How have your politics changed?

[Abertawe]

The problem is that many do still have a problem that People identify as transsexual and they rightly want equality as they are still discriminated against.

It's gone a bit weird though.https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/spo...on-let-first-transgender-weightlifter-compete

 

[johnnytodd]

Universal income should only be available to people who have worked for 25 years paying tax in UK.....immigrants get fuck all until 25 years too....that will stop the scroungers flooding in every day.

 

[Indian Dan]

It's gone a bit weird though.https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/spo...on-let-first-transgender-weightlifter-compete

Saw that Frank (Jane) Maloney on Celebrity Mastermind last week.

Has anyone told him/her more work needs doing

 

[Abertawe]

Saw that Frank (Jane) Maloney on Celebrity Mastermind last week.

Has anyone told him/her more work needs doing

No issue with people paying to change their 'gender' if that's what they wanna do but this equality liberal shit is coming to a head with transgenda athletes. What's it gonna take for divs to realise we're not actually equal, usain bolt winning women's gold?

 

[Jockney]

Wasn't the wrestling case to do with the regulatory body not allowing him to compete in the men's division? There is a very simple solution there.

I don't think some mild confusion in the case of a handful of transgender professional athletes is indicative of anything coming to a head. If inconvenience for the sports entertainment industry is enough to turn people into complete reactionaries on this issue then it's a sure sign that we've got a long way to go

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

I for one draw the line at questionable results in Olympic 100 metre races.

shot at defending my country.

 

[Martino Quackavelli]

The one good thing about being 62 is, generally, you don't really give much of a fuck about anything any more.

I've lived through the 3 day week, Thatcherism, 15% interest rates and been shot at defending my country.

Various so-called fashionable themes have come and gone which right royally pissed me off - the present one is the 'trans gender' bollocks.

I have no problem with a bird wanting bollocks or a bloke wanting tits and a minge - just stop banging on about it, ffs. There's too much of a 'poor little me' attitude about so many things these days. Whatever happened to keeping schtum and getting on with your life? Drama queens the lot of 'em.

Am I allowed to say queens these days?

He says, as he complains about people complaining.

 

[Abertawe]

Caster Semenya for instance shouldn't be allowed to compete. The way the media put the spotlight on her was terrible. It's very unfortunate but she shouldn't be competing in the women's format.

 

[Son of Cod]

The one good thing about being 62 is, generally, you don't really give much of a fuck about anything any more.

I've lived through the 3 day week, Thatcherism, 15% interest rates and been shot at defending my country.

Various so-called fashionable themes have come and gone which right royally pissed me off - the present one is the 'trans gender' bollocks.

I have no problem with a bird wanting bollocks or a bloke wanting tits and a minge - just stop banging on about it, ffs. There's too much of a 'poor little me' attitude about so many things these days. Whatever happened to keeping schtum and getting on with your life? Drama queens the lot of 'em.

Am I allowed to say queens these days?

3 day week?! What an absolute joke! No wonder you're such a bigot with work ethics like that!

 

[Red]

These lefties make me sick they whinge and moan about everything. The old bird did deserve a holiday but why should we the tax payer pay for it?

She should have been allowed 2 weeks grace go ride a camel and then come back and sign on without being sanctioned.

Then you got them moaning about shit jobs on offer at the dole office. Well because of your left wing, lazy bastard, everybody is equal views businesses don't want to invest over here. Everyone is selling off what they can in the UK because of your PC moaning types.

'oooh can't build a factory over there because some frog lives under the hedge'

The countries goosed because of hippies like Red.

People on JSA pay tax.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

Caster Semenya for instance shouldn't be allowed to compete. The way the media put the spotlight on her was terrible. It's very unfortunate but she shouldn't be competing in the women's format.

Absolute nonsense, that. Elite sports is full of people who are inhabit outer extremes of human biology. They're the strongest, fastest etc. To say to someone like Caster Semenya shouldn't be allowed to compete because she's biologically untypical in the wrong way.

Semanya's real problem is she demonstrates that gender-segregated sports are dependent on the fallacy of a male-female binary.

 

[Alty]

Absolute nonsense, that. Elite sports is full of people who are inhabit outer extremes of human biology. They're the strongest, fastest etc. To say to someone like Caster Semenya shouldn't be allowed to compete because she's biologically untypical in the wrong way.

Semanya's real problem is she demonstrates that gender-segregated sports are dependent on the fallacy of a male-female binary.

So what should we do? Categorise as best we can a la the Paralympics? Based on hormone levels?

 

[Abertawe]

Absolute nonsense, that. Elite sports is full of people who are inhabit outer extremes of human biology. They're the strongest, fastest etc. To say to someone like Caster Semenya shouldn't be allowed to compete because she's biologically untypical in the wrong way.

