Labour canvasser today

Why will he listen when he is in power? He has made clear where his personal sympathies lie.
I disagree that he's made it clear. I think Starmer's strategy is to say the bare minimum and I expect that will continue.
I do think a comfortable majority might make him bolder because I don't think he's a complete idiot. Trouble is that, as I've already said, my regard for him and his party is haemorrhaging away, and I don't think I can vote for someone if I don't have at least a modicum of respect for them.

I think this is a great idea OP. The use of colour means that they would be picked up by TV cameras.

But it would be very difficult to see how things would be under Labour.

Whoever comes next is going to have a mountain to climb, so deep is the damage that has been done by the Tories. However we can't even begin to climb it while the Tories are in power. Tory Party chaos made the UK unstable and uninvestable. A vote for them is a vote for continued political and economic instability.

Had Jamie Wallis previously declared a position on sex-based rights? Before his series of unfortunate incidents and plainly unrelated transition, that is? I'd love to see it if he did.

🤔

Chase this up before casting your vote OP. You don't want to end up with a Jamie Wallis like the poor constituents of Brigend.

@ProtectAndTerf But I wondered if there were lots of spoiled ballots with the same slogan, would it get noticed? Picked up in the news? (Story fed to journalists?)
Just thinking of the one where someone spoiled their ballot with, er, a drawing, and it made the news as there was debate over whether to count it as a vote as it was next to a candidates name.

I guess we could have a terf equivalent of 'none of the above'. I'm pretty sure it's not illegal and numbers do get reported up - interesting piece here votingcounts.org.uk/spoilt-ballot start that thread 😈

I think this is all true, and I am worried we will see people gravitate to extremist politics when it becomes clear that change of government brings no improvement.
truth is we are where we are as a consequence of what we screamed at the government to do. Shutting the country down and flooding it with free money was very popular. What did people think was going to happen as a result? It’s not like the consequences weren’t pointed out.

A pattern I've noticed with posters who are incredulous that anyone would vote Tory because of this, is that they take two things as read:

One that of course Labour will be better at things like funding the NG, trains, education, etc, because they are Labour and that is what they stand for.

and,

That Tory people, or at least MPs, don't give a shit about any actual problems, or people except the rich, or social justice, or anything. They are happy for the majority to live shit lives as long as rich white peopel are ok.

And in a way that makes sense, if you really take those things as your base assumptions, it's a strong motivator.

But neither is obvious. The second in fact is so clearly untrue that I am not sure how anyone continues to believe it. Do they just class the many examples of people who do not think or behave that way as outliers? Or they are so wedded to the idea that they don't notice the many many exceptions? Or they live in such a bubble they never actually meet anyone outside o their own political tribe nor do they see any news or literature about other people that is positive?

But even as far as the first question - it's certainly true that the fabric of public life has not done well in recent years under the Conservatives. But it's very difficult to see how it would be substantially different under Labour. The underlying issues aren't going to change. And they don't seem to have any brilliant ideas, out of the box approaches.

I think it can help to try and look with a bit of a wider lens at how things are going in other places, with different kinds of governments. There are certain patterns that seem to be repeated in many places, and those are perhaps due to more super-national or global issues. Decline of infrastructure, problems with increasing costs of health services, housing, how to deal with immigration and international movement of people - these are problems everywhere and there are no clear answers.

The idea that simply voting in another party will answer these kinds of problems, in the absence of concrete plans to do it, is very naive IMO. People will be disappointed if they expect these solutions are going to materialize just because Labour gets in.

You mean Padington Village? Novotel have built a hotel there, which is used by vivitors to the hospital and to the university and its many spin off businesses; plus The Spine ( adjacent to it) is home to the northern HQ of Royal College of Physicians. It has just won some environmental awards for being a 'healthy' building. Personally, i love the development at Paddington Village - it marks an exciting gateway to the city from Edge Lane/Mount Vernon, and there are plans for office space for knowledge economy related businesses.

I know the view from the Baltic Fleet has changed for the worse over the years! Also, Liverpool Waters/Clarence Docks was already a summer concert venue without regeneration (saw John Cale there doing the Velvet Underground album 6 years ago, I thought it worked well as a venue). If some of the docks could be 'redeveloped' as, well, docks...the Irish ferries would be handier for a lot more people than they are in their current location. The Universities also seem to be throwing up huge (apparently empty) skyscrapers blotting out the river as you come down from Edge Lane.

But as you say, all off-topic!
(quite possible we've met given our political convergences...DM??)

I sat in on an appeal, recently, by a developer who the council had messed around for three years and then refused permission. A handful of NIMBYs ( sorry, but true) and local councillors conducted a very vocal campaign against the development. The irony was, they themselves were living on a reclaimed dockland in what others would consider to be inappropriate style housing housing, and another adjacent former dock was given over entirely to their private residents' car park. The developer's appeal was successful, thankfully - and now a whole new area of waterfront will be opened up and accessible to the public.

