Ghost of Hope 🏳️‍⚧️

No TERFs or other fash.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Dot lol on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched the fedipact glitter in the dark... etc

She/her, trans, ace/pan, leftie, woman, mother of four, autistic, semi-retired coder, esoteric priest, martial artist, Rejoiner, English and Euopean, anything else you want to know, just ask.

I talk about politics a lot. I generally use hashtags like ukpol and uspol so people can filter, but I don't content warning these posts. No shade, probably best you don't follow me if you want politics CW'ed.

Oh, and I don't boost images without alt text except in extremis.

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Last Notes

2025-09-23 12:47:00 GMT

Pondering
What good does recognising Palestine as a state do? It does absolutely nothing directly. But last night I was trying to work it out a bit.
And I failed. There may be some obscure matters of international law that make a difference to this but in my layperson's mind I can see nothing that would change how the nations of the world react to Israel's genocide, nor that would change Israel's actions either.
Essentially Gaza has gone from being an internal matter to an external matter with respect to Israel in the eyes of much of the world, but the bombs won't stop.
So why the big deal?

2025-09-13 16:06:59 GMT

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* runs out of popcorn *
Seriously though, loving this thread

2025-08-05 18:23:08 GMT

I''m getting nervous about anyone getting behind the new party or Your Party or Corbyn Party or whatever right now. Because I'm trans, and we've been pressuring them to say trans rights since the party was announced but had total silence on it.
Other than admitting the Independent Alliance MPs, two of whom are queerphobic and I believe explicitly transphobic. Which says a lot.
If you boost this stuff while it's accommodating transphobia, you're not a leftie. You're a populist fascist movement in the making. Intersectionality is *important* - throw a minority under the bus before you get started and you'll find yourself throwing all the others under it before you finish.

2025-08-02 10:11:39 GMT

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Ah, I see what you mean.
Yeah, that might have an effect. Hmmmm

2025-08-02 10:05:34 GMT

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Yes, that's one of the avenues and I think a couple of organisations are already on it. GDPR is based on Article 8 and that's the primary basis for protections under what I've called item 2.
You're right though, it's going to take years to get any of this to Strasbourg and years to be implemented - if the UK government of the day even bothers.

2025-08-02 09:06:34 GMT

Trans people always needed two things from anti-discrimination law.
1. Protection against unfavourable treatment purely because we're trans (e.g. I found out you're trans, you're fired)
2. The legal right to be treated as the gender we say we are and in fact are.
Following this ruling:
https://www.outertemple.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/K01CT207-judgment-1-8-25-handed-down24.pdf
...it seems clear to me that we've completely lost item 2 now and therefore the UK has no gender recognition at all. We have the inertia of the previous protections that will keep most of us safe for a while, but basically every time a transphobe objects to our being treated as our true genders, they will sue and win.
This is why the transphobes were drinking champagne after FWS. In practical terms, in law, they've won. Lower courts are interpreting it that way. I'm not a lawyer but I saw this coming and argued at the time against some trans legal experts who said nothing had changed. Everything's changed...
#ukpol #TransRights

2025-08-02 08:09:54 GMT

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I just wake up every morning and wonder what the cursed timeline has for us today

2025-08-01 22:23:01 GMT

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I thought carefully about the Left Leave arguments at the referendum and concluded they were wrong. Nothing's convinced me to change my mind.
The EU is neolib but so are we. We might as well be on the inside. Out of it, we're going to end up a vassal state of the US, if we aren't already and at least the EU has string social brakes on the unrestrained capitalism that's turning the US into an open oligarchy or worse.
I think Left Leave hoped we would shake off neoliberalism but instead we embraced near-fascism, as I believed would happen. We kept the worst bits and binned human rights. Being in the EU was never the issue.

2025-07-24 15:20:59 GMT

#ukpol #TransRights
There are a couple (literally two, I think) of trans women in prison in the UK who are rapists. I won't name them. I'm seeing allies and even trans people arguing that these women should be in men's prisons because they're a danger to women.
This is just open, unmitigated transphobia. If these (two, out of all the trans people in the country) women are rapists and can't be housed safely with other women, then they're probably not safe to house with men. And doing so misgenders them and by extension the rest of us - it says, they'll pretend trans women are women as long as we behave but we're really men.
They should be in the women's estate, and segregated if they're a danger. Like any other woman prisoner who's a danger to other prisoners. This is a human right, and the point about human rights is all humans have them, even if they're scum. As soon as that principle is conceded, we're lost. All of us.

