Time to ban lobbying

[TimeToBanLobbying]

Given how women's rights have been effectively erased over the past 15 years by TRAs often using behind the scenes lobbying to turn society on its head, isn't it time to ban lobbying altogether?

Would you ban lobbying by charities? Say Shelter working to support the rights of the homeless? Or unions lobbying to promote workers’ rights?

I don’t think you understand how effective policy is made in our political system.

You don't like that topic being lobbied, but I bet there's plenty of others that you do agree with, be it foxhunting, the EU, GMO, charities or anything else that's in the news it would also ban any lobbying to improve women's rights. If you ban lobbying, you end up with politicians making decisions without input from anyone, which would be a disaster. It's a stupid suggestion.

There are alternatives to lobbying.
As society becomes more and more digitalised, it will be possible for registered voters to vote in favour or not of changes to policy or the law.

My concern is that so much lobbying is done behind the scenes and people or corporations etc with a lot of money can change policies and laws without the knowledge of the public as happened with TRAs infiltrating every public body there is unbeknownst to the general public.
I find that scary and profoundly undemocratic.

I think TRAs are the least of our worries with lobbying.

Arms and fossil fuel companies are much more insidious and dangerous. Weird little niche example to pick really.

There is nothing niche about TRAs, on the contrary - they expect the entire population to bow to their demands, use their language and follow their creed with heretics burned at the stake for refusing to do so figuratively speaking.
They have very successfully invaded and erased women only spaces for the past 15 years allowing men with a fetish into women's refuges, women's prisons, women's toilets and changing rooms up and down the country. Most people are afraid of speaking out against Trans ideology for fear of losing their job or being cancelled as happened to numerous public figures. It's far-reaching and dystopian what they have managed to do in such a short space of time and most of the changes were done through behind the scenes lobbying, without any awareness by the general public, hence my question.

Lobbying is part of my job. I’m in Ireland, where it is mandatory to make returns 3 times a year of all interactions with public officials (including all elected officials and civil servants up to a certain level of seniority). There returns are then published on a publicly viewable register - www.lobbying.ie if anyone is interested.
Just offering an alternative perspective on how lobbying can be done in a more transparent way, although I am not naive enough to think it is a perfect system.

I'm also Irish and I don't recommend the so-called transparency we have.
It didn't work.
It allowed self-id and men with a fetish can legally be women and end up in women only spaces. Barbie Kardashian being the headliner.
Irish politics is full of cronies and is anti-democratic and pays lip-service to women's rights.
Self-id is a national embarrassment and gives two fingers to real women.

I voted YABU. I believe in biological reality but don’t think banning anything is the answer. What’s next, free speech? How far does it go until we are in a dictatorship/authoritarian state.

It was a catchier title than replace lobbying with a democratic alternative.
Lobbying has effectively removed free-speech in the past few years.
Most people have been silenced by hate speech laws or the threat of hate speech laws where their only crime is to believe in biological reality rather than trans fantasy.

I think lobbying for policy or legal changes should be put to the public in the future. Lobbying allows niche groups to impose their values on everyone else which is undemocratic.

Most people do not believe people can change sex yet that is what all public institutions have been pushing for the past 15 years.
There is nothing good about that.

We have a lobbying register in the UK. Lobbying isn’t the issue with TRAs, the media coverage of the issue seemed to lead politicians to believe their view was the “consensus” which they adopted - they are inevitably focused on agreeing with the majority. An effective counter movement to TRAs came much later in the press, they have just not been as good at PR.

No, it’s a niche issue which is dragged up over and over again, and involves toilets and sports.

Lobbying is used far more insidiously - and its use is actually evidenced - to protect fossil fuel interests which affect energy security, energy costs, and the viability of our entire future on this planet. And arms companies - to start conflicts / supply weapons to criminal regimes who use them to kill civillians in their hundreds of thousands.

But yeah, please continue to complain about your unproven / theoretical / made-up toilet lobbying.

Why can't people use their brains and not let others do their thinking for them, maybe they need an intelligence test to be able to vote

Lobbying has effectively removed free-speech in the past few years.

