Is there an election soon???

[ZeldaFighter]

You're all intelligent women so I'm sure you've already noticed this:

• Tories asleep at the wheel for the last 14 years wrt women's rights and (running the country)
• election strategist decides to copy American politics playbook
• 2 weeks before the election, women's rights are a hot topic and the right wing media can't find enough commentators to discuss the opposition's record of women's rights
• Labour don't have to defend their actions - they aren't in power!!!
• Where is the acknowledgement that the dismantling of women's rights has come about during the Tories' watch?
• The Tories are the Government and they have run the NHS, the schools, the Police and the courts for the last 14 years...

I refuse to be sucked into this culture war b*llshit. I am a progressive, left-leaning feminist (probably 2nd wave which is why I disagree with gender identity ideology) and I will be voting Labour for the good of the country.

Yeah,all over again.

"I remember Tony Blair. I remember the hope, the SureStart centres, the drop in child poverty, the way things seemed much better....I just want that again!"

Zelda, I remember that too and would dearly like that again too but this Labour is not the Labour of 97. This Labour are committed to maintaining current Tory general spending and welfare spending levels. They are not saying that they will tax and spend, in fact they're saying they'll refuse to raise taxes.

I think that this Labour is coasting on the memories and hopes that people like you and me have of Labour 97.

So, given that Labour are refusing to spend to repair the country after austerity, their social policies are all they've got to differentiate themselves from the Tories. And I disagree with their social policies with regards to women's sex-based rights and I don't support their suggested policies to resolve the conflict between women's rights and the demands of men who say they want society to see them as women. I don't support their proposed policy to ban conversion therapy because they will be legislating against the advice of the Cass Report. I don't support their policy to allow the teaching of gender ideology in schools.

If Labour gave me a reason to vote for them, I would in a heartbeat but they seem determined to ignore voters like me.

What do you mean nothing has been said? It's been a huge topic in the media for several years, on an ongoing basis.

It's blowing up now because people are trying to figure out who to vote for and many hoped Labour would come out with something sensible.

I'd suggest that a lot of people allowed their hope to cloud their judgement, but in any case, Labour have bottled it, so it's a hot topic.

But it's worth remembering that had they been reelected, Labour was going to have money problems, even back then. They were going to have to start making cuts. And much of what they did for the health services was funded by tying the system to long term debt, which is still bleeding the NHS. Blair's decisions then are one reason the Conservative governments since then have not been able to make much headway in health.

This time they have no money to play with. The world recession and COVID mean there are no choices with money. (And don't imagine that had they been in power Labour would have made better decisions.)

When the Conservatives took power there was an infamous joke about Labour leaving a note and saying 'There's no money left'.

It was followed up by ITV:
https://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-06-24/infamous-liam-byrne-treasury-memo-seen-for-first-time/

It frustrates me intensely.

Gordon Brown went around saying 'No one could have forseen the crash of 2008'.

Except me and DH did, and financially planned for it. We warned a number of our friends who were going for Northern Rock mortgages at the time. We had another friend who was working in the city in 2007, and he was literally having conversations with us about the WHEN bit of it. Theres no way that if he was doing this, there weren't loads of traders actively doing their jobs based on that notion too.

They also did PFI which was insane. I doing a job in which I read all the proposals for a couple of hospitals in the NW. I was reading the financials on it going, why in gods name are we doing this. They were financially illiterate. And thats before you consider the terms and restrictions that this placed on hospitals in terms of what they could do with their own building.

I voted Labour in 1997 and I totally get it. They did a lot of good. But please don't put on those rose tinted glasses and say they were financially massively better than the Tories.

Then austerity. Austerity was also financially illiterate in so many ways. Its cut budgets in ways which meant we ended up spending MORE because of unintended consequences later down the line. It killed the concept of 'the best cure is prevention' in health and crime etc.

But it was also a consequence of the mismanagement of the previous years. No one gets a free pass to say that 'the other party was worse'.

Then we had covid. Brexit was bad enough but Covid just compounded everything.

Frankly, I think theres a bunch of politicians who are good at making noise but fucking useless at numbers and running things on a practical level.

It is so goddam depressing. And I am sick to death of the blame game, piss poor excuses, dodging of perfectly fucking reasonable questions and the lack of responsibility taking. You NEVER have good management with that culture.

I'm sad you disagree, TinselAngel

Is that you Wes? 😂

Same here. Gender ideology is embedded in the Labour Party no matter what Starmer says about preserving single sex spaces. He has only decided that in the last couple of weeks and he can change his mind in the next couple of weeks.
Starmer can't be trusted and the LP is just biding its time until it's in power.