Westministenders: KAAAAABBBOOOOOOOOMMMMM

[RedToothBrush]

'Quick' Recap.

Once upon a time, despite warnings to the contrary after previously attempting to recreate a speech from the 1930s, Theresa May triggered a50.

A series of events, which included a disastrous unnecessary General Election and losing seats, ensured that we have Brexit by Timetable in which every piece of goodwill was burnt up a long time ago, and the EU decided to go "see ya then".

Only this General Election, made this politically impossible as well as practically impossible, given how this would destroy our economy.

So May did the only thing she could and agreed to lock us in with sufficient progress deal, which is legally binding, if no deal is agreed. Thus giving us in essence a choice between staying in the Single Market and Customs Union due to NI or breaking an international agreement which would destroy all our international credibility and trust.

Except none of the Brexiteers really grasped what was happening. Until this week.

In the meantime we still have had spectacles of Nadine Dorries asking on the infamous WhatsApp Group why we can't stay in the CU. Any Davis saying that he has now apparently 'changed his mind' on the matter. Not that Labour are any better, with Corbyn saying we can't stay in the Single Market and leave the EU. Except of course, Norway is in the Single Market...

Fast forward through a sex scandal that's swept through Westminster, installing self appointing the vampiric Gavin Williamson as Defence Secretary, we eventually ended up with a reshuffle which was possibly as pointless and as successful as the General Election. And Gavin Williamson is caught up in a sex scandal.

May has managed to drag the Great Repel Bill through the Commons, without breaking the party, but with much back room dealing and compromise with Remainers. Hailed as something of a victory by Brexiteers, this rather is a fools paradise. At what price to their ideological purity did this come? Is there much Brexit left? And there is much more to come in the Lords, with the LDs committed to working with Labour on securing at least 10 amendments. The two parties have a majority in the Lords if they work together.

Away from parliament we have had the glorious demise of Toby Young, who is forever to be remembered for eugenics.

As it has become apparent that we are increasingly looking like we are on track for BINO, the EU have told us, that we should have sucked up a compromise proposal earlier and now the Norway Option is off the table as we fucked that up by taking too long to disagree amongst ourselves and being arses to EU citz. I paraphrase slightly here, but that's about he long and short of it. Instead we get the pleasure of 21 months of the EU interfering in our law without representation. And we are already locked into this. Now Leavers can moan about this, and shock horror, actually be correct about it too! Transition will be up to 31st Dec 2020 at the latest. Which realistically is still too soon, not that any lying arsed Brexiteer is willing to admit to this. Yet.

The only way to get out of this proposal for better terms? Either beg the EU for something there is no way they will give us or revoke / extend a50.

The fall out from May's reshuffle is still going on in slow motion. Rees-Mogg has got a bigger platform to spout shit he knows nothing about, admit that he has never changed a nappy nor wiped his own arse, thinks women should give birth to football teams, and how he has never visited IKEA and has no plans to do so. Johnson has tried to build bridges. And effed that one up again. Gove has made us all be obsessed by plastic straws and turn into environmental maniacs because no other minister is good at press releases and media stunts. Arch Remainac Liddington, got Deputy PM and took over Brexshit even more from DExEU. Hunt is in no way after becoming PM and Greening is really pissed and when straight back to lead from the Naughty Step.

To cut the long story short: they all hate May and think she's shit

There are thought to be nearly 48 letters to trigger a leadership election in Graham Brady's hands. But not quite. And its not about the letters its about needing 159 MPs to no confidence her... but that is starting to sound more and more plausible in the face of Brexshit hitting the fan.

We now have a leaked impact assessment that we really were not supposed to see which is slightly less worse than Project Fear. But not by much. Its supposed to be by DExEU. Its been suggested that its actually by alt-DExEU aka the Cabinet Department (Robbins and Liddington).

Anyway, nothing is decided. May might zombie on forever. She won't, she's in a crowded field of Tories with stakes. But that sub-committee meeting on Wed 7th Feb is crunch time for something or someone.

Tick tock, tick tock, went the Brexit Clock.

Oh yeah and there's going to be a trade war between the US and EU. And there's some stuff about a ex-Belize diplomat. And Trump's coming to visit us.

My own DD has a friend on the volleyball team who was knocked out by a kill from a biologically male member of the opposing team. As they say, it's all fine until someone loses an eye.

Girls should certainly be able to play sports safely. But this is not fundamentally different to a preadolescent boy being injured playing rugby against a boy of the same age who is physically adult.