Nonsense. In 2024, not a single person was arrested for in Ireland for something they said or wrote. Over 700 people were arrested for other crimes such as assault, that had a hate motive, but nobody had their "free-speech" removed. You may have arguments about the power of lobbyists, but hyperbole such as this isn't helping your case.

Source: https://hatecrime.osce.org/ireland

Men with a fetish have been allowed into women's toilets, changing rooms, refuges, prisons, sports all across the western world - have you been asleep for the past 15 years? It's unavoidable unless you're a hermit.
It may involve a small minority but the only other tiny minority with such political power are the ruling class. This is not a vulnerable minority - it's not even a coherent group. Young autistic or lesbian teenage girls have absolutely nothing in common with middle-aged men with a porn addiction. Pretending they do is how men have hoodwinked people into believing their nonsense and is why middle-aged women like myself are the ones calling them out. We know exactly what they are doing unlike the naive young women supporting them.

Who’s doing the lobbying ? Autistic teenage girls or middle-aged men with a porn addiction ?

This isn’t very coherent. So many more dangerous examples of actual lobbying and you’re bothered by this minor example with very little to zero actual evidence that lobbying is even happening.

Young people have been deliberately and callously groomed to go along with the fiction that people can be born in the wrong body.
Girls in particular are groomed to "be kind" which translates into "ignore your instincts and believe what middle-aged men with a porn addiction tell you to".

Religions and McDonald's do the same thing - get them young and you have them for life.

A tiny minority with this much political power is the antithesis of democracy.

Keir Starmer was saying 99% of women don't have a penis not that long ago. When world leaders are afraid to tell the truth, you know that very powerful men with a lot of money are leaning on them. The majority of people have been silenced using old-fashioned totalitarian methods.
There is nothing "nice" or "kind" or acceptable about that.

This is why Graham Linehan was arrested in the UK last September for tweeting on an American social media platform while living in the US, even though he is an Irish citizen. Five armed policemen arrested him and thankfully that shone a big bright light on what is really going on.

Powerful middle-aged men with a porn addiction are the ones pulling the political strings. Autistic teenage girls are the victims in this game.
80% of "gender-affirming surgery" in the US are double-mastectomies on young women. If there were such a thing as "trans", you would expect the number to be 50/50 male and female, not overwhelmingly young females.

Why aren't the men getting vaginoplasty if they think they are women?
Why is it overwhelmingly young women who are self-harming?
Why is the medical industry so keen to mutilate troubled young women?

This fad has run its term and is on the way out in the west.
The young women who have been mutilated will realise what has been done to them as they reach their thirties - that is unavoidable.
Theirs will be the loudest voices in a few years from now.

Do we have evidence that this lobbying is actually happening in the real world ?

Stonewall has been very successfully lobbying and campaigning for trans fantasy since their raison d'etre ceased to exist once marriage equality came in.
Shamefully, while women were at the helm.
Careerists will do anything to hold onto their job.
We've seen this also at NHS Fife with women in senior positions supporting a man with a fetish getting his rocks off in the women's changing room.

You want to leave complex policy changes to the hands of the public? Look at Brexit..

Lobbying and consultations are part of our democracy - be it wholesale policy changes or complex technical tax changes that only impact a particular sector. These often require input from those stakeholders with specialist knowledge of the subject matter and sector.

what is needed is more transparency - so all consultations and all responses the uk should be published and any form of lobbying should be registered.

I don't think a democracy can realistically ban organisations from expressing their opinions to government.

I would also imagine that well funded interest groups would be able to cause more havoc influencing the opinions of citizens in this decentralised alternative than they currently can trying to influence governments.

Lobbying is anti-democratic.
It allows people with plenty of funding to impose their views on others.

Brexit is a good example of democracy in action - the majority voted.

Democracy is not just when the majority votes in line with your own personal view.

Governments could use digital voting to get feedback from the general public.

The US is run by powerful lobby groups imposing their world view on the majority.

We need a new more democratic way of changing policies and laws that impact everyone.

TRAs successfully used the lobbying format and old-fashioned totalitarianism to forcibly impose their fantasy ideology on everyone else in society.
The irony is that they think they are more tolerant than the rest of us when they are the most intolerant group around. No debate is part of the totalitarian playbook. All totalitarian regimes actively suppress and prohibit debate, opposition, and individual expression.