Janice Turner - Class snobbery is at the heart of NHS gender war

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g No, I think you’re right and it is all very much from the same attitude.

There could in principle have been an accommodation which took account of the differing points of view – on gender by having universal individual facilities, by building different infrastructure for trans, by having whole areas where it just wasn’t allowed; on immigration by being highly selective on who was admitted and for what sectors, by disapplying human rights, by being ruthless in enforcing returns. And so on.

But in practice no, and instead we got name-calling, militancy by interest groups, and whole flabby sectors which grew up dependent on keeping the carousel turning.

Ultimately nothing was done properly or with forethought, and so I don’t think we can really expect that the unravelling is going to be orderly either.

I am certain any pro-bono work is factored into the NHS Fife charges. You are not going to find JR having to count any pennies at the end of the month.

No, I probably wasn't clear enough. I think there was a kneejerk response from some people whose lives haven't been adversely affected by immigration, rather the contrary, to think that other people, living in completely different circumstances, should also be delighted to see uncontrolled immigration into their local areas. I also think there's been a head in the sand attitude to the problems caused by certain specific groups failing to integrate into UK society, to the extent that they don't all learn English and they cling to some attitudes and practices which are against UK law and/or which the majority of UK residents find unacceptable.

It's not simple, though. Many of the migrants who came here were better educated and trained and willing to work for lower wages and live in worse conditions than indigenous UK workers, so of course they got jobs. Many employers who took on migrants had really struggled to get anybody to do their work previously. We can argue about whether they would have had more success if they'd paid more but it isn't just that. Early starts, outdoor work, hard manual labour (e.g. picking fruit and veg) are never going to appeal to everybody and we have a fairly generous welfare system which keeps people going even if they never manage to last at a job for more than a few days. A sign that it wasn't just about unfair competition from migrants is that when a great many of them went home after Brexit farmers, care agencies, cafes and so on all struggled to find workers from those who are left.

Anyway, I've strayed a long way from Fife and the Peggie case.

I think it interesting that someone mentioned James OB because he is the very embodiment of patronising progressive group think. He is completely tin eared on gender matters and dismisses GC view points by putting his fingers in his ears and singing la la la.
I think his callers are now mostly self selecting so that anyone with the opposing view won't bother. JOB deploys his deflecting strategies to dismiss their views and emerge triumphant from the bout. He learns nothing whatsoever from the encounter and nor does the listener. It isn't by accident that one of his books is called how to be right about everything. Only he could choose such a goady title

I don't care at all what a person believes. It's what they do that matters.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g Sorry, that’s my fault then – I had read it as you saying your side still think the Gillian Duffys were racist, and are now slightly horrified to find out that you hadn’t changed their minds at all.

I thought that was what I was saying. People no longer care about being told they're racist because they won the referendum vote and that made some outright racists feel that they were now in the ascendant. I'm certainly not implying that everybody who voted for Brexit is a racist, but there's no denying some of them were.

Overusing words is indeed a big mistake. It's happened a lot in the last ten years or so. Ordinary disagreements labelled as 'hate', people expressing a minority political or social opinion accused of 'hate crimes', people trying to point out the flaw in an argument told they are bigots, something-phobic or -ist, uneducated or all three. It has to stop. We have to have grown up debates and conversations where we start by finding common ground and proceed from there.

That’s the wrong lesson. What your side should be taking from it is that you found a tactic that works, in calling things racist, and overused it to win arguments against people like Gillian Duffy.

But every time you did that, you weakened the power of the word and now, as surely as night follows day, you are going to find out that people no longer care about being called racist, and all the arguments that you used to win will come back to life again – and that includes things which are actually racist, because guess what? The big taboo will no longer work.

I'm figuring that if Upton had been a nurse and decided he wanted to change, and watch others change in the doctors changing room, this whole thing would have been shut down a lot more quickly.

Class (or at least perceived class) has definitely played a part.

Gaspode is my spirt animal. 😍

This.

Someone came at me with "she's a racist" and I just said "I don't know Sandie, or any of her views but if we consider Rose West, a woman we can agree is dispicable and evil, I would fight for her right to single sex spaces. The "quality' of the woman does not matter, all women are entitled to this, do you not agree"
silly arguments
"Oh ok, so in prisons you believe that rape and assult are part of a 'punishment process' - I have heard this from hard line right wingers in the US but not in gteh Uk before, can you explain why?"
and basically batter them down with logic till they stfu

I'm not sure about Upton being a decent person tbh. He fabricated professional concerns about Peggie which speaks to a sly, manipulative type of personality as well as a wholly entitled male attitude. His views have impacted on other people on so many ways.

