I didn’t leave the left. The left, left me.

[GenerativeAIBot]

Stop me if you have already heard this the last few days, I am trying to make sense of how I feel about Trump and other right leaning wins:

“Woke” issues being pushed to where they have been, has empowered the right by giving them something real and legitimate to campaign against. Something more than their usual transparently false bogeymen.

In general, Authoritarianism, compelled speech, no debate. Specifically men in women’s sports, in women’s changing rooms, unfettered immigration, being asked to ignore the evidence in front of our eyes.

This is happening across the world, Italy, France, Germany, USA, UK.

I remain entirely committed to progressive taxation, a social safety net, collective bargaining, workers rights, public schooling and health services as well as the rights of everyone to live contented, unmolested lives.

I reject identity politics in their entirety. For example, I consider terms like “Woman of colour” to be the epitome of divisive, racist, sexist thought patterns that seeks to infantilise people and move their locus of control from internal to external. Disempowering people and making them victims.

I didn’t leave the left. The left left me.

Reasonable?

There is a world of difference between Mad Max complete collapse and a long slow economic decline over several centuries.
It will be so slow most people won't even know it is happening, unless they study political and economic history.

The example at your DD high school is not relevant to public policy. At a high school, all those affected can be contacted, and the matter agreed upon.

Again, it isn't about the individuals. It's about having a group of people on both sides who represent both sides, being involved in making policy and are willing to listen and find a compromise.

What about a changing room in a clothing shop? Not all the shop's potential customers can be contacted. Even if they could, say with a poll of everyone within 100 miles, or 200 miles, what do you do when the poll results come back split? Some want the changing room to be female only, some want transwomen to have access.

The changing room issue is a relatively easy one to solve. Changing the design of how we deliver that facility, and making it so privacy and safety is the key. We should, for everyone's sake get rid of the old model of the big open plan changing rooms. We could keep the current cubicle with a curtain model separated by sex, and add in to that area, a handful of fully enclosed changing rooms with a door that locks. Many have this model when making provision for disabled customers. Some have added these for gender neutral changing. Only the most unreasonable people on either end of the debate would have an issue with it.

This idea of "a solution that is acceptable to both sides if we just take a pragmatic approach" is pure wishful thinking.

Only if both sides insist that every single eventuality must be catered for. In most instances, the vast majority of people accept that a compromise must be found.

I work with a University as a client, when putting in new buildings or renovating, they create gender neutral toilets. An area (not a closed off room) that has a number of individual, fully enclosed toilets with a basin. No different than you might see in a small cafe or restaurant, just on a bigger scale, which everyone can use. No-one can peek in or harass anyone. It's a simple solution that solves the problem.

So, no, not wishful thinking, it was the result of consultations with students and thus far, the only push back there has been is about the money that is being spent doing this. But they are doing it as part of a wider programme of refurbishments of older buildings, not specifically to provide gender neutral toilets.

What is it that you would suggest happen after people talk? What possible outcomes can there be, trans women either have access to women's spaces or they don't

You haven't answered if you think women should have single sex spaces or not?

My reasoning is that everything has been getting faster, much faster, every single year I have been alive and you only need look at history to see that the pace of change is literally exponential.

I believe the downfall, should it happen, will be much faster than centuries

If you have seen "Threads" the point is society falls apart because the threads that hold us together were cut and that our society was cloth made of those threads

Covid showed how interconnected we had become, 35 years after Threads was shown, it will not take much for society to fall over, the coming USA/China war could be the one that pushes us over the edge.

We are no where near as resilient as a society as we used to be.

Is the real cost going up? Or down?

It's going down, it will always go down, it will never go up.

The real cost has increased quite substantially over the past 5 years. Primarily due to hyper inflation in the manufacturing and construction markets. And it will go up again because the NI increase is going to push up Labour costs.

The only thing that will bring it back down in a hurry is a recession and nobody wants that.

No. The real actual cost, not the cost to consumer, is down in all real terms.

What makes it drop further is massive Chinese factories building at scale and flooding the market. Like literally everything ever. Thats why my TV cost £10000 when the same one 3 years earlier cost £10,000

You don't understand. Women WANT the communal female space that provides succour to women. Women fleeing from a man gets support there from other women in the ladies. Women have had miscarriages and women in the ladies helped clean them up. The answer is NOT to remove that sacred communal space. It is to keep ALL MALES OUT. It was done easily, until a decade ago.

