Labour is betraying women

[IwantToRetire]

. . . If Starmer’s government has achieved so much depressing stuff in 71 days, roughly 4 per cent of the way into a possible 5-year term, what they might achieve by the end of it fills me with dread. I believe that Labour showed us, and in some instances told us, what they would do, or not do, to ensure the continued erosion of women’s rights, and they are doing exactly what they said. Why some feminist women, seemingly in a blind bond to Labour, didn’t believe them escapes me. It also infuriates me that they think Labour deserve a bit more rope to hang us with.

Some prominent left-wing women, before the election, pleaded with us to trust Labour and allow them space to make the right decisions. They suggested that it was wrong to focus on the single issue of gender ideology, because women would benefit in so many other ways under a Labour government.

I wonder, did they envisage this Labour government? The one maintaining unequal benefits, placing violent men amongst their female victims and keeping the blurred line between gender and sex embedded in law? I can understand if those women were now as dismayed as the rest of us at what they are seeing, but instead they appear to be spinning for Labour, suggesting the violent men aren’t really being released or excusing it by blaming the Tories. They suggest we should wait and see what happens, keep the faith, trust the process. After many years of being told that women are influencing Labour “behind the scenes” my faith in that has gone.

If you are a feminist woman openly critical of Labour you may now be accused of “right wing drift”. This is nonsense. Instead, should scrutiny not be focused on how far Labour have drifted from the left? This is where condemnation should be aimed. . . .

NB - these are only some paragraphs from the article - you can read the whole article here - https://thecritic.co.uk/labour-is-betraying-women/

Really?

I don’t think so.

It's hard to know what you are both advocating

I'm not advocating anything.

I am being really boring and practical.

At the moment the UK has quite a long list of areas of work that will allow people who want to do that work to come to the UK.

In this case the info is (surely?) easily accessible and so every month or whatever, these figures can be published. And in most instances these are jobs that are not taken up by UK citizens (hence talk by labour about upskilling our current work force)

And if in publishing it there was the a huge number of UK citizens saying but I wanted to do that job but they aren't paying the going rate then it is part of uk policy that migrant workers are not used to undercut the "going rate".

And maybe employers would have to show they had properly advertised vacancies etc..

Asylum seekers is something that the UK should be helping with other countries to do their / our fair share. I think there are easier to read stats than this link but no time to dig them out. https://www.economicsobservatory.com/asylum-seekers-in-europe-where-do-people-go-and-why

You have to wonder who it is in the UK that has this vested interest in creating this impression that we are being invaded compared to other countries. And hate to say it but one reason is that for the media it is the photo op of people in boats approaching Dover. If the UK had got off its backside and created processing centres in any number of countries eg Greece often the first europen country asylum seekers reach, there would be not need for mad and dangerous crossings of the Channel on inflatables.

The far bigger question of why so many people are seeking asylum is so huge, ie has so many aspects, that I am not sure whether any country, group of countries, can answer.

ie war, invasion, civil and political conflict, climate change, famine, hard line regimes, being a persecuted minority, former colonial exploitation of a countries resources, current exploitation of a countries resources to feed a greedy western consumer society, and ....

So it isn't about what I want, other than I want people to talk about the reality.

Not shit stir and victim blame.

Not forgetting the shame of the Windrush Generation who were asked to come and help the UK recover from WWII and then failure to preserve records and a "hostile" environment led to people who came at that time, or children of these people, were forcible deported to countries they had nothing to do with.

I don't mind realistic discussion about what to do as climate pressures increase but I don't think processing in another country will be viable as you won't be able to meet the demand.

And if you can't say yes to everyone who applies and is eligible, and it will be very high, then people will seek other ways. Which would still be allowable within international law. You'd also create such large movement to those processing centres it would be overwhelming.

It's not just this country btw, if you look at Germany and other EU nations. They don't have boats as images. The pressure is increasing and you will see the electorate react until politicians take it seriously somehow.

I think many, many people in the UK believe that Britain takes the most refugees (more than Germany!), and that the EU is only too happy to see them head in boats for our shores.

