Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times today

[MargeH]

Go Rod...

"My favourite politician, Harriet Harman, has come up with an ingenious plan, as is entirely typical of her. She has suggested that the next Labour leadership election should be contested only by female candidates. The men, she says, can “jostle” for the position of deputy.
This is presumably an attempt by Harriet to stop the macho bullies of Momentum winning the race. But there is a problem she may not have foreseen. Labour’s National Executive Committee recently decided that all-women shortlists can include people who identify as women but are not, actually, women. So the next leadership election may be your first and last chance to see Andy Burnham wearing a gingham frock or Sadiq Khan resplendent in a niqab. Men are endlessly inventive when it comes to getting their own way."

Well I think Jordan Peterson talks a load of bollocks but I will nevertheless defend to the death ChesterBelloc's right to publicly agree with him

I think some of Jordon Peterson's stuff is sensible, particularly the first chapter in his 12 rules for life book about the importance of appearing confident. I'm not keep on his love of mystical waffly spirituality but other people seem to enjoy that. I've yet to find anything really objectionable in his writing, often it's the way people have interpreted him rather than stuff he's actually written or said.

Might as well come completely clean - as well as being a conservative voter, I also voted leave .

But I'm still a feminist.

rofl re leave vote.

I now foresee a Monty-Python style competition of things we have done that could oust us from the board.....

Margaret Thatcher first stirred my feminist leanings. History may have judged harshly but at 9 years old it was amazing - and inspiring - to see a woman in the PM’s job.

LOL MargeH!

I'm not on the same political page as you (old school leftist) but I will say, and have already said here more than once, if push comes to shove I would prioritise the political needs of a working class man from a deindustrialised town over those of an upper middle class woman who graduated from Oxbridge.

Am I still allowed to have the temerity to comment on gender politics and the deleterious effects transactivism has on women? Is there someone I should ask? Is there an application form? Does an interest in social class disqualify me? Who is this central authority?

Question: what is as bad as the extreme right?
Answer: the extreme left.

Politics is not a left - right line. It's a circle where extreme left meet extreme right. Both are authoritarian, no dissent from their particular zeitgeist is allowed. Both think the other are the devil's spawn. Both are correct. Both are obnoxious and dangerous.

LangCleg

Both my granddads worked down the pit. I grew up in a steel town, lived in a council house and escaped to university in the early 70s. I now live a comfortable middle class life ..but I haven't forgotten my roots. A bit like Rod L, I suppose. Working class kid made good. Janice Turner in The Times is another one. And that gives us an insight and perspective that those well-known lefties, born into a middle-class lifestyle - such as Jeremy Corbyn, Tony Benn, Emily Thornberry, Polly Toynbee and Harriet Harman - will NEVER comprehend.

Speaking for the working class? Yeah, right.

Might as well come completely clean - as well as being a conservative voter, I also voted leave *
But I'm still a feminist.*

Me too @MargeH

MargeH

The posh left - and particularly this generation of pomo-brainwashed posh left - is always shocked to discover the existence of working class Tories. That's because they identify as the representation of the working classes. Doesn't occur to them that the working classes are perfectly able to represent themselves. That's why their only response pre-Brexit was to shout RACIST! and their only response post-Brexit is to shout TRANSPHOBE!

If they ever stopped identifying as other people's representation and actually engaged with the people they are assuming they can speak for, they might manage to come up with leftist solutions that even working class Tories would consider voting for. But they don't.

As a leftist person myself, it tries my soul.

Handwringing liberal fence sitter here too apparently.

Ditto re Margaret Thatcher for me as well.
As a child in the late 70s & 80s seeing a female running the country meant that nothing was off limits.

I'm working class, moved away from home at 18 & for a good while had a great income & a comfortable lifestyle - now a single mum on benefits.

I'm a centrist person politically - a pick & mix of slightly left & slightly right; I've voted labour, Lib Dem & Tory over my lifetime.

The extremes of each leave me cold & the privileged middle class socialists who 'hate' everyone who doesn't subscribe to their prescribed groupthink piss me right off.

