Heads up - webchat with Jeremy Corbyn Monday 19th Sept @ 2pm.

[JustineMumsnet]

Hello,

We’re pleased to announce a webchat with the leader of the Labour Party (and candidate in the current leadership election) Jeremy Corbyn MP on Monday 19 September at 2pm.

Jeremy has been MP for Islington North since 1983, and before 2015 was best known as a rebellious backbencher and chair of the Stop the War coalition. His leadership of Labour over the past year has inspired enthusiastic support as well as attracting sustained criticism. Among other things, he’s taken a new crowd-sourced approach to Prime Minister’s Questions, opposed military intervention in Syria and proposed the renationalisation of the railways.

His last webchat on Mumsnet (alongside fellow leadership candidate in 2015, Liz Kendall) featured lively discussions about socialism, electability and the provenance of Jeremy’s vests (Holloway Road market, since you ask).

Please do join the chat on Monday at 2, or if you can’t make it, leave a question here in advance. If you know people who you think would like to ask Jeremy a question, do please share the link around on social media too.

(If you’re interested in our webchat with the other Labour leadership candidate Owen Smith, take a look here .)

As always, please do keep in mind our webchat guidelines - one question each, follow-ups if there’s time and above all, keep it civil [taps nose like that geezer Shaw Taylor in Police 5] (Horribly showing my age there).

A link to a response from a Jewish organisation. Please read if you have only seen the one side of the anti Semitism row. For example it says:

"Accusations of antisemitism are currently being weaponised to attack the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party with claims that Labour has a “problem” of antisemitism. This is despite Corbyn’s longstanding record of actively opposing fascism and all forms of racism, and being a firm a supporter of the rights of refugees and of human rights globally."

www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/news/item/statement-on-labours-problem-with-antisemitism-from-the-jewish-socialists-g

I have said repeatedly, as did all the other posters here, that we support decriminalising the mostly female and vulnerable prostitutes and criminalising the mostly male pimps and traffickers.

That a problem for Jeremy Cornyn, then?

"Plenty of liberal feminists I know support the idea that transwomen (esp post-surgery) are women"

Seeing as how they're only about 20% of transwomen, they may change their mind when they consider the majority.

And most women aren't feminists, liberal or otherwise. They know when they're being sold a bag of shit and when something that calls itself feminism is selling it, they conclude that feminism is not for them.

A link to a response from a Jewish organisation. Please read if you have only seen the one side of the anti Semitism row. For example it says

The Jewish Socialists do not speak for all the Jewish community or all Jewish Labour members.

Please stop making out they do.

I googled 'Jewish community backs corbyn' and I got

jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/corbyn-backed-motion-to-severe-ties-with-jewish-labour-group/

And

www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/143703/on-his-side-jews-voting-jeremy-corbyn

• some support, but absolutely not any kind of endorsement from the Jewish community as a whole.

It's true that amongst these letters there are Jewish people who back Corbyn:

www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/29/labour-antisemitism-and-where-jeremy-corbyn-goes-from-here?0p19G=c

But that is not the same as 'the Jewish community backing Corbyn'.

So no, I am still very unsure that Corbyn has the backing of the Jewish community.

FloraFox, you – or anybody else for that matter – can pick out a couple of the words I use to score an easy point. I would ask you to read all that I have written and, instead, make a reasoned and rational reply.

To ArcheryAnnie I would ask you to do the same. You said, “The question is, jakepepper, why on earth you would think this is a bad thing? “ Well firstly you are putting words into my mouth. I have not said anything about the things you have mentioned.

I accept that MostlyHet was generous with her response (and with the time it took to write it). However, she wrote about women who are FORCED into prostitution – either by trafficking or by economic circumstances.

I have emphasised that my question is decidedly not about those poor unfortunate women.

I would refocus you on my original question but perhaps rephrase it more simply.

If women have a moral right to decide what to do with their own bodies then why do some people (women and men) object to those women who CHOOSE to become prostitutes instead of taking up other employment.

Perhaps a couple of the other people who post here ar right. It would seem that some posters want to impose their own moral viewpoint on others.

ThroughTheOtheSide I wish Jeremy Corbyn would explain his thoughts, when asked on a MN web chat which he agreed to, by MNetters. I do actually agree that questioning the actions of, say, Netanyahu doesn't equate to anti-semitism.

After all, that would make Haaretz anti-Semitic and it isn't.

jakepepper, am I allowed to morally judge pimps and sex traffickers in your world? Is that ok?

"I said quite clearly, “I am not talking here about women who are forced in any way to sell their bodies but about those who make a choice to sell their bodies instead of doing other work to earn an income”."

Are you a socialist Jakepepper?

Because in most economic situations, socialists understand that choice is constrained by circumstances. In every other situation, brocialists understand that poor people who choose their employment, do not have a free choice - hence the term wage slavery. They don't prate on about women in Bangladesh "choosing" to work for 14 hours in sub-standard fire-hazardous building in sub-standard working conditions. Because they understand that a choice not coerced by poverty, addiction or abuse, is not a free choice. Only when it comes to men sticking their cocks in women who don't want them to and will only put up with it for money, do brocialists suddenly develop an affection for the free market. Their hypocrisy is nauseating. When you refer to the unusual women who have a genuinely free choice, you are referring to such a tiny minority as to be almost irrelevant. The rest of us will concentrate on the majority.

