Corb Blimey!

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Yeah, no one in Ireland in the feminist community seems to give two fucks about self-id that’s already law here. Yet cos the SNP are bringing it in for Scotland very soon, a misogynist fuck like Wings over Scotland is now a staunch ally of loads of TERF twitter accounts. They are finding every piece about a self ID-ing sex offender to argue against trans in womans’ prisons, even against gender neutral bathrooms.

Can someone explain to me what is going on? do these people think that people are going around claiming to be trapped in the wrong body for the Craic? I mean on the one hand saying that Transgender people are exactly the same as cisgender (Have I used that correctly?) is bonkers, but it's only relevant in identifying people who may need help and assistance to get to where they want to be. Whatever happened to treating people how they would like to be treated?

[NHH]

I think treating people as they’d like to be treated is what’s known as political correctness gone mad

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Yeah, after many years of scratching my head, I think I eventually came to that conclusion. Some people have no basic manners.

[Lang Spoon]

There seems a belief that Trans advocacy and any redefining of what being a woman means is pure misogyny, that women who want to transition to men are also victims of evil misogynistic forces in medicine and surgery, lots of “mengele” references thrown about to describe surgeons who do female to male surgery. It’s really fucking unhinged, but that’s the company Linehan keeps now.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Can someone explain to me what is going on? do these people think that people are going around claiming to be trapped in the wrong body for the Craic? I mean on the one hand saying that Transgender people are exactly the same as cisgender (Have I used that correctly?) is bonkers, but it's only relevant in identifying people who may need help and assistance to get to where they want to be. Whatever happened to treating people how they would like to be treated?

Where does any other prejudice come from? Fear about having your assumptions about the world challenged? I don't really know.

Ultimately, the arguments that TERFs make (in particular, compared to other transphobes) are post-hoc justifications for more basic prejudice but most of the true-believers seem to hold that trans people are either liars or mentally ill or brainwashed via the internet or coerced into transitioning through experience of homophobia. Either way, their cure is the same - coerce trans people into either desisting or killing themselves.

Many appear to believe that "transgender ideology" is being pushed by the government and "big pharma" to "eradicate lesbians" - a sort of white genocide myth for people who've read The SCUM Manifesto.

Honestly, it's very confusing cos I've seen TERFs I knew IRL completely change tack depending on who they're speaking to. One moment, the conspiracy goes straight to the top, the next they're pretending they aren't sure where they stand and the trans bullies aren't giving them space to figure it out and discuss their concerns. It's very cult-like (albeit lacking the formal structure of a cult).

[Disco Child Ballads]

Zero mention of Wales in Corbyn's speech yesterday. The one part of the UK where Labour are in power and he ignores it. Is he ashamed of the Welsh Assembly Government or something?

[Lang Spoon]

Well NHS Wales is often used by the Tories to beat Labour with so maybe they are keeping schtum to avoid ammunition, and I get the impression that when Carwyn Jones ran a joint pro Single Market/CU Brexit strategy with Sturgeon that head office weren’t best pleased.

Though judging by Corbyn’s tin ear with regard to Scotland (and Slab seem to have had the worst possible conference, the flailing incoherent chasing after Unionist votes eejits) maybe being ignored is best.

[delicatemoth]

I've read the SCUM Manifesto! My mum had it when I was little. It's great*, but I'll bet she never expected me to take it so literally, hee hee.

Linehahahahan may have overstepped the mark a la Hopkins and may be getting his pipe sued off. I'd like to meet him just to ask who really wrote Father Ted (I think it was his mate?) as I reckon that would annoy him.

Fuck fuck fuck Corbyn's "gangsters and terrorists" rhetoric. Of course, I've seen little on this compared to the anti-semitism furore. Racism towards refugees (and implicitly Muslim ones) is just fine with most of the media class.

*when read as a psychedelic scream of rage and anguish, I should clarify

[Lang Spoon]

Heh, his last sitcom The Walshes was unspeakably bad, Mrs Browns Boys bad, so you might be into something there DM.

Corbyn’s million Triangulations are really fuckin depressing. The smell of institutional corrupt racist sexist municipal old Labour at its bigoted worst, the same pivot bullshit as Tony’s mob. Worst of both worlds.

