Hobbycraft employee badge - no terfs, no Tories

[ItsCoolForCats]

Another example of why bringing your whole self to work is a terrible idea.

Hobbycraft seems to be busy trying to mitigate the fallout, presumably because they know which demographic spends the most money there.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/politics/5359520/dundee-hobbycraft-trans-row/

Childlike.
Ignorant.
Hubris.
Self-righteousness.
Authoritarian.

I'm sure that as I read further posts, I'll be adding to the above list.

Ours just closed! No surprise if they insult (some) customers.

Everything you have just suggested would be considered political statements.

I'm not belittling you! Maybe I should have said black and white view rather than childish.

No, it's not fine in a place of work at all. It's also not true that everyone on the left is good and everyone on the right is bad, and as I said in an earlier post, I'm very left-wing.

Remember how Jimmy Savile presented himself as a lovely man who did lots for charity when he was actually one of the worst monsters of all? There are lots of people who similarly hide behind being left-wing who are actually terrible human beings (although thankfully very few people on either side of the political spectrum who are in the Savile league).

Just because you are left wing does not mean you are 'compassionate' and 'anti racist'. Sadly some of the most violently and viciously misogynist men I have met have been left wing. Same with racism/anti-semitism, which the left does sadly have a serious issue with. I say this as someone who has traditionally always voted left.

You seem to have been brainwashed to believe the left is pure and all good and decent, sugar and spice and all things nice, and the right are the demon. Sorry but you've been brainwashed. There are good and bad on both sides.

For my sins, I used to be very heavily embedded in the world of left wing activism. A sample of some of the charming people I got to know:

• More than one rapist, and quite a lot of people (including women) willing to vouch for their good character
• A particularly nasty wife-beater - once again, it was the people who blew the whistle on him who were treated as the bad guys
• At least one paedophile
• Several people who ended up having to explain that the funds were just resting in their account
• Quite a few unironic antisemites
• One full-time organiser who was such a psycho that I literally saw him bully a vulnerable person into a nervous breakdown

These charming people also held most of the approved views on political issues. A cynic might think they used their politics as a halo effect to distract from their character flaws. I don't actually believe that. I just think, contrary to Swift's cartoon view of the world, that someone's political beliefs do not map neatly onto good and bad character.

The one difference I've observed is that my right wing friends are happy to throw someone under the bus if they've demonstrated bad character. My left wing friends are more likely to close ranks around the bad apple and throw the whistleblower under the bus.

I think it’s generally accepted what people’s issues are, so when somebody wears a badge saying ‘No Tories’ I know that this person is left leaning, compassionate, anti racist and pro the common woman.

Anti Racist - Starmer spent the first part of his leadership trying to remove entrenched racism from the Labour Party, which rather suggests that racism is a problem on the left.

Left Leaning - probably - although they could just like Reform.

Compassionate? The badge suggests not.

Pro the common woman? Not much evidence to support this.

I think you could conclude that wearing a badge like that at work suggests a lack of judgement and intelligence.

“I know that this person is left leaning, compassionate, anti racist and pro the common woman.”

I think you have a rather romanticised, and extreme view about political positions. And a very optimistic about left leaning politics vs a very demonising view about anyone to the right of left wing.

I have almost exactly the same experience, which is why I give short shrift to the idea that the left is always good and virtuous despite still being on the left (for my sins).

Well wouldn’t that mean that those people aren’t actually truly left wing and would most likely be claiming so for nefarious reasons? If I were to claim I was vegan then chomp down on a big juicy rib eye steak that would invalidate my status right? You can’t truly be left wing and racist, the two positions do not align in any way. That would make you at best a centrist I guess, but most likely right wing.

But you think anyone who's wearing a leftie badge is automatically a good person, right?

Similarities with the trans issue there...

I think of the domestic abuser who I know personally very senior and well known in one of the left wing parties of the world and I think people who make such generalisations really are not credible.

Anyone who also believes this extremist view that the left is the only parties to care about female people is clearly very tribal and entrenched.

Let’s look at the parties that allow male people into the female representation roles such as ‘women’s officers’. There really is something disconnected with saying the left are the only parties that care about female people when the evidence is very clear that they are doing a poor job and really are not the only parties, despite the constant repetition of those points.

No, it's not fine. Because if (like the old poem goes) people come for the tories, then what if they came for you/Labour next? Tories are not 'evil' people, they just have a different way of wanting to achieve things. Everyone wants genuinely best for their country. We don't all have the same path though for that. Someone somewhere (in one of your previous posts in seemed your professor father indoctrinated you) has truly indoctrinated you to hate, to hate tories and believe in this 'good' vs 'evil' fantasy battle in your mind. People are people. There are good tories and bad tories. Good labour people and bad labour people. People who are tory are not all some demon sent from hell, they genuinely believe in their values. I think perhaps that never occurred to you. To see them as human beings, and not someone you are programmed to hate.

I believe all politics should be kept out of work. Because it is then just a slippery slope to 'No Labour voters served' and 'No black people no Jews'.

a statement of support for the disenfranchised of society?

Since about 2016, the disenfranchised in society have been heavily signalling that they don't have much faith in people who wear badges, and would quite like to take their chances with Nigel Farage.

No because left wing does not mean what you want it to mean. And those I described are high up in the left and are certainly not 'pretending' to be left.

Good luck sorting through who is worthy of being ‘left wing’ and who is not.

I suppose if 'left wing' = nice, the Chinese government must be the nicest people in the world!

I don’t think it’s fair to say my father indoctrinated me. Yes, he (and my mother) have always been staunchly left wing, Marxist even but that’s another story, but I was never forced to align with any of their worldviews. At one point in my youth I briefly flirted with the idea of being a Libertarian which caused much discussion around the coffee table that’s for sure! 😊

Very good point!

Did your father ever wonder why East Germany needed a heavily fortified border to keep its own people in?

If it's a joke I don't mind what it says if it's serious I mind whoever it's said about.

Garbage.

Left leaning? yes

Compassionate - doubtful. Instead someone who thinks they are but is in fact only to people who look and think like them

Anti racist - no. I am not racist. But I am also not "anti racist" it's a bullshit made up term to encourage the purity spiral. It's enough to just think humans are born and should be treated equal.

Pro the common woman - no. Given how all the further-left-than-labour parties have shit all over the definition and protection of women (and Labour has done a lot as well).

So no.

I'd just think they were a twat.

Did your mother ever discuss the Comrade Delta rape cover-up within the Socialist Workers Party with you? Or Stalin’s gulags? Or Pol Pot’s massacres? Or that Stokely Carmichael, a leading Black rights activist of 1960s America said “said: "I have never admired a white man, but the greatest of them, to my mind, was Hitler” and “'the proper position of women in SNCC is prone”.

It really is not as simple as left = good and right = bad. Politics cannot be reduced to these simplistic positions which is why it’s best left out of the workplace.

I suspect that those will be dismissed as "No True Scotsman"

In your 40s, really? That's even more embarrassing, tbf.