UK Politics Mega-thread - Page 622

On April 04 2025 05:58 BlackJack wrote:
Nothing says "obscure" like a country's prime minister vowing to fast track emergency legislation to overturn sentencing guidelines as reported by every newspaper

On April 03 2025 11:02 Jockmcplop wrote:


Yeah the problem with this idiotic American culture stuff occasionally finding its way over here to the UK is we end up getting lectured about our political system by people who have absolutely no idea about any of the context of the stuff they are bringing up.

These are tiny, tiny, insignificant incidences in relation to the day to day problems that people in our country face. Some idiot nursery head bans a toddler. Well that sucks for that toddler. Its not like its an institutional issue, its just a stupid thing that happened.
Meanwhile people in Birmingham can't get their trash taken away because the local council can't afford to pay its people, the treasury and the government are taking money away from the poor and most vulnerable to pay for their own mistakes and the mistakes of the wealthy, child poverty is on the rise etc. etc.

And we've got people here telling us that what we should care about is a headteacher on a power trip, because some stupid Republicans in America have decided that that's what would make a good distraction from their own massive freedom of speech problems at home.

The fake concern 'don't you care about freedom of speech'?

As if. Where were you when the tories spent a decade cracking down on people's right to protest in this country? An issue that affects millions of people, not just some parents whose toddler got banned by some moron?

On April 03 2025 21:07 Jockmcplop wrote:

The point is there are, and have been much, much bigger problems with regards to freedom of expression but they don't fit the 'the agenda' so they get ignored until someone can insert wokeness into the issue or make it solely about white people.

On April 03 2025 23:05 WombaT wrote:

Judges aren’t going to suddenly start judging according to these new guidelines (note, guidelines, not ‘law’) for a week, knowing that the government are introducing legislation that is a certainty to pass.

My ma has worked in my alma mater for a good 25 years now. Many a parent has been a massively aggressive prick. The police have, however never got involved.

Let’s just say I’m somewhat skeptical that these parents were as civil, reasonable and polite as they’re claiming.

The school said it had "sought advice from police" after a "high volume of direct correspondence and public social media posts" that it said had become upsetting for staff, parents and governors.

My spidey tense is tingling. I’m not a betting man, but I’d almost 100% wager that these parents put this individual on blast on various public or semi-public forums. And said individual, and said school got a ton of blowback from people all over the country or beyond.

Now, maybe this was actually justified, that I have no idea on. However, I’m extremely skeptical at how they’re framing their interjections here.

But hey, let’s assume they weren’t doing that:


So the police ultimately didn’t do anything, and reviewed it, and said they shouldn’t have even been involved in the first place?

What’s the actual problem here?

On April 05 2025 10:00 Razyda wrote:




I am guessing you refer to the anti protest laws which tories implemented. Not sure if it was on this forum, but I was against them and quite vocal about it. Funny how free country decided to have harsher anti protest laws than Russia (at the time, they probably changed in Russia by now). I also seem to recall that people were told something akin to that this law is there to be, not to be enforced, just to use it to full extent few months later during coronation. ( I recall they went as far as to arrest charity workers handing rape alarms ffs)

Now what I dont understand is how can you criticize those, but be okay with the school story and others were people were arrested for posts on social media? or UK government requests (and legislation) to provide them with backdoors to encrypted messaging apps?

BTW if you think that i support tories in any way shape or form, you couldnt be more wrong. The way I see it, tories were democrats from the Biden time, labour is what democrats would be if Kamala got elected. With both being set to remove as many liberties as they can with labour just going faster about it.

People tend to complain about US democracy, but they at least get to elect their own head of state. How many PMs had UK between last 2 elections? What was the impact voters had regarding this PMs?



bolded - Do you really not understand that it doesnt matter? Unless they were actively posting things like "30k for head of headteacher" or something like that it is irrelevant.

italic - wait, so having 6 police officers going into your house, arresting both parents in front of their child is "nothing happened"? I mean, if thats okay, then mind posting your address and time your kid/s is/are home? there is hilarious joke I can play on you, then I can come visit and we can have laughs about it over few beers, because "nothing happened" (to clarify this is a joke I wouldnt do something like that - with exception to few beers)

On April 05 2025 10:00 Razyda wrote:




I am guessing you refer to the anti protest laws which tories implemented. Not sure if it was on this forum, but I was against them and quite vocal about it. Funny how free country decided to have harsher anti protest laws than Russia (at the time, they probably changed in Russia by now). I also seem to recall that people were told something akin to that this law is there to be, not to be enforced, just to use it to full extent few months later during coronation. ( I recall they went as far as to arrest charity workers handing rape alarms ffs)

Now what I dont understand is how can you criticize those, but be okay with the school story and others were people were arrested for posts on social media? or UK government requests (and legislation) to provide them with backdoors to encrypted messaging apps?

BTW if you think that i support tories in any way shape or form, you couldnt be more wrong. The way I see it, tories were democrats from the Biden time, labour is what democrats would be if Kamala got elected. With both being set to remove as many liberties as they can with labour just going faster about it.

People tend to complain about US democracy, but they at least get to elect their own head of state. How many PMs had UK between last 2 elections? What was the impact voters had regarding this PMs?

On April 05 2025 12:51 Jockmcplop wrote:


Easy. Some things affect us all, some are just overreach, some are just isolated incidents caused by morons etc.

Government requests and legislation for backdoors are generally not really government requests. Its yet another example of the constant erosion of civil liberties in the UK, but I lay that one at the door of GCHQ. The government neither knows or cares about it, they just approve whatever GCHQ sends them because they don't give a shit about liberty. They generally defer to security services when it comes to legislation like that.