[slackster]

Seems to me the Labour Conference and Corbyn’s speech has gone down well, and the usual critics in the media & politics have been unusually restrained as a result, but then I’m broadly sympathetic to the cause.

[Lucy Waterman]

In fairness, Linehan's last sitcom was Motherland, a big critical hit.

He does seem to be fucking appalling on Twitter though, with all the thick skin of a Gunther Von Hagens installation.

[Duncan Gardner]

I quite liked the Walshes...

In another boost for the Party, Labour have retaken control of Dudley Council

[Tubby Isaacs]

Well NHS Wales is often used by the Tories to beat Labour with so maybe they are keeping schtum to avoid ammunition, and I get the impression that when Carwyn Jones ran a joint pro Single Market/CU Brexit strategy with Sturgeon that head office weren’t best pleased.

Though judging by Corbyn’s tin ear with regard to Scotland (and Slab seem to have had the worst possible conference, the flailing incoherent chasing after Unionist votes eejits) maybe being ignored is best.

Welsh public services are a bit awkward for him in that they're run along the lines he'd like (no academies, much less PFI, no NHS internal market) but aren't obviously superior to England's, and indeed often worse by the most common "headline" measures. You can make a strong case that Wales is relatively underfunded given its deprivation and demographics, for sure, and they've tried to be long term with some stuff (like spending lots on GPs so that conditions can be caught earlier) but the day to day issues seem to be pretty much like England, and there aren't really unambiguous political "wins" in this stuff.

Also, I think Jones probably has a different perspective on business to Corbyn, because the challenge is as much getting it to invest in Wales at all as it is to rein it in. I can't imagine Jones/successor would much enjoy standing by some derelict warehouse with an investor answering questions about 26% corporation tax. Post Hard Brexit, as we might well get, I think that'll be a problem in England, let alone Wales. Luckily, the DUP seem to be passing up the opportunity for Ireland to be in the Single Market and Customs Union, in an apparent effort to keep Wales competitive.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Fuck fuck fuck Corbyn's "gangsters and terrorists" rhetoric. Of course, I've seen little on this compared to the anti-semitism furore. Racism towards refugees (and implicitly Muslim ones) is just fine with most of the media class.

It also tallies in with the pivot we've seen from the home office post Windrush of using "modern slavery" as the pretext for immigration enforcement raids.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The thing to remember about the Walshes, is the Linehan didn't really write it as such. It was a web series, done by a bunch of actors, and Linehan's role was to help turn the web series into a tv show. I think it's one of those things that got made because Web Series' were new, and this novelty helped mask that this was paper thin and ultra slight.

Odd to see Owen Roe in the middle of all of that though.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Welsh public services are a bit awkward for him in that they're run along the lines he'd like (no academies, much less PFI, no NHS internal market) but aren't obviously superior to England's, and indeed often worse by the most common "headline" measures. You can make a strong case that Wales is relatively underfunded given its deprivation and demographics, for sure, and they've tried to be long term with some stuff (like spending lots on GPs so that conditions can be caught earlier) but the day to day issues seem to be pretty much like England, and there aren't really unambiguous political "wins" in this stuff.

Also, I think Jones probably has a different perspective on business to Corbyn, because the challenge is as much getting it to invest in Wales at all as it is to rein it in. I can't imagine Jones/successor would much enjoy standing by some derelict warehouse with an investor answering questions about 26% corporation tax. Post Hard Brexit, as we might well get, I think that'll be a problem in England, let alone Wales. Luckily, the DUP seem to be passing up the opportunity for Ireland to be in the Single Market and Customs Union, in an apparent effort to keep Wales competitive.

See this is the problem with actually being in govt and operating within a budget, inadequate to your needs. The Welsh Assembly may have avoided some of the insane stupid fads washing over the UK public sector, but that manifests itself not as things being good, but things being less shit than they might otherwise be. That thing about GP's is a really good idea, and I'm sure that it helps to make the Welsh Health System more efficient that it would otherwise be. But ultimately that's going to manifest itself as a less ruinous increase in a ruinous health deficit. It's essentially a function of trying to offer the services that are normal in a country where the Govt takes 46% of GDP in taxes, in a system where the govt takes 40% of GDP in taxes.

