Re: Starmer

Have a look at the respective parties policies on policing for one example.
Investing properly in the NHS would be another good one.

That doesn't though really address the very many other harms that 13 years of Tory government has done to women and children.

And you are aware that they are thankfully clamping down on the gender madness, that the PM can openly state that a woman is an adult human female and that the LP are doubling down on it all, bringing in self id and their leader dare not say what a woman is?

I never thought I would acknowledge the Tories for anything, but...

25th January 2023
www.gov.uk/government/news/update-on-changes-to-transgender-prisoner-policy-framework

If you click on the link and read the text, it clearly says the current government is making changes to its policy - "Under the reforms, transgender women with male genitalia, or those who have been convicted of a sexual offence, should no longer be held in the general women’s estate."

So the Tories are finally starting to do something. on transgender people and prisons.

Also, the Cass Review was commissioned under a Conservative government.

The DofE is supposed to be consulting on "gender identity" guidance for schools this year.

And if the "Tory government have consistently inacted policies that make women, children less safe" or the past 13 years, to quote jgw1, what exactly does the Labour party intend to do about that, should it win the next general election?

You are aware that for the past 13 years the Tory government have consistently inacted policies that make women, children less safe?

Ah soz Icake- there were several quoted posts and I got in a tangle with you, scratchedbymycat, Slothtoes and possibly others too! Anyway interesting idea and I do think there's something about a mailed letter with a stamp that makes it stand out from an email, however personalised.

(I'm not into make up so I won't have seen your thread of shame!)

@Floisme my visit to s&b was very, very brief. It was more what I did to show myself up. It was late, I was bored and may have been drinking. Iirc I recommended a concealer which I'd heard about 20 yo, suggested Preparation H for puffy eyes, outed myself as a bag lady and left, all in one post. If anyone was mean to me after all that, I wouldn't blame them but I was scared to look I'm neither stylish nor beautiful

I've never written to Starmer and I have no plans to. I'm not very articulate and tend to stray from the point. But if a thread is posted I'll watch with interest and do what I can for it.

I think Icake it boils down to whether you'd want your thread to focus on Labour's record with women or on wider issues. I can see reasons for both but, as I'm sure you know, any mention of gender self ID will see mass reporting to try and get it moved back here, although that hasn't always worked recently. AIBU will bring out the ermm.... contrarians and there's a high risk it'll go down in flames, but then while it's there, it'll get a wide viewing. Politics is so quiet now that posters have started visiting here for their sport.

You make some very good points and I really like the idea of 'real' letters.

And I'm sorry you had a bad time on Style and Beauty. I hang out there a lot and it used to be one of the most helpful boards I knew but it's very unpredictable these days.

@scratchedbymycat tbh, I spend most of my time on FWR (except for that one disastrous excursion on Style & Beauty <shudder>) and Gardening. AIBU seems to get most engagement, but perhaps not the best fit without a degree of shoehorning. Chat perhaps? It might sink without a trace but it's worth a punt. I suspect lots of posters will have questions for him. Although it's not in the bag yet, he's odds on to be our next PM.

It can't be too overtly GC or MN might move it here anyway.

Full disclosure, I'd like to see a few FWR-ish threads on the other boards because I can use them to amplify the Equality Act petition.

This would be great. We could all post the letters we have sent and the responses we have received.

I wouldn't let that drop. I'd be emailing the Labour guy and asking him if he thinks it is acceptable to women if Isla Bryson uses female toilets on release? If not, why isn't he trying to find a solution to both instead of throwing women and girls under the bus.

Agree. In truly despotic states, your political priorities start to get ranked. For example, it might bother the hell out of you that you get beaten if you support the wrong party, but it doesn't bother you as much as not being able to feed your children.

I do feel the UK should consider that. Gender is one of my top priorities, but it really wouldn't be if I couldn't feed my children. So I will vote with those thoughts in mind, but still do what I can to get gender issues flagged.

I am in a very safe Tory seat and interestingly my MP completely 'gets' the gender stuff and is clear on his commitment to keeping women and children safe. He makes a great deal of sense. I email him reasonably often. The Labour bloke told me that it would be 'cruel' to make a TW go in to a men's loo. I do not bother to contact him now and feel the same about Starmer.

