Do you ever wonder, what else have I been horribly wrong on all this time?

I do believe that when you have a couple like Heard and Depp, they are both narcissistic and the sum of two equals five. Elon Musk stayed very quiet about Heard and quietly supported her. He paid her legal bills. Not that I think Musk is a great guy, but for him to pay the legal bill, the abuse must have been real and obvious to others who had no skin in the game. Yes he is a billionaire so it’s not much money to him, but you don’t get involved in that sort of thing lightly.

Speaking of Twitter, it will be interesting to see what happens there. Tesla is run by east Europeans and Russians who are highly educated and hard working. I’m expecting Twitter to be run by the same group of people and for the content to be monitored using AI, therefore there is potential for so much more nonsense will get through, both far right and far left. In my dreams, eventually the two groups will implode and it will become a moderate chamber of comment.

I'm not Wauden, but I googled and I think this is the link.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-51467518

The 8 at the end was missing from the other link.

@Aintnosupermum
totally agree. I can usually filter out annoying things on social media, but I found the anti Amber Heard onslaught to be extremely upsetting and quite obviously part of a co ordinated campaign that she did not have the money or clout to counter.

I am not taking ‘sides’ here. AH is not a particularly likeable person and does not strike me as being a person of integrity. But whatever ‘side’ you are on it was really, really clear from the trial that JD has an unscrupulous and toxic personality (perhaps they both do). But he was obviously paying for SM chatter which painted him as a harmless, loveable rogue.

Neither of them were harmless, loveable eccentrics but only one of them had the money and clout to whitewash the murky reality.

The 2nd Heard/Depp trial was shocking. Basically he didn’t get the outcome he wanted the first time and the 2nd trial was about restoration of his image at any cost. I’m no fan of Heard but I believe her and the relationship as a whole was very dysfunctional. He held so much more power than her. She will probably never work in Hollywood again and he will go back to be the lovable pirate.

The media assault here was shocking. The reels shown were clearly made by and for PR spin for Depp. Why it was allowed is beyond me.

@Wauden
your bbc link is broken. Could you find it and share again please? 🙏🏼

Okay that Thatcher quote has blown my mind. I never heard the full quote before, but always had it represented to me as a repudiation of society, saying that we are just individuals, every woman for herself sort of thing.

Reading the quote in context, it seems she's saying the opposite of that.

Fucking hell. I think being on the left for most of my life must have really twisted my brain.

I watched about 80% of the Heard Depp trial live. Both very damaged people but I largely agreed with the jury based on the evidence shown & the witnesses. Most of the main stream media seemed to have watched an entirely different trial.

This makes me wonder what other situations/stories have we had "fliltered" reporting of?

I have also always thought Thatcher's quote misinterpreted, I have always interpreted it as meaning there is no such thing as society in the sense of a holistic entity capable of intentional actions and of carrying blame. Only people and the institutions we create can do that. How people choose to act, whether through private charity or collective and co-operative political action, she doesn't really get into, though obviously, being Thatcher, she prefers the former. But you can be a trades unionist, a co-operativist, a social democrat, a liberal, a believer in "friendly societies" and her dictum still works.

I also think that part of what she was getting at is that if you ask something of society, you aren't asking it of some nameless, abstract entity, like prayers for good rain or abundant food.

You are asking it of other people, who have to step up in one way or another to provide their work, time, etc. I suspect her sense that the state providing too much is not positive is because she felt that people tended to forget that there were actual people doing the providing, and also perhaps that it diminished people's sense of immediate responsibility towards their neighbours.

I agree with you Bat but the problem I’ve noticed is that once you leave the estate you are painted as getting too big for your boots and are pulled down. It shouldn’t be that way. I was told multiple times that I was overreaching because I didn’t accept my future as a housewife. Nope, I was fulfilling my potential and I moved abroad to accomplish this. Freed from the social expectations of an upper middle class family, I’ve got myself a nice career.

I think it’s interesting how it’s seen as a good thing to encourage “social mobility” as if helping the brightest kids to escape poverty and sink estates is some kind of solution. Yes it is for them individually, but it also kind of affirms that those sink estates and poverty levels are natural and inevitable. They’re not - we should be working towards everyone being able to have an ok and safe and happy life even if they are at the lower end of the pay range.

In the 80’s and 90’s there was a real sense of community. We saw others struggling. My mother would quietly pay for another mothers shopping when she saw she others struggling and would tell the cashier, please keep scanning. That doesn’t happen today. Using food banks is depressing and leaves people feeling less than. I often heard adults tell each other ‘it will be ok, you are doing all the right things, keep going’. I never hear that today. It’s no wonder so many struggle with depression.

Yesterday I spent 20 minutes with neighbours and passersby forming an impromptu local support group for a bloke who'd got stuck up on the roof. Various people came out to hold his feet, call the fire brigade, hold the ladder, crack bad jokes to reassure him, cast about for cushioning material in case he slipped, etc, etc. In the co-op, people leave the wee money off vouchers at the till for the next person to use. Someone just called me to say I'd left my purse in the shop and she didn't want me to worry where it was.

People are innately helpful, I don't think we can actually stop ourselves from being helpful. Pandemic notwithstanding.

As for food banks - when I was hungry in the 90s I went hungry. That was it. There was no such thing as a food bank!

Did they never consider women would fight back, at all?

