Starmer supports the ban on trans people to use either men's or women's bathrooms. This makes it impossible for trans people to hold down a job.
As far as I understand it, the sources you cite indicate that trans people are supposed to use their birth gender or neutral toilets. That might make things unpleasant but not impossible.
Lērisama wrote: ↑Wed Sep 03, 2025 3:15 pm
About Starmer generally, who knows what he really thinks; everything he does is in response to the right wing press getting angry at something and then choosing semi-random policies to U-turn on. I don't think that counts as left, but it's ntot he prototypical centrist either.
I'm honestly asking whether he supports any leftist policies, because I haven't heard of any.
[/quote]I have mentioned some higher in the thread e.g. natioanlisation and increased funding of public services. Also, reversing the Uganda expulsions.
rotting bones wrote: ↑Thu Sep 04, 2025 5:18 am
Not quite. As an old fashioned leftist, I don't believe humans have agency. I think humans are semi-random assemblages of particles that aren't special enough to have a nature, let alone principles. I see society as a materialist system that evolves through feedback loops that occasionally cause major state transitions.
In this view, reactionaries don't support reactionary politics because they are reactionaries. Humans don't have values. Reactionary politics is a social institution that is generated by the feedback loops of the current social system. If the relevant loops were redirected at a fundamental enough level, the combination of ideas we call reactionary politics will no longer command the same power that it currently does.
What would such a change look like? This answer has many dimensions. For example, it is known that the uncertainties caused by a capitalist economy lead people to seek shelter with the traditionalism fascists offer (cf. terror management theory). We need a friendlier economy, progressive social institutions, to get money out of politics so that businesses can't bribe politicians, etc.
In other words, a major overhaul. That's systemic change. What could justify such drastic measures? The power of fascist disregard for the weakest sections of society, the support for genocide, and the decreasing reliability of the old way of doing things could motivate us to look to the future instead of keeping the clunky old engine going.
Surely an old-fashioned leftist would support a slogan such as "Workers of the world, unite!". That is encouraging workers to act on their agency, not denying it.
Lērisama wrote: ↑Thu Sep 04, 2025 2:43 am
It is exactly that. The Scottish legislation was blocked by the Tories¹, not Starmer, so we don't know what he would have done, unless he made a statement at the time, which I don't think he did, as this was when he was running as a block of wood painted grey, to borrow Raphael's phraising, although I could easily be wrong.
Ah, that's my fault. I didn't realise that the block to the law could be lifted.
LZ – Lēri Ziwi
PS – Proto Sāzlakuic (ancestor of LZ)
PRk – Proto Rākēwuic
XI – Xú Iạlan
VN – verbal noun
SUP – supine
DIRECT – verbal directional
My language stuff
MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Thu Sep 04, 2025 9:26 am
As far as I understand it, the sources you cite indicate that trans people are supposed to use their birth gender or neutral toilets. That might make things unpleasant but not impossible.
The effect is that trans people won't be able to use public bathrooms: https://youtu.be/dxiih2vvDLg Honestly, I'm concerned about straight people too since anti-trans activists believe they can tell birth genders apart visually, and they are dramatically wrong about that.
MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Thu Sep 04, 2025 9:26 am
Surely an old-fashioned leftist would support a slogan such as "Workers of the world, unite!". That is encouraging workers to act on their agency, not denying it.
If you read the Communist Manifesto carefully, it says the system generates dissent from within itself.
Rigid logic is a hindrance in communicating science. In science, you have a model. Features of the model can be described in ambivalent ways. You can say any actor both has agency and doesn't have it in different senses. If I were arguing with Eddy saying we are powerless to stop the far right, I would say we do have the agency to stop them. In the context of the total system, we do not have the agency to choose our will in the first place.
The new, as of yet nameless, Corbyn and Sultana left wing party now seems destined to be the new, as of yet nameless, Corbyn or Sultana party¹. I'm ambivalent about this, as a) I don't trust Corbyn to implement Corbynism or a foreign policy of any kind, because he's much too naïve, but I'm not yet convinced Sultana is any better, and b) FPTP means the better this does, the more likely Reform will win the next election, so no matter how much I'd have agreed with it's not-yet-in-existance policies, given where I live I couldn't have voted for it in good conscience
In other news Donald Trump managed to refrain from anything too dramatic on his visit. The only really newsworthy thing is Trump demonising asylum seekers #1273, but he managed to refrain from doing it more than once, and even acknowledged that Trump/Starmer disagreement exists and is legitimate, so it seems to be being taken as a win² over here
¹ From the details I've seen, I think Corbyn will end up in control of the not-yet-existant party machinery
² Or at least a non-loss
LZ – Lēri Ziwi
PS – Proto Sāzlakuic (ancestor of LZ)
PRk – Proto Rākēwuic
XI – Xú Iạlan
VN – verbal noun
SUP – supine
DIRECT – verbal directional
My language stuff
Lērisama wrote: ↑Thu Sep 18, 2025 4:35 pm
The new, as of yet nameless, Corbyn and Sultana left wing party now seems destined to be the new, as of yet nameless, Corbyn or Sultana party¹.
