Debate happening in House of Commons: Victoria Atkins on fire

[BonfireLady]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/15/rishi-sunak-david-cameron-downing-street-general-election/

But have we been deliberately defiant as well as disrespectful women?[1] Are we approaching Northern?[2]

[1] Good Morning with IW and KJK:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/3378698-Disrespectful-Woman-Posie-P-on-This-Morning

[2] Northern women according to Meg John Barker:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/3339137-BACP-Gender-Sexual-and-Relationship-Diversity-by-Dr-Meg-John-Barker

Meg John believes northern women are more aggressive than southern women and: 'It is important not to assume, for example, that being a woman necessarily involves being able to bear children, or having XX sex chromosomes, or breasts."

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/3951849-Meg-John-Barker

On the BBC's shocking failures to report on Cass/WPATH, etc, I just looked up which Minister is responsible for it.

Lucy Frazer is Sec of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

I'm going to write to ask her to look into the BBC and institutional capture, and their reporting on gender and gender ideology.

https://members.parliament.uk/member/4517/contact

When you seek to deny or downplay the evidence in front of you, for ideological or emotioanl reasons, then you are more and more prone to reaching out for, and seeking comfort in, the most outlandish and batshit places in order to maintain your delusion.

I know my long-serving Labour MP personally. They have held various middle-ranking but key positions in the party. I was astonished to hear that barring KS's occasional constituency visits where he poses with my MP and then races off, they had never been permitted to meet or talk to Starmer, let alone had access to even a brief one-to-one. Apparently he is as inaccessible as Corbyn, who was notoriously reclusive and spent a lot of time holed up in his office refusing to talk to anyone outside his protective cadre of supporters.

I’ve been reflecting on how well Victoria Atkins dealt with all the questions, very able politician

Some stood out as not good however, I wonder what the calibre will be like after the GE - hopefully not Moyle and Butler types

Oh I’ll forward my email to her too.

This is a brilliant article, articulates what I have been unable to perfectly.

The mass gaslighting is so painful.

The mass gaslighting is so painful

It really is

Just a thought i have noticed a zombie post about a meeting a mumsnetter, made a record of.

Got me thinking about the calls for an enquiry into all of this capture. Maybe we should all be hunting out information posts and compiling a dossier of evidence of how this all happened.In readiness for an enquiry.

I would have thought this board is packed full of useful evidence. I just would not know where to start or how to do it.

.

Northern women are a problem eh?

What is it about class and socio-economic that differs between north and south? What is it culturally that's an issue here?

First rule of misogyny, innit @AdamRyan ? Claiming that women talking emboldens men to be violent is first rule of misogyny. We aren't responsible for what these violent scrotes do.

Just watched via the link above. I’m hugely impressed with Victoria Atkins. More politicians like this please.

MN site functions aren’t great for archive building unfortunately - we often have brilliant conversations in the middle of unrelated threads and you can’t copy a quote from one thread to another without losing the quote formatting. The compilation threads such as ‘Break it down for me’ are excellent but also overwhelming for those reading for the first time.

Thankfully lots of people have been compiling evidence elsewhere online, either individually (Still Tish’s blog site is excellent) or collectively/informally (The Farms) or via newly formed orgs such as Sex Matters/Safe Schools Alliance.

It might be worth contacting Sex Matters to ask if Mumsnetters could be helpful in a voluntary capacity so that any internet searching/archiving we do is an effective use of our time?

I proper love MN as a site for discussion but it’s rubbish for making organised threads!

Also anything we post here is at risk of being deleted, which makes the work of organising/archiving a bit pointless/disheartening.

Unfortunately some of the least impressive politicians in are in the safest seats, in all parties 😬

I’m hoping Labour will take Brighton Pavilion from the Greens tho - the candidate there (a bloke who used to be in an indie band in the 90s) was the terfiest of the shortlist and Caroline Lucas is stepping down so the loyal-to-the-incumbent effect to contend with.

Both Zarah Sultana and Rosie Duffield have small majorities so I’m hoping we’ll keep Rosie and wave Zarah off.

Arch Tory and chair of the 1922 committee Graham Brady is stepping down (for what looks like commercial reasons - a stonking book deal) and Labour have a really good chance of taking that seat (excellent local councillor candidate who got the nomination despite being male, stale and pale 😂)

I used to love pouring over the swing seat/target seats for Labour strategy, I’m still interested in all the stories behind the marginals but in a much more candidate-by-candidate way, no party loyalties nowadays.

https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2024/04/13/list-of-100-mps-standing-down-at-next-general-election/

That was my reaction too.