2025-07-22 15:09:40 GMT

Well, 20 years since Cressida Dick commanded the operation that murdered Jean Charles de Menezes.
I did a few things wrong in my professional life. But - and look, I'm no saint - I don't think I ever did anything that would have made any normal human being think "Ah well, I commanded this shit-show and the outcome was that an entirely innocent person was slaughtered for no reason other than the incompetence of those under my command and indeed myself, and was slaughtered as a direct result of my direct orders, how sad"
We all make mistakes. Fucking hell, we don't all make mistakes that result in executing someone but still, I think I would have had the good grace to retire from public life instead of ACCEPTING THE JOB OF HEAD OF THE MET
I think it was this, more than anything, that awakened (cough) me to what Britain is under the shiny hood of bunting and tea and crumpets and "Hear hear!" on the lips of murderous psychopaths

2025-07-08 17:24:50 GMT

Wait
Zarah Sultana's words in support of the banned group of protesters, have been removed from Hansard.
What the fuck, you don't mess with Hansard.
The freeze peach bunch whine on in every paper and on every channel about being cancelled because somebody said "Hey, I disagree with you" but will say nothing about this.
You don't mess with Hansard. That's erasing history.
#ukpol

2025-07-01 20:07:35 GMT

I'm getting close to selling up and leaving. The UK is terrifying. The EHRC guidance will become law and then I'll have a urinary leash on. It'll be a short step then for them to trash the GRA and revert documentation.
I'm disabled. I'm living off savings. I should be entitled to PIP and UC but I haven't been able to complete a claim because my disability is an autism manifestation and it's been saying nope not doing that. Now it's even harder.
The UK is going to kill me but I don't want to leave my kids. I hate this.
Fuck any of you who voted for Brexit. Fuck any of you who voted for Starmer last time around - we told you, but you wouldn't listen, it was all GTTO whatever the cost.

2025-06-30 17:30:50 GMT

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The problem is these things will take time, usually years.
And Farage is waiting in the wings.
I'm scared.

2025-06-30 14:46:55 GMT

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He knows exactly what he's doing. I truly believe he has no conscience.

2025-06-30 14:12:05 GMT

This is evil. Starmer is a lost soul.
#ukpol #TransRights #TransUK
https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/06/30/keir-starmer-supreme-court-trans-ehrc-single-sex-spaces/

2025-06-30 08:38:25 GMT

Morning all.
Today I should be pondering the fact that this is the last day to respond to the rigged EHRC consultation on their plans to effectively bar trans people from public life.
If anyone still wants to do it but can't cope with either the restrictive nature of the questions or the concept of participating in our own demise, Good Law Project have a route on their website that lets you write a free-form response. I used that and churned out a thousand words or so on it.
But...
Instead I can't stop thinking about the Bob Vylan fiasco.
Hate speech, Starmer? Don't make me laugh. The IDF are not hated because they're Jewish and you damn well know it. They're hated because they're the soldiers carrying out a genocide.
I think, Sir Keith, it's you who is conflating Jewish people with the actions of a genocidal army and taking offence on their behalf. That looks to me a lot like... what's that word? Starts with A, I think...

2025-06-28 10:49:40 GMT

I just saw a picture of Yvette Cooper wearing a Suffragette rosette a few years back.
You know, the Suffragettes, an open and self-declared terrorist organisation. Who tried to burn buildings down with people inside. Who threw a hatchet at the Prime Minister's head. Who conducted a huge bombing campaign including letterbombs, not just against politicians but anyone they felt like. Who killed several innocent people and severely wounded many others.
But Palestine Action are terrorists? Yeah right.
#ukpol

2025-06-25 17:12:52 GMT

I'm not seeing much comment on it in my feed so...
Today, hundreds of trans people and allies turned up to lobby Parliament in an event organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance about the horrible situation in which trans peeps find ourselves in the UK.
I couldn't make it, because I live nearly 300 miles away, I got autistic demand avoidance from not being able to find out how it would all work, and my MH would have made it too difficult. Still...
Parliament couldn't cope. They were overwhelmed despite having had notice of the numbers and some folks had to wait for hours to get in. It's been suggested that the authorities expected only a few to turn up, as happens when the transphobes do their thing.
Anyway, it seems to have been a huge success. Thanks to the organisers, thanks to those who went, and let's all hope that MPs listen and end this Starmer-led horror show that has many trans folk including me wanting to leave the country.
#ukpol #TransRights

2025-06-25 10:01:44 GMT

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Unlikely.
He's no longer popular in the PLP, thankfully.

2025-06-19 10:44:56 GMT

The European Convention on Human Rights was put in place to prevent the rise of fascism.
When a political party starts talking about modifying it or leaving it in order to have proper sovereignty or whatever excuse they want to give, every single person should know we have a real problem.
There are those, myself included, who have been calling Starmer a fascist for some time now. This wasn't name-calling, it wasn't us misusing the word. It's because we have been detecting the signs. Labour under Starmer doesn't hit every single sign on Eco's list of features of Ur-Fascism, but they arguably get most of them. In a polite, superficially less-threatening way, characteristic of modern fascists. It's not jackboots and rallies any more. It's media and concerns and dignity and national values etc.
I can accept arguments that he's a different form of right-wing authoritarian. But then ask yourself, why does he want to break the single most powerful piece of international law against fascism?

2025-06-16 11:50:17 GMT

I did it.
I had the conversation with the owner of the gym we go to. I have official sanction to use the right toilets and changing rooms, and they think what's happening to us is terrible.
Some people get it - don't comply in advance and even not then

2025-06-09 12:35:31 GMT

Public service announcement:
People in distress don't always read sarcasm posts clearly, especially when it feels like Poe's Law has come into play 24/7/365 as it has right now.
I suggest and especially to neurotypicals that you're careful to be clear you're deploying sarcasm if you're going to say things that can be taken the wrong way. The /s marker is a good way to do this.
I'm seeing a fair few instances of people getting their heads bitten off when they're actually parodying our enemies. I'm not saying stop doing that, you do you, just remember this is life and death to some of us and we're going to bite back.

