STONEWALL REVERSE FERRET INCOMING

At the inaugural meeting of the LGB Alliance, Simon Fanshawe (Stonewall co-founder) said that one of their biggest strengths had always been finding common ground with other groups who they might disagree with on most other issues. Usually over a quiet cup of tea.

I wonder if that’s the angle KD’s going for.

It's a very common phrase IwantToRetire, just because you have never heard of it doesn't mean nobody has. This is also a very UK based site so I'm now going to assume you aren't (which might explain a few things tbh).

A broken clock is right twice a day. Kezia Dudgale's fear/concern about visible signs in public about her relationship with another woman and the hate that may result, is I am sure a valid one and felt by many lesbians.

That does not mean agreement with self-ID or the campaigns of Stonewall.

KD is a regular political commentator on Times Radio and has been since it started in 2020. She always comes across to me as a well meaning but not very bright, out of her depth, teenager (I know she's not the latter) talking about issues she doesn’t really understand - perfectly encapsulated in the trailer that Times Radio used for a very long time of her saying "on this issue we need more heat and less light".

I think you are just harping on about something that doesn't exist.

Surely anybody who want to convey a point of few doesn't rationally think I will post using terms that are common to me and my friendship group rather than think what is the way to express this so that people who do not share my background, who are not part of my culture, who do not read or listen to what I do, will be interested.

I know nobody who talks about ferrets.

The assumption because you do it means everyone does is just parochial insularism.

Also what is so strange is not to be interested in the fact that using colloquialisms that reflect your circle might be incomprehensible to others, but rather assert your are right to continue to use a word that only has meaning to a small section of society.

Did you never do the common exercise about the word dinner being the best example of how the use of english by the english illustrates the divisions in society.

I know many of us have a shorthand way of talking to people we know or are friends. But this is the internet.
So the likelihood that what is common to my life or how I chat to friends and family, is going to instantly have the same meaning to thousand if not millions of stranges, is very remote.

60 years ago when I was quite young a metaphor involving the Vicar of Bray might have been apposite; nowadays 'reverse ferret' is universally understood in the English speaking world.

Looks like I hit a nerve! I'm just going to say this once, because I don't want to derail a perfectly good thread with a perfectly good title: you are not the Thread Police. This is not your personal forum. Comment on the subject at hand, if you have anything to contribute, but please stop expecting the rest of us to change how we communicate, just to suit your own agenda.

Very much the Labour playbook.

I think this is the problem. In you world, who you chose to talk to and read it might have made perfect sense.

But the titles on FWR threads are not just for your friends and how you talk to each other, and not just those who post on FWR.

I know nobody who talks about ferrets, so why use an obscure phrase?

And as to reading reddit why would I?

Again incomprehensible to think that because that is what you do, that is what every body does.

Just like those who keep posting links to X when 99.9% of the population isn't on X and more importantly cant read anything that's posted.

I know many of us have a shorthand way of talking to people we know or are friends. But this is the internet.

So the likelihood that what is common to my life or how I chat to friends and family, is going to instantly have the same meaning to thousand if not millions of stranges, is very remote.

The glossing over of the past 10 years of Stonewall Law is really something to behold, isn't it? As others have said earlier, there is a real possibility of conflict of interest here, given her relationship.

The title made perfect sense to me. As for the TRAs’ reaction, have you looked at the Reddit links, @IwantToRetire?

I think the thread title is perfectly fine, and led me to this discussion of Stonewall's beginning of a climb-down. So it worked fine for me. The thread is already posted and people have found it and are responding.

I've seen your posts for years, and they always seem to come from a glass-half-empty kind of perspective. I've often wondered if you have a personal agenda in keeping this whole miserable ideology going so you can be the first one to start a new thread and post a new headline before anyone else. It's very strange. Who cares what someone else titles a thread?

This is the real story. Not the Guardian promo article.

I was about to start a thread based on this story because the title of this thread made no sense to me.

So I hope others who similarly wont understand it will take a look because of the reference to Stonewall.

