Election Time

[Auntie Beeb]

I'm Emma Barnett, and this is a special edition of Question Time for young people. We as a nation are fucked, but they are especially fucked. Our panel:


Robert Jenrick, secretary of smugness, Conservative; Angela 'Educating' Rayner, shadow secretary of utopia;


Jo Swinson, leader of the Untrustables; Nigel Farage, leader and founder of the Untouchables;


Humza Yousaf, Braveheart; Adam Price, stuck inside of Cardiff with the Carmarthen blues again;


and Jonathan Bartley of the Greens, who I think we can all agree looks like the mature Matt LeBlanc if he turns his head the right way.


Our audience has been selected from a pool of those who can't find a date and have nothing better to do tonight.


"My question is, what's the point of voting?"




I believe you have a question, young miss?


"Do Scottish blokes wear anything under their kilts?"




I'm afraid we only have time for one more before I return to the darkness from whence I came.


"How would you solve the housing crisis? Will I ever be able to afford one, or will I have to raise my family in a large shoe?"


Don't everybody speak at once.






I beg of you all, let's please end this on a high note.

[Citizen X]

Decisions, decisions:



I call this one "On the run from democracy". It's a highly illicit photo I took after casting my ballot. The lesson is, shoot first, ask questions later.



Civic duty accomplished, I stopped by the village shop and wondered if it might be possible to vote again.


Hey, they were on the ballot!



The old "Vote for us or I’ll kill this dog” gambit


Would "Vote for us or you'll be up against the wall" work its magic, instead?


Or would Jo Swinson, shown here swiping through Pinterest for ideas to redecorate No. 10, pull off the upset of the century?


Pre-coverage coverage. To save licence fee payer's money, news readers are powered down when not in use


And they're off! A nation gallops to the polls and orders a whiskey


Votes are counted along with a representative sampling of rubbish, for technical reasons


The entire process is carefully monitored and adjusted to account for tactical voting


More ballots for Conservatives are rushed in when needed


Jeremy Corbyn has a premonition of the will of the people


Boris flies in from a secret location having just recieved reassurances from Darth Vader that the empire will not be handed over to Labour, no matter what the results


Sometimes you're the deer, sometimes you're the headlights


Theresa May is accidentally allowed on camera


Labour Instagram influencers are trotted out


In a perplexing development, processing of ballots is outsourced to gilets jaunes


There is more excited running back and forth


They thought they were electing the pope – nobody had the heart to tell them otherwise


Nicola Sturgeon, as always, is thinking of England


In a last minute appeal to swing voters, Jo movingly describes the crisis of conscience which repeatedly causes her to adjust her principles


Nigel Farage says he swallowed his ballot paper


Count Binface, actually a terminator sent from the future to stop the Conservatives, is thwarted when Elmo throws himself in front of Boris


Dominic Cummings spotted leaving the scene of Elmo's 'accident' afterwards. There are rumours he was tying up loose ends


Now decisively chosen by the nation to be its leader, the prime minister announces his relief that the little dog didn't have to be killed after all


Protesting the mute button


Dominic Grieve is calmly accepting of his electoral fate and smoothly changes career to hitman-for-hire


Nicola shows off her new phone screen, now set to Happy Dance


Corbyn claims the Force is still with Labour, vowing "We shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine"


Mind where you point that thing

[Citizen X]

This post is causing me nothing but grief. I want to write about politics without immediately diving into parody, but every time I set the words down they refuse to lay quietly.

Like so many, I’m politically homeless. This much was established in my Brexit confessional. My earliest political influence, not counting the guff they stuffed into my head in school and on TV, was Howard Zinn. He was followed by Gore Vidal, Noam Chompsky (admittedly more skimmed than read), and various others of that illustrious ilk. I've been happy to consider myself a creature of the left for most of my life.

Newsflash: good ideas can come from any direction, including The American Conservative and normally hard hearted libertarians.

My voting record:
1992 - Bill Clinton, alas
1996 - Nobody; was between countries
2000 - Ralph Nader, no alas about it
2003 - As a newly minted UK citizen, I voted Green and/or Lib Dem from time to time
2004 - Kerry, who as a bonus wasn't Bush
2008 - Obama and very happy to. Was in Austin that night feeling high as a kite. Part of me of course knew he wasn't the 2nd coming, but the fact that this was actually happening was enough.
2012 - Nobody, because incredibly disappointed with Obama
2016 - Nobody, but privately wanted Trump to win because I was so hacked off with everything, making me a secret deplorable
2019 - Conservative. I might've voted Labour if Corbyn showed the backbone he obviously possesses, and hadn't gone mad with the promises.
2020 - Nobody, or at least nobody electable, into the foreseeable future. Has divide and conquer won? Am I just done? Republicans are largely too far gone, Dems are warmongers and deceptively tolerant. How can I endorse either?