I suppose I get less worked up about this because in France schools students are not usually separated by sex for school sports. If there was a safely issue I would just withdraw my child from that lesson - I have actually done this once, when my DS was doing wrestling (!) at school and was matched against a much heavier boy. (Though my issue wasn't so much the other boy's size as inadequate supervision.)

The problem here is not gender but poor supervision and safety practices. Parents should withdraw children of either sex from sports where safe practice is not observed.

I don't think the situations are comparable Misti.. There's a big difference between a school PE lesson being mixed and competitive sport being mixed.
WRT pubescent boys playing rugby they may all play together in weekly PE lesson but when it comes to matches they are in teams according to their level, so you are less likely to have a mismatch of strength on the pitch. And the tackle is part of the game in rugby, so if its too much you just let the ball go. I've seen DS's team turn to jelly in the face of a stocky looking gang of opponents - no blood shed, they just lost miserably.
There's also a difference to playing a mixed sport and a playing female sport with a surprise male or two in the opposing team.
Sorry to add to the derail

It ends competitive sport for adult women
I've been doing sport since toddlerhood, so the topic is close to my heart.

There are inherent biological reasons why we have separate competitions for men and women, in all sports where strength, speed, height etc determine the winners.

Several cases already of mediocre male athletes who identify as women and quite easily become "women" champions
There is the case of the middle-aged man who became a star in women's college basketball
Also cases of trans-women injuring women in martial arts - and they and their supporters gloat over the beatings they hand out to women opponents.

and the whole area of allowing men into safe spaces where women are vulnerable;`
refuges, rape crisis centres, hospital wards, prisons, toilets, changing rooms, communal gym showers and saunas.

Self ID will remove medical safeguarding and will leave trans people vulnerable to harm.

The main point is also not about trans people who do live as the other gender, but since self id means man can declare themselves a women on a Tuesday for whatever reason. Its grossly open to abuse by men (note not trans) and will expose the trans community to a backlash this will create. The current system PROTECTS trans people by not allowing this exploitation.

The whole thing replaces sex with gender which is deeply problematic when you look at the reasons women are discriminated against. And it instead imposes gender stereotypes on women and reduces us to 'just a feeling' we can't identify ourselves out of. It removes rights for women and gives men who identify as women a higher status.

Define women by anything else but sex and biology and you are left eith what?

It is more authoritarian bullshit. You are asked to say white is black even though you know its not.

Its destroyed my ability to define myself as a women within my family. Instead my past has been erased.

Its harmful and sets a precedent for the removal of rights. Nor can activists name what rights they dont currently have that they want to gain.

Its a deeply sexist and homophobic movement. I feel torn as I don't want my sibling exposed or at risk, but at the same time the lack of respect for women and their reality is non existent.

Not all trans gender people are like this. Unfortunately the politics of trans activism is being led by extremists and goes hand in hand with mens rights activism.

It depresses me even more than Brexshit.

It is completely different, Mistigri. It was not a gym class. It was a match against an opposing school.

Why should parents withdraw girls from a sport they love playing and that they have spent so many years practising, and doing conditioning for? Not to mention the time and money the parents have spent getting a child good enough to make a high school team? Because some boy 'felt like a girl'? His interests trump the interests of the girls in participation in sports with a view to physical and mental health, or gaining a scholarship?

The volleyball team boy uses the girls' showers and changing rooms because his parents sued for access. He is a fully intact male. The parents from the other team know this because their daughters are all there in the showers and locker room with him. Many girls have stopped showering and changing because of his presence. They arrive dressed with sweatsuits over their strip, and put on the sweatsuits again after practice or a game, and don't undress.

The boy displaced a girl from the roster. She was a good player but her family could not afford to move house to any alternative school districts where she might have a shot at a team that would still make commuting possible for her parents. So now she won't have a chance to win an NCAA scholarship to university, and her parents are hopping mad because getting onto a high school volleyball team entails years and years of hard slog by athletes and parents alike, and thousands of dollars paying for travel teams and private coaching. The family had made huge sacrifices to pay for it all for their three tall, athletic daughters. Their two older girls got scholarships but thanks to the trans wave the youngest will not.

You can complain that all this is evidence of is that American life is crazy, but the fact is that one tall, athletic girl did not make a team because of this boy, another suffered a concussion because of him, and several girls now don't use the showers and locker room for their intended purpose thanks to him.

Everyone on the boy's team puts on a happy face and they are all "ra ra ra go team" because nobody wants to be accused of transphobia, but the opposing team parents fell over themselves apologising to the parents of the concussed girl. Boys hit the ball incredibly hard and no amount of lipstick and blusher can eliminate the effects of 17 years of testosterone on the upper body. My DS played volleyball, and so did my DDs and even at age 13/14 the difference was incredible.

