Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

the amount of terfy shit that comes out of the uk centre/libs/"the left" is nauseating

Yep and it’s a total UK thing

my impression - and obv someone will come in and tell me that i’m wrong - is that liberal corporate and institutional culture in the US is a lot more aware of identity constructions - just in a governance sense - than equivalents in the UK. The sort of environments in which centre left libs will expect to operate. Perhaps a requirement of handling many different types of people in their governed spaces, perhaps because of a litigious culture. In the UK I get a strong whiff of class about the whole thing - Hadley Freeman and Helen Lewis ffs.

god as series of statements that looks tenuous as hell. should have put them as a series of questions or “thorts”.

like before a US business meeting the other day part of the standard pre-meet info was that one of the participants self-identifies as “they”. i think this would still generate an eye roll in many contexts in the UK rather than just being taken in everyone’s stride as it was.

Class is definitely in the mix, alongside a privilege of "I am on the right side of progressive history how dare these kids challenge me?"

There's something about the kind of people in the UK at a certain tier of social service/NHS/NGO management that you've touched on I think Fizzles - a patrician, benevolent despot mentality usually negotiated thru class and the right kind of persona/presentation - I can't articulate this very well at the moment but I've swam it in for a lot of my working life.

Linehan is a different issue, looking back on his work he's just peeved he gets called on his hilarious homo- and trans- phobic gags, they run thru his whole career.

Gl1nner as a victim of right wing brain worms is how I break it down to an extent, though of course he was probably a willing victim

Gl1nner's done the full metamorphosis into an actual wirrum!

Gl1nn3r was always a cunt, even when he was “just” being obnoxious to people on Twitter he didn’t consider insufficiently funny or deferential or w/e. It’s just now he’s a cunt with something to amplify the self-righteousness.

I cannot for the life of me find the link to it now but there was a good documentary a few years back about the origins of the 8th amendment in Ireland - cultural conservatives spotted a niche in the law, organised internationally, manufactured consensus by constant lobbying and pressure on politicians and the No side didn’t have a response against the sheer will. Trans issues have been tried as a wedge issue time and time again and some of the same patterns now and then are at play - the class profile of the people involved, how utterly willing they were to viciously attack those opposed to them, the support from America.

I find it really interesting the reforms proposed here already exist in Ireland, and without much fuss afaict. I find it really very concerning that my mother - raised somewhere so rural that there are still dirt roads - has a far more progressive understanding than the moneyed, urban, educated British women who are the most obsessive here.

There's something about the kind of people in the UK at a certain tier of social service/NHS/NGO management that you've touched on I think Fizzles - a patrician, benevolent despot mentality usually negotiated thru class and the right kind of persona/presentation - I can't articulate this very well at the moment but I've swam it in for a lot of my working life.

the kind of people in the UK at a certain tier of social service/NHS/NGO management

Keir Starmer seems very cut from this cloth

Has the GRA reform consultation just been in limbo since last year?

I remember responding to it in Oct 2018 and the terf lobby had not as I recall produced a lot of evidence that tons of transgender Irish people gravely regretted deciding to transition

Liz Truss said it had been shelved iirc. I wrote a response to the consultation but you know it had been brigaded by the worst people.

Polly is at it again

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/25/labour-lib-dems-pact

"Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey fell into the trans thorn bushes"

"after four miserable defeats they are ready to bend"

Actually, rightly or wrongly, most didn't experience 2017 as one of those.

"There should be a socialist and a social democratic party. Trying to contain both has led to historical Labour strife."

This is wrong. What most 'socialists' are trying to achieve in practice is social democracy - eg: on the Scandinavian model that PT used to champion. I am on the far left by most UK standards but would call myself a social democrat. The real problem is that the Labour right, Blairites, et al, are not really keen on social democracy either. So she means 'There should be a social democratic party as well as a socially liberal neo-Thatcherite one'.

The assertion that Lab and LD should collaborate to get PR, I agree with.

Clive Lewis has said all this kind of thing before. Why didn't PT take any interest in him? Even here, she doesn't acknowledge it.

lol, the incorrigible Polly T at her bullshit again again. Caroline Flint in yesterday's ES was saying the next leader needs to lead from the centre and she used "virtue signalling". Nothing like a bit of unsolicited advice from the same ol' predictable fules.

Every country in Scandinavia has a Socialist and a Social Democratic party, btw. And a Green one, and probably a Socially Liberal one. It's great. You can really pinpoint the melts.

It's everyone but the Socialists, of course

As usual, Fred, you have no idea what you're talking about, you have no clue about the Labour Party and the Labour movement in the UK - its history, its significance, its importance, so shut the fuck up and go and irritate some Americans instead.

Had arguments about Polly Toynbee before, the idea that she's 'on our side' when she's a fake who was quite happy to be involved in an attempt to destroy the Labour movemement before.

Suzanne Moore also covering herself in glory today.

As ever.

I was reading that Jon Stone thread about the shittiness of New Labour and he mentioned Caroline Flint, in government, advocating for council houses to be taken off the unemployed. Because that, of course, is why you’re voting Labour.

it's amazing how many former Labour MP's only ever wanted to be in a reconstructed Tory party.

current MP's the same of course

"What was your motivation for becoming an MP Caroline?"

"I always had this burning desire to make poor ppl homeless so I joined the Labour Party of course"

Just dropping this thread here for a bit of much-needed context to Labour right criticism. Plus it’s bleak all laid out like that.

there’s been a reassessment of the Blair/Brown government on the Left in recent years: you hear more about its achievements than you used you. that’s good, but it’s also important not to forget that it regularly did things a Tory government would be criticised for (THREAD)

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) February 23, 2020

essential thread is that .. b b b but Sure Start centres!

also even John Major took a more tentative steady as she goes approach to PFI'ing the NHS than Blair because he didn't think the Tories could even away with it without a public backlash.

I was literally talking about Scandinavia. Ffs the level of xenophobic idiocy among the uk posters

Just the usual Fred Derangement Syndrome.

Dane Derangement

Daneragement.

It's all over the front page
You give me Dane rage

Denophobia

“Uk posters” when at least half of us aren’t from there

Don't sell yourself short, you've been in this country long enough to qualify.

You've been stewed in the ambient denophobia of old Albion for long enough

It’s true, I do love to be xenophobic against...*checks notes* foreigners discussing UK politics.

xxxp flagged post for gratuitous use of third-tier Britpop band lyrics

Pretty sure all of our Denophobic DNA has a large glug of dansk swilling around in it

Tbf Beowulf, the great Anglo-Saxon epic, begins with a line about 'the Spear-Danes in days gone by'.

Despite loving Brage he's still just a Dane in cage

No more tiers, enough is enough

Fun fact, Dan was the older brother of Angul, ancestor of the Anglo-Saxons. So you are all just whiny younger siblings. Admittedly except for the Celts.

The English are just self-hating Frenchified Scandos.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1200916423905828871/gMO-IZcb_400x400.jpg

itt Blatant Dan[e]ophobia

There was Shield Sheafson, scourge of many tribes,
a wrecker of mead-benches, rampaging among foes.
This terror of the hall-troops had come far.
A foundling to start with, he would flourish later on
as his powers waxed and his worth was proved.
In the end each clan on the outlying coasts
beyond the whale-road had to yield to him
and begin to pay tribute. That was one good king.

Not sure the Vikings ever made it to my neck of the woods but we know the Normans did. Source: very Norman surname on one side of the family.