Trans group attack Wes Streeting"s constituency office

[DrudgeJedd]

Happened this morning but doesn't seem to be reported anywhere. Trans protest group Bash Back smashed a large window & painted "child killer" (although it looks more like 'chip king' 😁).
Manifesto seems to be the usual MtF centred hyperbole about 'our trans sisters' and repeats the mass suicide myth that Jolyon Maugham & his daughters' group Trans Kids Deserve Better have been trying to blame on Streeting since last summer. I wonder if TKDB have decided that leaving paper coffins outside of this office every day isn't getting the attention they want?
x.com/LeftieStats/status/1951281603776278791?t=z-aJP8CBec9iUri9dZH_PA&s=19

@RedToothBrush fwiw I agree with you about the inward and outward looking tendencies. Like you I have a foot in both camps, which was I found myself trying to explain to a very lovely local LibDem worthy (wonderful woman, has done a lot of good over the years) why she had quite got it about why people vote Reform. She just hadn't twigged that people have been feeling ignored, sidelined and marginalised for decades now. They've been asking to discuss the practical and social impacts of immigration since before Gordon Brown's famous foot-in-mouth moment and it's now surprise to me that we now have public disorder over the topic. You can have your kid marrying an immigrant who you really like while still thinking that immigration, overall, is too high and very poorly controlled.

Part of the problem is that we have low productivity as a nation, and a lot of debt, both of which really limit any government's scope for action - as Reform will find if, as I fear, they form the next government.

@Beowulfa
This response to being incorrect is now rare in itself. Why bother analysing data and asking difficult questions when you can just label voters stupid, bad and wrong?
Well, exactly. And when you label them like that, they won't vote for you, possibly for decades.
And since Nigel hasn't called them names, and just about all the other parties have, it's hardly surprising that he's getting a lot of votes in deprived constituencies where people are under pressure.

@EdithStourton I feel like I've been banging on about this for years, but I can remember arguing during Ed Miliband's leadership (it seems so long ago!) that Labour politicians fear and hate working class Labour voters.

I think the only thing that has changed is that those working class people aren't Labour voters any more.

And a Conservative friend was telling me at the time that it was the same for both parties - that grassroots Tories hadn't failed to notice the contempt Cameron held them in.

You can only get away with that for so long, before voters start looking for a politician who doesn't hold them in contempt.

Here's an interesting thing about Farage - he's got an ego obviously as all politicians do, and he loves the sound of his own voice, but if you ever see him interacting with voters, he hardly says a word. He's listening to them. He's interested in people and what they tell him.

It's quite a contrast compared with certain Labour MPs I've met.

Edith it's to my absolute frustration that I can see all this, but if you try and explain it you almost get called a Nazi sympathiser for your trouble!

Its about different priorities rather than hatred in the vast majority of cases.

People who are struggling to get affordable housing in their local area and then are forced out by a combination of gentrification from within the UK and from people moving here from overseas when their family has lived in an area for at least five generations ARE going to feel differently about issues to someone who is educated, moved to university and then moved somewhere else in the country for work that they have no family ties too.

The local community and social networks of both are wildly different.

Those who live in poverty see family and friends in their local community as their safety net and what life is all about precisely because that's their world. They don't have opportunities outside their world. So anything that threatens that, basically threatens everything that's important to them.

It's not about hating people coming in. It's a defensive concern about what little they do have.

It's too easy to interpret it as racism - and notably there's similar tensions in areas which gentrify too.

But ultimately people don't want to engage with these arguments because if they did it'd cause their world view to collapse and they might be forced to do something to address it. Which ultimately they don't want to because it's not their political priority.

I do think that sometimes allyship isn't about being right, it's about numbers and forcing a lifestyle and priorities over others whose faces don't fit.

Hence the smear by association tactics...

@RedToothBrush
Edith it's to my absolute frustration that I can see all this, but if you try and explain it you almost get called a Nazi sympathiser for your trouble!
Oh yes! I tried on a thread once, and some twerp said, 'Ah, well, we can all see that Edith will vote for Reform'. Fortunately I'd been on the FWR threads a lot longer than Twerp, and the massed howls of laughter over the ether probably gave Twerp tinnitus.

It really worries me when people think that 'I can see why some people vote Reform' equals 'I too will vote Reform, and by the way I think A. Hitler was given an undeservedly bad press.'

I genuinely don't know who the hell I'm going to vote for at this stage.

I crossed paths with a former local councillor over the weekend. He literally can't look me in the eye anymore. He once said to me I was the most politically astute people he'd ever met.

Then he cut me dead over the trans stuff saying it wasn't important.

He's retired now, but I know he knows and I know he knows I know he knows I was right.

