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describing your repeated actions isn't an attack of your personality, sound like jon ashworth

I disagree with you on many things, but I do my best not to attack you personally, and instead try to describe what I think and why I think it. Sometimes I don't even do that because I know it can be upsetting, and I don't want to upset anyone. I just like talking politics.

If this is going to become a thread where it's more about playing the man than the ball, I'm happy to respond in kind, but I don't think you'd like it very much.

i'd imagine it's the same legislative method as the other things they were in the house voting on in the kings speech, otherwise, why put anything in it at all?

This is what the SNP is relying on - people who aren't familiar with parliamentary process assuming that if the amendment passed, the cap would be removed. That's not how it works. If the amendment passed, it would amount to parliament saying they have no confidence in the government and their ability to pass their manifesto as set out in the King's / Queens speech. Most likely outcome based on precedent: government collapses and we go back to the country for another election.

This was a bit of SNP mischief making. McDonnell et al decided to go along with it - with predictable consequences.

If you were better informed you'd be more capable of disagreeing with me on the substance, instead of attacking me personally.

Would you like to explain to me the legislative mechanism through which this cap would've been lifted had the amendment passed?

Just in case anyone else hasn't bothered reading the story, this was a King's Speech debate - it wasn't about changing the law, it wasn't about anything that would've made a difference to people's lives. It was the government saying 'this is what we will do in this Parliament' and an opposition party with 9 MPs saying 'we'd do this instead'.

Labour is now a party of government, and no government would tolerate its own MPs voting for another parties policies over its own. That goes double for a King's Speech debate on the policy intent those MPs were elected on. King's Speech votes are de facto confidence motions.

These MPs chose to stand on our manifesto. They then voted to destabilise it. It's a very clear fuck around/find out situation.

I have a slightly different take on Cass because I simply can't find a higher evidence base, despite the fact that I don't like her conclusions. I have a feeling this is why Wes has gone along with it. It is gross, but I at least understand the logic and if you were feeling charitable you could call it 'evidence based'.

But Rosie Duffields' comments are straight up vile. She should be kicked out of the party for this. She won't be, but she should be. She is a bigot.

why does a trial have to be double blind if you have baseline data to work from?

Worth stating that Cass says these trials don't need to be double blind. The University of York (rather than Cass) was responsible for saying whether a study was or wasn't included, and they say they included around 60% of the existing papers - though it is fair to say that they only found 2% were of sufficiently high quality. They also say they didn't exclude on the basis of double blinding, which is as we all know not possible when a drug changes something physically obvious:

Blinding is a separate issue. It means that either the patient or the
researcher does not know if the patient is getting an active treatment
or a ‘control’ (which might be another treatment or a placebo).
Patients cannot be blinded as to whether or not they are receiving
puberty blockers or masculinising / feminising hormones, because the
effects would rapidly become obvious. Good RCTs can be conducted
without blinding.

The University of York’s systematic review search did not identify any
RCTs, blinded or otherwise, but many other studies were included. Most
of the studies included were called ‘cohort studies’. Well-designed
and executed high quality cohort studies are used in other areas of
medicine, and the bar was not set higher for this review; even so the
quality of the studies was mostly only assessed as moderate.

(source: https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/final-report-faqs/)

I’m not up on this in anyway, is banning puberty blockers a good thing or a bad thing?

I'm going to try to do something novel in the world of trans rights, I'm going to try to give you a balanced and fair overview of the science and what each 'side' says about it.

Scientifically speaking, puberty blockers are safe as hell. We've used them since the seventies to combat precocious puberty in children, and since the 80s to combat certain midlife conditions, also related to hormone production. They're safe for those use cases.

More recently (since about 1998), they've been used as a sort of delaying tactic for pre-pubescent teens who think they might be trans - they're seen by gender clinicians as being able to buy a teenager some time before they make any decisions about surgery etc. The Cass report said that as this was a novel use for puberty blockers compared to the use cases above, we should do more research, since we don't yet know if there's any irreversible effect of their use on (for example) a teenagers brain or bone development.

Important to note the Cass report did not recommend an outright ban, just more clinical research. But the government has taken this recommendation, and since clinical research happens before a drug is released to the public, that effectively means that people who used to be able to get puberty blockers on the NHS or privately can no longer do so. This is what's being called the 'ban'.

Labour has said they are "minded to renew the emergency banning order with a view to converting it to a permanent ban, subject to appropriate consultation”.That means trans teens will be unable to get these drugs, even privately. Which will mean trans teens going through a puberty they don't want - which must be horrific. And, arguably worse, trans teens for whom these drugs ARE working will have them taken away, and go through a puberty they thought they were saved from.