The thing about immigration is that it's one of those issues with a long tail. So crises in the system now are often the unforeseen consequences of decisions made many years ago.

It means you have to think about the long term, which politicians are notoriously bad at.

Another long term issue is the birth rate being below replacement level, while most women say they would like more children than they actually have. Is there anyone out there with the imagination to think of long term initiatives to support mothers, bearing in mind the so-called gender pay gap is really mostly a maternity pay gap?

What are we going to do about the lack of skills in the workforce, which hasn't been addressed by the push to get every kid into university? Any long term ideas for that?

And of course, how do we support an ageing population?

It's not as if we don't know about the big demographic pressures. But our rulers seem incapable of thinking about them. Instead they ramp up immigration, while lying about doing it, and come up with dumb policies like the two child benefit cap that don't balance the public finances but allow ministers to seem "tough" for the benefit of the headlines.

The Conservatives failed on all these points, and Labour look well set to fail harder. And then they wonder why Reform are rising in the polls.

I don't think the argument that the problem is the government didn't build enough houses washes with people. People don't always have highly developed ideas about these issues, but they have a sense of what's going on that is informed by what they see around them.

It might be true they should have built more housing, but it' s pretty irrelevant if you can't find housing now and are seeing new arrivals housed. Most people in this situation will feel that regardless of historic blame around home building there should not be more people admitted when there are not enough homes or other infrastructure for those who already live there.

Then, the question is how many is enough? England has an extremely high population density and many people are suspicious of the idea that it needs to be greater, or should be greater.

And the fact that any government is presiding over a population that is economically discouraged from having kids while doing all of this is part of why it's a kick in the teeth. And that's not just because they can't afford it, it's because education and work culture make it too hard for people to take care of more children.

And what's discouraging is, you don't get the sense that politicians (in any party) are seriously grappling with this.

Also the practical issues. Housing estates are being vomited up on every square foot of green land in my area, at high speed, everywhere. Huge amounts of open space and green land has been destroyed. The housing estates are badly planned, particularly for parking and cars, and the affordable homes are a few tucked in a corner. There is little to no care for infrastructure, the hospital was designed for the population 20 years ago before the explosion of incomers and can't cope, the GPs can't cope, the schools can't cope, the roads are gridlocked because the town was never designed for this kind of traffic, it impacts all users. Flooding is a huge issue and concreting over needed run off and open ground has been done with glee because it brings in council tax to a broke LA and that's all they can see. And when you crowd people together, remove all the green and open space and make services more scarce and over stretched?

Well it's not exactly going to be a happy, contented and thriving population.

Do people want the population always to increase? It's a bit of a Ponzi scheme that pushes the problem forward if so

Obviously it's a Ponzi scheme. It's a short term solution that means politicians don't have to think about difficult long term problems, and that's the appeal.

The trouble comes if they've been putting off thinking about the long term problems since Tony Blair was PM.

I've been saying for years that population growth is a Ponzi scheme and will come back to bite us on the bum. England has the highest population density in Europe barring the various city states and then people blame farmers for us being 'the most nature-depleted country'. Yeah, sure. A massive field near me that used to be full of skylarks and poppies is now covered in bloody houses. Great for agricultural output and wildlife.

You also have to consider social cohesion. I am not anti immigration at all, but I am opposed to continuing high levels to an overcrowded country with a housing crisis.

I live on a large council estate built in the 30s on what was then the edge of London. It wasn't just a load of houses; it included a new hospital, surgery, schools, shops, cinema, parks and transport integrated with the nearest Tube station on the newly extended line. The houses aren't big, but they have plenty of storage, and gardens. Obviously they couldn't predict that in the future even working class households would own at least one car, but they clearly sat down and drew up a list of "what makes a nice area for families to live".

Just mindlessly building houses wherever you can squeeze them stores up different types of futre social problems.

I think it's coming back to bite for a few other politicians too now, Merkel's lack of foresight for Germany

I don't actually think you can keep selling ever higher populations

I don't know.about England, but in areas in Scotland the housing shortage is largely driven by changing demographics. Smaller and smaller households; more single occupiers; fewer multi generational households.