The fact I don't know who I'm going to vote for (I've been a very good political barometer for years as I'm a swing voter) says much about how volatile UK politics currently is.

All I can say is I won't be voting Green and I won't be voting Reform. I will struggle with the remaining options (whatever they are!). An good independent looks very attractive at this point and if that's where I am, that's where a hell of a lot of other people will be.

I honestly don't know who I'll vote for. I don't actively dislike my Labour MP, but he hasn't done anything to make me love him either.

Given the demographics of my constituency, any challenge to him is likely to be either from the Greens or from Jezbollah. This might nudge me to voting Labour.

I won't rule out voting Reform, because they might pick a candidate who isn't an absolute dingbat. But that's very debatable.

I'm genuinely homeless. And was so last year, where I voted for a no-hope SDP candidate because I couldn't stomach anyone else.

You can have your kid marrying an immigrant who you really like while still thinking that immigration, overall, is too high and very poorly controlled.

You can be an immigrant and think that - I know some who do. Doesn't always mean they're right but it's a mistake to assume that the only people who think that way are white people who've been in the UK since whenever.

I do think that sometimes allyship isn't about being right, it's about numbers and forcing a lifestyle and priorities over others whose faces don't fit.

I don't like "allyship" much as a model any more. External "allies" are mostly useful against a shared external enemy. But external "allies" become a big problem when there's disagreement within a community - or within what the "ally" has conveniently labelled as a "community". Then external "allies" either become a force imposing their own view of what the community should be, or else they are exploited as weapons in the internal struggle. Sometimes both. Not to mention what happens when an external power has to choose in a conflict between two different groups that they've previously promised allyship.

The other practical use for "allyship" is when you're trying to put together a group and you don't want to fall foul under the Equality Act or set very clear strict boundaries. "X and allies" is a handy way to say "X plus other people who agree with us about X". (At your own risk)

Other than that I'd steer well clear.

As a Northern Ireland voter I’m screwed in much the same way: we have a majority of politicians who are ideologically hidebound and unable to actually govern effectively for local people’s needs. Too much tinkering around the edges rather than actual policy making and too readily resorting to tub thumping when criticised.

If I still had a vote in NI, I'd like to be able to vote Alliance, but...

Let's just say my experience of Stephen Farry is that he was never a very good listener when he'd already made his mind up about an issue. And I don't think Stephen was unrepresentative of Alliance.

People who are struggling to get affordable housing in their local area and then are forced out by a combination of gentrification from within the UK and from people moving here from overseas...

And how much worse is it going to get when the migrant hotels are closed? The DM story yesterday was about men who lived in a house "managed" by the likes of Serco ( , because we all know the level of care that outsourcing companies give, once they've tendered their lowest possible bid and got their money). One went on to allegedly rape a 12 year old girl.

If the authorities think it's bad now when these men are in hotels where there is security and (possibly) better management because the premises need to be looked after, it will be 10 times worse when it's spread out into residential areas, not to even mention the perception of "immigrants taking houses off locals".

Those who live in poverty see family and friends in their local community as their safety net and what life is all about precisely because that's their world. They don't have opportunities outside their world. So anything that threatens that, basically threatens everything that's important to them.
It's not about hating people coming in. It's a defensive concern about what little they do have. It's too easy to interpret it as racism - and notably there's similar tensions in areas which gentrify too.

I completely agree with this too. It is so easy to see this from the perspective of someone who can up-sticks and move if I wanted to, who sees chances to live elsewhere and do different things as a great opportunity. Some people don't have that and/or don't want it - why should they be made to feel parochial and socially backward for wanting to keep their security and comfort in the community they know? When you've not got much, something is everything. So someone coming to take away - or even just threaten - that small amount of something, knowing that you haven't got any other options or choices, is deeply worrying and upsetting. I'm sure I'd feel the same, in their shoes.

It smacks of the Educated Liberal Lanyard Class looking down and sneering at their 'small' world and saying their values are not only wrong, but racist and bigoted. Maybe they are that too, but they've also got a point.

I have thought for a while that political parties are in the midst of an upheaval in terms of what they stand for and who they represent. I think that it will be ongoing for at least two more election cycles here in the U.K.

Labour no longer reflect the concerns of the working class, if you define them as the skilled and unskilled labourers. The Conservatives are rarely conservative, and they tolerated a lot of non-conservative nonsense under Johnson. Both claim to be the party of business. So is no wonder no one knows who to vote for any more. Farage is very good at identifying what the average man and woman are worried about, and saying stuff to speak to them. I think many of his ideas are unworkable in practice, if not immoral, but he speaks well and has a charisma so he is listened to. And just on a basic level, about half the adult population consider themselves working class so Farage has the numbers on his side.

i cannot abide the purity politics of many of the professional class that inhabit the progressive left wing. I should be amongst them, but find myself castigated for saying things like no one should lose their bank accounts for having legal political opinions. And, like PP, saying I could see why someone voted for Brexit and/or Reform, even while I disagreed with them.

if an election was called tomorrow then I’d have to take the least worst option and vote for my current MP who is Labour, local and seems to been doing a good job in being accountable to her constituents. But 4 years is a long time in politics, so who knows what the landscape will look like by then.