A lot of people in the city say things like " we don't need any more hotels; we don't need any more new offices; we've got too many students....." as if a modern major city can survive on community bakeries, community centres and community parks alone.

I don’t think you need to be an expert to understand cities need to develop. The question is how. What’s been done on the Liverpool waterfront is an atrocity, and I’m far from alone in that opinion.

A more important issue than the economy, the NHS, infrastructure, the rights of immigrants etc? Why vote on a single issue?! That’s totally crazy to me.

You might vote on a single issue if you have no faith whatsoever that Labour will actually deliver any improvement on any of the others. I certainly don’t.

I watched Sir Keir on Laura's show. I'm getting a little sick and tired of his lack of backbone on anything. He has a constant exasperated/rabbit in glare of headlights look. He's jettisoned any left wing principles. He remains in thrall to identarian forces that are riven in the modern labour movement.

He is a man that cannot be trusted on anything. Least of all, women's rights.

And I hate myself for typing those words.

This. You must be very naive. IMO Labour would be the same as the Tories, with the added destruction of women's rights. Who needs that? There is now no decent alternative to the Tories, & that's entirely Labour's fault.

Peel own Princes dock and northwards, not the Pier Head.

Obviosuly off topic for this thread, but briefly: The Pier Head was a wind swept bus station when I was growing up, and the new ferry terminal is a definite improvement on the one that went before.

Yes, previously low rise buildings on Mann island which had no public function or purpose. Now there are cafes, work spaces and a gallery. Liverpool lost world heritage because of Everton's new stadium at Bramley Moore Dock. They are welcome to it as far as I'm concerned. The stadium will be great, not only for the club but for the city too ( summer concerts and other major events) and will no doubt attract further redevlopment of surrounding dereliction.

Liverpool is not York or Bath - it is major, contemporary city. The victorians had no such reservations and the Liver building did not " fit in " when it was built. what i think is needed is high quality contemporary architecture, not pastiches of times gone by. Hardly anyone even visited the waterfront before the new arena and Liverpool One. Now they do.

( Do ypou live in the city, by the way - perhaps we've met?)

What I can’t understand is this: if the Labour Party actually cares as much about impoverished families and the future of the NHS as some posters on here claim they do, why haven’t they told the male sexual entitlement activists in their party to think of the future of the UK, put themselves and their desires last, and stop harassing and abusing women? Does your experience in your local party give you any insight into that?

exactly @LoobiJee if it’s such a small insignificant issue, why aren’t Labour telling TRA that actually, there are far more important things to worry about given the appalling state the country is in, than meeting their demands? Why aren’t they getting the message women are getting ie we’ll look at your concerns when we’ve sorted out all the ‘important’ stuff?

Derelict? Wasn't there a car showroom (and other low-rise buildings) where those enormous black screens have been erected?

I don't know what the reasons were for giving planning permission (was this particular section a Peel project?) but normally new buildings in a conservation area have to fit in with their surroundings. Unesco weren't wrong that the new buildings destroyed the heritage value of the waterfront.

“they know exactly what a woman is and the fact they won’t say do means they’re either scared or lying.”

Or misogynist to their very core.

Lisa Nandy and many other Labour MPS have yet to distance themselves from referring to WPUK and the LGB Alliance as 'hate groups'; and somehow I think they're not likley to.

I post on a urban and architecture forum, and in my experienece anyone who is realy into urbanism appreciates that cities have to grow and develop; often upon the remains of the past. Of course, we'd take, in preference, some of the developments which are ten a penny in London, alas Britain is hyper centralised and all most resources and focus is channeled towards the capital.

@IJustHadToLookHavingReadTheBook

Thanks for answering.

“we are all in agreement that letting trans women in without question or debate is not appropriate in female spaces”

That’s no different from the current iteration of the national Labour Party position though, is it? The current iteration of national policy recognises that their previous position - the “no debate” attempt at shutting down any recognition or discussion of the impact of women of permitting males to self describe as female and then be treated as if that were actually true - is no longer sustainable. Accordingly they’ve moved on to: acknowledging there needs to be discussion while maintaining that TWAW, and deploying “toxic on both sides”, claims of bigotry, using “case by case” along with attempts to narrow the discussion onto physical harms to women while disregarding women’s right to privacy and dignity. In other words the absolute minimum possible to appear marginally less misogynistic.

I can’t think of a single example of them publicly condemning even the most egregious behaviour of the TRAs. I can think of far too many instances of them publicly denigrating women standing up for women’s rights.

What I can’t understand is this: if the Labour Party actually cares as much about impoverished families and the future of the NHS as some posters on here claim they do, why haven’t they told the male sexual entitlement activists in their party to think of the future of the UK, put themselves and their desires last, and stop harassing and abusing women? Does your experience in your local party give you any insight into that?