That Starmer fella...

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  • Have we had this yet? Labour's support now comes mainly from the middle classes, not the working class as the UK's demographic has changed enormously over the past 40 years:

    https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/peter-kellner-on-the-labour-party-crisis-7960234

  • A timely reminder of what happens when unions and labour get too close - unite wasting Β£1.3 million of its members money supporting a Corbyn-loyalist blog after it libelled Anna Turley.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/13/unite-blogger-must-pay-former-labour-mp-13m-legal-costs-libel-case

  • Where did the union hurt you?

  • Reads as if the union and the blog were sued together, not sure they had much choice in it.

  • When Unions Go Bad

    The Shocking Truth Behind Rotten Len’s Blog Bashing

    Wait till I tell you about how publicly traded companies pay their legal fees.

    TBH it’s probably covered by legal/liability insurance and doesn’t come direct from the big pot of members gold under Len’s mattress. Please fact check me because that’s an assumption and I want to know but CBA to google

  • Show me on the dolly.

  • However she does defend transphobes - or at least, she defends the right of transphobes to say things like 'trans women are men' - which means to me that she's a bit like what Jordan Peterson is to the far right, kind of a gateway drug.

    I know what you mean, but I'm not really a fan of finding stuff in people's back catalogue of writing as a justification for ignoring everything they say. That seems to be a specific habit of progressive types (which I'd broadly place myself within) that just polarises debates and feeds the right-wing narrative of them being the defenders of free speech. To be fair it's not a strong example, in any case, since it seems to be her discussion of whether hate crime legislation was applicable to the retweeting of a poem (that she agrees was rude and unkind). That seems like fairly meat-and-potatoes work for a philosopher whose work hinges on being able to use language to express sometimes unwelcome viewpoints without worrying about prosecution.

    More broadly I think one has to find someone on the other side of the debate who can at least intelligently articulate arguments. If you can work out responses to those, then finding responses to more stupid arguments should be straightforward, and I think we need to maintain a healthy distinction regarding speech of where arguments are put as part of a genuine discussion vs. those that are actually inciting harm (as with Mill's corn dealer example). That's not to say that there's no such thing as fostering a negative environment (anyone who cycles and reads any newspaper opinion pieces knows that), but if we don't engage with any counter arguments at all (on the basis that the mere utterance of them is harmful), then we're not really doing anything other than saying "we've made everyone's mind up for them." (Obviously that being the perceived tone of the left is quite relevant to the rest of this thread).

    It's is also possible, with a bit of effort not to get on a slippery slope as long as you read broadly. Taking your example, thinking that Jordan Peterson occasionally says interesting things is still completely compatible with the belief that Ben Shapiro is just a diminutive bellend with nothing interesting to say at all.

  • There's no way public liability insurance will let you defend a case you've lost 75k on because you dispute the result.

    An insurer would want control of the process and they'd make you settle, or drop the appeal.

  • Question Time audience shredding Nandy on what is the point of Labour, pretty brutal and don't think I've seen the audience so animated in a long time

  • That's funny. I thought she did well with Paul mason in facing a distinctly hostile couple of pricks in the studio and some one who could be on here calling themselves "working class, but I work blimming hard and pay my taxes"* while clearly showing off a very middle class house.

    *Because only the working class pay taxes. Right?

  • I agree, she doesn’t take shit.

  • Now I realise why I stopped watching QT.

  • Nandy is a decent communicator and could definitely work one of the good seats in a cabinet. Beyond a few of the Labour MPs it's difficult to see who would be leaders and senior cabinet ministers should they ever come to power.

  • Turley's offer to Skwawkbox and the Union was to retract and apologise and she'd drop the legal case. Unite instead chose to waste their members money on fighting it - the same Unite who were in favour of Labour fighting the antisemitism whistleblowers in court, by the way.

    Unite in the headlines again after Len's successor Howard Beckett made prima facie racist comments about Priti Patel - now suspended from Labour and almost certain to be kicked out (and off the Labour NEC to boot). https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/13/unite-leadership-nominee-apologises-for-tweeting-priti-patel-should-be-deported

    Again I have no problem with the union model in general but those arguing that the current model works need to be able to justify this kind of thing, or accept that reform is needed.

  • Why, you didn't have any?

    I do have some experience of working with insurers and am pretty sure they wouldn't risk chalking up a Β£1.3m liability to dispute Β£75k. Insurance policies aren't a blank check to pursue litigation against people - you might be able to get specific litigation insurance, but that isn't cheap.

  • Starmer
    Nandy
    Lammy
    Butler
    Ashworth
    Burnham

    Who else?

    If anyone says Richard Burgon

  • "Keir is prising McCluskey’s cold, dead hand from the Labour Party."

    trans: fuck the EHRC report

  • Again I have no problem with the union model in general but those arguing that the current model works need to be able to justify this kind of thing, or accept that reform is needed.

    Most of what you've been saying comes across as "unions are bad and need changing", most of your arguments, which are fine if taken in this context, are "I don't like the recent leadership of the Unite union and disagree with some of it's recent decisions". That unite is the biggest union and donor to labour means that some of your argument applies to labour, but reform could easily be someone in charge that's less of a dick, when you seem to think it should be some kind of upheaval of all unions and how they work, which for the most part is helping workers.

  • Could say the same about the tory party as well.

  • Rebecca Long-Bailey and Angela Rayner.

  • I know what you mean, but I'm not really a fan of finding stuff in people's back catalogue of writing as a justification for ignoring everything they say.

    No, I'm with you on that. It's not a 'gotcha' of her views though - it's a cornerstone of her beliefs (that people should be free to say things like 'trans women are men' without it being assumed they're being hostile). And that actually sounds very reasonable if she's talking about the right of academics to discuss such points without being accused of hate crimes / harassment under UK law. I agree with that right firmly. There does need to be a discussion about precisely where we draw the line when cis and trans rights clash, and we can't discuss that without academic freedom.

    But while Stock doesn't say this in her piece (which is reasonable and well argued) she does actively defend people like Maya Forstater who not only want the right to discuss such statements academically, they want the right to say these things to trans people whether it causes hurt or harm or not. That's quite a different thing because - well - it's harassment.

    That's where I get a bit more nervous, because the academic freedom argument (which I agree with) and the licence to harass trans people argument (which I am firmly against) should be really very far apart. And the fact that she mixes these two things up quite often makes me worry, and it's what reminds me of Peterson.

    None of that means we should discount what either academic says - I never went to Uni and I've an absurd and outsize respect for academia - but I do think we're entitled to put it in context.

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That Starmer fella...

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