - look what happened there.

When mainstream political parties fail to address the Edna’s, the fringe will step in and capitalise on saying what the others won’t. The SD, incidentally have general economic policies that are very Swedish and left wing - but they were vocal on immigration. The mainstream parties realised too late that they needed to stop telling people all immigration is fabulous and they were a bunch of racists and they did actually pot stronger controls in - if they hadn’t, the SD would probably have made larger gains.

See also: brexit. You can’t addressthe worries of the electorate with condescension and calls of racist, because the average woman or man in Page Hall in Sheffield will tell you to fuck off.

The vast, vast majority of British voters, both rural and city based, see Westminster as a bizarre metropolitan bubble that has no connection to or genuine interest in their lives. They are perfectly happy to put the boot in when needed.

Yes - everything is becoming so divisive that it’s becoming impossible to build a broad coalition of support for anything. We’re at stalemate and Brexit is only the most obvious (and frightening) manifestation of that.

It was actually quite a deliberate strategy from the Tories in 2015 - we don’t need to persuade everyone, just x number of voters in y constituencies. But the obvious end point is that we’ve reached a political stalemate which is becoming more entrenched.

I’ve been following the “why would anyone vote Tory” thread and you can see the entrenchment all over it.

ScienceIsTruth Thx for the reference - he sounds like my sort of person with the title of one blog post being Synanon, the Brainwashing “Game” and Modern Transgender Activism: The Orwellian Implications of Transgender Politics.

I do think there is a totalitarianism regime being implemented, with social media at its heart, gaining control of the masses, by a small group of men. It's the mind control at play, seen with the TG agenda, that should have everyone worried. I will read and listen some more ...

Really interesting points being made - Treats you are getting me to rethink my strategy. Lang I absolutely agree, as you know, and I can also see some of the divisive issues at play that we will have to work within - even though it disgusts me on one level - that the behaviour of many MPs is reprehensible.

PS One of my other projects is re-inventing democracy but that's another longer convo.

Lang - because I broadly agree with you, I’m not going to defend MPs any further. At the end of the day, they SHOULD speak up on this issue, and all my explanations as to why they might not are really no excuse.

Would we agree that there is a crisis in our mediating class - with this being one symptom and, say, Brexit being another? I don't think they even see what they need to see, let alone find themselves capable of formulating policy for it. Lisa Nandy talks about town vs city a great deal and I think that is another prism through which we could look here.

As time moves on, I do believe this will be seen as an Emperor New clothes scandal. Anyone who fell for it or was a swindler will have no career, political or in a public body.

*do what I can

Lang - because I broadly agree with you, I’m not going to defend MPs any further. At the end of the day, they SHOULD speak up on this issue, and all my explanations as to why they might not are really no excuse.

Just one further caveat, though, if I may. My big fear, as a politically active woman, is that this issue has the potential to become very divisive within parties, as we’ve already seen. If some party members refuse to support others because of their views on gender, we potentially end up with a result where a talented progressive female politician fails to win against a regressive privileged man because she was taken to task by her party for her gender views and he wasn’t. The answer is for strong minded women from the party’s leadership to challenge the prevailing view, but there are very few women in strong positions in politics atm. Which brings us back to not wanting to threaten the prospects of our future leaders by encouraging division.

That’s my last thought on this subject. But I will keep reading the gender critical threads and look for opportunities to sweat I can.

The Guardian does what you expect - it has its hierarchy of victims. Trans gender ticks the top victim box at the moment. A year or so back it was the immigrants who assaulted women in Cologne etc. but were, of course, the real victims. It is so up its own arse.

The problem with pandering to Felixes until a critical mass of Ednas is on your side (without any attempt to get a critical mass of Ednas on your side) is that you leave what is an inevitable backlash - when safeguarding failures have led to a crisis, eg Rotherham, Savile, etc - to the far right. They can say, a la Tommy Robinson, we were the only ones talking common sense.

If MPs don't want the far right to hoover up a large number of Ednas, they are going to have to be proactive opinion formers, not reactive lobby group slaves. I have no sympathy with them at all.

That tweet from Julie Bindel:

"Feminists on the paper have been silenced, & major articles examining the reality, spiked. There is cowardice (& some bullying) in the air."

is quite chilling in its description of what's happening at the Guardian. I think we've all suspected as such. Take Hadley's article: it was a lone article, no comments etc. They're now pre-moderating articles if they do have comments open on this subject. There has been nothing about the bomb threat. Horrible newspaper. I'd like to hear more about who's doing the bullying...

AngeyAttackKittens - precisely!

Prosperous- yes! That’s why we need to keep writing and getting others to write. If MPs start to think that Edna will move her vote because of this issue, they will speak out. Right now, they’re not convinced, but I think that’s changing.

It’s good to get Kirkup in the Spectator and Aaronovitch and Turner in the Times, but the Daily Mail (alas) would be pivotal.

But that’s why I think girls’ sports has to be the focus. Anything that was too easily categorised as transphobic and you couldn’t get Felix onside as well as Edna.

Felix can pay to go private.

If Felix has a stroke, do you think upon learning he is on a long waiting list for speech therapy due to a AGP receiving long term every word taught from scratch NHS funded acting lesson, will Felix still feel the same way?