Tonight's debate 7.30pm BBC 1

[BastardisMendacem]

Anyone fancy a discussion thread?

Agree !
and some of us are ALSO concerned about the erosion of woman's rights. The loss of which could affect 51% of the population.

This is my point. I can hardly find any women at all interested in this issue.

Lots of women and men are though
There are threads on mumsnet aswell discussing this very topic re the election.

Appreciate you won’t be aware as it’s not something you’re interested in.
Some women are switching voting habits based on this one reason. Some are not voting or spoiling their ballets. Some are making a balanced view weighed up against other issues they find important.

It's pretty common for candidates, or at the least the network to control the questions/narrative in TV debates. Otherwise how do they choose the questions? This is what happened when I went to Question Time.

It's not just done randomly otherwise we'd see more 'specialised' questions being asked.

I'd love it if someone's question was approved and then they went rogue and asked a completely different one once the cameras were rolling 😂

I guess it depends. I know lots who are interested, you know few. Such is life 🤷‍♀️

I was thinking if I’d been there that’s exactly what I would have done.

There are very many on here as you well know. And if you ask a woman in real life if she is happy about rapists being put in to women's prisons, men invading women's sports and girls being forced to have mixed sex loos at school so that they refuse to drink/use the loo and get infections - I think that they will be interested.

'Brexit Boston'. What on earth? And are you saying that you have never heard of Boston? 🙄

You obviously didn't watch QT around Brexit time. They kept going back to this obscure town in Lincolnshire called Boston that was very Brexit-y. A good excuse for them to pack the audience with Brexiteers.

Yes I think he did and I'm no Brexit/reform voter!
A pity he doesn't use his ability for good instead of the creation of havoc and dissension amongst the public.

Yes I liked Carla - seems the Greens are replacing the Labour Party in their politics.
I wish we had a Green candidate here!

Carla seemed visibly moved by the knife question. Until then, I thought she sounded confident and articulate. After the knife question, she seemed less assured.

I thought she was really nervous and a bit scared of saying the wrong thing. I don't think her heart is in the current manifesto.

I am not sure it's particularly obscure. 😂

Also the little smile she had when Farage was slagging off Starmer and saying that she was the real leader...very telling. She is not a centrist at all.

It shouldn't matter whether immigration is high, net zero, or negative, so long as there is a rationale behind the policy and a good strategy for it.

And the money to pay for it, which is rather the missing item here.

If Farage is right about immigration not being a net contributor when you factor in dependents (and I'm not sure if such analysis exists in reality to support either view), then it very much matters if immigration is high given the size of our public debt and state of public services.

Irrespective of whether you love or hate immigration, adding 7 million people can't be a positive for NHS waiting lists. And in reality, it's not evenly spread so it can easily be absorbed, it's mainly in the high-density areas which are already stretched.

The only time I hear about it on the news is in relation to Brexit. Is it famous for anything else?

I just find your lack of general knowledge a bit strange. You call a place obscure just because YOU haven't heard of it - that's on you really.

Many places in the UK are not on the news regularly - doesn't mean they are obscure or that people have never heard of them!

Are you from Boston that you're taking this so personally?
Seriously, more British people have heard of the American one.

The network and the panelists aren’t the same. Obviously the questions aren’t random, that doesn’t mean they’re determined by the panelists.

If that's what you think, then you just carry on.

I thought she was smirking at the very transparent "divide and conquer" Farage was attempting

True, but if also doesn't mean that there aren't issues (like provision of single sex spaces and Gaza, for another example) that aren't being discussed on purpose because they are seen as too polarising.

It doesn't mean to say there aren't large numbers of voters who are interested in such issues.

IMO ignoring people's voices doesn't usually end well eg Brexit.

Yes, I read the little smile as an ironic one in line with thinking 'just what you would expect from grubby Farage, blatant divide and conquer tactics'.

Well you have jumped to some conclusions there.

I see some people on MN are very focused on it to the point where they are voting on this single issue.

It's a subject I get very worked up about. I've tried to bring it up with a large number of friends and only have one who is remotely interested. She is a real activist on the topic. Most don't see it as anything to do with them. Believe me, I've tried to find out people's opinions and most don't seem to have one.

Funny that you assume it's something I'm not interested in.