This essentially is what is at the root of a huge number of the UK's problems, and alongside an attitude towards workers rights that owes more to the suppression of Wat Tyler's revolt than it does to running a successful modern economy, it makes the UK a less productive and prosperous place than most of its EU neighbours. This is the thing that Labour should be going bald headed for with an axe. But there's very little of that talk, not in a coherent way that suggests that anyone has understood the nature of the problem. But all of this is moot beside Brexit. Leaving the Single market is going to be the death of Progressive politics for a generation in the UK. I really wish that there was a better grasp of this issue.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's essentially a function of trying to offer the services that are normal in a country where the Govt takes 46% of GDP in taxes, in a system where the govt takes 40% of GDP in taxes.

Absolutely, and we're kidding ourselves if we thinking we can get to what we need from taxing business and people on £80k more- though I give McDonnell credit for starting income tax rises even as low as £80k, nobody else has been brave enough.

The GPs policy is very good, but in the short term it comes at the cost of longer waiting lists now. The Tories can, without lying, point to those waiting lists and say things are more shit in Wales. There's also money, of course. And beyond that, I think it's much harder to attracting senior staff/professionals to Wales which holds it back. The Nuffield Foundation (who compare the 4 UK health systems, fairly constructively) said that Wales really needed to improve the leadership in its health boards. There are parts of England where there's the same problem too, no doubt, but that's not going to show up too much in overall performance for England. Actually, I think it was Nuffield who said it was better to compare Wales with NE England, and its performance held up when you did that.

On a similar theme, this is what happened when the Office for National Statistics tried to move a lot of staff to Newport.

https://www.ft.com/content/cdc2353c-...f-4d6e0e5eda22

The ONS’s move out the capital in the late 2000s was part of the Labour government’s drive to shift large numbers of civil service jobs out of the South East. Most other government departments kept their policy advisers and most senior staff in London, moving only branches with specific functions. But the ONS embarked on a wholesale relocation to the Newport office.

Staff there praise the work-life balance and the surrounding countryside. That was not enough to stop about 90 per cent of the London-based staff deciding to quit rather than move to south Wales. Many joined the ranks of the Treasury and BoE, forcing the ONS to rebuild its knowledge base on a huge scale.

And that's Newport, handy for Bristol and Cardiff. Try getting people like that to the remote parts of Wales.

[Lang Spoon]

I've read the SCUM Manifesto! My mum had it when I was little. It's great*, but I'll bet she never expected me to take it so literally, hee hee.

Linehahahahan may have overstepped the mark a la Hopkins and may be getting his pipe sued off. I'd like to meet him just to ask who really wrote Father Ted (I think it was his mate?) as I reckon that would annoy him.

Fuck fuck fuck Corbyn's "gangsters and terrorists" rhetoric. Of course, I've seen little on this compared to the anti-semitism furore. Racism towards refugees (and implicitly Muslim ones) is just fine with most of the media class.

*when read as a psychedelic scream of rage and anguish, I should clarify

https://mobile.twitter.com/flyinglaw...310159362?s=19


Oh yes. Doxxing a lawyer seems an amazingly stupid thing to do. I truly hope he is Hopkinsed in a civil court, and found guilty of a criminal offence also but suppose broke Linehan will just become a TERF martyr.

[wingco]

Decided to chime in on Facebook as follows.

I think yesterday's final conference speech, and Labour's conference as a whole, represented a palpable change in British politics. Corbyn spoke with a certain calm he didn't have a few years ago; the calm of a leader of a party slowly and inevitably being energised from below. The idea that Labour is a "cult", the instrument of the High Sparrow's will, doesn't fly. (If that were the case, Labour wouldn't still be opting for Trident, something I disagree with also). If Corbyn does secretly harbour EP Thompson-inspired Lexit dreams, then he was disabused of the idea that most Labour share those secret dreams also. That's as it should be; the Labour Party isn't about him - he'll move on in time - but the membership, what's coming after him, a movement growing in numbers, confidence and competence, who, far from being "hard left" are helping pull back the centre from the right. A movement with youth on its side despite the age of its current leaders. Ideas that under New Labour would have been considered pie-in-the-sky lunacy are now taking their proper place in the mainstream of feasibility.

I know Brexit is perilously unresolved (I'm as pro-Remain as they come) but this country does have a future of some sort and I see every reason to believe that Labour will be leading it some time very soon. And I think it's about time some on the Labour right acknowledged this and stopped wasting their time and energy trying to fight it, as if the restoration of the likes of Caroline Flint and the rise of people like Stephen Kinnock is some sort of actual existing possibility. There's more chance of a Lib Dem resurgence than that happening. Face it - your people lost.

