Conservative manifesto; no mention of GRA

[MrsSnippyPants]

Long grass it is then. I'll be asking my ppc what happened to those consultation responses.
The word 'gender' does not appear anywhere, FYI

Some interesting comments on this thread. I did think that Brexit had shown us how alienating these right / left all tories are racist zealots and all lefties are communist traitors beliefs are and if you vote for anyone other than my agreed party then you're .......... - but they seem to be alive and well with a few posters.
My tory MP is gender critical (but hasn't spoken out publicly) there's a good woman labour candidate who wants women to focus on other more important things than women's rights and child safeguarding and there's a Lib Dem who is full on TWAW. It's a dilemma between my decades of voting Labour who are clearly going to abandon women ind introduce self ID or the risk of voting Tory who are currently quivering in a corner in fear of the bullying trans lobby - so it might happen anyway.

My reasoning is that I honestly believe the policies and pledges of the Tory party are way preferable to those of Labour for the working class women, men and children in the area that I live

Maybe in the area you live.......

My vote always goes in favour of social values, not just on my own personal financial situation. Where i live the council has already been hit by 63% budget cuts, and with a further £53 million to come next year - leaving the city on the verges of bankruptcy.

I contribute several times a week to a food bank.....and watch as local children's & community facilities close down; fire stations are lost; police numbers reduced. The government appointed company, Carillion was given the contract to rebuild the city's central teaching hospital. It was supposed to have been completed three years ago - but instead is now having to be partially deconstructed due to structural faults - and with no date yet from the government when it will be ready. It is holding up all manner of other related projects in the city, and the current hospital is crumbling, has water leakages, lifts that don't work etc

My city has a legacy of handsome Victoria parks, and the largest of them ( a Grade 1 listed park), about 15 years ago, after decades of degeneration, had some money spent on its renovation and rejuvenation: the lakes, the trees, the play areas, the palm house etc - but now we see it sliding back towards its former condition. 'Parks and Gardens' services have suffered due to the cuts, and the park is less regularly maintained and refurbished than it needs to be.

So many aspects of life that make for civil society, with human beings at its core, are suffering and falling into decay. The city's galleries and museums have suffered too.....loss of staff and maintenance issues....while London museum and galleries receive new extensions, expensive re-modelling every few years, ours have leaking roofs, closed galleries, shabby carpets, poor lighting ( & this is in a World Heritage site). Just to open one new train station to serve the city centre requires a 30 year plan....

All of this and so much more is what austerity means where I live......and there is more to come, in spite of what Boris Johnson says to the contrary.

I'll vote for them as "the least worst" option. Tbh even a delay would be a good thing. Get more people on board. But I highly doubt the current lot believe TWAW. Most of the Tories pushing for it were very much Tory wets or Liberal Democrats in the wrong party who've been cleared out now.

Ohwhatatangledwebweweave

Totally agree with whoever said they just happen to be the party in power when the TRAs started this nightmare and that if Labour /LD were in power it would be law now. What a terrible position we women have been put in.

This is a very good point and worth reiterating. Much like you, I could never vote for the Tories because of austerity, UC, Brexit and their heartless treatment of disabled people. But this stuff would have happened anyway regardless of who is in power. The sexist and homophobic GRA was passed in 2004 by a Labour government- Gordon Brown’s government, not even the insane Momentum-riddled party is it today!

We know that the TRAs are opportunistic. After the Miliband defeat they saw a golden opportunity and useful idiot in Corbyn and Momentum, who are both hyper-woke, extremely intolerant of dissenting viewpoints and very very bad as class analysis - pretty embarrassing for what is supposed to be a left wing socialist movement. They never got as much of a strangle hold with the Tories because the Tories main concern has never been social justice reform.

The all party select committee which prompted the consultation last year on reforming the GRA was interesting. I’m acquainted with poster TheHarpySings who infiltrated the ‘We’re Still Here’ trans conference in September last year. Helen Belcher (Lib Dem) was in attendance and was also involved in that all party select committee. According to TheHarpy, Belcher stayed at the conference that during the committee meetings, Maria Miller would just defer to Belcher’s knowledge around the subject, it seems without asking any awkward questions or applying any critical analysis to what Belcher was saying. They also didn’t bother asking any women’s groups what they thought about it.