2025-06-06 09:24:47 GMT

The thing that upsets me most about the removal of trans human rights isn't that it's happening.
It's the response of the cis members of my family. They genuinely do not give a single fuck. When I try to talk about it they just say "Yeah that's not very nice" at best, or try to convince me that I'm overreacting. I've never seen so much as a social media post from any of them supporting trans rights, in the more than a decade since I came out, let alone a two minute email to their MP. I'm not expecting them to go on a protest though that would be kinda nice.
I really can't decide if they're so thick they don't understand, or if I'm tolerated rather than loved and they're actually transphobic.
The only people I know in my offline life who care about this, are trans people or the families of trans people. But not, it seems, my own.

2025-06-03 07:41:02 GMT

Star Wars fandom right now is full of upset christofash and MAGAts and incels who finally realised they're not the Rebellion.
This got me thinking. And as I thought, I came to understand how they saw themselves. They believed they were living under an oppressive regime, and they believed they were the seeds of freedom by refusing to conform to it.
It's not that far-fetched when you consider it. They are counter-cultural to a degree.
What seems to have "woke" them up (huh huh) is Andor and the beautifully done though still Disney-friendly depiction of a genocide. And the use of that word.
Anyway, it's got me pondering self-deception and the power of language to reveal true things. Clearly more coffee needed.

2025-06-01 12:08:49 GMT

I wrote something that would have offended a lot of people, and deleted it. This is the watered-down version.
I'm not talking to or about actual active phobes here. I want to talk about complicity.
If your workplace bans trans women from the ladies and you do nothing, what use is your allyship? Did you protest? Did you organise? Did you down tools? Did you wait until the cameras were off and then crowbar the signs off the toilet doors? Did you expose your workplace to the few remaining allied journos, or on social media? Did you risk *anything* for us?
I just saw pics of a certain young trans football star in floods of tears because she can no longer play. Will her teammates continue without her? The staff? Their opposing teams? The officials? Will they just continue, and then post the Niemoller poem and consider their allyship box ticked?
Will they watch sadly as people are put on the trains to the camps, and go about their lives?

2025-05-26 10:55:01 GMT

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Maybe it's just me that's changed. I don't think so but...
Gaslighting myself on top of everything else isn't helping. Right, let's smash this workout and then get back to making escape contingency plans
Trans life, Terf Island

2025-05-26 10:51:16 GMT

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Nothing really overt has happened yet since the ruling. But the atmosphere has changed. Some people are being super nice a lot.

2025-05-26 10:48:37 GMT

Just got called Pal by a lad at the gym... Just as I exited the women's changing rooms.
I don't know how long I can deal with the hypervigilance and outright fear.

2025-05-22 21:02:27 GMT

Didn't expect to get into a discussion tonight with a KC about the risks of committing an offence under the Fraud Act 2006 by, erm, going for a piss without disclosing I'm trans.
But I did.
Terf Island is a bizarre place.

2025-05-21 08:40:50 GMT

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Popcorn shortage predicted

2025-05-21 00:03:14 GMT

Well, what a spectacular day.
Everybody in Britain basically now needs to carry their birth certificate round with them, in order to use a toilet.
I can't wait for this to begin, particularly since
a) I have a corrected birth certificate
b) Anybody can buy anybody else's birth certificate
c) Anyone remotely gender non-conforming is going to be challenged
d) Any org that doesn't challenge everyone will open themselves up to a lawsuit
I'm starting to think Phillipson will fall on her sword over this. She's ultimately responsible for what Falkner and her crack team of genius lawyers get up to.
Watch out for Blair trying to get national ID cards in to "solve" the problem though.
#ukpol

2025-05-19 15:16:19 GMT

Anybody know what's actually been agreed between Starmer and the EU?
The Brexiteers seem to have all thrown their toys out of the pram but all I can see is something about fishing rights - a miniscule economic factor - and a vague promise to look at a youth mobility scheme.
Also, the centrists seem to have suddenly forgotten that Starmer's a genocide-supporting ableist transphobic racist eugenicist twat. Funny that

2025-05-18 14:47:46 GMT

Another day, another "trans people told you " moment
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/police-could-search-homes-and-seize-phones-after-sudden-pregnancy-loss

2025-05-17 10:30:50 GMT

One thing I have to say before I get on with the day: Get the hell away from the University of Warwick.
They published transphobic toilet policy, and they put it on their website. They're now saying it was an error, and they put a draft policy out too soon.
Apart from the ludicrous lie that a draft policy somehow tripped and fell onto your website, you're damn right it was an error. Because that policy is a human rights violation. And the error was choosing to violate our human rights. You crossed a line. You crossed a fucking line. You told the world you're collaborators.
#ukpol #TransRights #TransUK

2025-05-14 13:13:42 GMT

Everybody's probably seen it now, but the new ILGA maps are out.
In the Legal Gender Recognition, the UK is now counted as having none. That puts it behind 44 countries, and tied for bottom place with Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria and Hungary.
Shame on you, Labour voters. We fucking told you this was coming.

