Labour have reneged on promise about single sex spaces - again!

"but I really don't see what harm it would cause."

Maybe we should flip this over and ask if it’s right for adult to burden 16 year old’s with an adult responsibility. Is it right to expect them to make a decision on something they mostly have no interest in, and don’t have the ability to comprehend due to lack of knowledge as well as no interest in. They will, one hopes, have to develop an awareness eventually but why rush them into it.

@Grammarnut

I just think 16 is a bit young to be voting in elections.

I agree with everything except this bit. I think there's no pressing need - I certainly don't think that 16 year olds need to vote to redress some cosmic intergenerational grievance, or to put Society in tune with eternal principles of social justice, but I really don't see what harm it would cause.

@Grammarnut,

Yes, you're right. But I'm not saying I'm in favour of enfranchising 16 year olds, just that the idea isn't barmy. I can see it happening, but perhaps not in the immediate future. People enter adulthood at different ages for different purposes. A 16 year old can ride a moped or dirt bike on the road. You are criminally responsible at 10 in England and Wales, 12 in Scotland. But I'd bet a fiver that if the age was reduced, everyone would be amazed at how boring and conservative the 16-18 years are (at least, the ones who bother to get up).

Any argument which demands competence in voters is inherently undemocratic, as it gives the government too much power. "Competence" has never been used to grant the vote, only to deny it to disenfranchised groups. I've been voting for nearly 50 years, and no one has ever asked if I was a fit person to do so or if my judgement was sound and well informed. And neither should they! Can't have the government deciding who can vote for it and who can't.

And, by the way, that's why the vote shouldn't be taken away from prisoners routinely. Disenfranchising groups should not be in the routine power of the government. If a prisoner is to be stripped of their voting right, I want to hear a judge say it, each time, with reasons. Otherwise the vote stops being a right and degenerates into being a licence, held at the government's whim.

In 1969 we lowered the voting age to 18 from 21, and it didn't seem to lead to wild eyed idealism. Low turnout and a Tory government were what happened. I don't think it's a "barmy idea" to reduce the voting age to 16 at all, but it's certainly barmy to believe that this will somehow inject a kind of adolescent passion for justice and purity of purpose into the process.

Yes! That’s probably why Nicola Sturgeon was so keen on lowering the voting age too. This group of politicians are all of the barmy idea that children should be deciding policies for the country (and the world in Greta Thunberg’s case) 🙄

Idealism can be useful but experience and practicality are important too.

This is why they want to bring the voting age down to 16.

Nothing accidental at all, labour said they would take away woman's rights and that is starting. It's what was voted for.

There's no accident about any of this.

@UtopiaPlanitia po faced and incompetent

With this current government, it feels like the country accidentally elected a particularly po-faced set of officers from a Student Union 🤷‍♀️

TWAW is a wildly unpopular stance, I have no idea why Labour are so desperate to support it

Do Labour want to lose the next election?

If so, this would be a cracking contribution to their campaign with that aim.

The i paper, hardly a "right wing rag", has a front-page feature on voters' shift to Reform.

Re the judicial review for Sex Matters, logically, the SSE clause in the EA must mean that the drafters of the law foresaw precisely the kinds of scenarios discussed here. They added the clause because they realised that women would be disadvantaged and upset by TW in their spaces.

It HAS to mean that rights and spaces are defined by actual sex, not claimed sex.

The Government really should, at a minimum, state that organisations ought to be using the SSE in cases where they have women's spaces.

Don't forget to fill in this consultation. Reminder from Akua Reindorf.It's really important that @EHRC gets input from as wide a range of stakeholders as possible on the draft updated Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations. NB everybody is a stakeholder.Deadline 3 January 2025.Guidance from Sex Matters for filling in EHRC' s consultation on their proposed guidance. Deadline Jan 3rd.sex-matters.org/take-action/respond-to-the-ehrc-consultation/

Presumably Stonewall & the other anti women organisations will be expecting some payback for the numerous Lord Ali donations? Presumably this is part of that?
Expect more of this "the dog ate the submissions, nothing to see here" from the government.

Falkner was only extended by Labour for a year. So this move enables the government to drag out sending/not sending examples and to run the clock down.

At which point, a TWAW adherent will be installed.

Anneliese Dodds has always been truly awful but I suspect this is coming from Starmer.

Oh look. Annelise Dodds has failed to send the EHRC all the examples of illegal policies sent in by the public, instead sending a carefully selected 42 cases, dismissing all the rest. Lady Falkner has had to write to ask to see the remaining cases

"We would find it helpful to see the remaining 362 examples submitted to you. This would enable us to form a better judgment of the overall picture of compliance with the Act and guidance, inform the development of the statutory Code of Practice and our broader regulatory activity, and have confidence that the Act, on the whole, is being applied correctly."

It's going to a tedious 2025 as everyone has to repeatedly unpick the stream of lies that holds this toxic edifice in place.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14226447/Britains-equalities-chief-intervene-Labour-single-sex-spaces.html

Yes.

Can anyone point to a basic template? I'd need to make sure I'd got the working correct.

These men cannot change reality so have set out to steal woman’s language. It is not a coincidence. It is deliberate violence against women.

"Trans women" are not women. They don't have a coherent definition of what they mean by the word woman. Therefore I don't accept their claim. They are male, so they simply fall under the description of men.

It's heartbreaking. I don't want to argue about whether transwomen are "women" or not, not least because it's blinding obvious two groups using one word to mean two different things are both right according to their own definition and therefore are never going to find agreement.

All I want is legal, social and political recognition of the blindingly obvious fact that some people are female, and that this has repercussions for them, some simply physical, some socio-economic, and some an intersection of both, and that the reasons why up til about five minutes ago we accepted female people have good reasons to have spaces and opportunities that are female-only have not disappeared simply because some men feel the word "woman" is a better fit for them than "man".