Keir Starmer on Sophy Ridge

[EdgeOfACoin]

On just now.

Asked about trans rights. Said that they didn't go far enough and the current process to transition is demeaning.

Criticised both sides (ie TRAs and feminists) for 'tearing lumps' out of each other.

Expressed sympathy for women who were victims of domestic violence but refused to say whether refuges should be single-sex or not (fence-sitting).

[quote Treats]@Justhadathought - sure you can spoil your ballot as well, or not vote at all, or vote for a different candidate. I'm just saying that if you want candidates to know why you're not voting for them, it's much more effective to write to them than it is to spoil your ballot paper. They're unlikely to see the spoilt paper personally - the people who do look at it will only be looking to see if it can be counted as a valid vote, and that's only if the result is so close that the spoiled ballots might make a difference.[/quote]
Treats - give it a rest. You’re making a massive assumption that we haven’t already lodged our concerns repeatedly with our local MP or constituency parties and been brushed off. Most of us are fed up to the back teeth of this and have exhausted other avenues for protest.

This has also distracted from my original query about how many people strongly favoured one candidate over another for the police commissioner elections.

Or are people just picking the Labour candidate along tribal lines?

@OnlyTheLangoftheTitBerg

This is why more and more of us are so bereft at feeling politically homeless. Any vote is a compromise, but if you’re left-leaning/centre left, where is the compromise between abandoning women’s right to even define ourselves and so losing everything that flows from that, and abandoning the disabled and disadvantaged to the ravages of the Tory vision of the welfare system? There simply isn’t an acceptable compromise to be found.

I agree 100%. I'm in Wales where we have elections in May. Plaid Cymru with Adam Price at the helm and Leanne Wood before him have gone full TWAW. The Lib Dems and Greens are a lost cause and I don't know if I can bring myself to vote Tory. It's either a spoiled ballot paper or, very, very reluctantly a Tory vote from me.

Lifelong left winger here. Greenham Common, Twyford Down, ANL/RAR at the time of Blair Peach murder etc protester on marches. Poll Tax rebellion against MT. Anti War protester when Bliar was in charge

Now politically homeless, was Labour party for decades, then GPEW member.

Cannot drink the kool aid of TWAW.

So far apart from Brexit, SNP are the closest aligned party to my opinions.

Tories say stuff and so far have held off the TRA nonsense, but I just can't bring my self to ever vote for them, because of everything else they stand for and still do.

Just joined SNP. I can work on the Brexit issues, everything else looks ok.

catmaiden do you mean SDP?
SNP are full on TWAW with a couple of prominent exceptions who they actively and publically throw under the bus at every opportunity. Currently pushing through "hate crime" legislation likely to criminalise questioning Gender ID extremism or discussing women's sex based rights/oppression.
Or is there more than one SNP?

@Catmaiden

Do you mean the SDP?

The SNP sacked Joanna Cherry for standing up for women's rights, NS even made a video about how important trans issues are over anything else.

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/28/sturgeon-transphobia-tweet-prompts-calls-to-push-through-legislation

Arggh yes SDP! Bloody autocorrect after I went on SNP website to email them!

Sorry, all

I also emailed the SNP when they sacked Joanna Cherry, and got no response. They apparently don't care enough to even respond to an email when a woman leaves the party but the leader makes a video when a trans member threatens to leave.

I also emailed Joanna directly and got a lovely message back but there is absolutely no way I'd vote for them again.

As I said previously, if they can't listen to and protect 51% of the population, there is no way I'd trust NS to run an independent country.

@OnlyTheLangoftheTitBerg

gardenbird my husband is disabled. I have seen at first-hand how people have irrefutable medical evidence going back decades ignored under the current system. I have seen how someone who has complex mental disabilities is made to perform like a dancing bear - lift this leg, raise that arm - at dehumanising assessments. I have supported someone through a system which thinks a physiotherapist is qualified to make judgments on those complex mental disabilities. I have read with my own eyes the blatant lies that were written on the decision report, to the point I queried whether they had mixed up my DH’s assessment with someone else’s because it bore no resemblance to the evidence we presented. I have supported him through the stress of a PIP appeal, all simply to get back what he had been awarded under previous systems. And my husband’s experience is far from unique.

By the DWP’s own figures, the cost of disability benefit fraud is less than the amount unclaimed by those who would be eligible. This is not about balancing welfare needs with the cost to the economy. This is ideological.

Please don’t assume I’m simply repeating empty leftie rhetoric. I know exactly what this system does to the vulnerable.

I'm very sorry to hear of yours and your husband's experiences.