There's a diagnosis by some of what's happened to Labour; that everything was fine and functional and then, the membership turned unaccountably moron and decided to elect Corbyn. There was further astonishment when he didn't capitulate under the relentless sniping and manoeuvring of establishment Labour groups like Labour First and further astonishment still that he achieved the share he did in the 2017 election. And yet, denial that this has anything to do with a sincere sea change, that it's not the 1990s any more, persists.

I have all kinds of doubts about Corbyn's personal abilities, foibles, etc but none at all about the direction he's taken the party in, and am impressed that he hasn't capitulated to relentless efforts by assorted centrists to wrest back power and restore it to the "grown-ups" as they love to describe themselves, with a condescension whose charms many in the Labour movement find bafflingly resistible.

Sustained by a massive, massive sulk that they have been displaced, they don't engage on any soul-searching or any sense that they might actually in some way to blame for their own demise. No, it was just an outburst of looniness. Why, you only have to look at Twitter to see that! And so, dredging the depths of Twitter, they come up with plentiful examples of someone somewhere who said something stupid to console themselves with the utter idiocy of their opponents. Surely, any day soon, common sense will be restored. So wistful and intense and amnesiac is this feeling that people, grown-up people, are actually wondering why we can't have Tony Blair back (what did he ever do that was colossally catastrophic?) or fete Margaret Hodge - Margaret "give natives priority for social housing" Hodge! - as a paragon of anti-racism.

Look - an idealistic movement like Labour in its present incarnation will attract cranks, twits, a few lingering tankies and yes, even anti-Semites. But to damn the entire possibility of opposing the prolonged and ever-increasing inequality that is pulling the UK apart on those grounds is to wilfully ignore the vast numbers of decent people working in good faith and with no other agenda than a desire for social justice. Why abstain from that? Of course, Corbyn is imperfect - but whose fault was it that when it came to picking a left-leaning leader, he was the only choice on the menu? New Labour's, for a deliberate systematic (and, as I saw with my own eyes, corrupt) selection process for Prospective parliamentary candidates.

And yes, he did Press TV. But here's what I'm talking about when I talk about wasting time. I wish he hadn't done Press TV, I wish he'd handled having done it better but a) it's not quite so bad as a war in which over a million people died, which apparently we're supposed to regard as water under the bridge and b) the electorate doesn't give a toss about stuff like this. It's nothing to them. You will not topple Corbyn with stuff like this. Also, the mooted idea that it shows how "dangerous" such a man would be once in power - are you serious? What, you think he's going to declare himself Ayatollah?

Blair is history, Corbyn will be soon enough. It's what's coming after that which interests and excites me. I think everyone, from centre to centre left should be a part of it, neither exclude themselves or be excluded. Labour is the future.

[Nefertiti2]

excellent post.

[ursus arctos]

Indeed it is

[johnr]

x 3.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The boy can write. He could have a future in the game, if he stays injury free....

While upbeat in tone, I can't help but be brought down that most of it is about the pointless infighting between some pretty awful people, while an apocalyptic disaster threatens to overwhelm everyone.

[Johnny Velvet]

Brilliant stuff, wingo. I just wish I could articulate things as well as you do.

While upbeat in tone, I can't help but be brought down that most of it is about the pointless infighting between some pretty awful people, while an apocalyptic disaster threatens to overwhelm everyone.

I dunno, Berba. Your reference to the “apocalyptic disaster” that is Brexit is something that Corbyn hasn’t handled well, given his background and views on the subject, I’ll concede that. But the term “apocalyptic” is too strong here. Literally understood it means end of the world kind of shit. I’m not as intelligent as you – genuinely – but I don’t see a way in which Brexit will entail apocalyptic suffering for the British people. It will be horrible, certainly, and I feel awful for the people, all our UK-based OTFers included, who are going to have to bear the brunt of it. To bring things down to brass tacks, after March 2019 in what way will the British people have to face an apocalyptic scenario and how likely is it? Will they go without essentials such as food, water, medicines? These are gennuine questions, I’m not trying to trip anyone up. I’ve read the stories about British firms stockpiling essentials in the event of a No-Deal Brexit but part of me doesn’t really seem willing to believe that the UK will turn into some version of the world depicted in Mad Max after it leaves the European Union.