The choices in this election seem to be between what kind of disaster you’d prefer to live through.

“Stayed” = “stated”

Autocorrect can suck the ladydick I don’t have. Because women don’t have penises.

Zampa, did you read the fullfact check?

The conclusion says "This is based on which person in a household receives a benefit or is taxed, so doesn’t factor in the “indirect” impact on partners and household budgets"

The simple lead statistic is only telling half a story and women in healthy relationships may well have benefited from improved household income.

The politician I respect most is probably Frank Field

Frank Field is one of my local MPS -although not in my constituency. I'd vote for him if he was, though. He has integrity, and has always stood up for his constituents - ravaged as they are after decades of neglect, and now austerity.

So many aspects of life that make for civil society, with human beings at its core, are suffering and falling into decay

Yes. This is the awful tragedy of austerity.

Too little, too late from the Tories for me, I'm afraid.

There is no party for which I can cast a positive vote. Another tragedy in itself.

One factor worth considering is how influential any political party in power might be given the total capture of the civil service by the trans / anti woman ideology. I really believe that they are the "power behind the throne" and unless their influence is harnessed in some way, this will continue unchecked.

@zampa. I appreciate that gender rights are important

Don't you mean sex based rights?

I'm going to be judged as hell here - how can anybody who is a feminist possibly vote conservative?

Their policies and actions are awful for women, disabled folk and minorities.

Yes, I like all of you want a government to whom "Woman: adult human female" isn't perceived as an act of aggression. It's really important to me... but even if they had the perfect GC approach, I couldn't hand on heart vote for them if women's rights were an influencing factor in the way I vote (and they are).

All of this for me, plus aside from my views on the Tories, I believe Johnson is unfit for public office following his conduct in the referendum.

While lots of you social norm voting Tory, this remains our last tiny grain of time in which to try to fix the climate and whatever I think of self ID, I'd rather give my kids a chance at a future where that needs sorting out than none at all. The Tories' record on climate is absolutely shameful.

I resent having no positive voting choice to make but the key thing to do in this situation is to write to all the local candidates who have a chance of getting elected and tell them what we want and don’t want.
Otherwise they will have no incentive to change policies, win or lose. Ears are particularly open at election time.

One factor worth considering is how influential any political party in power might be given the total capture of the civil service by the trans / anti woman ideology. I really believe that they are the "power behind the throne" and unless their influence is harnessed in some way, this will continue unchecked

That’s an excellent point. The extent of this regulatory capture is incredible. It’s profoundly undemocratic how this lobby group has managed to successfully colonise every aspect of state power. And they have done it while the vast majority is completely oblivious.

From what I've read Dominic Cummings has weakened the civil services influence a lot (largely to be able to get on with Brexit)

I believe Johnson is unfit for public office following his conduct in the referendum.

As a Remainer (presumably) you are perfectly entitled to think that.

I'm pro-Brexit and have been dismayed at the behaviour of the remain side since the first 'people's vote'. I haven't forgotten or forgiven Project Fear and the subsequent attack on democracy.

I want a stable government which will be the least economically polarising because we need social and economic stability, inclusion and democracy and a liveable planet to live on. So for me that specifically rules out the Tories who got us into this Brexit mess in the first place and have exacerbated this since they expelled their less extreme MPs. Johnson is ruthless. He wants to push on with Brexit at literally any cost because it’s a personal power project. He hasn’t a principled bone in his body.

But even if Brexit were not a factor, Tory policies are inherently economically polarising which is the best way to destabilise society.

The previous Conservative silence and inaction (after all the public statements have been made by Maria Miller, which have not been challenged ), is not what I would recognise as support for women, it’s just their self interested political pragmatism at work.

They know it will become a vote loser to support self ID among their key voters but they can’t afford to look like they are not the Stonewall-branded version of ‘progressive’ on social issues, because the UK’s mainstream debate on self ID and genderist politics is only just getting started.

The Tories still hope to mop up more centrist voters who think they may still offer a Cameron- style ‘compassionate conservatism’. Again to that concept but it has resonance for some voters.