Title IX was instituted in America to give girls and university women a fair shake when it came to sports participation, sports funding and sports scholarships to university, and American girls and women didn't need to be asked twice. Title IX also has clauses protecting the interests of girls and women when it comes to sexual assault or sexual harassment or the existence of a hostile environment in classrooms and on campuses in both secondary and tertiary education.

Title IX is in many ways the foundation on which girls' and women's rights are built in the US because it seeks to make the educational playing field level. It means that girls are not discouraged from doing calculus or physics or woodwork or sound production. It means that schools are obliged to have open procedures and protocols in place for girls to make complaints and to take complaints to an appeal level and on to court if necessary. Before that all girls and university women had was a bunch of cigar chomping good ole boys telling them they should all be doing home ec, and hinting that developing muscles made them unattractive.

It was rendered completely meaningless by the equating of the word 'gender' with the word 'sex' in the Title IX legislation that was done by the Obama administration.

Look, I'm fundamentally on your side. I don't think you get to redefine biology. I have identified as a feminist all my life.

But the mumsnet obsession with this comes over as pretty cultish, tbh. You aren't allowed to disagree, even in a nuanced way. You aren't allowed to have a discussion about whether even biology is as black and white as is being claimed. And the debating techniques used often look like something straight out of the Brexit handbook.

Sorry for the derail.

Is it just me, or does Boris sound like he's trying to convince himself ?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43045553

Boris Johnson is to attempt to reassure voters who are angry and alienated by Brexit that the UK's split from the EU is a cause for "hope not fear".

(contd)

misti I want to thank you for saying that, because I'd wondered whether I was going a bit mad thinking that myself. I stay away from a lot of threads about it because that's how I find it on mn too. I have no issue just calling a transwoman she (or conversely transman he) which from what I can tell isn't mn etiquette. Doesn't mean I agree with self id but that gets lost.

I'm with you Misti and Dobbi. Personally I refuse to acknowledge gender as anything other than a social construct that has been used for thousands of years to oppress woman. However, I have sometimes experienced the discussion on MN straying too far into the alt-right anti-trans narrative for my liking. I did come across an article on Buzzfeed the other day by some young thing saying they are starting to wonder if we should just stop having genders at all, which made my eyes roll so far I had to get up and chase them across the floor. What do they think the old school feminists have been saying for years? There's no teaching the young sometimes

Anyways, back to Brexit. Yes, Boris seems to be getting a bit desperate to keep the whole thing afloat doesn't he DG.

Concerning, if true:

KREMLIN SOCIAL NETWORK BACKING JACOB REES-MOGG

www.byline.com/column/67/article/2049

Oliver Kamm - behind The Times paywall so I could only read intro but it is succinct and damning.

Boris Johnson’s big idea on Brexit is just preposterous

Boris Johnson authorised briefings ahead of a speech today setting out his vision of Brexit. Presumably he didn’t trust himself to be coherent on a single hearing. Mr Johnson embraced Brexit in 2016 without a plan for accomplishing it and his thinking shows no sign of having advanced since. His speech will set out a future for Britain purportedly unshackled by EU regulation. It is in reality the foreign secretary who is travelling light, unburdened as he is by reflectiveness, historical understanding or awareness of the derision he inspires among Britain’s allies

The anger on the Feminist board isn't because of calling transwomen "she'`

• if that was all that was involved, 99.9999% would be supportive

It is about taking away existing rights for women, taking away measures to tackle safety and inequality, that several previous generations of women fought hard to achieve. The typically male aggression, threats of murder & rape, persecution towards ordinary women who dare to mention biology

This prioritisation of trans feelings over biology will be harmful to women of all ages in their daily life, careers, medical care, recreation …

I will never vote for any MP who supports this, or who will roll over and accept party policy
This issue would determine my vote far more than Brexit

I would never vote for a party that takes hard-won rights away from women, any more than I would if they take rights away om people of colour.
Labour and LibDems need the votes of older women and BME citizens like me
They aren't getting mine until they change policies and their leaders stop spouting this harmful crap

I will spoil my ballot with #sexnotgender

"Grandfathering" of trade deals: not as easy as the govt claims (surprise)

Canada & Japan have indicated they would grandfather
South Korea and Chile indicate they want more concessions from the UK than they did from the much bigger EU
The US, India, China have all said they want concessions in a new deal, but we don't know if they would grandfather for a transition period

The UK says there are over 100 countries with whom they want grandfathering of current EU deals, so that the UK can use them with current terms.

issues:

• Those countries who have a trade deficit with the UK are more likely to want to renegotiate than those with a surplus
• Some countries will just want to take advantage of a UK on its own, in a much weaker negotiating position
• Not enough time to deal with 100 countries - and the UK needs deals before transition, not during

trade partners demand concessions for Brexit transition rollover

During this [transition] period it [UK] will have to abide by all the EU’s international agreements, including free-trade agreements,
but there is no guarantee that third-country trading partners will do the same.