And in some.rural areas second homes and holiday lets are also buying up all.the available property and pricing out residents. I know that happens down South, too, although I suppose the larger scale issues are a lack.of new high density building.

Speak for yourself. I might well feel politically homeless, but I didn’t vote Tory. Would never in a million years vote for fucking Farage.

Edited to add: is this a not so subtle effort to yet again label FWR as ‘far right’. Getting boring now.

I think they very much don't.

I mean, everyone can see, surely, that space is not infinite?

What I find quite odd is that there are a lot of people who seem to think the government should be going crazy on house building who are also, supposedly, environmentalists. I find it really hard to understand how they think that works. It's like they only mean carbon output, they don't care about actual nature.

From Pembrokeshire:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyl52jz73vo
Lobby your council to do likewise.

My friend Rachel spoke about the maternity pay gap at Labour's conference at the weekend and was well-received. Labour is on it: it'll take time to change it, but there a people working on the issue and we can expect improvements.

Conference rejected the abolition of the WFA and it's expected that there will be revisions soon, to ensure the poorest band of pensioners don't lose out.

In a public speech for LWD at the weekend, Tonia Antoniazzi announced that Labour have stepped away from self ID. I think she can be relied on to have got the go-ahead to say that. Labour are waiting for the Scottish Supreme Court ruling on what sex means in the Equality Act. If the Supreme Court rules that it means biological sex only, they will accept that. More likely that the Supreme Court will conclude the law isn't clear and throw it back to Parliament to rule on, at which point Labour's GC MPs will fight for changes to protect women's rights.

I note that elsewhere people are criticising Labour Women's Declaration for not having Rosie Duffield speak. Rosie wasn't, apparently, available. Last year Tonia chaired the LWD meeting which was held outside the security zone because LWD were not permitted to participate in the conference itself. Tonia stepped up, in the rain, to support LWD.

Annaliese Dodds, despite being minister for Women and Equalities, was unwilling to talk to certain women's groups at the conference. This is not a surprise, obviously: she's a genderist. Very troubling.
https://t.co/qFZaHkcaQg

The link is to an archived Telegraph article by Julie Bindel.

I think it's a narrative loop we can't get out of. It's centre left media and entrenched

So people talk about this in one way but then bump into facts. Like we can't increase every year can we?

And we can't take everyone so some controls are actually required.

The conversation is woeful though, really so bad. People lose rationality and logic

And yes agree on nature and biodiversity

Possible that it's just someone who thinks any questioning or criticism of the left must come from the right.

My kids will use real money to buy things like an electronic hat for a computer avatar in a game.

My partner knows someone who makes a good living designing and creating one off virtual clothing and accessories which she sells to people for their computer avatars. Another person I'm aware of makes 'bespoke' virtual guns and weapons for gamers — again, earns enough to live well and travels the world while working remotely. Both started it as a side hustle, then found it paid more than 'real' work.

It does make it quite difficult to go along with the 'you boomers never had it so good' whinging.

That, plus the sluggish economy, plus the energy crisis, plus east Germany is still considerably poorer than the west, plus a clown show coalition government in which nobody seems to know what they're doing.

Germany is interesting because the median German voter leans a bit to the left on economic issues and a bit to the right on cultural issues, but thanks to the political party cartel that runs the Federal Republic, they usually get the opposite of what they vote for. This should not be difficult for Brits to understand.

East Germans in particular are absolutely pissed off with their rulers and for a generation now have been voting heavily for any populists who promise to upset the cartel. That used to be Die Linke before the party was taken over by Berlin hipsters, now it's the AfD and more recently BSW. You don't have to agree with any of these parties to think it might be counterproductive to have politicians and pundits constantly going on talk shows to explain that east Germans are unsophisticated rubes who don't understand democracy.

The Greens over there are now in the interesting position where they still get glowing media coverage but the actual voters hate them.

The UK is not the only country with a political class that strongly resembles Principal Skinner wondering why the kids are out of touch.

I wonder what Marx would have made of this kind of 'wealth creation'!