2025-05-13 15:13:46 GMT

Seeing reports that there are security guards checking people's sex at the toilets at Victoria station.
Just reports at this stage but...
Fucking hell

2025-05-06 12:42:04 GMT

Just taking this off-thread...
Allies don't argue for compromise with bigots. They fight them. I'm seeing politicians being praised for saying "The SC ruling is what it is, now we have to implement it in a way that's the least damaging to trans folk"
No. You don't. You take it to the European Court or you legislate the human rights violations away. You call the ruling out for what it is, a total disgrace to the UK legal system.
Get off your lazy useless arses and do your fucking job.

2025-05-06 11:20:53 GMT

How long should we normally wait for a reply after writing to an MP?
This one's had nearly two weeks, I'm thinking that's about enough for me to at least get working on the next one.
I know what the reply's going to say, after all.

2025-05-06 09:05:24 GMT

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I don't see any point in cutting it off. I'd lose the network and I need to know what's happening to them. I know what it is, but the Nazi bar analogy only extends so far. No Nazis get through my filters without an instablock.
As for VPN, pointless now. I'm on every government list of trans people there is already.

2025-05-06 08:37:04 GMT

Morning all.
Just been on the Book of Faces where - because of my age I suppose, both natal and since hatching - my network includes many older trans women and many who haven't been able to "fully transition" as we used to say. Many who only get to be their authentic selves some of the time. They're still trans, they know who they are but they either never reached the transition or die point that hit me, or their opportunities never opened up.
Some of them are socially detransitioning. They're getting too scared to present as anything other than the men they're not. I don't blame them, something has really changed in the UK...
1/

2025-04-30 17:53:54 GMT

Still seeing people criticising US lefties for not voting for Harris over Gaza. I regret their choice too but let me explain something...
There are some things that are so important to you that you can't vote for the lesser evil, because you see no difference between the choices on the issue. In that case you can't vote for the lesser evil. You just can't. You'd throw up.
I'm there right now with trans rights, for example. If I'm still in the country when the next GE happens, there's no fucking chance of me ever voting for Starmer, even to keep Farage out of number ten. I'd rather die than vote for him. And... things are bad for trans folk in the UK right now but they're nothing compared to what's been done to Gazans.
So save your ire and your "how could yous" for the politicians who funded, supported and supplied the weapons for a genocide and then expected the left - that section of society who tend to give a shit about people other than themselves - to vote for them anyway.
#uspol #ukpol

2025-04-26 09:51:58 GMT

Right, we're doing a protest today.
Somebody point me in the direction of protest solicitors, just in case it goes wrong? It's been a while since I did anything beyond Pride marches

2025-04-25 16:15:57 GMT

You know when you get out of the Fourth Reich, US frens? You need to do the new version of Nuremberg properly.
Don't just punish the ringleaders. Get every Republican politician, every corrupt Magat official, every CEO who sucked the mushroom, every fed or cop or ICE agent who obeyed orders, every school board member who voted to kill trans kids, every coward who snitched on a brown person, every soldier who failed to honour their oath to ... "all enemies, foreign of *domestic*".
Get the lot of them. And perhaps most of all, get Democrat politicians who collaborated or weaseled or approved Trump nominees or bipartisaned or in any way helped the fascists.
I'm not saying execute them all. Just, get them. Don't give them a pass for doing their best or just obeying orders or being duped. Make them an example that will last a thousand years. Nuremberg version 1 was pathetic in its scope and the fascists are back a mere 80 years later. It didn't work.

2025-04-24 09:52:07 GMT

A reminder that toilets in the UK are NOT single-sex spaces whatever Falkner wants you to believe.
Many of us have been caught desperately short in a long queue at the Women's in a nightclub and run into the entirely empty Men's. It's accepted practice. That would be illegal if they were single-sex spaces.
Taking your child of a different sex into the loos to wee in a cubicle because you can't send a toddler in alone, illegal.
You get the picture.
Putting the Gents and Ladies signs up is a suggestion for the purposes of societal norms. It doesn't create a single-sex space for the purposes of the Equality Act. It *could* potentially, but it overwhelmingly doesn't. This is what Sumption was saying, though he hinted he thought that could change.
If Falkner has her way, it will. Enjoy wetting yourselves when you're out clubbing ladies, and don't try to take your male baby into the Ladies anywhere lest you suffer the wrath of the Gender Police

2025-04-23 21:32:44 GMT

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Pondering this but...
How hard would it be to form a new Party with a revised rule book that excluded transphobes?
If they were serious about it, that is.

2025-04-23 18:00:34 GMT

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Start her own party? Maybe. I don't know.
She ran with him. She must have known what he was. I suspected for years and I'm not even a member.

2025-04-23 17:38:40 GMT

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Nazi bar rules, Carla.

2025-04-23 17:38:13 GMT

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Actually, no. Fuck it.
One of the Greens Co-leaders is a transphobe.
I'm out. There's nobody to vote for. Well done, you've finally disenfranchised me.