I was talking more in general about balancing the needs of the vulnerable against building a strong economy, the costs of welfare against the receipts from taxes etc. Taxing the right amount to maximise tax revenue without driving the big money overseas to better tax regimes.

With the greatest of respect to your situation (and I recognise that it has such a huge impact on lives), I don't think the intention of that particular policy and application of it by the DWP is to deliberately make it awful for people like you.

It obviously needs to make significant improvements from your experience so they need to get the balance so the right people like you are being helped effectively but the people who don't need it are helped to move their lives forward differently.

I think that even though the fraud figures are lower than the amount that should be given to those eligible, that doesn't meant that they should stop trying to prevent fraud. They need to focus on improving the effectiveness of the assessments, and, it sounds like, the kindness of people carrying out those assessments.

My view is that in order to look after the vulnerable properly which I think is a very important function in society, I believe that we need a strong economy and in general I have never felt that Labour had the right policies for that. Keir has not changed my mind on that at all.

In fact, as a lawyer, his whole approach to this debate worries me greatly.

boatyardblues - I'm sure you have, which I said in my post. I just get frustrated with constantly reading on here that spoiling your ballot is an effective form of protest. It really isn't. I'm sorry that writing to your MP or election candidates hasn't worked either, but the best way to protest through the ballot box is to cast a valid vote for the candidate who is closest to your views.

I've stood for election, I've knocked on doors, I've spoken to voters. I know that direct communication from voters gets through to candidates and spoiled ballot papers don't. That's all I'm saying.

I've stood for election, I've knocked on doors, I've spoken to voters. I know that direct communication from voters gets through to candidates and spoiled ballot papers don't. That's all I'm saying

Genuinely curious if you were asked what a woman is when doorknocing?

So now that you know we are seen only as the support humans will you still speak to voters, presumably stuff envelopes etc etc?
Our help cannot be needed if no one knows what we are I guess.

@Treats

Post withdrawn.

I'd rather have a man representing me if the women are full on TWAW.

gardenbird you’re missing the fundamental point that these are not flaws in the current welfare system that could be improved. It’s deliberately designed this way. The aforementioned fraud rate, acknowledged by the DWP itself, was 0.5%. That did not stop Cameron’s government setting a target of a 20% reduction in disability benefit claimants. That’s 19.5% of recipients that by the department’s own admission were genuinely entitled to DLA or PIP but were going to have those benefits withdrawn anyway.

It’s not just my experience. It’s repeated over and over again, and cynicism for the independence and future of disabled people is baked into the system at every level by now. Look at the success rate of PIP appeals - currently standing at 76%. That’s the DWP only getting it right less than one quarter of the time. Tens of thousands of applicants have died within six weeks of being found fit for work by DWP assessors. Are they being overhauled and reorganised the way, say, PHE is? Are they fuck. Because it’s not seen as a crisis or a failing department. It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.

There’s a reason I, Daniel Blake resonated with so many people. Because that story was representative of thousands, literally thousands and thousands of people who have been treated like shit by the system supposedly in place to help them. My husband is just one among thousands.

(Sorry to derail this thread from the original point, but there is no justification for the 6th richest economy in the world to treat its most vulnerable like this. We can afford vanity projects like HS2 and a fucking tunnel under the Irish Sea, but heaven forbid that a comparatively tiny number of people get £60 a week that they might not be fully entitled to )

With the greatest of respect to your situation (and I recognise that it has such a huge impact on lives), I don't think the intention of that particular policy and application of it by the DWP is to deliberately make it awful for people like you.

I understand what you are saying with regards to the conservatives and the economy, but this is naive.

I recently had a Pip consultation - just last week in fact - and it was absolutely humiliating, demeaning, and soul crushing. Every fear that had prevented me applying beforehand and worse. The entire application process and the ridiculous nature of the questions (which in many cases are a wholly inappropriate way of measuring how a person is truly affected by their disability and I question their reliability and validity) is so nefariously disingenuous that after going through it, you cannot remain under any illusions but that it is very deliberately engineered to prevent people receiving help.

I am in bed for sometimes weeks at a time, yet if I tick that I can reach my hands above my head, this apparently means I'm in fit fighting form. There is not one question on the form that accurately correlates to my condition or day to day reality. God knows how depressed people manage. The questions asked during the assessment were outrageous, (have you ever had to call the fire brigade? in questions determining difficulties preparing food as a small example, yet ability to use the phone is also a metric of how fit you are) and afterwards I felt like I had no dignity and no value in this society at all. In fact I had not experienced real feelings of despair over my illness until after the assessment, in which my words were twisted to imply I am not as unwell as I claim - and that is the point, the whole thing is set up with just that underlying assumption, and going through it the message is VERY clear.

