Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Green Party thread 3

999 replies

FermatsTheorem · 30/08/2018 17:21

Previous thread here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3347925-Green-Party-statement-continuation-thread?pg=40

Will post links to AC's public statement and Caroline Lucas's appalling white wash job in a moment, but for me, Andrew Gilligan nails it yet again:
twitter.com/mragilligan/status/1034776005326581767

OP posts:
Thread gallery
31
Ereshkigal · 02/09/2018 17:20

Twitter says the Greens are cleaning house.

Could it possibly because their posted statement that they have only now been made aware of DC's charges and trial has been contradicted by the Green Party Women one which says they did know about it? Surely not!

TerfsUp · 02/09/2018 17:56

I know a furry who believes that TERFs should die in a fire. He's charming in all sorts of ways.

BitOfFun · 02/09/2018 18:24

He really sounds delightful.

TimeLady · 02/09/2018 20:16

Cesira
I've sent you a (long!) list of names from the JB II & III threads by PM

thebewilderness · 02/09/2018 20:45

Why is killing women so often men's knee jerk reaction to being disagreed with or inconvenienced?

thecatfromjapan · 02/09/2018 21:04

So ...

My thoughts:

  1. Stonewall are silent.

They shouldn't be. Attention needs to turn to them.

Questions: Did 'Aimee of the Problemstic Boundaries" work for them/advise them/ have input into their incredibly problematic advisory guidelines regarding Trans children? Advice which we know contravenes statutory Safeguarding guidelines?

Does Aimee still work with them?

Will they be reviewing any work done by Stonewall to which Aimee was advisory?

Next thought:

Having read through the NSPCC thread, something that leaps out is just how under-supervised the groups and committees tasked with producing work on Trans issues are.

Lack of oversight would appear to be something of a structural constant.

GirlGuide72's posts concerning the on-line communications of 'James-from-the-NSPCC-Trans-Group' is staggering.
He comes across as an ideologue, with poor understanding of his professional duties and indeed professional standards full stop.

How did such a poorly trained person end up in role? Who was supervising and monitoring him?

What oversight, generally, would there have been for the work he and his group prepared? Was it suitably thorough? Was it objective and properly researched, drawing on a range of advice, sources and voices?

Where was the Risk and Impact Assessment?

I raise this here because I think something that has emerged in the Green Party story is that lack of oversight was a part of the Safeguarding failure. There seems to have been a culture of 'We do not question certain groups in the way we would question others', leading to a staggering autonomy and lack of oversight and reflection.

My guess is that this isn't just a Green Party problem, it's a structural issue built into the whole 'only affirm' ideology.

Add to that the fact this is one of the most rapidly successful identity-rights based campaigns I have ever witnessed and you can see that organisations might be overly hasty and overly in recruiting people who seem to be informed about Trans identity/want to work developing rights . Concomitant with that, there is little oversight - perhaps other people in the organisation do not feel equipped to oversee and challenge with sufficient rigour.

Anyway. I think Stonewall are getting off the hook too easily.

Their very unaccountability permits their silence.

And that unaccountability is potentially quite dangerous.

And I also think there are issues in this Green Party story that raise questions about oversight and safeguarding in many other organisations.

RedToothBrush · 02/09/2018 21:22

My guess is that this isn't just a Green Party problem, it's a structural issue built into the whole 'only affirm' ideology.

There is no guessing about it. Development of ANY policy requires discussion of pros and cons / benefits and potential problems in order to make good policy which isn't open to abuse.

It doesn't matter if you are talking about taxation, trains or trans.

It's a universal thing that a range of interest groups of all who have knowledge, experience or concerns are consulted.

Image if a bunch of Tories said, this is our new policy on offshore Bank accounts, you need to trust us because we've all worked in banking and we'd be offended that you didn't recognise our exclusive authority to decide to do this. You should just all nod and agree or we might be so upset our mental health will collapse and we will all start jumping off buildings like shareholders after the 1929 wall street crash did.

They'd be bloody uproar.

This is no different. The comparison is not ludicrous. It's how you form any new law. Except self ID it would seem.

The suicide smokescreen is covering this basic structural tenant.

carceralfeminist · 02/09/2018 21:30

‘Someone recommended I should join a political party, so I joined the Green Party. I got involved with the LGBTIQA+ association in the party, and then the Chair role came up. I was encouraged and supported to go for it. I’d been on the Stonewall Youth Volunteering Programme, so I had the knowledge of how to campaign and get involved. And I was elected. Following that, I was appointed as the spokesperson for the party’s LGBTIQ issues. Apparently I’m the first openly trans spokesperson of any UK political party.’

– AIMEE CHALLENOR

2BorNot2Bvocal · 02/09/2018 21:41

An interesting tweet from the co-chair of the lgbtqi young greens.
twitter.com/TheLucasNorth/status/1034388283650916352

His personal website linked to twitter account is currently down for a rebuild.

silentcrow · 02/09/2018 21:46

carceralfeminist It makes you wonder about other alumni of that programme, doesn't it?

thecatfromjapan · 02/09/2018 21:47

I reckon this needs attention.

Questions to everyone:

Should we start another thread?
Pros: Attention in its own right.
People may think Green Party issues done and dusted.

Anti: Draws on info arising from AC/GP - necessarily, because arising out of/connected to.
People may still be looking for GP stuff - and it is related, will therefore attract GP-related attention.

Next question: What to call such a thread, if decided upon? Name would want to make clear links with pre-existing topic + a slightly different focus.