Given all the comments on the thread is it possible that a society in a modern world is ungovernable, and by that I mean, we don't have the skills, knowledge or talent necessary to govern anymore.

Maybe it's not possible for us to develop them, because there are to many directions in which we're being pulled, to many 'communities', to many needs, to many demands, all of which are in conflict with one another.

@AmaryllisNightAndDay
You can be an immigrant and think that - I know some who do. Doesn't always mean they're right but it's a mistake to assume that the only people who think that way are white people who've been in the UK since whenever.
Absolutely. I can remember a vox pop during the Brexit campaign quizzing a group of taxi drivers or similar (iirc they were Sikh), and they were all very much, 'Nah, mate, too much immigration...' And the journalist was 😳

In some ways this thread is depressing, but OTOH I feel a bit less like a lone voice holding in the wilderness than I normally do. I do have a fair few friends who share a lot of my concerns, but a lot of my ILs are what my late DM (lower-middle class to the tips of her fingernails, but with even less money) would scathingly call Champagne socialists, and they drive me bonkers.

Us oldies remember "My Beatiful Launderette" from the the mid-80s...

Johnny: What would your enemies have to say about this, eh? Ain't exactly integration, is it?
Nasser: I'm a professional businessman, not a professional Pakistani. And there is no question of race in the new enterprise culture.

Nasser: .... We'll drink to Thatcher - and your beautiful laundrette.
Johnny: Do they go together?
Nasser: Like dal and chapatis.

It's worth looking up the original quote list on IMDB - there's a lot of causal use of P* and that was a very right-on film.

I've added 'the new suffragettes' to my growing list of 'mirroring', or 'parrotting' if I'm feeling #beunkind, ie. examples of TRAs using words, phrases, etc which have been used by us to critique them.
They haven't got the imagination, or the vocabulary, to come up with something original🙄
Still, you know the old saying 'Imitation is the highest form of flattery'

I think it's perfectly possible to rub along with varying communities.

The issues are resources and competition for them.

What makes my blood run a bit chilly are 1. population growth which is forecast to continue even though it's slowing slightly and 2. the fact that our 'growth' economy, untethered to what are definitely finite resources, has pretty much pushed us off a cliff over the unknown. How far can economies continue to expand when they're not based on material reality?

Now that Reform seem confused about whether men should be in women's prisons perhaps that will dampen some of the enthusiasm for them on here.

Although its a shame to miss out on their plan to cut taxes and have wonderful services by eliminating "waste" which they cant even identify.

You seem to be falling into the same trap the Dem's in the USA did, nobody is enthusiastic for Reform, there just thoroughly pissed of with the main stream parties, to the point where they can't vote for any of them any more.

You still to be falling into a trap too. There is plenty of enthusiastic support for Reform, it’s not just a protest vote.

some of the enthusiasm for them on here.
I'm not seeing enthusiasm for them on this thread.

Me neither. But discussion and examination are interpreted as enthusiasm or support by some.

See also KJK threads. Any discussion of her is seen as wholehearted enthusiasm for everything she does.

Perfect own goal HPFA you have just proven the point that RedToothbrush, GreySkyBlueSky, EdithStourton* and several others are making. Well done.

I almost said something about the standard of reading comprehension several posts ago, when agreeing with RTB, and then didn't.

Either it's wilful, or people are stupid, or people read in too much of a hurry to actually take in what's being said i.e. are very careless. We all make mistakes, but we do have repeat offenders.

It's rather proving the point many of us are making - you either vocally and vociferously condemn the likes of Reform (while conveniently ignoring why anyone would consider voting for them) in order to prove your 'right-on' credentials, or you're One Of The Bad People Who Need To Be Re-Educated.

I was listening to an episode of the History Extra podcast about the Iron Mountain hoax (an anti-war satire which got taken to be a real report about plans for social control) and the interviewee broadened the discussion into how conspiracy theories take hold. He said societies need to step back and ask why people are wont to believe them, and what is causing their fear that a conspiracy theory provides an answer to. I'd say that applies in absolute spades here, but so many people like HPFA would rather condemn and scold than look to see why people feel the way they do and whether they have a legitimate cause to feel aggrieved.

A ha ha! I remember that we were supposed to make the Peelers dance, but the Police turned out to be party poppers!