Thread 11 Starmer: Will that Phone Call Be To Harris or to Trump? (the decidedly superior looking cats thread)

[BIossomtoes]

New thread.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5195566-thread-10-starmer-first-female-chancellor-delivers-the-budget?page=40&reply=139578573

Well, yes but at least they can change their minds in 2 years and give the Senate etc back to the Democrats.

We on the other hand, are fuggin stuck with Brexit and Starmer seems to be just as set on continuing this farce as Sunak was, i hope he realises v quickly that if he wants growth, he will need to change the Brexit deal next year, when its up for renewal.

Which one did you watch @Willowkins

Noelle with Anna Kendrick and the wonderful Shirley MacLaine

I can’t either - so I volunteer walking them at the dogs’ home. Best thing I’ve done in ages, though the heart strings get a few tugs…

Keir Starmer is the first PM to reject membership of Chequers golf course

🙄

I wonder who else is a member.

I'd have loved to see Truss hacking up a golf course.

Or Trump maybe?

Oh Lordy, Starmer didn’t play golf in Kentish Town! What a man of the people. 🙄

What do you get out of being needlessly rude? It doesn't make you look good to be rude about someone just because they don't play golf. I doubt he turned it down to look like a man of the people. He probably just can't be bothered with golf. It's not exactly a fun game, let's face it!

The Telegraph thought it was worth an article

Golf isn't everyone's cup of tea.

I'm with Oscar Wilde - "A good walk spoiled".

If he had taken up membership, I expect some people would accuse him of being elitist, out of touch etc. etc.

Golf is so boring. I don't blame him for not being interested.

So he gets slammed for taking a football season ticket for the team he already supports, and he also gets slammed for not taking a golf membership he's not remotely interested in.
Seems fair...

The Torygraph stoops to new levels of pettiness:

"Michael Knight, who has been a member of the club for more than 30 years, criticised the “crass” response, claiming it showed that Labour was “more driven by hatred of the rich than by love and concern for the poor”.

He told The Telegraph: “I don’t know why he thinks he has any need to reject us out of hand and change 100 years of tradition and history that was gracefully accepted by all of his predecessors" ".

Starmer is 60 and likes football. Why would he take up a sport he has no interest in? Michael is miffed because he can no longer boast that he plays golf with the PM.

The golf players I know aren’t rich I mean, they must have enough money to afford the subs and what have you, but it’s not really an elitist sport, is it?

Mostly I think he gets slammed for being Keir Starmer.

Knight's response rather suggests that the ones at Chequers golf club are certain 'type' of golf club member and regard themselves as members of 'the rich'.

Golf is very elite, as it goes (one only need look at the cars in most golf clubs' car parks). It is historically not that long before black people found it hard to join clubs and the discrimination against women players was also rife (still can be). It remains one of the whitest, most affluent sports in terms of player base in England and the US. Not so much in Scotland and Wales. Club membership is expensive. I imagine this is just an opportunity for the Tory, Telegraph reading bastion which will be Chequers golf club to show their disdain for a Labour PM.

But I am sure none of that is the reason why Starmer doesn't want to join

A membership is £1840 pa . A corporate membership is nearly 2.5 k.

Not huge but something he'd surely be wary of accepting after the press went after his free stuff.

Wrong club!

Ellesborough membership is over 2k.

I wasn’t rude to or about anyone.

The golf club membership is obviously traditional and honorary. Refusing it is clearly posturing since golf isn’t a game of ‘the people’ - unlike football (even if Starmer is a real life Roger Nouveau).

A KC with a knighthood is hardly the common man, however he presents himself.

But I can see one positive way to interpret the refusal: historically, golf clubs were notorious for being antisemitic and barring Jewish applicants, which is why Jewish golf clubs started. If Starmer is making a pro-Jewish gesture (like Reeves’s pointed reference in the budget speech to support for Holocaust remembrance) and perhaps subtly signalling his support for Israel, then good for him.

He definitely couldn't win on this one.
If he takes the golf membership he's a hypocrite taking yet another freebie just after tightening the rules for everyone else.
Not taking it means he's turning his back on tradition and rejecting his peer group (pun intended).

Ain’t that the truth? No opportunity is knowingly missed.

Must be the 100 mile radius around where I live, then, because there’s a real mix of people belonging to golf clubs. Have female friends who play or have played, too.

Agree the perception of it being for rich people is not why KS turned it down. He’s made the mistake of being a normal person who doesn’t play the wider Class game and doesn’t want to join a club he probably won’t use.