² Or at least a non-loss
Lērisama wrote: ↑Thu Sep 18, 2025 4:35 pm
The new, as of yet nameless, Corbyn and Sultana left wing party now seems destined to be the new, as of yet nameless, Corbyn or Sultana party¹.
² Or at least a non-loss
Splitters!
It writes itself, doesn't it?
"But he had reckoned without my narrative powers! With one bound I narrated myself up the wall and into the bathroom, where I transformed him into a freestanding sink unit.
We washed our hands of him, and lived happily ever after."
I have not seen anything that confirms the suspect's motivation, but what I do have to say is that oppression and bigotry do not justify oppression and bigotry, no buts or ifs -- for instance, we have seen so many cases where, say, Israel's war in Gaza, as utterly horrific as it is, has been used implicitly to justify or excuse anti-Semitism, when it must be emphasized that there are no 'legitimate' targets, oppression and bigotry are wrong no matter whom they are targeted at.
Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Oct 02, 2025 9:28 am
I have not seen anything that confirms the suspect's motivation, but what I do have to say is that oppression and bigotry do not justify oppression and bigotry, no buts or ifs -- for instance, we have seen so many cases where, say, Israel's war in Gaza, as utterly horrific as it is, has been used implicitly to justify or excuse anti-Semitism, when it must be emphasized that there are no 'legitimate' targets, oppression and bigotry are wrong no matter whom they are targeted at.
I wholeheartedly support this statement.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf My conlang pages Yrgidrámamintí!
Is it just me, or does Manchester seem disproportionately prone to majorish¹ terrorist attacks² for its size? Or am I just underestimating the size of Manchester?
¹ As in, not a massive coordinated effort by many people, but multiple fatalities
² It's obviously too early to know the motive for certain³ but it has now been officially been declared a “terrorist incident”
³ Although we can take a pretty good guess, given a Synagogue was attacked
LZ – Lēri Ziwi
PS – Proto Sāzlakuic (ancestor of LZ)
PRk – Proto Rākēwuic
XI – Xú Iạlan
VN – verbal noun
SUP – supine
DIRECT – verbal directional
My language stuff
Slightly worrying: "Prime Minister Keir Starmer says "additional police assets" will be deployed at synagogues across the country after the attack in Manchester.". I would have thought that mosques were also at increased risk, and not necessarily from Jews.
I could have asked this in the English Questions thread over in the Languages forum, but I didn't want to derail that thread into a potentially political discussion, so I'm asking it here instead:
Where does the habit of using "Empire" as a proper noun come from? That is, the way some academics and political commentators and activists will, for instance, instead of talking about "the history of the Empire" or "the history of Imperialism", or "the history of the British Empire", simply talk about "the history of Empire"?
I must admit that I find that habit a bit weird myself.
Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Jan 12, 2026 5:31 am
I could have asked this in the English Questions thread over in the Languages forum, but I didn't want to derail that thread into a potentially political discussion, so I'm asking it here instead:
Where does the habit of using "Empire" as a proper noun come from? That is, the way some academics and political commentators and activists will, for instance, instead of talking about "the history of the Empire" or "the history of Imperialism", or "the history of the British Empire", simply talk about "the history of Empire"?
I must admit that I find that habit a bit weird myself.
It doesn't seem weird to me because Kingdom in United Kingdom is also in capital letters.
The forum ate my massive post on local government reorganisation, and I forgot to copy it before I posted (silly Lērisama), so here's a slightly abridged¹ rant.
Traditionally, local government has had three tiers, county councils with no power or money², district councils with no power or money and parish or town councils with no power or money. The latter two are merged in cities and towns large enough for their own district-tier government. There are also unitary authorities, which were invented in the 90s to merge the top two tiers, either to take a large city or town out of its county, or for efficiency™⁷, and have been popular with central government in all situations ever since⁸, and police and crime commissioners (PCCs), which were invented in 2012 by the coalition government so you could vote for someone you've never heard of to do something to do with the police you don't understand for an area that makes no sense. I only mention these because the only uncontroversial element of this reform⁹ is to abolish them.
Every now and then central government finds a local government fad, or an obsession with efficiency™, and tries something out on the places where that idea actually makes sense/wherever is unlucky enough to be a test case. The current fads are devolution, where the top tier of council, or multiple working together in a combined strategic authority¹⁰ gains groundbreaking new powers to do things like run the local busses, or do whatever it is the PCCs do. This is not to be confused with devolution¹¹, where Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland get most government functions being given to the national Parliament/Senedd¹²/Assembly.
