Scared and disheartened today

I didn't know that that wanker was standing for Parliament. What's his manifesto? Make like Kazakhstan and decriminalise domestic violence?

Now thankful that I'm not in the constituency that Rod Liddle is contending.

You surely aren’t going to vote Tory, though? They don’t really care about women’s rights and they will usher in the US healthcare system simply by doing nothing.

Spoiled ballot? Vote for the next biggest party in your constituency?

When people say "it's not as important as XYZ", I wonder where their line is. If a party was saying all the right things about NHS, education, social services, support for those in poverty etc, but also intended to legalise slavery would that cross their line? I hope so.

What about banning [insert XYZ religion]? Would that be too much?

How about banning competitive sports? Or even just football? Would we be ok with losing football as the price of getting a government that will hopefully restart real investment in society?

Crazy right? No one would ever accept that.

And yet we are supposed to consider it reasonable to lose the literal definition of every single person who currently believes herself to be a woman because of her body, and with that the loss of any rights, voice or political identity based on the fact of our sex.

Had another look. Definitely not voting for her. She's nailed her colours to the mast in the last year.

Now I'm awake and on the laptop...

https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/person/117446/kelly-jane-oliver-dougall

Well, it looks like I'm voting for Kelly. Better than wasting it by spoiling my ballot, even though she's no chance.

Miriam Cates is my local candidate, I so wish she wasn't a Tory 😔

I think yesterday was the deadline, @SinnerBoy and we now have an SDP candidate on our list. Mary Foy is our MP and I couldn't find out anything about her, the last time I looked.

I've just seen my choices of candidates.

I'm just off to bang my head against a brick wall for a while!

But the one thing I do know I'm not voting Labour, my Labour candidate has spent the last year refusing to speak to me! I'm sure the candidate will once again send their lackeys down my road to knock rather than coming themselves.

I haven't been able to find out if my MP (Alan Campbell) is GC or GI, despite quite a bit of Googling. I think he'll get in again with his majority.

I could never ever bring myself to vote Tory, so unless there's an SDP candidate (I don't think so - none mentioned when I looked a few weeks ago) I'll be spoiling my ballot with an explanation for Starmer.

If so, I'll email Campbell to explain, he was actually very helpful to us a few years ago, when my wife was stateless.

Ah link was bogus

https://deadwildroses.com/2019/10/07/handy-venn-diagrams-the-radical-feminist-position-on-gender/

There's a nice Venn diagram somewhere

Isn't this the point where the (extreme?) left and right meet?

He's not GC, he thinks gender is GRATE because it keeps women in their place

The Reform candidate here answered my Sex Matters questions very thoughtfully, actually, and was supportive. He's not getting my vote though!

Yes, and he’s been so successful selling the “man of the people who likes a pint and tells it like it is” act.

I think there’s a case to be made that he’s the most influential politician of the 21st century so far, mainly for running rings around Cameron and stirring up the Brexiter Tories. Which all the more remarkable considering he’s never been elected to the Westminster parliament.

Anyway, I could imagine he’d take a GC position - from the misogynist/patriarchal angle that men are men and women are women and it’s “not woke” to say so.

God help us if we’re going to rely on him to prevent Labour going full self-id once in power.

Farage who got his first city job straight out of school after a cosy chat with his dad's golf buddy. He has played a blinder pretending he's not a standard posho old boy's club nepotism baby.

Farage is a far more astute political operator

He has the advantage of having been round the block. A bit grey round the chops. That stood out a lot in the BBC debate.

Do at know what the Farage position is on Gender Issues? Because having seen some of the debates so far, I think he’s got a fair chance of getting quite a few MPs.

As someone who thinks the Atlee government was the apogee of parliamentary achievements in the UK, it is in no way appealing to think of Reform as a significant political party. However, no one in the current political Left mainstream seems to have learned from Brexit and the Red Wall falling at the last election, and the apparently inexplicably enduring popularity of Trump. And as demonstrated from recent threads on here, there is still a horrible tendency of The Left to denounce “wrong think”, and Farage is undeniably charming and appealing to those voters who “The elite” have written off as ignorant and bigoted. Some of them may well be, but they are also citizens and have the same rights and votes as me.

Farage is more dangerous than Boris Johnson because he has both the charm and apoeal to that category of voter, but I also think Farage is a far more astute political operator and less likely to get bored and lose interest after a few months as an MP. He’d bloody love the drama of standing up to Starmer at PMQ every week.

Assuming that Labour Would not have have blocked the Scottish plans for self-ID (had they been in power at the time), once in power will the SNP/Scottish Greens get what they want? (Can Section 35 be removed because if so I am assuming this will happen in Scotland first, then Wales, then England.

Unless it's a bloodbath for SNP and Scottish Greens with clear signposting that it was their weddedness to GI that pushed them under.

I don't hear much on this board about voting for Greens or SNP. Could they be the real casualties? If so will this send a message to Labour to be wary?

Yes me too

Are labour planning to get rid if the House of Lord? ive just read something that said they were thinking about it but have changed their minds

Sex Matters have done a template.

Absolutely no need to apologise, it didn't come off like that! But I took the point and realised I might have sounded harsher than I'd intended.

I agree about huge majorities although in this particular instance, I'd prefer that to watching them do a deal with Lib Dems / SNP etc, I also think it's true of any party that holds power for too long (e.g. more than 2 terms). You end up lazy and complacent.

This seems like a good idea. Is there someone more articulate than me who fancies drafting a template? Or is there one somewhere already?