The extremes of each leave me cold & the privileged middle class socialists who 'hate' everyone who doesn't subscribe to their prescribed groupthink piss me right off.

^^this. With bells on. They have no idea how patronising they are. I'd take Rod over Polly any time.

I'm left wing, but always thought that the Brocialists were as sexist as hell. Re Rod Liddle, he's a twat, but even a stopped clock can be right twice a day.
I am more than willing to put differences to one side to fight this battle. And I'll take support from wherever I can get it.

LangCleg

I can't begin to tell you how furious I am that all Leavers were tarred with the racist/bigot/thick smear by what you so rightly call the 'posh left'. How bloody insulting. We, and millions like me, especially up t'North, knew what we were voting for. I had made my decision long before any alleged Russian intervention or a poster on the side of a bus.

Proudest voting moment ever, putting my cross against Leave

I'm sure some racists voted Leave for racist reasons. But that patronising tone applied to all dissenters and the casual tarnishing of them all as thick/racist is what lost Remain the referendum, if you ask me. (FWIW I am Euro sceptic myself but voted Remain as the least bad option, if you see what I mean).

The same thing will happen to the bourgeois transactivists. At some point, the extremes of their nonsense will hit the mainstream and there will be a revolt against it. And by that time, they will have alienated all their possible allies among feminists and the sensible left (who would fight for minority rights provided they didn't come at the expense of women's rights) and they'll be up against a lot of people who really don't give a shit about them.

LangCleg

True. Too many snouts sniffing around the EU gravy trough.

In all parties.

It's just fascinating that feminists are becoming Alt-Right. Fascinating. It's like you've dipped your toes in and found....hey we're more at home with fascists and boorish, misogynist arseholes like Liddle

Neither Liddle nor Peterson are alt-right. I think shouting "alt- right" to a man is the equivalent of shouting "terf" to a woman.

I think those of us who have been right of centre for a while find the alt right allegation rather amusing. Obviously, to believe anything with conviction there must be a modish label to attach it to. The notion that you could have solidly and boringly thought a certain way about things before people on the internet gave you an identity is alien to some people.

All I really know is that:

1. my brother just told me that he will speak at dad's funeral because "it is a male thing"
2. that's what my childhood was like too
3. mum was a stronger person than dad and it's important to me to know it's ok for me to be strong too. mum was never ok with being strong.
4. the working class kids at my kids' school face multiple barriers to inclusion that are totally invisible to most of the parents
5. now my life has changed and I work with those kids (outing risk alert) and they and their parents and their teachers tell me it makes a difference. And I know it does too.

Like Carrie Bradshaw knew shoes, those things I know. But like Carrie men I may not know.....

I'm sure some racists voted Leave for racist reasons. But that patronising tone applied to all dissenters and the casual tarnishing of them all as thick/racist is what lost Remain the referendum, if you ask me

I'm a former posh lefty Labour remainer. Still remain, but no longer Labour.

The fishermen of North-east Scotland voted leave- it has nothing to do with racism.

You're right, there are strong parallels, BabyItsAWildWorld in the way this latest debate is being bulldozed through managed. I find that quite scary, tbh. Who's really behind it, or are they simply so gullible right on that they haven't thought it through?

But never fear, Mr Liddle is a strong Brexiteer too! TBH, that was when I first took notice of him - at last, someone in The Sunday Times was giving my views a platform.

If you're reading this, Rod - thank you.

The fishermen of North-east Scotland voted leave- it has nothing to do with racism.

I live in a farming community in the back end of the English beyond. The politics here have nothing whatsoever to do with London politics and the Leave cohort here also has absolutely no interest in race or immigration issues.

Going back to men talking about trans issues in The Times, Matt Ridley is in today's Times discussing the study that discussed the genetics of intelligence/school exam results. Hoping the share token works!

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/forget-private-school-its-all-in-thegenes-hzxfj8nwd?shareToken=6e6e89c4c650cfb0bf063260c4031f1c

"Genes cannot be wished away. As the Harvard geneticist David Reich said: 'Well meaning people who deny the possibility of substantial biological differences among human populations are digging themselves into an indefensible position, one that will not survive the onslaught of science."