2025-04-23 17:23:19 GMT

And as for the Greens...
https://parliamentnews.co.uk/green-party-leaders-divided-over-transgender-policy
Ramsay always stank. He's regurgitating Labour smokescreen language and signalling to transphobes that he's a willing accomplice.
There are no political parties active in England that can be trusted. I'll still vote Green given the chance as they're the most socialist of any with MPs, they're the most environmentally-minded (duh, and having a viable planet is sort of good) and the others are all Tory or worse.
But make no mistake, the Greens won't win their fight to expel their transphobes while one of their co-leaders has their back.
#GPEW

2025-04-22 18:15:58 GMT

While I'm on a rant, I'm fucking sick of progressives saying Starmer's doing all this to suck up to the press or to outflank Reform in a game of 4D chess.
He's as close to absolute power as is possible under our unwritten constitution. Anything he's doing now it because he wants to, because it's what he believes.
He was lying before, to get into power. HE HAS IT NOW. There's no more reason to lie. So he's not.
Look at the polls. He's not getting elected again, and he doesn't give a shit. He's getting to enact his beliefs and they're nasty.
I understand it from centrists, you were conned. Nobody likes to admit they were wrong. But damn it, I wish everybody else would wake up to the fact that Starmer is a hard right authoritarian bastard the likes of which we haven't seen since Thatcher graced us all with a new gender neutral public toilet.

2025-04-22 14:15:25 GMT

Thinking about how the centrists mocked us when we started calling them the Red Tories.
Thinking about that, and laughing hysterically as "Labour" demolish thirty years of trans rights, embrace austerity for the poor, tell disabled people to get a job or die, steal money from pensioners, criminalise peaceful protest, and reject the EU in favour of wanting to become a vassal of Fascist USA.
The centrists were right, I suppose. They're not Red Tories. They're Red Far Right

2025-04-22 09:06:18 GMT

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Thanks.

2025-04-22 08:52:57 GMT

Okay, I'm braced. Somebody tell me specifically what the "Equalities" Minister said on Radio 4 please, I don't want to break my monitor playing it on catch up

2025-04-18 15:01:59 GMT

Lol.
Just seen that Portugal cancelled their F-35 orders and are getting Gripens instead.
The free markets in action

2025-04-18 08:56:18 GMT

Feeling a sadness today.
Got my hair dyed so I can not look like an old hag on my passport photo, which I plan to get today. For those who don't know, I'm renewing it early in case the UK tries to change my gender marker.
I don't feel safe leaving the house. Who's going to take this as licence to attack? Which business is going to bar me? Which copper is going to sexually assault me for fun?
It's not going to stop me. But Britain is a very different place now.

2025-04-16 19:22:49 GMT

You know the worst thing about today's ruling? It doesn't take into account the primal, overwhelming power of - and I'm going to use the old term - gender dysphoria.
Most cis folk haven't experienced it, though many cis queer peeps know what I mean from a different context. The compulsion to live free or die. I wouldn't be alive now if I hadn't transitioned.
The lucky ones transition before they get there but the rest of us hit a point in our lives where it's transition or die and that's not hyperbole. I always wanted to see a world where transition happened for all before that point, because I barely made it through. That hope is pretty much gone.
Call us mentally-ill if you like. I don't care. I live, or I don't. For the sake of preventing some vile people feeling a bit uncomfortable, you've put our lives in real danger, judges of the Supreme Court.
You're disgusting bigots and any remaining respect I once had for the law has gone. We're outlaws again.
Please boost this unless you don't give a shit.

2025-04-15 14:51:02 GMT

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Do you ever get out of those barbarous lands and onto the correct side of the Pennines? ;)

2025-04-15 10:07:45 GMT

#uspol
I keep seeing journalists approaching all this from a political viewpoint - Jon Sopel and Katty Kay most recently. They're scared about the mid-terms. Public opinion. Maybe they'll lose the House. The Democrats might stop them.
None of them are talking about the real threat. They're disappearing people and they're ignoring court orders. When will they understand this is a takeover, not politics as usual?
Left-wing bloggers and commentators are the only ones pointing out that once the disappearances get underway and the courts are owned, the most likely end to it involves a military coup.
If Trump stands and loses in 2028, who seriously believes he'll hand over power this time? He's got three and a half more years to replace anyone who could conceivably stop him.
Sigh

2025-04-14 12:48:12 GMT

The British Steel Scunthorpe debacle is a shining, no, flare-lit, no, stellar example of why... drum roll... critical infrastructure should be owned by the State and not by private companies.
This stuff is strategic. A foreign government should not be able to blow up such an important sector. People who've been saying this since Thatcher, have been derided as loony lefties.
Next, do water, energy, comms, military materiel, and transport.
#ukpol

2025-04-13 08:49:00 GMT

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You're 100% correct on this.
The tariffs haven't been undone, just paused. And the real damage is to trust. Why would anybody want to increase trade with the US now? Agreements are worthless, conditions depend on the whim of a volatile tyrant.
Amusing that he's already lifted the levies on Chinese tech, clearly having had it explained to him what the consequences will be. We're not dealing with a master tactician here, we're dealing with a con artist.

