Women's rights general conversations - Thread 8

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of Thread 7.

There is so much excellent information and so many active discussions on FWR that I wondered if it would be useful to have a thread to sort of "cross-fertilise" between them - airing little thoughts or vignettes that wouldn't themselves merit their own thread, to highlight other posts/threads of particular interest or to point to notable developments on fast-moving threads so that casual observers know where to look.

(For example, "the X thread has meandered onto a fascinating discussion of Y" or "Poster P's amazing analysis on thread Z might have relevance to the scenario in thread W" or "Has anybody noticed this recurring theme that keeps coming up??" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions in the supermarket, grr"- that sort of thing).

I think they have low ones for people in wheelchairs to use.

I dunno; first of all people in wheelchairs have to put up with all kinds of weirdos using their loos, and then, when they come to vote... 😜

Won’t wheelchair ones be too low?

Goldicocks.

I’ve just been to spoil my ballot. I didn’t see any dicks out but avoided the low shelves in any case.

😅

Definitely no dicks out at our polling station while I was there. No other voters at all. It was about 2pm, and only 190 out of over 1600 ballots had been cast.

The normal rush is evening after work but that's still sounding very low for 2pm. A lot of people go before work.

Mine was surprisingly busy at 4pm. After school crowd, I guess?

Just looking at twitter for indicators for turnout.
Its a mixed bag of some saying their local polling station was very busy and others saying its very low. I think it could well be area dependent - this time around theres lots of places which aren't normally marginal but might be this time around.

Are you planning on staying up tonight for the results, Red?

That bloody Aussie site! I just spotted an email from them in my junk folder;

It's headed 'Serious Infraction'

You have received a serious warning for this post (which may have been deleted):
Transgender - Part 2

The post in its entirety was

This hardly ever happens 🙄
followed by a link to shewon.

The email continues:

This is worth 5 warning points.

If you accumulate enough points in a 12 month period you will lose privileges:

5 points - 1 week off.
10 points - 2 weeks off
15 points - 3 weeks off
20 points - Account banned.

Check out the rules if you're unsure of what is not acceptable on [redacted]

I've been posting on this site for probably ten years (sporting sections only) without incident. I pop into their Politics section for once, make a factual and non-abusive post, and get a week's ban! Cant even chat about the rugby now.

I hope this kind of intolerance is not going to spread here.

I wasn't but DH is very overexcited (even despite calling himself politically homeless too and thinking they are all rubbish). He loves politics.

I'm not sure what time we will last until though.

I might have a disco nap.

i generally love election night, have attended the count several times and even stay up for the US election results but I’m rather underwhelmed this GE.

Still, at least this isn’t quite as depressing as Trump v Biden!

Only thing particularly credible I've seen so far.

The noise I hear seems to be suggesting that Reform friendly areas seem to have higher turnout too. This doesn't necessarily mean reform votes if this is correct. It could be people trying to keep them out.

We'll see. Still a bit early still

I caught the post-school/work rush. The local polling station had moved venue and it wasn’t as well organised as normal which was a surprise. There’s normally two queues depending on where your road name sits the alphabet, one set of volunteers with the papers on each side of the room, signs on the door directing you to the right queue.

However this venue is long and thin so both sets of volunteers in the same table on the same side of the room. No signage apart from the statutory “polling station” signs. So there was one massive queue to the nearest pair and one pair of volunteers sitting there twiddling their thumbs until every other disgruntled voter reached the top of the massive queue and was redirected, muttering about a waste of time standing about.

Not exactly a disaster in the big scheme of things, but given how long elections have been going on you’d have thought by now they have the hang of running it like clockwork. In my limited volunteer experience, it usually means the person Who Does and Thinks of Everything isn’t involved this year.

For the amusement of the thread, a message from my sister:

I got chatted up at the gym. He began by basically taking the piss out of my light weights and calm demeanour.

Was ready to mansplain. So i informed him I’m a trained gym instructor

😆

Turnout in NI apparently very low. Worth keeping in mind schools have already finished there. May also be true for Scotland.

It's trades fortnight in Edinburgh and the Lothians (and probably other areas too) and the English school holidays haven't started yet so a lot of people here are away on holiday. Postal voting has been a shit show with loads of areas having to set up emergency postal/proxy vote centres as people didn't receive their ballot papers on time.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jun/29/scottish-election-officials-doing-all-we-can-amid-postal-vote-delays

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c720kj0e0gdo.amp

Unherd have a live election broadcast on YouTube, if anyone can’t face the big telly news…

https://www.youtube.com/live/_X2e0hWAQ0I?si=ffVqRoHCV975FEg1

Husband is insisting on watching the Channel 4 election coverage.

The know-it-all arrogant dickhead Campbell and his cuddly friend Rory, and Emily Maitlis released from her Righteous Men controllers, Sopel and Lewis. Hannah Fry is the number cruncher (I don't know whether she's Righteous or not, but her pal Adam Rutherford is, and AFAIK all the meeja academics are eyeball-deep in it). Oh, and a panel of ex-politicians who all blatantly loathe each other.

I may have to leave the room.

unherd is a bit chaotic but they are currently speaking to Mary Harrington, so worth checking out, if only briefly

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/general-election-2024/5112325-the-result?reply=136524810

Started a specific thread in the GE section for any who wants to talk there rather than cluttering up here with general politics.

I utterly loathe Campbell, always have, but can't find it in myself to dislike Rory Stewart, who is at least calm and apparently sane. Maitlis is sharp, Sopel is past it and Lewis Goodall sounds like a 12-year-old lecturing the grown-ups. And Hannah Fry is way brighter than Rutherford.

I don't plan to watch any of it, because it really doesn't matter what (if) they think. I shall quietly go to bed in the glorious new pyjamas I bought this afternoon and let them stay up all night if they want to. It will make no difference.