I suspect MJB was using southern as a proxy for middle class and northern as a proxy for working class, possibly whilst lacking the insight / self awareness to realise that’s what MJB is doing.

I’m transnorthern (born in the SE, settled in the NW).

(Meg John signed the academics against the Cass Review letter authored by Natacha Kennedy earlier this week)

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/3339137-BACP-Gender-Sexual-and-Relationship-Diversity-by-Dr-Meg-John-Barker

Northern women! Always problem. Speak too much, and always say what they think with no filter, urgh! They always tell the truth!

Let women speak, but not Northerners. Good god.

I'm northern and middle class.

Personally I do think there is a cultural difference even between north and south middle class that's not socio-economic.

There is cultural pressure to conform and be kind in the south due to politics in a way that's different to the north. Being blunt and to the point is accepted in a way that's not the same. In the south it's more about being polite.

I can't even quite put my finger on it and explain it. It's subtle.

But interesting it's being picked up on.

There is deffo a difference between north and south working class but I presume that’s to do with the history of industry (my family were picking up potatoes behind a horse drawn plough while their northern equivalents were in the cotton mills or down mines).
By the 60s agriculture work in my area was replaced by manufacturing but light industry compared to the North (eg at the age of 15 my dad sewed pyjamas at whereas his dad was stacking hay with a pitchfork at 15).

No history of heavy industry means far less trade union activity (a worker is far less likely to die when sewing pyjamas than manufacturing steel!) so the main rivals to the Tories in my home area were always the Liberals, now superseded by the Lib Dems.

Around there (apart from a surge when Blair was fresh) it’s only pretty recently that the Labour vote has gone up, and I presume that’s due to the party flip - Labour taken over by activists who graduated from posh universities (eg Owen Jones) and ‘Red Wall’ Old Labour/Blue Labour voters turning to the Tories to ‘Get Brexit Done’.

Some time ago Lisa Muggeridge said something along the lines of Owen Jones/Novara Media types were ‘Identifying as the political representation of the working classes’ and it’s something I think about a lot.

@TheClogLady if you are interested then electoral calculus will tell you who is likely to stay and who is not. They are historically pretty accurate on electoral outcomes.

Some time ago Lisa Muggeridge said something along the lines of Owen Jones/Novara Media types were ‘Identifying as the political representation of the working classes’ and it’s something I think about a lot.

Lisa Muggeridge really struck a chord with me on a lot of points.

Finally managed to catch up on all the brilliant comments.
@Karensalright I second the rollcall of MN heroes and will add another of my own: RebelliousCow.
Both during my initial learning journey and now still. Also I value the other parents who are caught up in this. And to finish the personal note, I am right on the edge of my own mental health on this but thankfully I'm on it and have some strategies.. and a wonderful counsellor and (often but not always) wonderful husband.

More importantly, some key thoughts and reflections on the topic in hand:

1. The BBC focus sounds great. Yes, they've been awful on this but they can break this scandal if they want to. Hopefully they can either want to want to or be helped to want to.
2. Re CAMHS we've had a very difficult journey but we're finally getting somewhere. I'm meeting with the management team soon and my MP is supporting me (I've said this on other threads but relevant here to). My goal is to secure an approach that will scale. My daughter remains under their care and they have also done some great stuff (with some heavy pushing) to signpost what is needed in her EHCP. Forgive me, I forgot to note down the username but I fully agree with the poster who said that having an EHCP is the most important thing here for autistic children. It doesn't help with healthcare but it's very significant in school.
3. schools. Yes, let's push hard to get the enforced belief in gender identity out of schools. I fully agree with the suggestion for every parent to use the Cass Report to do this as much as possible
4. 🚨 That question from Mishal Husain to Chris Whitty was gold. This is the type of journalism we need from you BBC senior management if you're reading this. Who knows, you might be. Mishal Husain: "These were NHS prescriptions to children. The fact that they were ever allowed.. is it a failure? Did you ever, at any stage, think 'I should be stepping in on this because I'm not sure what the evidence base is?'" I don't want Chris Whitty holding solely to account on this, he's not. But as Chief Medical Officer, residing over a national experiment on thousands of children, it's a good place to start covering this scandal. Inquiry. Now. Media coverage. Now.

Northerners are less effusive and performative in my experience.

I think it can be hard to gauge the subtle differences in social cues - divided by a common language, to appropriate the expression used to describe tensions between US English/UK English.

Thanks for that @ArabellaScott . Very interesting and informative!