I'm not massively au fait with Mumsnet, where do you think they'd get most engagement? The Politics forum seems a lot quieter than here from my brief ventures.

X-post Scratched
I feel now is time for practical politics and collaboration and all the rest of it and that the Left insisting on ideological perfection is a total fucking waste of time.

That impossible quest for idealogical purity is something that you’d never catch the Tories wasting a single second of their time and energy on worrying about. The Tories’ flexibility and resolve to win power gives them latitude to appeal widely to a spectrum of electorate and it gives them plenty of opportunity to try pragmatic position changing in government within limits. All things that the left could be doing. But I fear Labour still sees itself as not the natural party of government, whereas entitled Tories have that view baked into their DNA. They couldnt give a shit what some self appointed mouthpiece figure says on social media.

And because I feel like this I see the current outbreak of GC infighting commented on on this board as a useless distraction from women getting on with influencing policy via the courts and Parliament. It makes ‘us’ look incoherent and unorganised to those who do hold the power in those settings. Many of who we have yet to convince to find a backbone.

'My letters to Starmer', imo, would be a great thread. Perhaps it could be on the wider MN?

Generic and not helpful in other ways as the opposition but it was received

I do get responses to enough of my emails to let me know they have been read. My Tory MP, a rare breed in Scotland, replied personally and often wryly because of the fury I expressed.

@Slothtoes Please join me. Maybe one letter doesn't get read, but five from different women at regular intervals might. Im going to try send one every two tweets, touching on whatever has happened in between. I'm not sending emails. I feel a postage stamp and recorded delivery feels more 'intentional', if that makes sense. My next letter will reference Nicola Sturgeons resignation, and the butcher from Melrose. I think he needs to be warned that KJK will be forcing this into the open in his constituency too.

I haven’t seen this tbh

And I have written to my MPs a few times and had responses

Generic and not helpful in other ways as the opposition but it was received

I'm considering starting a thread called 'My letters to Starmer', and posting them there. But I'll tell him I'm doing that. Maybe the Daily Mail will find them come election time.

ScratchedbyMyCat I really like what you’re doing with this and will consider doing the same. Anti democratic shite is spouted on this board with tedious regularity by Tory posters including ‘MPs don’t get to read it’ if you write to them. Emails can also be copied into a handful of relevant people at the same time (Minister in charge of that issue etc) if people are ever worried about writing to an MP and their email not being passed on..

I feel exactly the same way.

I want Starmer to be really clear on his gender politics views with actual policy commitments made on the record so I can decide, i want ALL politicians from all parties to do this and I want to see hustings to hold all these politicians seeking election to their views and their policy commitments.
I have always voted Labour before and while they don’t have a monopoly on left wing thinking I need and want a party to vote for, now, I can’t wait for a decent political party to form. So this isn’t my only issue for deciding who to give my vote to (the health of the economy and public services and housing, climate and the environment and trying to narrow the economic inequality gap also figure) but it’s high up the list.

I wrote to Starmer after Russell-Moyle, pointing out that the exact similarity and suggesting that it was possibly the same characters in the party moving into the next 'cause' bringing with them their 'justified passion' (Russell-Moyle described it as something like that) and inflaming supporters and followers on social media. Every time I see a tweet from OJ I am reminded of the way he also swept away allegations of anti-semitism wrt Corbyn. Vile little trouble making toad.

I did say to Starmer that with the anti-semitism issue, all Labours denials and claims that it wasn't a Labour problem, or was media propaganda, was measured by me against the simple fact I'd never seen or read such vile hate towards Jewish people in my Twitter feed as I did while Corbyn was leader.

I literally did not vote for Labour because of the 'What would you have done if you were an ordinary citizen in pre-WW2 Germany? question. I hope I wouldn't have voted for a party that had as its backdrop, rising hatred towards Jewish people.

And, I went on to comment that the claim that 'Labour won't tolerate misogyny' means nothing to me in the face of a Twitter feed with rampant spiralling misogyny and Labour MPs who don't feel safe or supported in their own party.

It can be fixed. He did it. I think he could do it again, but the biggest hurdle is to recognise that it is a problem that exists. The fact he made no comment about Russel-Moyle bothers the hell out of me.

And yes, maybe he doesn't read the letters. But I'm going to keep trying, and keep sending them hardcopy, recorded delivery.

100% this. Sickening really.