Fully enclosed toilets are dangerous and things like epileptic seizures, overdoses, miscarriages can be missed.

You really don't get it. Women want to keep that safe communal space. We DON'T WANT single enclosed toilets. Its dangerous and you just don't get how vital that COMMUNAL SPACE is for females. Maybe have a read of this, it might explain it better: https://archive.md/JLFJn

Yes this is true. Historically societies were not as technologically developed as we are, the fall could be far more sudden.

We could keep the current cubicle with a curtain model separated by sex, and add in to that area, a handful of fully enclosed changing rooms with a door that locks.

What would you do about the transwomen, or just angry abusive men, who insist upon using the 'female only' area?
The former would use if for validation. The latter would use it because they want to distress women.

number of individual, fully enclosed toilets with a basin
The issue with fully enclosed mini-rooms is that people die in them. Seriously. If you feel unwell in a public place or at work, you very often head to the toilet to sit for a moment. Perhaps you think you will throw up.
Then you have a heart attack or stroke, or in a night-club you OD on drugs.
No-one can see you in a fully enclosed room. In a traditional toilet area with cubicles that have gaps top and bottom, you are likely to be spotted when you collapse.
I am not making up this scenario for the sake of arguing - it is a real concern.

Plus, a man can easily shove a woman into a mini-room toilet and lock the door. No-one can see her being attacked.
She might be heard if she screams loud enough.
But an open-plan room with gaps top and bottom of the cubicle drastically reduces the risk.

Individual fully enclosed toilets are not, and never will be the answer. I don't know many women who would ever support that. The fact you are doing everything you can to suggest tearing away that vital communal space, that is so very vital and important, just to appease men, should give you pause to think, and make you examine your internalised misogyny and need to tear down our communal spaces because you want to appease men, @BoredZelda . Women say NO to that. It is NOT want women want. In fact, it goes against everything women want. Its one of the WORST suggestions possible.

Thanks for this, I agree

Me too.

I read of a case, can't recall where it occurred, it could have been the US, I can't remember exactly where it was now, only the story as it was so poignant. Anyway, a woman trapped in a DV relationship slipped a note under the wall of the cubicle next to her asking for help and to call the police. That woman called the police and the woman got help and was able to escape him. If that was an individual cubicle, @BoredZelda , she would have NO CHANCE! Her male abuser would be waiting right outside it. That right there, is a testament to the support of having a female space with fellow women surrounding you.

Its obvious you have not thought for even 30 seconds of the implications of the reckless and abhorrent practice in removing safe communal spaces that you are advocating. You've clearly done absolutely no thought on this at all, whatsoever!

Female communal intimate single sex spaces SAVE LIVES.

What is it that you would suggest happen after people talk? What possible outcomes can there be, trans women either have access to women's spaces or they don't

Oh I dunno, after talking there could be something similar to the two solutions I described, which are already being used quite effectively.

You haven't answered if you think women should have single sex spaces or not?

Or, the secret 3rd option is that in most situations it is unnecessary for things to be labled "women's spaces" as a blanket description.

Do I think women should have privacy in situations where they feel vulnerable, e.g when undressing or using the WC, absolutely. Do I think trans people should have the same? Of course they should. Which is why the individual toilet/changing solution would work for everyone.

There will always be a need to have some spaces which are segregated. Hospital wards for example should not unilaterally move to being mixed. But again, the new model of hospitals is moving to single rooms rather than open wards so that would solve a problem.

Sports is probably the hardest one to solve and I can see the issue from both sides. I'd favour having more categorisation in sports rather than just men and women, regardless of the trans issue. They do it in things like boxing and weight lifting where different weights and builds are taken into account. There could be a mixed category for athletics where anyone of a similar build could compete. I would pretty much go with the science on that one. It seems to suggest that there is an advantage someone gets from going through puberty and that makes it unfair against another who hasn't had that advantage, not sure how you control for that, but until we have an answer I'm in favour of keeping it separate.

The only other one I'm the fence about is women's refuges. I'd want abused women to feel safe and secure, having a trans person there might not be the best thing, but as men's refuges are few and far between, where would they go to get support if they are being abused? That's probably an argument to provide more support services for men.

And under no circumstances should a convicted rapist be in a woman's prison.

If a transgender person wants to access women's only spaces solely on the basis of "I'm a woman too," I'm not for that, but I actually think that thought process isn't representative of the vast majority of trans people.

And me.