"We risk a worst-case scenario where U.K. exporters lose their preferential access to third countries
while companies from those states can still export to the U.K. under preferential conditions,”

Grandfathering EU free trade deals for the UK: a look at an actual text

https://tradebetablog.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/grandfathering-eu-ftas/

This issue would determine my vote far more than Brexit

I find this quite disturbing.

I can understand the risks of allowing a free-for-all in terms of gender identification in sports - but where is the evidence this is happening to any significant extent in Europe?

In contrast, there is every reason to believe that Brexit will seriously affect the life chances of millions of Britons, especially those who are already less-privileged (a category in which women and children are over-represented).

Boris Johnson’s big idea on Brexit is just preposterous

Boris Johnson is preposterous. I don't know why anyone pays any attention to him.

At least Farage sincerely believes the racist guff he spouts.

Misti My vote on Brexit is determined by the needs of the UK, not the E27

Giving up these rights doesn't just affect sports; it affects every aspect of womens' daily lives in the UK, all those I have listed and more.

So, if Labour and Libdems are prepared to erase women, presumably because they expect more votes from a minority of aggressive men and their supporters,
they need to realise that some feminists will regard them as the enemy - and withhold their vote.

bigchoc you and the other posters here may not have that issue, but it is prevalent across mn. There were several threads yesterday where a large amount of posters referred to transwomen solely as he. It clearly is an issue on mn.

I've long argued that there's little reason why there shouldn't be women playing football at the highest levels, not just in women's leagues. There are plenty with the talent, speed and strength to more than match the men. But then football isn't an environment where men feel able to come out so that would take some major revolution sadly. Both to the massive detriment of the sport. I suppose at least they're getting better with mental health issues i would also like to see them treat head injuries more seriously but that's a pipe dream too apparently

Boris cares only about Boris. Don't think it comes down to more than that tbh.

Changes for Uk expats in Germany

Just what I've noticed in my own life …

I received last year my polling cards for local council and mayoral election
However, I presume I won't be able to vote in the 2019 EU elections, as that will be after Brexit

In January, when I had the last 6-monthly review of my Postbank Brokerage accounts, the adviser said we could continue as normal
EXCEPT
she was no longer allowed to give me the standardised meeting protocll for this that up to know has been printed out at the end of the meeting and we both sign.
It didn't bother me, as I know what I'm doing and my German is reasonably fluent.

She said this was a change specifically for UK citizens and had occurred sometime after our previous meeting last summer.
I already saw that the Uk was no longer in her online pulldown menus, her databank of EU countries, so she had to phone up various colleagues for afvice on how we could do what we wanted.
This was ok, since she was prepared to do this to keep a client and it is only every 6 months.

It would cause problems if I were a business exporting, not in standard databanks and this was happening every week, say.

I wonder what further changes will happen wrt my brokerage accounts post-Brexit

dobby I use "he'` for rapists and for aggressive transwomen who persecute women
None of us would have thought of so doing before seeing other feminist attacked & threatened, sometimes physically, for opposing the TRA agenda.
Don't expect feminists to be polite and acquiescent when attacked - we fight back and sometimes get angry

People do react very angrily when hard-won rights are taken away
If BME rights were removed, to pacify a minority of angry white males, you can bet I might sometimes be rude about them too

99.999% of us on MN Feminist threads would have been supporting transwomen in previous decades
to wear what they want, not to face discrimination in housing or jobs
just to get on quietly with their lives, as we did

That relationship worked in harmony for decades before the misogynists took over, with male entitlement and violence
They were always welcome to share our pronouns, but we won't let them erase us and our rights as women.

About this men identifying as women lark, which makes me very uncomfortable - should women self-identify as men and attempt to storm male only organisations? I suspect that would kill the whole thing stone dead.

Sorry, a digression, back to Brexit.
The only bonus I can see is that it might destroy the Tory party, but even that hasn't happened yet.

There are plenty with the talent, speed and strength to more than match the men.

The talent sure. The latter two? I think that pesky biology thing might be getting in the way.

bigchoc I think therein lies the issue that misti and bigly were pointing out - I've mentioned mn and posters not feminists because I have no clue whether they are or aren't, and whilst I may not hang around on the feminism boards here and feel uncomfortable with the tone of the debate in general on mn it doesn't make me not a feminist either.