The school story sucks, but I'm not a school inspector, I'm sure it'll get dealt with. I don't really see it as institutional or instructive in the way that its part of a pattern or something. Shitty things happen sometimes because of shitty people.

As for arrests for tweets, there's alot of overreach but at least there's genuine public debate and debate in Parliament about how far that stuff should go.

The United Kingdom’s highest court ruled that the legal definition of “woman” excludes trans women, in a case with sweeping consequences for how equality laws are applied.

Britain’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the definition of a woman in equality legislation refers to “a biological woman and biological sex,” sparking celebrations outside court among gender-critical campaigners but warnings it was a “worrying” development for transgender people.

The case centered on whether trans women with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) – which offers legal recognition of someone’s female sex – are protected from discrimination as a woman under the nation’s Equality Act 2010.

A group of campaigners in Scotland brought a challenge in 2018, arguing that those rights should only safeguard those assigned as women at birth. But the Scottish government said that a trans woman with a GRC is legally a woman and should therefore be afforded the same legal protections.

Even though the case stems from a dispute over Scottish laws designed to increase the number of women sitting on boards, the outcome on Wednesday will shape the increasingly fractious and polarizing debate over transgender rights across the UK.

The UK’s ruling Labour party said the ruling brought “clarity and confidence” while the opposition Conservatives called it a “clear victory for common sense,” urging the government to amend existing guidance.

The five judges ruled in favor of For Women Scotland (FWS) – which proposed that not linking the legal definition of gender to biological sex would have repercussions on designated single-sex services, including changing rooms, hostels and communal accommodation.

“The terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex,” Lord Patrick Hodge told the court in London. “The provisions relating to sex discrimination can only be interpreted as referring to biological sex,” he added.

“Interpreting ‘sex’ as certificated sex would cut across the definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ and thus the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way,” a summary of the ruling said, which added that transgender women could be excluded from same-sex facilities such as changing rooms if “proportionate.”

On April 28 2025 07:17 KwarK wrote:
People are taking this out of context. There's a law that uses the term woman and people asked for clarification on the application of that specific law regarding whether it's all women or just cis women. The court ruled that it was intended to just apply to cis women. That's the extent of it.

On April 28 2025 06:13 Nebuchad wrote:
Probably should be some discussion of trans rights in the UK in this thread, so I'll do the honors. UK Supreme Court says legal definition of ‘woman’ excludes trans women, in landmark ruling.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/16/uk/uk-supreme-court-ruling-definition-woman-intl/index.html



Obviously this is bad and obviously this is newsworthy, and I've noticed that now that everyone feels more threatened attacks on trans rights don't get mentioned a lot, in the US either. There is also no reason for a Labour party to decide to run to the right of the conservatives on trans rights - in 2016 when North Carolina got similar laws, the UK, then led by Theresa May, advised LGBT people not to travel there. But when their main purpose in the system is to make sure people like Corbyn don't get elected, as opposed to following the progressive set of ideals of their voters, this is the kind of leaders you get.

You can also see the mechanism that pushes systems to the right in action there: Labour gets impopular as a result (of this and other things obviously), they govern like conservatives so conservatives don't represent change, and Reform is currently on top of polls even with all the negative publicity effect cause by Trump and Musk around the far right.

On April 28 2025 08:03 WombaT wrote:

Some felt this was almost inevitably going to happen as the devolved Scottish Parliament brought in their own rulings on trans issues that some felt went ‘too far’ or were too permissive, and basically made legal challenge inevitable.

I’m not saying I personally agree with that assessment, but it’s a reasonably prominently held one and probably worth mentioning for context

It’s a deeply tiresome one, and, as per usual attempts to simplify and bring clarity, if anything just bring more edge cases and confusion.

And even attempts within somewhat reasonable parameters are often driven by anti-trans activists, so I find a real undercurrent of bigotry underneath things I might consider reasonable otherwise.

I’d absolutely feel that a political target is on my back if I was a trans person in the UK these days, absolutely it obviously is so.

On April 28 2025 19:53 baldgye wrote:



Regardless on your stance on the matter, it was extremely dissapointing to see the glee with which the people (women from what I've seen reported) celebrated this decision. Popping champaign outside of court at this news sends a pretty clear message.
It's a shame that this topic never gets the good faith debate that is required to make fair and balanced laws.

On April 28 2025 19:53 baldgye wrote:
Regardless on your stance on the matter, it was extremely dissapointing to see the glee with which the people (women from what I've seen reported) celebrated this decision. Popping champaign outside of court at this news sends a pretty clear message.
It's a shame that this topic never gets the good faith debate that is required to make fair and balanced laws.

On April 28 2025 23:02 Uldridge wrote:


We're in the realm of tribalism at the moment because that the only thing that is left. We're suffocating in nuance and it costs a lot of people so much effort or stress (i.e. energy), that they resort to the simpler dichotomous versions and latch onto it in a cult like manner.
People need to figure too many things out by themselves because too much has been disrupted in the last 2 decades. Sometimes it feels like everyone has become slightly psychotic. And it's very difficult for a parliament who has almost no actual finger on the pulse.

On April 28 2025 23:21 baldgye wrote:



I guess it's by design to stop any meaningful and considered debates and conversations from happening...

On April 28 2025 19:53 baldgye wrote:



Regardless on your stance on the matter, it was extremely dissapointing to see the glee with which the people (women from what I've seen reported) celebrated this decision. Popping champaign outside of court at this news sends a pretty clear message.
It's a shame that this topic never gets the good faith debate that is required to make fair and balanced laws.

On April 29 2025 00:03 baldgye wrote:
I wish there was a serious UK party that was fully backing a ban on the marketing algorithms that social media companies used