Peggie has objectionable views but there's no suggestion they have ever impacted anyone. Challenging a top-down policy isn't in the same ballpark.

With brexit, immigration, trans, and lots of other issues, the government and supporting media framed one extreme/side as the norm or middle, allowing the otherside with no other option but to be seen as 'out there' at best.

Its a form of no debate, because the other view is not only fighting to get their opinion voiced, but to get acceptable people to say it. If, by definition, saying something against brexit immigration or trans makes someone an -ist or phobic then how does anyone platform a resonable person to say it?

Middle class people express their racism in different ways: very visible during Brexit were the Guardian posters ‘explaining’ that leaving the EU would mean that the European (white) migrants would be replaced by non-European (not white) migrants.

The idea that people voting for Brexit might be worried about the level of both white and non-white migration didn’t seem to occur to them. Nor did it occur to them that wanting European migrants but not non European migrants was racist.

I agree that Brexit was a bit of an awakening, but for me it was the discovery that supposedly progressive liberals were not only completely unaware of their racism, but that they were capable of expressing views on the working class that would have made a Victorian mill owner blush.

I spat out my coffee 😂

@Daleksatemyshed The EEC/EEA etc trading bloc morphing into the vast political machinery of the EU was not on the cards at the start and I think my late father would have agreed with yours. It's a shame the 'soft Brexit'/single market option wasn't on the ballot.

@matresense the standard 'No Debate' approach!

I agree with a lot of your points @matresense

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

i think that lots of people are not racist, so my take away is slightly different to yours.

i think it’s about the Overton window having moved too far.

I think that there are some quite big parallels with the trans debate. I look at some of JKR’s tweets now and I think that they are actually strident to the point of being potentially quite unkind; I don’t think that JKR is a transphobe - in fact, I fully agree with her and the essay she wrote. But she actually expressed herself very moderately to start with and was pilloried and now gives no fucks (quite understandably) and the fact that she expresses herself so freely and goes in hard now keeps the issue live in the debate we are having. She isn’t a subtle voice though.

I think it’s the same with immigration - for a long time, people who didn’t have the chance to gatekeep their own communities were told by those who did that they didn’t get to decide who came, that who came was an unqualified good (because it was great for the privileged to have cheap labour) and they were racist if they didn’t enjoy competing for resources and had concerns about their own community life.

Was there prejudice there? Yes, maybe (not all trans women are predatory and the debate does centre on this - lots of immigrants assimilate and contribute). But also are those concerns legitimate? Yes (safeguarding and fairness etc does require single sex spaces - there are issues where immigration is not properly planned and we haven’t been strong enough on trying to ensure that we run a system that has adequate controls and respect for communities and values).

Those people who like Nigel Farage because he “says things others can’t say” are not necessarily racist. They are frustrated and willing to tolerate a level of “unkindness” to get their message across. Is this a good thing for society? No, not really. But if politicians and liberals had listened sooner to more subtle messages on single sex spaces and immigration, we’d be in a better place right now.

Except I think she has, because as Julie Bindel pointed out her bio has the hilarious typo “bro bono”.

Presumably she doesn’t do much pro bono work then?

@Crouton19 the you were lied to argument works at both ends of this issue. My DPs voted for the Common market ( as it was called then) because it was sold as trade agreements and nothing else. My DF was pretty angry over the amount of interference in UK laws, if he'd lived long enough he'd have voted for Brexit in a heartbeat

I'm another of those centre-left bubble-dwellers guilty pre and post Brexit referendum of not fully appreciating that a heck of a lot of people did not see the world as I did. It was a wake-up call. While James O'B and others quickly took up the "you were lied to" position to try to relate and engage (not entirely incorrect), many fewer journalists and commentators acknowledged that some Brexit voters understood perfectly well what they were voting for and went ahead anyway.

It reminds me of David Cameron's "I met a black man once..." yarn. The working class people my former fellow bubble-dwellers know also went to university, work in the same professions, have acquired the same political views (possibly joke about the views of those they have left behind). Sandie Peggie is an unwelcome reminder that the UK is, to a large extent, a small c conservative country.

A light bulb moment as someone of team “the ancillary people who confront biological sex in every backside they wipe.” That critical thinking is only acceptable when you fall in with the received wisdom.

I wonder if Kate Searle felt in order to survive as a woman in the system they felt coerced into siding with the captured ideology or lose their job. They would be coming after her next.