NEWS & VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

A WEEK IS A LONG TIME IN POLITICS

By Michael Shrimpton

The German agent Harold ‘von’ Wilson, then Prime Minister, once said in 1964 that a week is a long time in politics. It’s one of the few things that the idiot got right, no offense intended. In both the US and the UK the last week or so has seen dramatic political developments.

The UK

You can just about forget Labour’s victories on Thursday in the Kingswood and Wellingborough by-elections. Turnout was very low, around 37.5% in each seat. Tory voters stayed at home in droves. Given Rishi Sunak’s weak leadership and centrist policies, dictated to him by the Cabinet Office, who can blame them? The Reform Party achieved its best-ever results in by-elections, achieving over 13% in Wellingborough.

Even worse for Rishi, the Bank of England Governor, Andrew ‘von’ Bailey, who’s backing Starmer, has managed to engineer a recession by keeping interest rates too high for too long. The Governor of course reports to the Treasury and the Cabinet Office, which have a more than a century’s experience between them of using the levers of economic power to hold back the British economy.

READ THE REST HERE

---------------------------

UK foreign aid may have helped fund the work from a religious organization in Uganda that pushed for harsher anti-LGBT+ legislation in the country.

This should never happen again.

Sign Tarin’s petition and speak up!

SIGN HERE

------------------------------

In the United States, as in the United Kingdom, there are some self-identified liberals and leftists who insist on pitting cisgender women’s rights against trans rights, baselessly arguing that draconian discrimination against transgender people is necessary to “protect women and girls”.

As a transgender American woman, the willingness of such people to partner with right-wingers to put a target on my back is bewildering and painful. The fact is, after all, that trans people suffer violence disproportionately. Just this month, in fact, a non-binary, Native American teenager, Nex Benedict, was beaten to death by other students in a school bathroom in Oklahoma, and the school administration didn’t even call an ambulance to try to save them.

So-called ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminists’ (or ‘TERFs’) may not care that they have innocent blood on their hands, so long as the blood spilled belongs to people on the trans spectrum, though such thinking is of course both cruel and shortsighted.

But it’s hard to understand why the cis women who oppose transgender equality seem unconcerned that the moral panic they’ve decided to fuel is sweeping away their own rights in the same American states that are most viciously persecuting trans people.

(These people, it should be said, represent a small but loud minority in the UK, and a larger minority in America, concentrated heavily on the political right.)

If the Republicans – the ones who fund their precious anti-trans crusades – take control of the entire federal government in the 2024 elections, (cis) women’s rights, and those of gay men and lesbians, will be on the chopping block nationwide along with trans rights. And it seems increasingly clear that the rights in jeopardy include not only access to abortion, which Republican women largely oppose, but to contraception and fertility care as well.

-------------------------

JB COMMENTS

It's just a matter of time.

We live in a time where everyone - regardless - is DEMANDING THEIR RIGHTS - even if they already have rights and even if nothing extra is wanted.

Can I remind you that while we have rights in the UK - at last - protecting LGBT - - these ' rights ' can be taken away just as quickly and we can find ourselves living in another Poland or America - Russia or Hungary, that have repealed their LGBT laws and are now making it VERY difficult for LGBT to live, work and survive in a country that now - and once again - has turned its back on LGBT and we are being seen as the Anti Christ.

People turn their backs so quickly and as with the Jews in WW2, when a government uses misinformation and lies, the mass believe and follow suit and - millions die. LGBT are not safe anymore and - while we are protected in the UK, this madness from America WILL COME HERE - it's just a matter of time.

Please don't say ' I didn't know ' - when your liberty and life are affected to the negative by some homophobic government or council putting in the knife.

--------------------------------------------

I have to admit to not knowing whether to laugh - or cry.

I have to admit that while I am predicting troubled times to come for all - I cannot help but laugh my head off at the antics of Trump and how he gets away with it time and time again. We would be arrested and prosecuted LONG LONG AGO for any of the horrendous things he has done, people he has mocked and even grieving parents whose gunned down children are hardly in the ground and Trump is telling them to ' Get over it.'

If it wasn't so cruel and appalling - it would be funny, trouble is, it isn't funny, it isn't some sit com or a movie - not a block buster mini series or anything else, this is real life and millions are being hurt - MILLIONS.

----------------------------------------

HOME PAGE

BLOG HOME PAGE

DIARY OF EVENTS