Labour canvasser today

[SirSamVimesCityWatch]

I'm in one the constituencies with a by-election coming up.

Just had a labour canvasser (woman, mid/late fifties) knock to ask if I was voting. I said yes I would be.

She asked if I knew who I was voting for. I asked if she knew what a woman was. I told her I was a single issue voter and that was the only issue that was going to decide how I voted.

Her response: "I believe a woman is anyone who believes themself to be a woman".

I told her in that case I have nothing else to say to her, and closed the door.

I would have loved to have actually put some of the issues to her (rapists in prisons, assaults in mixed sex spaces, including schools, destruction of women's sports etc) but my heart was already racing and I knew it would be like talking to a brick wall anyway.

But anyway - at least that's a clear pile in the eye for the whole 'it doesn't come up on the doorstep' nonsense.

So, I'm either voting Tory or SDP.

is a tiny issue which doesn't affect me at all

Yet. And I'll bet when it does you'll be crying that no-one told you. And people on here will turn round and say 'We did tell you. You didn't listen.'

Liverpool Labour is so ideologically hostile to developers and companies making profits that they end up with corrupt local cowboys instead.

I quite like Mann Island and the Museum of Liverpool - if that is what you are referring to? They beat a derelict car park, anyway. Cities much change and develop.

https://sdp.org.uk/policies/transgender-and-biological-sex-based-rights/
SDP definitely exist!

Exactly

These?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/21/unesco-strips-liverpool-waterfront-world-heritage-status

Really? God I think they’re awful - never yet met anyone with a different view!

One of my local Labour MPs is the young and foolish Nadia Whittome, who is talking about legal rights for "non-binary" people and she supports a violent criminal's right to incite violence against "terfs".

No Labour are not getting my vote until they reject this nonsense. I will not vote for a party that is this detached from reality.

I genuinely don't believe that the Tories give a rats arse about what a woman is, why would they... they don't care about kids, the elderly, the sick or the otherwise disadvantaged and they protect rapist MPs and sex criminals
within their own party... seems weird to me that to some GC women the Tories have become the face of feminism

I know it doesnt seem like it, but we agree.

We agree torys are a shitshow, we agree they care nothing about anything but themse.

Where we disagree is how important this issue actually is.

Tory, willing to listen to women, have started the beginning of the end of trans everything.
Labour, still cant say with certainty that women do not have/have never had a penis.

Tory win next election, we will carry on dismantling trans everything.

Labour win next election, we will have to go right back to the beginning, maybe even rename ourselves to get our single sex everything back.

I look at what is easiest, and I decide women will have nothing if labour get in. I cant be a part of that.

Tories don't want to be an eternal laughing stock over this issue and want to win if they possibly can and will use the culture was that Stonewall and Labour started. It's insulting on top of being told a man is a woman that it was not Stonewalling and Labour that started this.

Tory, willing to listen to women, have started the beginning of the end of trans everything.
Labour, still cant say with certainty that women do not have/have never had a penis.

Tory win next election, we will carry on dismantling trans everything.

Labour win next election, we will have to go right back to the beginning, maybe even rename ourselves to get our single sex everything back.

Labour puts us back to when women got the vote. No bank accounts, no mortgages, no jobs and no child custody it will go to the woke be it family or the state - not women who know what a woman is.

You'll find that most people in the city are in favour of redevlopment of derelict dockland. There is acres and acres of it. UNESCoOwanted, effectvely, to freze the city in a state of decay and post industrail wasteland, and a few noisy campaigners would have liked that too

The picure you show is of the 'three graces'; indeed the Liver Building itself ( at the time very controversial) was itself constructed on the site of a former infilled dock. That is how cities grow and develop, and that was how Liverpool developed.

The implication, that I think is being suggested, that development was down to a corrupt Labour Party misses the mark. In fact, if it were not for the Labour administration far more would have been redeveloped by now. In place of openness to change and oopportunity, the Labour group comes up with a sort of communist model of centralised control - with all sorts of rulest that must be obeyed, and which, in turn, deters investment.

@IJustHadToLookHavingReadTheBook

Thanks for answering.

“we are all in agreement that letting trans women in without question or debate is not appropriate in female spaces”

That’s no different from the current iteration of the national Labour Party position though, is it? The current iteration of national policy recognises that their previous position - the “no debate” attempt at shutting down any recognition or discussion of the impact of women of permitting males to self describe as female and then be treated as if that were actually true - is no longer sustainable. Accordingly they’ve moved on to: acknowledging there needs to be discussion while maintaining that TWAW, and deploying “toxic on both sides”, claims of bigotry, using “case by case” along with attempts to narrow the discussion onto physical harms to women while disregarding women’s right to privacy and dignity. In other words the absolute minimum possible to appear marginally less misogynistic.

I can’t think of a single example of them publicly condemning even the most egregious behaviour of the TRAs. I can think of far too many instances of them publicly denigrating women standing up for women’s rights.

What I can’t understand is this: if the Labour Party actually cares as much about impoverished families and the future of the NHS as some posters on here claim they do, why haven’t they told the male sexual entitlement activists in their party to think of the future of the UK, put themselves and their desires last, and stop harassing and abusing women? Does your experience in your local party give you any insight into that?

