@Lana +9001%
This goes for any politican anywhere:
#HumanRights are not negotiable;
"Both candidates are transphobic so you might as well vote for the one who has good other policies" is strikingly similar to the gameplan that happened about the climate, the Palestinians and undocumented people. The ratchet really does seem to move Rightwards.
@passenger Or maybe because the lesser evil lost the election, putting the greater evil in power (and we've seen what they've done with it over the past...is it only 7 months?), opportunistic politicians are looking at it and thinking hey, I need to be more evil to win elections, so I'll do that now.
If the lesser evil regularly won, that ratchet would be going in the other direction.
I live in the UK. The lesser evil won the election here last year.
I wonder how trans rights are doing in the UK? Oh, they're substantially worse than they were under the previous reign of the greater evil; worse even than they are in the US? Oh dear.
I wonder how they see Palestinians? Oh, people are being arrested under terrorism legislation for displaying Palestinian flags, which is again worse than it was under the greater evil party? Oh dear.
Undocumented people are still being put in concentration camps, and new international agreements are being made to make their lives even harder? Oh dear.
Let's ask people with disabilities how their lives have gone recently? Oh dear.
I'm afraid that you'll have to try a bit harder if you're going to argue that lesser-evilism is anything but "same policy, different logo." In particular, you're going to have to apologise to all the above groups for throwing them under the bus.
@jetlagjen @passenger @kelson all whilst largely managing to retain the ‘non-evil’ perception, leading many — even those who might otherwise be vigilant — to just presume it's all good, all whilst those of us who dare posit so much as ‘this seems maybe suboptimal’ get bashed with ‘but other worse! other worse!’
And so they get away with so much that the ‘worse’ lot potentially wouldn't, and they're also largely smarter about it.
Badenoch most likely would have brought forward some big anti-trans bill by now, which might've been blatant enough to spark a useful response.
But Starmer? It's all a little tweak here, an adjustment there, besides the Supreme Court ruling it's basically all been done by stealth, and even there it wasn't his case — a Scottish group sued the Scottish government, he's just respecting the ruling don't you know, clarity clarity.
Some finally blinked, but I'm still told ‘other worse! other worse!’
@passenger @kelson
I think you refer primarily to a decision by a court on what a word used by Parliament 25 years ago means.
Seems hard to blame today's gov for that.
Meanwhile, had anyone non-governmental been working on such rights (yes) and why did a quiet concensus of 25 or more years collapse during the previous government?
(Cases do not rise to the Supreme Court within 2 years, I think.)
Really? Given the statements from the government immediately after the court case, including the prime minister literally stating in an interview (the moment that it was confirmed to be legal to do so) that he thinks trans women are not women, you're going to carry water for them?
This isn't how governments respond to supreme court rulings which they regard as defeats, and you know that perfectly well.
Get fucked, transphobe.
@BarneyDellar @passenger @kelson
They do.
What should the Green Paper on it say?
Then there'd be a White Paper, and then a Bill.
Should there be a Royal Commission, first?
And: why did it come unstuck? Most people were basically sensible from the beginning of the Century.
I suspect the main solution lies in architecture, with one fewer or several more, categories of toilet.
So I suppose whoever does Building, Building Regs, plans etc, had best be involved.
The judge was not pleased.
I remember that when David Cameron became Prime Minister, his government completely abolished and rewrote squatting law within six days.
I remember this because at the time I was a liberal, and I was horrified that they had specifically done this because the law at the time said that you had to give the police seven days' notice before holding a public political protest, so a significant law was hurried through faster than anyone was legally allowed to oppose it.
More recently, it was less than 24 hours after the trans rights court verdict that the British Transport Police announced their plan to do literal genital inspections. It didn't take them ages to think through that one either, they must have been tensed like a sprinter waiting to go.
This is what UK governments do when they actually want something. That's how fast they move and how little they care about consent when it's ideologically important to them.
@passenger
You present examples of bad legislation and curious announcements as though they don't show that even if you have thought things through and formed a policy or as you put it "been wound up like a sprinter" you are likely to get results some regard as sub-optimal.
Odd mixture.
Bye.
@BarneyDellar @passenger @kelson
As you've written, Labour does not have that power.
In France the Academie Francaise probably do have that power, for French, and in the USA Trump might assert it. Humpty Dumpty was given that as a line, but Alice was not, IIRC, impressed by it.
Our OED doesn't have power, it just describes and records.
If you mean Parliament has the power to introduce and pass legislation, yes.
What legislation do you want, please, in exact words checked for other effects?
#PrincessBride moment there.
You say interpretation, but I think it isn't, now, but meaning.
(And in the past, at that)
And, "correcting" the meaning of a word that the Supreme Court has determined the meaning of, even only in particular context, looks to me like one of the worst ideas I've seen for a long time.
If the word doesn't mean what you want, use a different word or words that do mean what you want.
@BarneyDellar
The Interpretation of the Equality Act Act?