For me what this is about is the whole gravy train of people who can it seems at any point in time position themselves as being on the cutting edge and yet quite without any sense of responsibility pop up a few years later as though there has never been an issue. (Is this a particular Labour thing, thinking of Starmer wanting Mandelson?)

As though a few bland words will make up for the damage done. But of course helps to reposition Stonewall as somehow still an organisation to be listened to. Look out for them adopting some of the issues raised by LGB Alliance.

See statement posted by @Theeyeballsinthesky that is the start of them climbing back up the greasy pole of being the consultants politicians etc., will turn to.

But do wonder how has her appointment been seen by the unreconstructed TRAs.

Also in the Times:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/87919e12-7756-41be-9f19-1061d326658b?shareToken=f1adc361f46fb345d269f6e008742696&ver=article

Not only can nothing get done in the country, the PM purportedly doesn't know what's going on in the country as the biggest vetting failure at the highest levels in modern times, isn't made known to him.
The UK is many things, but apparently a functioning entity with leaders in touch with important matters, isn't one of them.

You've missed out all the hundreds of quangos that have been set up these 30 years, I was just reading an article in Spike (and yes it was written by someone connected to Reform) but the facts are fact's

"Blair’s project, something that political scientist Peter Burnham called the ‘politics of depoliticisation’ way back in 2001, was the deliberate placement of decision-making at one remove from democratic accountability."

"...quango after quango was established to manage everything from the environment to equalities to infrastructure. Each new body had its board of appointed experts. Each operated at what officials lovingly called ‘arm’s length’ from government. And each commanded portions of the huge (now £353million) budget that the quango sector disposes of annually."

"Starmer has, since taking office, established approximately 30 new quangos while abolishing one large one."

All captured, and all unaccountable to the public despite being funded by public money.

Let’s consider… all political parties, most unions, those at the top of the NHS, the BMC, education secretaries, devolved govts, girl guiding, the WI, Social Work regulator, physiotherapist regulator, NMC, College of Policing…

who else 🤔

Feels like the answer to that question is ‘no’ then.

Apart from Baroness Falkner was brilliant as head of ESRC and the SC judges seem mostly a sensible lot (Lady Hale disappointed me).

wow. He sounds very unwell.

As a former biggish donor to Stonewall I prefer to judge them on what they do rather than what they say.

The cheques dried up from us once they added the rest of the alphabet soup and developed a holier than thou attitude. And nope, I am not feeling the slightest bit feart of holding my wife’s hand out and about in Edinburgh. It is risible that KD is claiming she is living in dangerous times.

If a conversion therapy ban is still on the table, they can piss right off and I hope they sink without a trace. Also how many of these 2000+ orgs are tax payer funded? Mind boggled.

It would have been more realistic if they’d had a bloke in wig, makeup & short skirt trying to be chatty in the women’s toilets.

When the storyline played out I remember wondering how it was supposed to work - what could they do to cause a man to become a woman and obviously Julie Hesmondhalgh played a pretty convincing woman character due to the fact that she was… a woman.

Sometimes I wonder if they had used the bloke who came up with the storyline (who I think later appeared as a ‘woman’ in Hollyoaks) , would we be where we are now? Corrie was such a big show.

Hilary Clinton warned Pakistan that turning a blind eye to Al Qaeda operating from there was like keeping poisonous snakes in your back yard and hoping they’ll only bite your neighbours.

only total capitulation 100% of the time, regardless of how extreme their demands, is acceptable to these loons.

Critics accused it of pursuing a “militant trans agenda” and a “no debate” approach to trans women. They charged Stonewall with pursuing an absolutist position on trans inclusion, in which trans women should be allowed into all single-sex spaces – from prisons to hospital wards, professional sport and women’s refuges – regardless of concerns about safety and fairness.

This is actually an.... accurate summary of one of the criticisms of Stonewall, so I'm surprised to see it in there. Is HP a sneaky GC? Why didn't she say that people accused Stonewall of being too kind in a world full of hate, or whatever the usual line is?

Whoops LGB of course. Fat fingers!