I post on a urban and architecture forum, and in my experienece anyone who is realy into urbanism appreciates that cities have to grow and develop; often upon the remains of the past. Of course, we'd take, in preference, some of the developments which are ten a penny in London, alas Britain is hyper centralised and all most resources and focus is channeled towards the capital.

Lisa Nandy and many other Labour MPS have yet to distance themselves from referring to WPUK and the LGB Alliance as 'hate groups'; and somehow I think they're not likley to.

“they know exactly what a woman is and the fact they won’t say do means they’re either scared or lying.”

Or misogynist to their very core.

Derelict? Wasn't there a car showroom (and other low-rise buildings) where those enormous black screens have been erected?

I don't know what the reasons were for giving planning permission (was this particular section a Peel project?) but normally new buildings in a conservation area have to fit in with their surroundings. Unesco weren't wrong that the new buildings destroyed the heritage value of the waterfront.

What I can’t understand is this: if the Labour Party actually cares as much about impoverished families and the future of the NHS as some posters on here claim they do, why haven’t they told the male sexual entitlement activists in their party to think of the future of the UK, put themselves and their desires last, and stop harassing and abusing women? Does your experience in your local party give you any insight into that?

exactly @LoobiJee if it’s such a small insignificant issue, why aren’t Labour telling TRA that actually, there are far more important things to worry about given the appalling state the country is in, than meeting their demands? Why aren’t they getting the message women are getting ie we’ll look at your concerns when we’ve sorted out all the ‘important’ stuff?

Obviosuly off topic for this thread, but briefly: The Pier Head was a wind swept bus station when I was growing up, and the new ferry terminal is a definite improvement on the one that went before.

Yes, previously low rise buildings on Mann island which had no public function or purpose. Now there are cafes, work spaces and a gallery. Liverpool lost world heritage because of Everton's new stadium at Bramley Moore Dock. They are welcome to it as far as I'm concerned. The stadium will be great, not only for the club but for the city too ( summer concerts and other major events) and will no doubt attract further redevlopment of surrounding dereliction.

Liverpool is not York or Bath - it is major, contemporary city. The victorians had no such reservations and the Liver building did not " fit in " when it was built. what i think is needed is high quality contemporary architecture, not pastiches of times gone by. Hardly anyone even visited the waterfront before the new arena and Liverpool One. Now they do.

( Do ypou live in the city, by the way - perhaps we've met?)

Peel own Princes dock and northwards, not the Pier Head.

This. You must be very naive. IMO Labour would be the same as the Tories, with the added destruction of women's rights. Who needs that? There is now no decent alternative to the Tories, & that's entirely Labour's fault.

I watched Sir Keir on Laura's show. I'm getting a little sick and tired of his lack of backbone on anything. He has a constant exasperated/rabbit in glare of headlights look. He's jettisoned any left wing principles. He remains in thrall to identarian forces that are riven in the modern labour movement.

He is a man that cannot be trusted on anything. Least of all, women's rights.

And I hate myself for typing those words.

A more important issue than the economy, the NHS, infrastructure, the rights of immigrants etc? Why vote on a single issue?! That’s totally crazy to me.

You might vote on a single issue if you have no faith whatsoever that Labour will actually deliver any improvement on any of the others. I certainly don’t.

I don’t think you need to be an expert to understand cities need to develop. The question is how. What’s been done on the Liverpool waterfront is an atrocity, and I’m far from alone in that opinion.

I sat in on an appeal, recently, by a developer who the council had messed around for three years and then refused permission. A handful of NIMBYs ( sorry, but true) and local councillors conducted a very vocal campaign against the development. The irony was, they themselves were living on a reclaimed dockland in what others would consider to be inappropriate style housing housing, and another adjacent former dock was given over entirely to their private residents' car park. The developer's appeal was successful, thankfully - and now a whole new area of waterfront will be opened up and accessible to the public.

A lot of people in the city say things like " we don't need any more hotels; we don't need any more new offices; we've got too many students....." as if a modern major city can survive on community bakeries, community centres and community parks alone.

I know the view from the Baltic Fleet has changed for the worse over the years! Also, Liverpool Waters/Clarence Docks was already a summer concert venue without regeneration (saw John Cale there doing the Velvet Underground album 6 years ago, I thought it worked well as a venue). If some of the docks could be 'redeveloped' as, well, docks...the Irish ferries would be handier for a lot more people than they are in their current location. The Universities also seem to be throwing up huge (apparently empty) skyscrapers blotting out the river as you come down from Edge Lane.

But as you say, all off-topic!
(quite possible we've met given our political convergences...DM??)

You mean Padington Village? Novotel have built a hotel there, which is used by vivitors to the hospital and to the university and its many spin off businesses; plus The Spine ( adjacent to it) is home to the northern HQ of Royal College of Physicians. It has just won some environmental awards for being a 'healthy' building. Personally, i love the development at Paddington Village - it marks an exciting gateway to the city from Edge Lane/Mount Vernon, and there are plans for office space for knowledge economy related businesses.