2025-04-11 08:33:34 GMT

Aaaaargh.
People responding to the news that "those deemed illegal" in the US are going to have to register themselves, with "lol like that's gonna happen"
You're right but you don't get it. They're unwinding the Fourth and Fifth Amendments and before you know it you'll have to show your ID to the Gestapo just to walk down the street.
#uspol

2025-04-10 08:55:44 GMT

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Possibly.
The geography can't be changed. The flag-waving, maybe.
I think the "Special Relationship" is another contributing factor, and that's clearly past its sell-by date to all but the fringes. As England comes to understand that the US is a danger to us, we might shift more to feeling European.
Okay, it's a long shot I admit. Maybe EFTA/EEA would be a better place for us for a decade or two. That could be sold as "we're not really in the EU, we just took the sound and wise decision to give ourselves access to the largest trading market on the planet, which the Tories recklessly left on the say-so of an advisory referendum won by flat-out lies from Johnson and his cronies"
But the problem with achieving that is Keith. If he was out of the leadership I suspect even this iteration of Labour would go for it, but he's gone so far right he's in danger of turning into Farage.

2025-04-10 08:41:37 GMT

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I'm not disagreeing here but I think the "Island Nation" thing - which isn't even true technically but still - beloved of flag-waving politicians and gammon activists, played a part.
Collectively we never really saw ourselves as members of the EU. Because we weren't part of Europe, that was the Continent, the bit that could be cut off by fog in the Channel.
We were like a member of a Parish Church congregation who didn't actually believe any of that religious rubbish, but liked the choral singing and got bored on Sunday mornings and enjoyed the enhanced social standing of sitting next to mayors and councillors and having them know our name.
It wasn't *just* that we thought we were better than everybody else, it was that we weren't committed. We didn't see ourselves as members. We were toying with the idea of joining properly (in our own minds) but never did.
Next time I think it must be all in. Federal Europe, EU Army, Euro, the lot.

2025-04-09 18:10:28 GMT

So.
90 day pause - I think it means, reduction to 10% - on US tariffs for those who tried to negotiate.
The world has 3 months lads, divest and get replacement supply chains in order.
He's clearly panicking that a) the markets have shit themselves, and b) the two blocs he most wanted to roll over have said fuck you (mention in dispatches to China for doing it more quickly than the EU).
Also, well done on your orange arse-kissing Keith, it achieved nothing. As you now know since you appear to be weasling up to Brussels again with no intention of rejoining the team.
I suggest we all pay attention to King Donald's human rights abuses now, and to his expansionist ambitions. If he's halting trade war (apologies China but I think you have him covered) he'll look to that lovely Canadian, Greenlandic and Panamanian territory again.
Remember, 3 months and it kicks off again. Unless he changes his mind in the next half an hour.

2025-04-07 09:25:52 GMT

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I think it's fascinating that China, South Korea and Japan decided to get together to coordinate their response.
That's a sign of things to come. American rule is over.

2025-04-07 09:00:54 GMT

And while the trade war grows, Gaza dies.
Israel knows it can proceed with impunity, atrocities piled on atrocities. The ICC have been shown to be noble but toothless, the UN are now ignored by all and the Free West will in the end have done nothing but supply the weapons and provide political cover.

2025-04-07 08:35:13 GMT

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I don't know actually.
The effect of his tariffs will be to shift trade to other countries. That creates and expands relationships and sidelines the US.
I think the outcome of all this will be the end of US dominance, the rise of China as a genuine superpower, but also potentially the collapse of some smaller economies that can't weather the storm.
I could be wrong though, it wouldn't be the first time.

2025-04-05 18:35:33 GMT

Just having a look at UK media outlets to see if anyone's covering the Hands Off protests.
* Nothing on the BBC (surprise surprise)
* The Independent has a short piece that seems okay, but the headline writer is clearly dodgy, saying "Thousands to protest" - no mate, thousands of protests
* The Times - sod all but I didn't get to the end of the page because pictures of transphobes repelled me
* The Heil - nothing
* The Mirror - nothing
* Torygraph - short but accurate piece (wait what, journalism there of all places?)
* Daily Express - sweet FA
* Daily Star - tits and stuff about the annual horse-killing thing
* I can't be arsed to check the Guardian because there's bound to be some transphobic crap to wade through
So, nothing yet really and I predict not much afterwards. This is how the establishment disarms peaceful protest. I know this is the UK but frankly, US news is world news now.

2025-04-05 08:25:27 GMT

I fear such events will become a thing of the past again fairly soon. I hope I'm wrong.
But with the UK government firmly on the direction of travel laid out for it by The Heritage Foundation and their economic compatriots in Tufton Street, I doubt it will be too long before it's the cops doing this and not the local fash youth.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/organisers-slam-disgusting-attack-park-31358142

2025-04-04 18:51:37 GMT

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It's astonishing isn't it? This has been blindingly obvious for months and yet there are alleged professionals who....
Sigh.

2025-04-04 13:42:10 GMT

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Aaaaand.... How much will that hit defence production?
This is going to really hurt the US.