But TLDR; the Tories doing nothing will not help us to stop creeping self-ID. So by omission it adds up to the same thing as supporting it. Women are very very low down on their list of priorities, they see us an ignorable minority.

Whoever gets into government will have to deal with this issue at some point though and we will all campaign on it then.

We will also have public opinion on our side once the public understand what self ID means for their daughters and themselves if they are female. So let’s cross that bridge then.

So whether we vote or spoil, now is the time for as many GC people as possible to write to all their local candidates and to express their concerns about these issues.

You can bet the promoters of sex stereotypes are already hard at it with that and they will be claiming they have strong public support for everything they are saying and that the law is already as good as on their side.

My vote always goes in favour of social values, not just on my own personal financial situation.

Ditto and obviously like you my judgement is formed from what I see around me. I do find it strange that it is almost a given that anyone who votes Tory must be well off and concerned about their own financial situation because I'm not. For the record I would imagine my personal wealth, housing situation and income is much lower than almost everyone else on this board.

I live in a deprived, predominantly white, rural area and I see similiar things to you, homelessness, children in inadequate housing, lack of work opportunities, degeneration and hopelessness. I do not believe that Labour cares enough about the people I see around me as poor, white people are not a sexy enough cause for them. Yes of course I want to see minorities looked after but to be honest if someone is struggling it doesn't matter to me whether they are a minority or not. A homeless person is still a homeless person regardless of whether they are trans, BAME, gay or whatever.

Johnson is ruthless. He wants to push on with Brexit at literally any cost because it’s a personal power project

Depends on how you voted, I suppose. I see it as making my vote and those of 17.4m others count, despite multiple obstacles bring put in the way to prevent that happening by people who don't seem to understand democracy.

And yes, I did know what I was voting for at the time.

I do find it strange that it is almost a given that anyone who votes Tory must be well off and concerned about their own financial situation because I'm not

Well, yes, rural areas tend to vote Tory too...regardless of social or class background. There are definitely socio-economic -geographical factors involved in who votes for who.

Why do you vote Tory, then? What is it about their values or policies that appeals?

I'm pro-Brexit and have been dismayed at the behaviour of the remain side since the first 'people's vote'. I haven't forgotten or forgiven Project Fear and the subsequent attack on democracy.

The thing about Project Fear is it was all bloody true! Unlike the false statements in the Leave campaign.

Some of the Remoaner stuff shortly after the referendum was a bit silly but after 3 years of negotiations and Theresa May genuinely trying to get it done it's now evident that there is no decent* deal to be had. Personally I don't think it's undemocratic to revisit the referendum result in the light of that new knowledge especially as Gove et al campaigned on the basis that we would get whatever deal we asked for.

There's also the small matter of electoral fraud...

• i define decent here as a deal that is not harmful to the poorest in our country

I want to know whether the Tories would start to look at the wider influence of lobby groups like Stonewall and start to combat it. I.e. is this kicking it into the long grass as far as they would go, or would we they listen to the bigger and wider issues.

The thing about Project Fear is it was all bloody true!

I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

Why do you vote Tory, then? What is it about their values or policies that appeals?

Sometimes it’s not the political party but rather the local MP themselves that are the most important factor. If you have a local MP that is passionate about the area they represent and have a record of providing help to constituents in need, do you vote them out because you don’t agree with the national policies of the party they are a member of? By the logic you could lose an MP who has lived in the area all their life and is fab on local issues to someone who has been parachuted in by a rival party and doesn’t understand or care about the constituency itself.

I'm pro-Brexit and have been dismayed at the behaviour of the remain side since the first 'people's vote'.
I voted remain and cried when I heard the result but otherwise I agree. The behaviour of so many remainers, not least their patronising attitude towards people who happen to hold different opinions, has been a real eye opener for me.

By the logic you could lose an MP who has lived in the area all their life and is fab on local issues to someone who has been parachuted in by a rival party and doesn’t understand or care about the constituency itself

Yes, that is what real democracy would look like.....with your MP speaking out on behalf of their voters ( even if a little imperfect because not everyone would have voted for them). Thing is many MPs just toe the party line and are whipped into doing so. It ends up being more about the party than the people.

Political parties are funded by vested interests.....and there are few true Independents.