It has been an eye opener

But perhaps I had also been naive. Until now the rights of the disabled to fairness and dignity had been peripheral.

But now I ask myself: Do I expect any party (or society) that happily dehumanises some of its most vulnerable citizens day after day to suddenly 'one up' for women?

Now that would be inconsistent.

Personally, at the end of the day, despite all I've said above, I would still vote Conservative to my own (immediate) detriment over this one issue of womens rights than Labour.

Even if Keir Starmer came out with a more favourable GC stance I would not trust the Labour party not to reverse that position in practice and legislation immediately once in power. You simply cannot trust any left leaning parties on this issue not even centre left ones.

It's got to the point that I'm looking at new parties like Reclaim without the scepticism I would once have employed. Lots of things are viable to me now.

I am willing to personally suffer and overlook a lot of quite unpalatable things and vote for unpalatable people in return for a guarantee of the safety of women and girls and protections of free speech. Those are the two issues I most fear losing.

I am also Welsh and would normally vote Plaid, but who on earth do I vote for now ?

@OnlyTheLangoftheTitBerg

gardenbird you’re missing the fundamental point that these are not flaws in the current welfare system that could be improved. It’s deliberately designed this way. The aforementioned fraud rate, acknowledged by the DWP itself, was 0.5%. That did not stop Cameron’s government setting a target of a 20% reduction in disability benefit claimants. That’s 19.5% of recipients that by the department’s own admission were genuinely entitled to DLA or PIP but were going to have those benefits withdrawn anyway.

It’s not just my experience. It’s repeated over and over again, and cynicism for the independence and future of disabled people is baked into the system at every level by now. Look at the success rate of PIP appeals - currently standing at 76%. That’s the DWP only getting it right less than one quarter of the time. Tens of thousands of applicants have died within six weeks of being found fit for work by DWP assessors. Are they being overhauled and reorganised the way, say, PHE is? Are they fuck. Because it’s not seen as a crisis or a failing department. It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.

There’s a reason I, Daniel Blake resonated with so many people. Because that story was representative of thousands, literally thousands and thousands of people who have been treated like shit by the system supposedly in place to help them. My husband is just one among thousands.

(Sorry to derail this thread from the original point, but there is no justification for the 6th richest economy in the world to treat its most vulnerable like this. We can afford vanity projects like HS2 and a fucking tunnel under the Irish Sea, but heaven forbid that a comparatively tiny number of people get £60 a week that they might not be fully entitled to )

I could not bear to watch "I, Daniel Blake" because I had read about it and knew I would find it unbearably distressing.

All the awful things you mention about the DWP, the lying "assessments", etc. - been there, done that, my partner was dead from terminal cancer three weeks after he was deemed fit for work while being in constant, excruciating pain, hardly able to speak, a staggering, fragile, feeble skeleton.

That was under Labour.

I completely agree with all your points - except that this situation would be rectified if Labour was in power. They presided over a system that was just as cruel, unfair and indefensible.

I have always voted Labour, actively campaigned for Labour, spoken at Labour Party Conference and held elected positions within the Party.

My MP, Labour, has failed to act against NHS closures and believes TWAW.

The only reason I am still paying membership subs is that there is a possibility that I can do some good soon within a local CLP as far as women's rights are concerned. I suspect that that will lead to me being either suspended or expelled but at least I will have tried to make a difference. If I don't get sanctioned then I will probably toss in the towel anyway.

I am not sure whether it would be more productive for me then to support the Tories from the inside - Conservative women are begging for help maintaining a GC position - or join the SDP.

The current incarnation of the Labour Party, which seems to be controlled by middle-class Marxists, does not as far as I can see give a toss about improving the lives of ordinary people and is worryingly authoritarian. As was Corbyn's LP, with its influx of hard-left activists playing student politics and waging the woke culture war.

As far as treatment of the most vulnerable, disabled people and those with serious medical conditions is concerned, Labour failed us before and I do not see any reason to suppose that they would not fail us again. People have short memories or were not around to know what the situation was like under Labour and just believe the hype.

Finally, to highlight how hard it is to square the circle of which party has done most damage to public services: the NHS, and other statutory services, are staggering under the weight of PFI repayments. Not a Tory "brainwave" (sarcasm).

PFI was proposed by the Labour Party in 1991, picked up by PM John Major and introduced as Conservative Government policy in 1992, became official LP policy in 1995 and was expanded from 1997 under Labour.