Also, I think people are in 'Shit! School tomorrow mode (apart from Scotland, who must practically be looking forward to the holidays now!) - so perhaps starting a new thread mid-week? If a new thread a good idea?

(And I'm not sure it is.)

PS Cesira I love your work. 😁

ChiaraRimini · 02/09/2018 21:54

Aimee Challenor is 20, an age when she should be cutting her teeth in student politics, not being let loose as a national spokesperson. Presumably the Greens are such a small pond they will take anyone on with little supervision or training.
As an aside I only became aware quite recently how the Greens have become an extreme far left party, I wonder how many people think they are still a single issue party of "Save the whale" etc

theOtherPamAyres · 02/09/2018 22:03

Shahrar Ali ( a contender for the GP leadership) is doing a good job with some of the jobsworths in the Green Party opposed to a root and branch enquiry

twitter.com/ShahrarAli/status/1036201308494147584

He's interested in uncovering the dynamics and relationships, at the highest level, that led to the expulsion of Olivia Hersham and the suspension/vexatious litigation suffered by Andy Healey. In other words he wants to examine the culture and behaviour of GP's finest.

I think he's on the right track.

theOtherPamAyres · 02/09/2018 22:06

Wow, on Twitter, Shahrar Ali is getting grief from the people who might not look good if an enquiry examined the Green Party itself

arranfan · 02/09/2018 22:10

Buried somewhere upthread is a link to Shahar Ali's Open Letter that seemed to set out a stall for moral leadership.

Sadly predictable that he's having this pushback but it isn't reflecting badly on him - as PPs say, something that doesn't seem to give those involved appropriate pause for thought.

TimeLady · 02/09/2018 22:15

Why wash all your dirty linen on Twitter?

LangCleg · 02/09/2018 22:19

Wow, on Twitter, Shahrar Ali is getting grief from the people who might not look good if an enquiry examined the Green Party itself

Looking at the responses to his tweets, the Green Party is toast. Blinkered, stupid people who have absolutely no understanding of integrity, oversight or safeguarding and are concerned with only one thing (that has nothing to do with green issues).

The Green are no longer green. They should rename themselves the Identifarians then we'd all know where we were.

Crwban · 02/09/2018 22:21

Thanks Bore.

I am utterly baffled as to how

Crwban · 02/09/2018 22:22

Oops

...as to how fetishists have been allowed to gain such traction in our political parties. I'm betting that the Greens aren't the only ones too...

The silence is screaming out to anyone who's listening and watching and waiting...

arranfan · 02/09/2018 22:22

Via Shahar Ali's thread - he retweeted a piece written by @LostinFife about that Statement of Support that the Green Party should have read out on the court's steps after the trial's verdict.

A Statement in Support of #DavidChallenor's Victim

It is a very fine piece - and it would have gone a long way to assuring people that politicians recognise the full extent of the crime involved and the consequences.

theOtherPamAyres · 02/09/2018 22:55

There's a revealing exchange on that Shahrar Twitter thread between Benali Hamdache and Alison Simmons. He is aggressive, demanding, unhearing and obnoxious - a perfect example of what women in the party have had to put with.

Alison recounts writing an email to protest about the erasure of women in GP policy. She receives an email back from GP HQ telling her that her membership is terminated. A good example of the culture that Shahrah picks up on.

Hamdache gets his arse handed back to him by Alison. Grin

Must say that I punched the air. Nice one, Alison. Flowers.

twitter.com/ShahrarAli/status/1036201308494147584

RedToothBrush · 02/09/2018 23:01

It's not within the terms of Reference, but it Verita find as part of their enquiry DC was enabled because there was a culture of bullying - and within that and a concerted effort to drive certain people who asked difficult questions out of the party, what is Verita going to have no option but to point this out in their report, and potentially make the recommendation that suspensions were unsound?

At this stage we don't know what they will come up with but Shahar Ali is showing enough incite to be aware of the very real possibility of where it might well lead and have the wisdom to perhaps preempt that in order to perverse some integrity of the party.

thecatfromjapan · 02/09/2018 23:12

TheOtherPamAyres

😳
That Twitter exchange is extraordinary!

If what Alison Simmons says is correct, it would seem that they who hold the Comms Dept (and who was that again? 🤨) actually holds the Party.

Being kicked out by email, with no discussion or disciplinary procedure whatsoever, and no possibility of reply (blocked, no less) ...

That's quite something.

And a lot of people on that thread don't seem to grasp that this is a serious problem.

RedToothBrush · 02/09/2018 23:16

I don't think that 'grasping a problem' is a quality shared by an alarmingly high percentage of the Green Party membership tbh.

thecatfromjapan · 02/09/2018 23:26

No, RTB, and it seems that if you did. You were kicked out - by email, by a 20 year old volunteer, subverting Party structures, with no oversight, and no way to communicate what happened to you.

Bloody hell.

The Green Party effectively created a group who were permitted to run amok, without oversight, checks or balances, and use and subvert Party structures. And the lack of oversight, and control of communication, meant that they operated within an ideological vacuum, getting higher in that ideology, without oversight.

And who created the Green Party automatic response form to the GRA?

It's being sent out to Green Party members in the name of the Green Party? But whi created it? With whst oversight? And with what input? After all, we know GC voices were silenced (expelled - with no disciplinary procedure). And we know oversight within the Party was a problem.

I've said it before but I'll say it more strongly:

The Green Party automatic response form for the GRA is not fit for purpose.

The GRA Committee needs to be informed of that.

Preferably by a senior member of the Green Party. And if not them, by the public.