2025-04-04 13:39:11 GMT

People are talking about China's retaliatory tariffs, but I'm wondering if the export restrictions on rare earths will do more damage.
Virtually all rare earths come from there. The US tech industry is going to be... well, not to be hyperbolic but this will bankrupt a lot of companies very quickly.
Sweet

2025-04-02 09:55:05 GMT

Meanwhile, it looks as though Netanyahu is going to properly seize Gaza, ending what self-determination the Palestinians there had. I suspect they'll be expelled openly.
Within a few years, western centrists will be sunning themselves on Gazan beaches talking about how terrible it used to be when those awful terrorists used to rule the place. And the Palestinians will be... gone.
Genocide complete.

2025-04-01 16:32:08 GMT

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Funny, I was just thinking a similar thing. If they were isolated and ignored, would that break the world economy? I seriously doubt it.

2025-03-31 13:23:27 GMT

I really dont think Trump's foreign policy excesses are distractions. That would be foolish, and Trump is anything but a fool when it comes to politics.
Look, the only things slowing his internal takeover are number one - those resisting right now, from protests to lawsuits to political stalling to those accidentally dropping orders in a shredder to the small proportion of journos who arent complying, and number two - the threat of actual revolt.
Military coups are more effective than popular uprisings and if there's one thing that's likely to cause that, it's sending a military to war with their friends. Canadian and Danish armed forces have been friends for a long long time. So if this is distraction, it's idiocy.
He must really want Greenland and Canada. We have to get that threat settled in our heads and stop minimising the risk.
#uspol

2025-03-26 20:13:01 GMT

Labour's approach to dealing with poverty is exactly the same as Alan B'stard's approach to health.

2025-03-24 14:00:15 GMT

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Do you think the UK government's current hostility to any kind of gods-damned furriners coming over here and stealing our breathing air etc, will be more of a factor than the cost of study? I suspect it will.

2025-03-23 12:06:54 GMT

I tried to be nice, but I just can't deal with people saying "Won't someone think of the poor Tesla owners"
We are. They're going to suffer just as much under fascism as anyone else. I support these actions 100% as they stand.

2025-03-23 10:17:40 GMT

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In my getting-a-bit-long life, I've always loved trying to learn languages.
When I was a youth, you could do conversational language evening courses, usually for free. They've completely disappeared round here. Instead of evening classes on car maintenance, cooking, French and Spanish, you can do bottom-rung vocational stuff if you're lucky.
Everything's become about squeezing the last drop of blood out of the working class. Sorry, feeling that way out today.
More productively, I agree with you and I wish we had access to effective language learning in adult education. I'd jump at the chance to learn Portuguese, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese, at night school. Preferably all at once!

2025-03-23 09:32:03 GMT

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I'm going to ponder that a bit.
The problem we have now then, is that the rich see no threat from us.
Maybe the attempted takedown of Musk through the destruction of Tesla will have some effect.

2025-03-23 09:18:25 GMT

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Just wondering if any political history types know of societies that have come back from this level of inequality without collapse or revolution. I suppose you could argue that absolute mornarchies tended to last for centuries, so we can't rely on instability to help.

2025-03-22 08:49:51 GMT

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I don't know if it's just that I'm getting older but increasingly I don't feel comfortable driving around housing estates at 30. So I don't.
Part of that's modern estate design with traffic calming measures that in my view do little to slow things down and just add extra hazards to compete with the possibility of a kid running out from behind a car or an elderly person misjudging their pace.
But the point is, I'm not a useless driver. I know what I'm doing and my decades of experience are saying, 30 is too quick. So I rarely do it. Speed limits aren't there for people like me though, they're for the young or the daft (down, chat, I know I'm still daft) who haven't figured out what's safe.
Short version, 20 across built-up areas across the UK with exceptions for roads that are effectively fenced-off urban dual carriageways, seems like a fantastic idea to me.

2025-03-21 12:47:39 GMT

I don't think anybody except card-carrying Nazis should be heading to the US.
All it takes is a random search of your socials and ICE have you. It's only one more step before you could be off to El Salvador, with a bag over your head, accused of being a terrorist and treated like the Guantanamo captives.
Who wants to risk that?

2025-03-21 08:57:53 GMT

I'd just like to announce, rather randomly, that this is the 17th day since I last drank anything alcoholic. Because I'm feeling proud of myself and a bit grateful.
I did 15 days in Dry January. This one's for Lent but... it feels like it might be long term. I bloody hope so. I've been trying to stop for so long I've forgotten when it was I realised I should try.
Anyway, go me, send prayers, vibes, blessings and manifestations if you're into that kind of thing please.