It was surreal to be fighting against PFI within the LP and TUC while arch-advocate of privatisation, Tory Minister John Redwood, was opposing PFI on the same grounds.

At least with policies like PFI the Labour Party did not expel members who argued against it on factual, scientific grounds. Even more surreal now to know that the Labour Party will expel members for the heresy of believing that biological sex exists and that we have to rely on the Tories to uphold scientific fact and enlightenment values.

I'm afraid I don't know much about these assessments, since I am in the very fortunate position of never having needed to know about them.

However, I do know people who are absolutely adamant that they know people who are cheating the system.*

I guess my question is, how easy is it to lie your way through an assessment? For instance, could someone fake being in pain while putting their arms above their head or just lie their way through the questions?

So in effect all these assessments (a) do not catch unscrupulous claimants who are happy to lie to their doctors and the dwp and (b) prevent genuine claimants who have conditions that don't exactly match those listed on a form from getting the help they need?

*I appreciate that we don't always know everything that is happening in a person's life, but some of the claims I've heard do sound very dubious to me.

I don't want to derail but feel the need to respond about DWP. My mum is disabled and the PIP process is horrendous. The assessment criterion are nonsense, as someone said upthread they don't capture the reality of illness and its impact. In his notes he wrote that she "declined" to bend over and touch her toes as an indication she was uncooperative, when in fact she would have fallen over. He also noted that her top had buttons which I can only assume he thought demonstrated her ability to stack shelves of similar. He didn't bother to find out that my brother lives at home and helps with buttons, zips and shoe laces.

She was refused but won at appeal (how much extra does that cost the tax payer?). I attended the appeal with her and there was a guy in the waiting room who was bright yellow from kidney disease (we overheard him talking).

I would rather 10 frauds get the pittance PIP allowance than 1 genuine person have to go through such a brutal, dehumanising process.

@MoltenLasagne
I think the 85% statistic is that 85% of people identifying as TW have no surgery. Within the remaining 15% will be people have plastic surgery to create breasts and get facial feminisation and still retain their penises.

In the light of these statistics it’s interesting to look at some of the assumptions made by those supporting the GRA in 2004.

Here’s Lynne Jones, responding to concerns about transwomen having access to women’s changing rooms:

“Quite frankly, the idea that a male-to-female trans-person would be granted a recognition certificate if they did not undergo a penectomy is, again, unthinkable.”

and

“To be candid, if the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that someone who sports a full beard would have their application for a gender recognition certificate granted, I wonder what world he is living in.”

api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/2004/may/25/olympic-athletes

I’m not taking any chances, Im waiting for clear evidence and commitment around women’s single sex spaces remaining female only before even considering voting Labour. No evidence, no vote.

Haven’t RTFT but have to agree what has Keir got to lose at this point? Yes he would lose the youth vote, but that isn’t enough to win Labour elections anyway as we’ve seen. The huge swathe of voters Labour have lost, ‘red wall’ etc may be economically left wing, but they are socially more small c conservative, it’s this dichotomy that makes them more and difficult for Labour to retain...
They would welcome more common sense and less woke from Labour.. a lot of the swing voters Labour need to convince are also more socially conservative so I think fighting for women’s rights on this would actually help not hinder.

I’ve always been Labour supporter but I spoilt my vote last time due to all the nonsense Labour were spouting. I’m going to take a good hard look at other parties and what they have to offer

It's quite astonishing that some people still think voting Conservative is their only option.

Who has been in power all this time?
Who introduced the GRA reform bill?
Who has allowed trans women into women's prisons?
Who has allowed a comprehensive take over of policy by Stonewall and Mermaids, allowed them to train, even in schools?
Which Equality Minster refused to answer on the issue when she was invited on a MN webchat?
Who has pushed the TRA message until very recently - Theresa May even made a speech at the Pink News awards - and has never firmly backtracked on that message?

Christopher Chope is a Conservative; Sue Pascoe is a Conservative; Christine Burns is a Conservative; Penny Mordaunt is a Conservative; Maria Millar is a Conservative.
The Conservative party have the same problem as all the other main political parties: they are just better at hiding it - why else is Boris Johnson never asked his opinion on trans and women's rights, despite being the Prime Minister?

I'm also astonished that people think a Centrist move would be any better. Do you honestly think the LibDems are far left?

This issue is not a Left vs Right one. It has permeated every one of the main political parties. None of them are putting women's rights first.

It's high time Conservative GC started holding their own party to account instead of vote chasing and pretending everything in their garden is rosy.

Labour is not in power and Keir Starmer is not the Prime Minister.
Start pressuring the people who do have the power to make meaningful changes - and won't.
I wonder why that is?