2019 would have been inconceivable to a slightly younger me, despite the fact that the only time we've ever been personally helped by a politician it was a Conservative, who chased up our applications for citizenship with the Home Office.

Basically I believe in the power of the state to do good, but think that too often it does the opposite, which brings me uncomfortably close to Reagan... The current situation with UK housing is an example. We need a land value tax and a mass deprogramming. Who’s going to help bring that about, hmmm?


O holy house price inflation

Maybe the Greens, but along with the Lib Dems they now embrace the irrational a bit too tightly for comfort.

Sir Keir Starmer reliably annoys. No self-respecting Labour politician should go around with a Sir in front of his name, for a start. Third Way Wrong Way Blair almost destroyed the brand (and unfortunately has been resurrected in the cadence and intonation of dishi Rishi). I don't pay enough attention to Starmer as I probably should. It took my wife pointing out his response to the budget to make me sit up and say hmmm. Maybe. We'll see.

Meanwhile I'm going to revert to my default position: politicians and voters are but a means to an end to each other.

[Citizen X]

Deliver us from evil

I've nothing much to say about our new prime minister other than we're just as screwed as we were yesterday, if not more so, if only because nothing ever really gets better thanks to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which can be interpreted to mean the world is going to hell in a handbagbasket.


All hail the Chief of Darkness

The last time I wrote vaguely on the subject of world leaders is when I was London bureau chief for a small town Ohio paper. (Really.) (Not really.) Might as well dust it off, if only to help fill my link quota: Hop Skip and Jump to the Polls. Said polls only being open this time to the minions of Satan, aka members of the Conservative Party. (I'm a member of the Conservative Party.) (Not really. But see the sorry tale of a floating voter, above.)

Still & all, that's 3-0 in the female PM dept., Labour; I'm not saying don't get the best man for the job, but you might want to break that glass ceiling one of these days.


Frakking was an improvement on fugging. There's no sweary filter here, as you can see from the OP, but I do like to keep titles respectable.

[Citizen X]

Green Party US Senate candidate:



Comedian (or "comedian", if you prefer) with a platform on what's seen as a rightwing news station:

[Mabel Vernon]

I think the baby was just in the line of fire.

later...
Non-apology apology

The SNP: hold my beer.

[Annie Edson Taylor]

Just a little blast from the past, in this case a four year old Spectator article quoting our new Welsh secretary (I can see into the future).

Who gets to be a woman - James Kirkup

a short exchange between Mr Davies and Ms Moran, the Lib Dem MP for Oxford who is a former science teacher.

The exchange captures a great deal about this issue, which has excited strong feelings among some woman (and men).

Some of them are unhappy about rules allowing male-born people to 'identify' as women. They worry that doing so could compromise the female-only spaces that society has provided in recognition of the potential danger that male-bodied people pose to their safety and privacy. They argue that if, as a slogan suggests, 'trans women are women' and a trans woman is anyone who says they are a trans woman, then there is nothing to stop a male-born person with full male anatomy and malign intent entering female-only spaces. And that, they say, is a problem, because a male body (especially one guided by male socialisation) is always a potential threat to female bodies, female privacy, and female dignity.

Ms Moran has said she believes trans women are women. Mr Davies has said he believes that a person with a penis cannot be a woman.

Their exchange is here:

David T. C. Davies:

'I hear what the hon. Lady is saying. May I bluntly ask her whether she would be happy sharing a changing room with somebody who was born male and had a male body?'

Layla Moran:

'I believe that women are women, so if that person was a trans woman, I absolutely would. I just do not see the issue. As for whether they have a beard, which was one of the hon. Gentleman’s earlier comments, I dare say that some women have beards. There are all sorts of reasons why our bodies react differently to hormones. There are many forms of the human body. I see someone in their soul and as a person. I do not really care whether they have a male body.'

And that, in a nutshell, is the transgender debate. Remember, Ms Moran, an intelligent and educated member of Parliament was speaking in a debate about laws that help determine how and whether people with female bodies can chose to separate themselves from people with male bodies. I’ll repeat her key observation again, just for clarity:

'I see someone in their soul and as a person. I do not really care whether they have a male body.'