And more, we will concentrate not on the choices, behaviour and motivations of the women in prostitution, but those of the male punters. What sort of man is willing to stick his cock into the body of a woman who he knows doesn't want it there and is only consenting, in order to get money? A rapist, that's what sort of man. Further, what sort of man is content to have coerced consent from a woman, rather than enthusiastic participation, which is the least a good lover will settle for? A man who has no respect for women and a huge sense of entitlement.

And if the state backs those men, it sends a very clear message to society, about the humanity of women. And that message affects every woman who is ever born. And if you're not affected by that or not bright enough to grasp it, why are you here mansplaining to us?

If women have a moral right to decide what to do with their own bodies then why do some people (women and men) object to those women who CHOOSE to become prostitutes instead of taking up other employment.

You present prostitution, jakepepper as if it's the majority of prostitutes are women who have actively chosen that, and it's the ones who are trafficked that are the exceptions. It's the opposite way around. I choose (or CHOOSE, possibly) to focus my efforts on supporting the women who are forced into prostitution (whether by trafficking or poverty or abusive men). If you insist you are not talking about those "poor, unfortunate women" then all that illustrates that you know nothing about the reality of prostitution.

In any case I certainly don't object to the women themselves. I do object entirely to the abusive men who treat them as nothing but meat to wank into. Why don't you?

I think the position of (some) Jeremy Corbyn supporters can be summed up thusly:

1. The Dear Leader is right, about everything.
2. The Dear Leader is above criticism.
3. Everyone who criticises the Dear Leader is clearly a Tory, or (worse) a traitorous Blairite.
4. That's it.

"If women have a moral right to decide what to do with their own bodies then why do some people (women and men) object to those women who CHOOSE to become prostitutes instead of taking up other employment"

We don't object to those women. They just aren't representative of the majority of people who are forced into prostitution.

And er, we object to the rapey men who exploit them, we object to the idea of the state sanctioning our status as wank-toys for men's boners.

Got it?

I was at work too but I would have liked to have asked Why he is intent on killing the Labour party??? because the conners will be in for the next 50 years now!!!!

This is the massive underbelly of Corbyn.

Jake you could argue that people should be allowed to sell their organs - why not? It's their body. However, it is illegal because of the potential for exploitation and crime.

There might be people who would love to sell a kidney, but we don't let them to protect the far greater number of people who would be harmed by commercial trade in organs.

A similar logic could be applied to prostitution, but well, women, I suppose.

To LineyReborn: You have every right to morally judge pimps and sex traffickers. I can only agree with you that they are the scum of the earth.

To some of the others, I would ask you to do the same.

However, yet again, I ask readers to go back to my posts and please reply to what I say.

I have to go now but before I do, I would recommend a book to anybody interested in having a rational and reasoned discussion in any sphere and not just on Mumsnet..

The book is called "Straight and Crooked Thinking" by Robert Thouless. It may well be out of print now but a link to some of his ideas is here:-

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_and_Crooked_Thinking

"However, yet again, I ask readers to go back to my posts and please reply to what I say. "

I did. Twice.

Behold: jakepepper has buggered off. (Without answering any of the points put to him. What a surprise.)

What a condescending prick.

jake I responded to you very specifically.

Do you think punters should be criminalised?

That's a key difference between the Nordic model that protects women, and the brothel model that seems be supported by Corbyn, Amnesty, the Greens, Vaz, etc, after sex industry lobbying, that protects men.

But apparently your thinking is still crooked, AskBasil.

MostlyHet, your post was really useful.

You've entirely missed the point I was making. Regardless of whether he shares my view or not, Corbyn claims to be a politician of principle rather than soundbite.

He said that his views on prostitution were driven by harm reduction. But he did not say what approach he thought would minimise harm, having been explicitly asked. So either he doesn't think the issue is important enough to have bothered to think about it before now (which is a bit crap given that there is a parliamentary committee currently assessing the options, and presumably its recommendations will go forward to parliament soon). Or he's sitting on the fence waiting to hear what the majority of the public think (in other words something akin to a Blairite focus group). What he hasn't done is given a real answer. The point is not that "not all questions were answered" but that he did actually pick this question out then gave a non-answer. I still don't know if he's on the side of the Swedish model or the German model. All he's said is that he favours harm reduction, which is a bit like saying "and I think we can all agree we like foods that taste good" - it's a complete bloody non-answer. He ducked the issue. Fine if you like the idea of a politician who virtue-signals and postures, but doesn't actually tell you what their policies are. I personally like to have some inkling of what sort of policies and laws a politician would push for before I vote for them. I know it's unfashionable in these days of the cult of personality, but I like to vote on actual issues.

Doncha love these passers by who come in waving their testicles of objectivity