2025-03-19 12:54:11 GMT

Politics Live on the BBC are debating "Do the welfare cuts go far enough?"
This is how it's done. Frame the question in such a way that you can't answer it in a constructive way. Instead of asking if the deaths of disabled people are a price worth paying to allow the megarich to continue pillaging the country, they do this.
Are you still beating your wife?
#ukpol

2025-03-18 16:46:33 GMT

People keep saying "That isn't Labour"
Laughing my arse off.
Labour died a few years ago and this is its rotting corpse being moved around by Tory necromancers while a ventriloquist shouts "working people, working people" until we all run into the sea and collapse from shit poisoning

2025-03-17 09:16:09 GMT

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My first real thought on this is, how much of the cost of these technologically advanced treatments is down to the price of the drugs?
And then, how much of that price can be cut by reducing patent protections to ensure that drugs can be produced at near-cost more quickly?
That would require publicly-funded research to become the dominant model of development in medical science again though. And so we come back to the true cause of the problems here - neoliberalism

2025-03-16 10:27:24 GMT

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It's not a U-turn.
They're (apparently) giving way on the freezing of PIP levels, in exchange for avoiding a rebellion on tightening the eligibility criteria.
They've probably bought off their critics inside the PLP at the cost of many thousands of people who need and deserve the help, losing it.
I suspect this was the fallback plan all along. The Blue Tories used to do this a fair bit as I recall. Leak an extreme policy, then water it down and introduce it, thereby looking comparatively moderate.

2025-03-16 09:26:55 GMT

Morning all.
Musing: the lies from Labour about helping people into work.
If you want disabled people to work, and I don't know why you would other than some twisted belief that human lives are meaningful only in terms of our economic output, but if you do then you could do it this way:
* Identify areas in which deploying large numbers of people with varying skills and ability levels could improve society for all, and if you must do it this way, improve national economics capability
* Offer flexible and realistic positions to make progress in those areas, to disabled people, without threat and at market rates
* Pay for this using the power of a fiat currency with a national central bank
Maybe this would work instead of forcing people to compete in an ableist job market deliberately designed to have large numbers of unemployed in order to suppress wages.
But you don't want it to work. You just want to look good to the gammon and the City and the cost will be the lives of disabled folk.
#ukpol

2025-03-14 18:49:05 GMT

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And it's been progressing quite well in countries other than the UK, too.
The far right have to be smashed. Popper told us all, but we never listen

2025-03-13 14:43:41 GMT

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He sat in it. Now it's used ;)

2025-03-13 13:47:50 GMT

Starmer is saying cutting six billion from disability benefits isn't a return to austerity.
* calculating meme *
Look, are we at war with Eurasia or not?
#ukpol

2025-03-12 10:14:01 GMT

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Kendall has been chomping at the bit to punish disabled people for a decade at least. Cooper is responsible for Work Capability Assessments and all that came after, and is the drive behind Labour's "The Rwanda plan is bad because it costs too much money and doesn't hurt brown people effectively." Reeves is a bank manager who doesn't understand country-sized economics let alone grasp MMT. Starmer is a right-wing bigot who lied his way into power. The rest of the cabinet are too spineless to stand up to them.
Sorry, rant over for now...

2025-03-12 10:09:15 GMT

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It's no longer possible to sustain the belief that Labour are not right-wing idealogues.
They're not taking these positions to get far-right votes. They actually want to do this stuff.

2025-03-12 09:50:03 GMT

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I've been thinking about integrated supply chains recently, and the thing about financial services is you can't eat them, drink them, wear them, live in them, or ride on them.
In an era of trade wars, the major blocs are going to be looking at strengthening internal markets and reducing reliance on outside goods and oh look, the UK just left the EU and Starmer won't even consider going back.
The UK can't even remotely feed ourselves let alone run a stand-alone industrial society the way things stand.
tl;dr - sigh

2025-03-12 09:20:39 GMT

I'm loving all the pictures of Teslas with fake manufacturer badges.
Audi and Honda owners are going to have to take security measures to stop people nicking theirs, like in the old days when Mercs had their badges on a pedestal and kids used to steal them to make ninja throwing stars.
I predict anything that looks like a Tesla is going to get a bodywork redesign in the next couple of years too, as collateral damage begins to mount up.

2025-03-06 10:48:34 GMT

I keep seeing announcements of countries increasing military aid spending to Ukraine. I'm not seeing many announcements about increasing armament production capacity in these countries themselves.
It may be happening, but it's not being well reported. Until it is, I have to assume that most of this aid is being spent buying US weapons which can be cut off at the whim of the orange tyrant.
Meanwhile, in the UK our government's position is "We must spend more on defence, lol let's kill our disabled people at the same time"
If Trump truly wanted peace, he would agree to deploy US troops in Ukraine as part of a peace deal. It's very simple. It would be the greatest, most wonderful idea you've ever heard. Everyone's saying it. Where's my covfefe

2025-02-28 18:58:43 GMT

Zelensky, and every other NATO country, need to tell Trump and the US to fuck right off (sorry US friends, the sooner your King gets deposed the better for all of us).
Some Keynesian military spending in Europe, and the US will be isolated and friendless in a couple of years. Because they're now a rogue state.

2025-02-25 10:54:33 GMT

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With respect, I don't know why people believe this. The evidence appears to be entirely against it - admittedly without having looked at the research, if there is any.
Systems nearly always self-select for leaders that mirror their values. As a consequence, I don't believe capitalism can be healed from within as you're suggesting. It has to be opposed externally by law and politics, which is why things go so badly wrong when politics begins to be ruled by the money of the rich.

2025-02-22 01:28:10 GMT

Nigel Farage just spoke at a conference where Steve Bannon did a Nazi salute.
Bannon wasn't kicked out for it. Farage didn't leave because of it.
Farage is a Nazi.