Back to the original post:
I think the Left hasn't been economically left for decades. Since at least the 70's.
Gordon Brown might be the exception. (I don't know enough about US to comment). Blair was (is) a narcissist with no ideology. Corbyn was economically left but didn't get to power. Starmer is like Blair - just interested in his own career with no convictions to speak of.

Old-fashioned, trade-unionist, re-distributionist, welfare-state, cradle-to-grave Left has not been a prospect in my adult lifetime. So the Left left me before I even got to vote.

Social-issues Left, what someone earlier correctly identified as Liberalism, just is not that important to me.
Obvs, I want equality for all and an end to discrimination, but I would always vote according to economic and taxation issues.

PP didn’t say that Polish people came here illegally, they just pointed out that the number that came was much higher than expected.
Similar thing might (and is likely to) happen if safe routes are established.

Similar thing might (and is likely to) happen if safe routes are established.

People are spouting this stuff as fact, which it isn't. You don't even know how the asylum system works, it's not like some golden gate is opened and suddenly people just flood in.

And FYI this country has massively benefited from the labour of Polish and other workers, don't portray them moving here as a bad thing.

Now leave me alone.

I read of a case, can't recall where it occurred, it could have been the US, I can't remember exactly where it was now, only the story as it was so poignant. Anyway, a woman trapped in a DV relationship slipped a note under the wall of the cubicle next to her asking for help and to call the police. That woman called the police and the woman got help and was able to escape him. If that was an individual cubicle, she would have NO CHANCE! Her male abuser would be waiting right outside it. That right there, is a testament to the support of having a female space with fellow women surrounding you.

One case you say? Wow, then we should immediately re-think everything.

What if she had been somewhere there were no toilets? If she were in a bar she could have offered to get a round in and slipped the note to the bartender, or a waiter in a restaurant, or the person next to her at the cinema. The "ask for Angela" campaign is making that more possible.

It's obvious you have not thought for even 30 seconds of the implications of the reckless and abhorrent practice in removing safe communal spaces that you are advocating. You've clearly done absolutely no thought on this at all, whatsoever!

I've done plenty of thought on it, and have given examples of places where it is working well. If you want to retain a single sex toilet, (now that it isn't just about privacy and safety but some "communal experience" that public toilets give you, then hey, let's add that in to the solution.

What I refuse to do is simply shout for a status quo that leaves another group of people feeling vulnerable, when in every other example in history, we've been able to come up with a solution that solved the problem.

but I would always vote according to economic and taxation issues.

Which is exactly what America has just done.

I thought you left?

in a huff?

if you want to be left alone. Stop commenting.

or perhaps back up your claims with reasoning.

One is more than enough to demonstrate how vulnerable women are and how we NEED each other as women. How many, would be enough for you, to justify our need for that communal space? Give us a number. I can guarantee you that these isolated doors are NOT working well, and cannot. Common sense tells one that. Which is why you clearly have not thought about it at all. Also considering medical emergencies. You clearly gave absolutely no consideration to that at all. In fact, it never even occurred to you did it.

Males in dresses are not 'vulnerable'. And as I previously said, by the testimony of transwomen (and gay men) themselves, they are perfectly safe in a male space. Ask yourself why you are bending over backwards for 1%, and ignoring the vulnerability of 50% of the population. Male vulnerability is not actually a thing. They want VALIDATION. That's the issue. They are not 'vulnerable'. Even if they were, dismantling the hard fought for most sacred communal spaces females have for one percent, is not, and never will be the answer.

What claims should I back up? That I think that people fleeing war should be given refuge? It seems that you fail to grasp the concept of common humanity.

Do you honestly not agree? Do you think Ukrainians should not have been allowed to come here while Putin rained bombs on them? People from Afghanistan? Jews fleeing Germany?

I'm just amazed that your ignorance is not more widely challenged here.

And FYI this country has massively benefited from the labour of Polish and other workers, don't portray them moving here as a bad thing.

I totally agree. Having been in the construction industry in the early part of this century, seeing the eye watering rates for construction labour where an unskilled labourer was being charged out at £25/per hour (equivalent to £45/per hour today) and skilled labour was nearly £40/per hour (£71 today) we saw the price of construction projects going through the roof. I'm all for a living wage, but when someone who is sweeping up a construction site and watering the grass is being paid more per hour than a professionally qualified person, then that's a problem.

When more labour became available, prices came back to a more reasonable level. Not cheap, but reasonable.