The reason I ask about all this is because the term “apocalyptic”, if it can be applied to anything, describes the fate of the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq after the wars unleashed on those countries by the New Labour government – some of the members of which we’re now told we should be listening to about the impending horrors of Brexit because they’re “grown-ups” who “know the way the world works.” This is what angers me and what has driven so many people away from the kind of people within Labour – the party’s centre-right, to be precise – who are ostensibly the strongest opponents of Brexit. Some of these people – Blair, Campbell, Straw – are war criminals. They’re walking around, availing of the freedoms we all enjoy and they have the blood of thousands on their hands. They may not have harboured ambitions for conquest and slaughter all of their lives but they had a chance to stop imperialist wars. And they did nothing. Now, you might ask what does this have to do with anything or what relevance it has for Brexit. Directly, the Iraq War doesn’t have any bearing on it, I’ll grant you that. But I’m not the only person who harbours these feeling about the “sensibles” and “decents” who are telling everyone that Brexit trumps everything else in British politics right now and that’s because our sense of the most basic ideal of justice is offended. Why believe anything – why place faith in any political system – that, as wingco says, encourages us to think of a war that happened 15 years ago that killed hundreds of thousands as “just something that happened” and that we should all move on from as it’s “water under the bridge” while at the same time regarding an impending economic catastrophe, as Brexit undoubtedly is, as an “apocalyptic” threat. The sums don’t add up. Corbyn may well harbour dubious views on Brexit and may have handled the matter poorly. But the sentiment that powered his ascent can’t be delegitimised. He’s not the only one sick of this way of doing things.

[Tactical Genius]

Brilliant stuff, wingo. I just wish I could articulate things as well as you do.



I dunno, Berba. Your reference to the “apocalyptic disaster” that is Brexit is something that Corbyn hasn’t handled well, given his background and views on the subject, I’ll concede that. But the term “apocalyptic” is too strong here. Literally understood it means end of the world kind of shit. I’m not as intelligent as you – genuinely – but I don’t see a way in which Brexit will entail apocalyptic suffering for the British people. It will be horrible, certainly, and I feel awful for the people, all our UK-based OTFers included, who are going to have to bear the brunt of it. To bring things down to brass tacks, after March 2019 in what way will the British people have to face an apocalyptic scenario and how likely is it? Will they go without essentials such as food, water, medicines? These are gennuine questions, I’m not trying to trip anyone up. I’ve read the stories about British firms stockpiling essentials in the event of a No-Deal Brexit but part of me doesn’t really seem willing to believe that the UK will turn into some version of the world depicted in Mad Max after it leaves the European Union.

The reason I ask about all this is because the term “apocalyptic”, if it can be applied to anything, describes the fate of the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq after the wars unleashed on those countries by the New Labour government – some of the members of which we’re now told we should be listening to about the impending horrors of Brexit because they’re “grown-ups” who “know the way the world works.” This is what angers me and what has driven so many people away from the kind of people within Labour – the party’s centre-right, to be precise – who are ostensibly the strongest opponents of Brexit. Some of these people – Blair, Campbell, Straw – are war criminals. They’re walking around, availing of the freedoms we all enjoy and they have the blood of thousands on their hands. They may not have harboured ambitions for conquest and slaughter all of their lives but they had a chance to stop imperialist wars. And they did nothing. Now, you might ask what does this have to do with anything or what relevance it has for Brexit. Directly, the Iraq War doesn’t have any bearing on it, I’ll grant you that. But I’m not the only person who harbours these feeling about the “sensibles” and “decents” who are telling everyone that Brexit trumps everything else in British politics right now and that’s because our sense of the most basic ideal of justice is offended. Why believe anything – why place faith in any political system – that, as wingco says, encourages us to think of a war that happened 15 years ago that killed hundreds of thousands as “just something that happened” and that we should all move on from as it’s “water under the bridge” while at the same time regarding an impending economic catastrophe, as Brexit undoubtedly is, as an “apocalyptic” threat. The sums don’t add up. Corbyn may well harbour dubious views on Brexit and may have handled the matter poorly. But the sentiment that powered his ascent can’t be delegitimised. He’s not the only one sick of this way of doing things.

Great post.