This is quite a challenging one. I'm very much pro trans rights, but I believe in evidence based medicine. If Cass is right that this is a novel use, and the impact on bone/brain development in teens is not yet understood, then I don't see why they should've been prescribed in the first place. On the other hand, we've been prescribing them since 1998 and isn't that trial enough? Banning them will lead to trans kids killing themselves. Not banning them might mean people who aren't trans being pushed into using puberty blockers without us understanding the impact. What's the right answer?

Is Badenoch as much of an odious cunt as Braverman? Surely not

Depends what you mean. They're both vile but Braverman feels more out and out swivel eyed lunatic whereas Badenoch is quite prepared to pretend to be normal in order to smuggle her awful views into the mainstream. Braverman seems to believe the awful things she says whereas with Badenoch it feels like she's prepared to say whatever awful thing she needs to to get her objective met.

Braverman is prepared to absorb/work with/align with Reform whereas Badenoch isn't. So I suspect Braverman would be worse for Labour, Badenoch better. But they'd both be terrible for the country.

Denial of racism takes many forms, including minimisation. Imo that's especially insidious because it effectively says Jewish people can't be trusted to accurately report the discrimination they face. Imagine saying that about any other racial or religious group?

And it's clearly a political position. If the EHRC ever pulled out their finger and issued a judgement against the Tories for their obvious racism, and on that same day Rishi Sunak said something as stupid as 'one abused MP is too many but the scale of the problem was dramatically overstated for political reasons' you'd have absolutely no problem recognising the issue. It's only Corbyn, and it's only Jews, where that principle doesn't apply.

i think whenever you take a wrist shot yourself, the watch looks bigger. I assume it's to do with perspective/distance

I've got one of those phones with different camera lenses on it. Each lens magnifies the watch face slightly differently.

I'm not sure if it's the same for every phone but on my one, the wide angle seems to have the least distortion, and the closeup one (which I'd instinctively want to use to take a picture of a phone) which most effectively magnifies the face and distorts it.

Here's my casio - one with the wide angle (on the left) and one with the closeup (on the right). It looks a lot more like the one on the left in real life!

People are still denying that antisemitism was a real problem in labour.

The quote you've selectively used there is actually quite interesting,
because while it criticises 'a lack of leadership within the Labour
Party', it stops short of apportioning blame for this.

You mean it stops short of specifically calling out Corbyn by name as the sole owner of the problem. And so it should. The role of EHRC was to determine whether a breach of equality law had happened, and it determined that it had, and that that was the fault of the leadership. Now, the leadership IS wider than simply Corbyn. But anyone reading that report is left in no doubt that Corbyn bore primary responsibility, since he also appointed the leadership team and approved the processes. He is the leader. He bears responsibility. Which makes his minimisation of the problem so grotesque.

As for your Forde report quote, that Jeremy Corbyn didn't engage in
requests to interview him was neither here nor there. Loads of people
declined to be interviewed, including many of those responsible for
the outbursts that sparked Forde being called in to investigate in the
first place. So to interpret that as 'not tackling the issue and not
taking it seriously' (by which you mean the issue of antisemitism) is
disingenuous at best.

The EHRC report says Corbyn didn't take the issue seriously. Forde goes quite a bit further: "there is enough evidence of direct intervention to support the conclusion that such interference went ebyond what was the legitimate interest of LOTO, most notably in relation to cases which involved allies of Jeremy Corbyn".

See the case of Glynn 'Jews in the gutter' Secker, whose investigation was lifted after Seamus Milne interfered to let him off the hook because 'Corbyn was interested in this one'. They didn't even use this example in the judgement!

And actually, it does matter how many people had been 'institutionally
discriminated against' when you're talking about the scale of
something. That EHRC found evidence it had happened in two cases where
it deemed the Labour Party was directly responsible. It also found
wider evidence of antisemitic behaviour - but not that much wider.
Nevertheless, the findings were acknowledged by Jeremy Corbyn when he
made the statement to which you object. And the gravity of it was
accepted. Nevertheless, the point that the scale was exaggerated still
stands.

If an institution is proven to have discriminated against a group of people on two occasions, then they have actually done so on many more. That's literally the point.