The current government has decided that we all need to be brought up to the current thinking on how to make efficient™ local government. This means abolishing all the two tier¹³ authorities, and strongly encouraging everyone without a mayor to form a combined strategic authority with one¹⁴. In times gone by, they would blindly draw lines on the map and then moderate their proposals when the local MPs make an uproar, but this is the 2020s, and no government will do something unpopular without creating a scapegoat if it can help it. Therefore the minister made groups of all the areas with 2 tier government and wrote to all the councils to tell them that they have to come up with proposals for division in to unitaries, ideally agreeing with the other councils in the area, but they don't have to, so the government only has to decide between different options and not make the unpopular maps themselves.
It is of course impossible to find anything other than the pure maps¹⁵, like the reasoning behind them, in anything more than a press release where they say how wonderful they are, so I'm complaining to the ZBB in lieu of writing an angry letter about how dare my council want to put [probably guessible from the information I've posted, but whatever] with [ditto], and to go with [other option] as the lesser of two evils.
¹ My original got up to footnote 17. I don't think I have that in me this time.
² All local government is funded through a mixture of centrally determined yearly grants³, a portion of the business rates, again set centrally, and council tax⁴, which can be varied locally, with a maximum rise of 5%⁵⁶.
³ These regularly get cut or the formula used changes, so councils can't do any long term planning.
⁴ A property tax based on the theorised value of a home from an external assessment in 1991, when they needed a quick temporary poll tax replacement, which hasn't been changed since. For some reason this is the most unpopular tax in Britain.
⁵ Ish. All the different local authority types have a percentage and or absolute maximum, some of which is reserved for adult social care, which averages out to around 5 percent.
⁶ Unless they have a referendum that they have literally always lost. This can be waived or the threshold raised by central government for councils in exteme financial distress.
⁷ This will come up a lot.
⁸ But not so much with the people forced into them outside the big conurbation example. People tend to either want county-level government, for tradition, or smaller areas, to avoid being lumped with [local hate town here], and unitary authorities, with their government approved ‘ideally ≥ 500 000’ size are awkward halves and thirds of counties with no tradition of being lumped together and including [local hate town].
⁹ Except among the actual police and crime commissioners, but noöne knows who they are, so that's fine.
¹⁰ Don't ask me. I thought they were just an exuse to give a mayor to mutliple local government authorities, but apparently you can have mayorless ones – I even live in one, which I misses because it doesn't seem to do anything.
¹¹ Note the subtle lack of change in the spelling. The former kind can be called English devolution if you need to disambiguate.
¹² Not a simple Latin borrowing it turns out, but a borrowing from either Senātus or Synodus, with the second syllable being replaced with the abstract noun suffix -edd, which is nice.
¹³ Parish/town councils don't count for this, I think because they don't provide any government services.
¹⁴ I think the reform makes the link between devolution and mayors explicit, but I lost track at this point.
¹⁵ I think you get more information once the consultation comes out, but it hasn't yet for my area, and you'd think you could find the full proposals they sent to the government somewhere.
Edit: for some reason bbcode was turned off.
LZ – Lēri Ziwi
PS – Proto Sāzlakuic (ancestor of LZ)
PRk – Proto Rākēwuic
XI – Xú Iạlan
VN – verbal noun
SUP – supine
DIRECT – verbal directional
My language stuff
I needed to rant about it, because I am very annoyed with what's been done around this. What I missed out from the abridged version, and probably should have included, as it's a significant reason for the rant, is that the government set an impossible task. For some areas there are no useful units of the approved size of ≥500 000, and even the ‘if it's politically useful¹’ ≥300 000 is difficult to come by, and when you've added in that they must form useful geographic and economic units and the implied command of not cause everyone to hate you, something has to give. You can either try and get your own local district a good council and mess up the rest of the county (my council's approach, only they botched it even for themselves, because they're just too small to make it work), or make something where everyone's about equally unhappy and the criteria are just about met, which is what responsibile councils do.
¹ Officially it's something along the lines of ‘if you give a convincing argument,’ but I'm translating
LZ – Lēri Ziwi
PS – Proto Sāzlakuic (ancestor of LZ)
PRk – Proto Rākēwuic
XI – Xú Iạlan
VN – verbal noun
SUP – supine
DIRECT – verbal directional
My language stuff
I managed to find the full documents! It turns out you have to google to find [council submitting proposal X]'s section on local government reorganisation¹, then follow the link to the council meeting where this was discussed, find the agenda and then download the pdfs of the documents² endorsed at that meeting. This is an entirely obvious process that I'm shocked I hadn't already worked out.
¹ Because of course their search function is broken
² Yes, documents plural
Edit: A greengrocer struck.
Last edited by Lērisama on Mon Jan 19, 2026 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
LZ – Lēri Ziwi
PS – Proto Sāzlakuic (ancestor of LZ)
PRk – Proto Rākēwuic
XI – Xú Iạlan
VN – verbal noun
SUP – supine
DIRECT – verbal directional
My language stuff