I can't think of an existing example but I'm no expert, even on E&W legislation.
An amendment of the existing act, or I seem to recall a 1975 Act, would be a more usual way I think.
And I'll leave you to show it is easy.
@BarneyDellar
(Legislation to _allow_ an Act to be interpreted in a way contrary - according to the supreme Court - to it's interpretation as written would be odd, possibly unique, and seems dangerous. Can you prevent it applying to any other Act, whether for that word or other words?
In short, a Bad Idea)
@passenger @kelson Trans rights have been harmed in the UK primarily by the recent supreme court case, not a change in government policy. The Tories made attacking trans rights part of their manifesto. Even if Labour do nothing, it won't be as bad as it would have been under the Tories.
At least under Labour there was enough of a rebellion to limit the impact of disability benefits to new claimants (obviously this is still awful and needs to be undone!) but can you imagine that kind of backbench feeling from the Tories?
I'm not impressed with Labour this term, but even I struggle to imagine that the Tories wouldn't have been much worse.
@patrizia @passenger @kelson The trouble is Labour aren't doing nothing about trans rights, they're making things actively worse. Here are two stories from my timeline just in the last 36 hours, and there are many more going back further. This is about more than the awful SC verdict.
https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/07/16/labour-conference-passport-gender-checks/
It's always possible to imagine a worse or a better timeline. In the UK many Corbyn fans, for example, have a shining dream of what might have happened under his rule; and we will never know whether this is or isn't what would really have happened.
It's fine to have a dream, but honest people don't use that dream to justify real-world events. You cannot argue against "X is bad" by saying "I can imagine a future which is worse than X." Of course you can. You can also imagine a future which is better than X. We are humans, we can imagine anything. "X is better than what I think the alternative would have turned out to be" is simply a statement about which imagining you've chosen.
What we can say is that X is incrementally worse than (or better than) what actually happened before that. To take the UK as an example, has Starmer repaired the damage of Brexit? Has he undone the harms of the previous government, or made them worse?
@BenAveling @passenger @kelson sure, and Biden built the wall and increased deportations, reversed almost nothing of Trump's first term. Campaigned on protecting Roe vs Wade and let that slide, too.
The lesser evil in the United States of America still doesn't give a shit about us.
@BenAveling that depends on who you are. As a transfem, obviously not!
One party represents the millionaire and the corporations, the other represents the billionaires and the fascists.
Neither give a shit about 90% of the people in this country past our willingness to vote for them, mixed with the convenience and political accessibility of pandering broadly to our specific demographics. I'm fucking exhausted by libs who can only see this issue as a binary.
@passenger @kelson The pure evil (the UK billionaire owned media) probably requires more proof from the “lesser evil” that it is loyal.
As there is not a conceptual fix of the British society (it's not only the media ownership, it's also the total brainwashing to neoliberal dogma), you cannot expect good things from politics.
@kelson @passenger @kelson @passenger in France the "lesser evil" has won the last three presidential elections. Somehow the "ratchet" is NOT going in the other direction, quite the opposite. The government has adopted the far right talking points on many issues, and the far right is polling higher than they have ever done.
Isn't that surprising? When you run after the far right, it actually shifts the political landscape to the right. Who would have thought?
hmmmm I think there was a third candidate? why doesn't anyone think of that?
hmm not an American. Is it like third parties never have a chance to win? Or is it like they aren't really third party and actually one of the two? Or maybe they have a chance to win but they will have to take one of the sides?
@farooqkz @passenger third parties have never, in 250 years, taken more than 27% of the ballot, and even that was Theodore Roosevelt, a historically beloved president who had previously swept into office in a landslide just two elections prior on the Republican ticket.
The top performances from third party candidates were:
- *Theodore Roosevelt (27% Progressive party)
- *Millard Fillmore (21% American party)
- Ross Perot (18% Independent party)
- John Breckenridge (18% Southern Democratic party)
- Robert La Folette (16% Progressive party)
- George Wallace (13% American Independent party)
- John Bell (12% Constitutional Union party)
- *Martin Van Buren (10% Free Soil party)
Asterisks indicate candidates that either previously won the presidency or would go on to win the presidency as a non-third-party candidate.
No other third party candidates even broke above 10% of the ballot.
hmm isn't it a chicken and egg problem? People don't vote for them cuz they think they won't win. And they won't win because people don't vote for them.
Edit: It's also an interesting game theory problem... and I think a paradox
Edit2: Not sure. But this idea crossed my mind that such a system in which only 2 parties have a chance, might not be a good system.
@virtualinanity if/when he becomes the ONLY alternative to voting for a fascist, I will vote for him.
Which is why we need to make it clear RIGHT THE FUCK NOW that this is unacceptable in a candidate.
@Lana ‘why are you such a one-issue voter’
Because the ‘issue’ is if I have the right to exist or not, I do try not to be self-centered but idk, I also kinda insist on existing.
Not to mention his war on the homeless.
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