And you misunderstand Corbyn's point on that facebook post. He's not talking about the EHRC examples - even he wouldn't be that crass. He's referring to a bit of hagiography created by Bad News For Labour which he began to rely on after many years of telling us that he had no idea how much antisemitism there was in the party. https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-corbyns-claim-that-labour-antisemitism-numbers-are-exaggerated

As for the the tip of the iceberg thing - I read the same bit of the
EHRC report and if that iceberg consists of 18 further borderline
cases and evidence of antisemitic conduct among members (that were not
deemed the responsibility of the leader of the opposition), then it's
not exactly an iceberg, is it? More a perfectly visible snowball.

Page 8 of the report. I know you saw the phrase "This is by no means the full extent of the issues we identified within the files in our sample; it represents the tip of the iceberg" because it's directly above "18 borderline cases". You can argue with EHRC if you want. I wouldn't have the nerve.

But ultimately, you're saying Jeremy Corbyn should have had no right
to reply, which is pretty wild IMO.

He's perfectly entitled to say whatever he wants within the law, and nothing about what he said was illegal. By the same token, I'm entitled to point out that what he said was inappropriate, tone-deaf, and unprofessional, and I can see why the whip was instantly removed.

It's not a precis, it's a direct quote. The EHRC report has a whole chapter called 'A Failure of Leadership', page 100, but their view is best summarised by the following quote:

We found specific examples of harassment, discrimination and political
interference in our evidence, but equally of concern was a lack of leadership
within the Labour Party on these issues, which is hard to reconcile with its stated
commitment to a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism.

The Forde Report says the following:

"In contrast to the widespread response from the membership, some key figures within the Party were notably silent ... Regrettably, certain prominent members of the Party (including those central to the factual matrix) either declined to meet with the Panel or failed to respond to our requests for evidence. Most notably, while he was a signatory to a joint written submission, Jeremy Corbyn did not engage in our requests to interview him"

You are fundamentally wrong on your interpretation of the EHRC report btw. It does not matter if it found that Labour had institutionally discriminated against Jewish people on one or a hundred occasions, that it found we had done so at all IS the judgement. It had 220 complaints to choose from, of which it investigated 58, and 12 from the Labour Party itself. The detailed analysis it published to demonstrate the legitimacy of the ruling was literally the tip of the iceberg.

The scale of antisemitism in the party was way overstated for political reasons

This may be technically true, but many things are technically true and also utterly inappropriate, tone-deaf, and unprofessional to say. Corbyn was in charge when we received a statutory judgement that we had discriminated against Jewish people, institutionally. He was specifically called out for a failure of leadership in that judgement, and in the subsequent Forde report, in not tackling the issue and not taking it seriously.

There are people who could make this point. But he isn't one of them, and on that day least of all. It could've been a point of healing for our Jewish friends and allies. But once again Corbyn made it all about himself.

I'm a Labour Party member and treasurer for my local CLP.

Look. This is a safe space, so I'm just going to say it.

Have I been watching the election coverage too long or does Emily Thornberry have a really sexy voice?

Biggest thing is that they made BoE interest rate independent in the first week but you wouldn't have known that was the plan from the manifesto. They kept things cagey.

So I don't know if anyone else had the same problem as I did (too much high frequency reverb on vocal takes from a small and reflective room, making them sound tinny) but I picked up a foam reflection shield on amazon for £40 and it's incredible:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B098NN2MYW

I don't think you'd need one of these unless you're recording in a very tacky and small room - I'd never needed one before - but if you do have that problem, I fully recommend it. Now all I need to do is re-record all my guitar and vocal parts!

And no breathing!

That's a great shout. I'm mostly worried about acoustic instruments tbh - guitar, vocals - but those tips will work really well. I never thought a clothes horse could be so useful, but it makes total sense!

Morning all. Anyone had any experience in reducing room noise when recording using sensitive condenser mics? I always liked the sound of a room in a recording, and I never tried to hide it, but the latest place I've got (a box room) has the harshest high frequency reverb, it makes everything I record sound tinny as hell. There's no working with it.

What's good for sound deadening? Egg boxes on the wall? Sound blankets? Making a little vocal booth out of wooden framing and moving blankets? I'm all ears!

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/03/labour-nec-to-confirm-diane-abbott-reselection-despite-lies-tweet

How many second chances does Abbott get?

Rory Stewart's book about walking across Afghanistan gave me a real insight into the kind of person he is. I think if all Tories were like him, while I'd still never vote for them, I'd have much more understanding of and respect for why people did. He is a legitimate conservative - he wants to conserve things. He has as much in common with the Johnson/Sunak/Truss wing of the party as Luke Akehurst does with Richard Burgeon.