I firmly believe they didn't look at it from a woman's perspective in the slightest, @ArabellaScott. It didn't occur to them that we'd have any reason to object. We're just Support Humans, after all.
#BeKind etc

I've questioned a lot of things over the years. I've done a 180 on surrogacy, I did dabble briefly with thought experiments whether TWAW and voluntarily used the term Cis, until I'd had an even longer think and ended up fully and completely GC.

The frustrating thing about the way GC feminists are framed is that we hate trans people. Don't be so daft - as if we don't know some and love them and care about their safety and security in our everyday lives! I maintain it's hard to have children between the ages of 12 and 28 and for at least one of their mates to be trans-identifying.

We don't hate - or even dislike or distrust - this young people. We merely don't accept their self-descriptions as true, and we maintain sex-based safeguarding measure for the safety, comfort and dignity of all.

This is one of the best threads ever.

Another thought is that my eyes were opened by the findings of Operation Bullfinch in Oxford
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-5146751

The biggest issue is that those with knowledge have no desire to share it today for fear of being cancelled. The ‘experts’ which will speak to the media are so often hacks and opportunists, not experts.

As for the NW and level of deprivation, it’s very much needed that the investment is made to those communities. Much of the breakthrough technology in the NW was from the brains of lower middle class and working class children who broke through the barriers. Grammar schools were a very valuable ticket.

In the 80’s and 90’s there was a real sense of community. We saw others struggling. My mother would quietly pay for another mothers shopping when she saw she others struggling and would tell the cashier, please keep scanning. That doesn’t happen today. Using food banks is depressing and leaves people feeling less than. I often heard adults tell each other ‘it will be ok, you are doing all the right things, keep going’. I never hear that today. It’s no wonder so many struggle with depression.

It's kind of awful seeing all of this though, which source, which news do you actually trust? For me it's basically none, I don't know what is true anymore.
I found it most striking when the likes of Radio 4's Today or PM programme's Anchor talked about a subject on which I was knowledgeable and you realised that they hadn't a clue. You start to think, "if they got that wrong, what else are they getting wrong?"
To be fair, we long ago went past the idea of 'renaissance man', where one person can know everything there is to know. Life is too complex these days.

The problem is politicians who feel the need to pretend that they do have answers to everything. Who have to stir up the 'Them v. Us' because how else do you get differentiation between parties and hence votes?

They very much are legacies of industrialisation and the attitudes that prevailed towards the working class back then. Politicians talk about aspirations, but it isn't that. It's something else and I can never quite put my finger on it, despite having lived it myself.

I think there are lots of things informing that - town planning, welfare state, capitalist economics, culture, counter culture, health provision, etc.

Poverty compounded over generations becomes far more than the sum of its parts, imo.

Almost sounds a bit anarchist, in fact.

I have always interpreted it as meaning there is no such thing as society in the sense of a holistic entity capable of intentional actions and of carrying blame. Only people and the institutions we create can do that.

Yes, that's my understanding of it - I thought she was actually trying to humanise society by explaining it not as a faceless all-powerful mysterious entity, but as a simple network of people, family groups, etc.

I get most of my news from podcasts now. I think it's much easier to work things out when you can spend two hours listening to someone who's an expert on a particular topic, going in depth into various aspects of the situation. Also when you listen to them in deep conversation, you can tell when people have intellectual humility and are just seeking the truth.

This is a bit of a derail, but we could really do with initiatives like these in our area.

There's so much talent and energy and life just locked up on some of our estates. They are like prisons somehow where the bars are made of years of psychological conditioning. Or maybe islands.

They very much are legacies of industrialisation and the attitudes that prevailed towards the working class back then. Politicians talk about aspirations, but it isn't that. It's something else and I can never quite put my finger on it, despite having lived it myself.

Well, actually, she does get into it. I overstated the case....

First, thanks to everyone for the most riveting thread on this board for months.

I have also always thought Thatcher's quote misinterpreted, I have always interpreted it as meaning there is no such thing as society in the sense of a holistic entity capable of intentional actions and of carrying blame. Only people and the institutions we create can do that. How people choose to act, whether through private charity or collective and co-operative political action, she doesn't really get into, though obviously, being Thatcher, she prefers the former. But you can be a trades unionist, a co-operativist, a social democrat, a liberal, a believer in "friendly societies" and her dictum still works.

It's kind of awful seeing all of this though, which source, which news do you actually trust? For me it's basically none, I don't know what is true anymore. The Israel issue is a good example, its so much more nuanced than I ever imagined, the war in Ukraine, what is true and what is propoganda . Its very tempting just to give up caring tbh.

I have really enjoyed reading this thread. Torunette's post is really important as it shows there is a way forward from the tribal politics that make open discussion and nuanced decision making so hard to achieve.

I think the reason why the 'left' has got so caught up in transgender politics is that they drew parallels with racism and homophobia but underplayed the impact of discrimination against women. People born after the Sex Discrimination Act was enacted rarely know what a difference it made, for example, in outlawing different rates of pay for the same job. Once the worst examples of employment discrimination were outlawed, women's progress was mainly measured in terms of career progression in the workplace or entry into higher education, but topics like domestic violence or unpaid care never got the same attention. This meant that the idea of women being a group that experienced discrimination was under recognised.

I also think we have got caught up in gesture politics so pronouns and convoluted descriptors avoiding the word 'women' are seen as more important than asking more fundamental questions about why we have seen such a rise in gender dysphoria.

FWIW, I don't think it's just chance that GI is mainly found on the left. It's part of id politics, and that has come from the left.