Truly, Britain is a fortunate nation. This year really has demonstrated how lucky we are in the talents of our elected representatives. But even after the masterful Brexit debate and all the other delights, we didn’t know just how blessed we are. Because it turns out have an MP who has the gift of being able to see people 'in their soul'.

[Sarah Fielding]

Girlhood is not a fetish (The Democrats cannot grow up) - Raquel Rosario Sánchez
On 24 October, US President Joe Biden sat down with social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney to discuss gender identity policies during a presidential forum, held by left-wing outlet NowThis. The purpose of the forum was to host “intimate conversations between Biden and young change-makers focused on finding solutions to some of the most critical issues facing their generation”. The conversation between Biden and Mulvaney focused on the protection of “gender-affirming care”, which consists of medical treatments and intervention to try to physically transform people into the opposite sex…

What exactly does it mean to “identify as a girl”? According to Mulvaney, being a girl is an exciting adventure through endless outfit changes, playing with make-up and bouncing up and down looking ridiculous. “Days of Girlhood” represents a pantomime of what men envision girlhood to be like.

Wearing baby pink glitter eyeshadow and a pink dress over a pink background, Mulvaney introduced the “Days of Girlhood” by summarising what girlhood meant to him: “Day 1 of being a girl and I have already cried 3 times. I wrote a scathing email that I did not send. I ordered dresses online that I couldn’t afford. And then, when someone asked me how I was, I said ‘I’m fine’, when I wasn’t fine. How did I do, ladies? Girlpower!”

Dear Democrats: This is why you lost my vote.

Today for the first time in my life I voted in the US midterms for candidates who I do not believe in, people who I would never, ever vote for under different circumstances had your party not gone off the deep end with their blind support of gender ideology. Last night I was unable to sleep about it, I was so tormented by my decision, and so angry that it has come to this. It does not matter who I voted for, be it Libertarian, Republican, write-in, it did not matter: I voted for anyone who was not a member of your party.

A registered Democrat since I first turned eighteen, I have voted straight Democrat in every election up until now. I volunteered for more than one presidential campaign. I donated money to your party. In the fight of good versus evil, I sincerely believed that you were on the side of the good. You have betrayed women across the nation. You have broken my heart. Today I voted for people who I do not agree with almost anything on, most of whom I truly dislike. I held my breath and voted for these people I have almost nothing in common with ideologically except for one thing: they know the difference between a man and a woman, and they will not force me to speak those things that I know to believe untrue.

Stonewall 2023 - has anything changed? - Conservatives for Women
The ideology that Stonewall promotes, the compliance that Stonewall requires, is incoherent and unanchored from science, reason, public awareness, public acceptance - and any remaining shred of proportionality.  Stonewall undermines science. It ignores reason. It steamrollers women's rights. It over-rides established languages. It literally invents stuff... Aro, ace, IDOHOBLIT. Then passes it off as long-established and [insert]-phobic, if ignored. Incoherent while also bullying. It's a national embarressment that most of our major corporations, charities, universities, and public bodies continue to go along with all this.

[sam]

The School-to-Clinic Pipeline - Leor Sapir
The United States has become an outlier in pediatric gender medicine. Medical authorities in Sweden, Finland, and, most recently, the U.K. have done some combination of closing down gender clinics, placing sharp restrictions on the use of hormones for treating youth in distress, banning surgeries outright, and issuing warnings about the “experimental” nature of pediatric medical transition, as Finland’s Council for Choices in Healthcare put it. These countries have based their decisions on systematic review of the evidence—an approach designed to synthesize scientific insight from a range of studies according to predetermined criteria, thus minimizing the risk of bias (through cherry-picking of studies) to support a desired conclusion. Earlier this year, Florida banned Medicaid from funding “gender affirming care” after a panel of experts commissioned by the state department of health conducted an “overview of systematic reviews.”

By contrast, the Biden administration, its media allies, federal judges, and transgender advocacy groups have resolved to follow American medical associations, which have not conducted systematic evidence reviews and have instead devoted themselves to promoting deeply flawed and ideologically driven research.



Hmmm i wonder who is worth listening to: those covering their ears and going LA-LA-LA-LA in unison with their tribe, or those who are actually keeping informed.

If you have something you want to say about confirmation bias, don't just lurk. Man up.

[Montesquieu]

https://twitter.com/satiricole/status/1615667268146581505
(meet Lloyd's policy advisor upthread)

. . .

A day of sneering, aggressive misogyny at the heart of British democracy

. . .

Expelled from the Green Party