Semanya's real problem is she demonstrates that gender-segregated sports are dependent on the fallacy of a male-female binary.

I don't think you see male/female sports in the same way as most people. Caster shouldn't be racing with women, it's as simple as that laa.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

So what should we do? Categorise as best we can a la the Paralympics? Based on hormone levels?

Maybe - martial arts use weight categories, as a surrogate for "how hard can you punch someone", doesn't it?

 

[johnnytodd]

No th

People on JSA pay tax.

No they don't !

Think about it.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

Capitalism has perpetrated countless genocides for its foundational basis. Enclosure in England, the highland clearances in Scotland, the countless imperial wars and genocides of indigenous people that are still ongoing - the foundation of capitalism depended (depends) on the wholesale violent destruction of pre-capitalist society and dispossession of societies who believe in communal land ownership.

Even when Britain became the wealthiest country on earth because of the exploitation of its colonies, people still lived in slums in the big cities. It was only post-war socialism* that improved conditions and provided housing and healthcare for all. Nearly all of that has been rolled back and slum housing is beginning to re-emerge.

I'm not an apologist for state capitalist regimes - but those that have existed have drastically increased living standards for the vast majority. Life expectancy at birth jumped by 20 years in the first two decades of the PRC. India - with its colonial then capitalist administration, saw no equivalent jump in living standards and suffered an equally devastating and preventable famine.

That capitalism has temporarily retreated from parts of Andalucia for example, is not a sign of its benevolence, but its weakness. The people in Marinaleda or where will be ruthlessly crushed if Capitalism requires it. It's a myth that capitalism permits political freedom - as its long, bloody history attests.

* itself dependent on ruthless colonial exploitation, especially in Malaysia.

This seems more like a commentary on imperialism and authoritarianism than anything else. It's not like communist states haven't swallowed up their neighbours, funded violent revolutions abroad, or even murdered tens of millions of their own people in order to try to protect and perpetuate their ideologies.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

So what should we do?

You could make sports unisex.

 

[Abertawe]

You could make sports unisex.

Great point. True equality. Ian's binary fallacy logic would ultimately ensure women become redundant in the majority of competitive sports, all in the name of equality.

 

[Red]

No th
No they don't !

Think about it.

I have thought about it and looked into it some years ago......

https://www.gov.uk/income-tax/taxfree-and-taxable-state-benefits

 

[johnnytodd]

I have thought about it and looked into it some years ago......

https://www.gov.uk/income-tax/taxfree-and-taxable-state-benefits

Who pays for the benefits in the first place.......unbelievable.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

This seems more like a commentary on imperialism and authoritarianism than anything else. It's not like communist states haven't swallowed up their neighbours, funded violent revolutions abroad, or even murdered tens of millions of their own people in order to try to protect and perpetuate their ideologies.

Imperialism is driven by capitalism and capitalism depends on imperialism (or more specifically, depends on land/resource theft in the global south, together with the brutal exploitation of the working class there - and requires imperialist aggression in order to prevent those people from becoming revolutionary).

"Communist state" is something of a contradiction as in a communist society there can be no state. Neither the Soviet Union nor China claimed to be anything other than "state capitalist" societies - "state capitalist" societies where the state has a monopoly on capital. Neither Lenin nor Trotsky thought communism could be built in Russia - at least not the Russia that existed in the 1920s - and barring emergency measures like War Communism they didn't try to*.

But securing that state capitalism required the brutal suppression both workers' attempts at self-organising and also of peasants - who resisted the Red Army's requisition of food for the cities. These tensions between the Bolsheviks and the peasantry led to the horrors of collectivisation under Stalin**.

But that isn't how it had to be - and, after the revolution, Nestor Makhno defeated various imperial armies in southern Ukraine and established a libertarian communist society where rural communities, governed by peasant councils, freely exchanged goods with urban communities - under the protection of the Black Army*** from 1918 until their betrayal and murder by the Bolsheviks.

*they viewed Russia as insufficiently developed for communism and wanted a global revolution to replace state capitalism in Russia. That looked fairly likely in 1917, though much less likely in the late 1920s - which probably explains why the Soviet bureaucracy took over as a new ruling class.
**think it's important to state that despite all this, the Russian Revolution led to lasting advances in the conditions of the working classes in Russia.
***Course, South East Ukraine was the most industrialised and advanced area of the former Russian Empire so it's possible Trotsky was right - the industrialisation of Russia may have been necessary to defend the "revolution", and that could not have happened without the exploitation of the Russian working classes - which Makhnovism would not have permitted. More likely though Makhno was evidence that communism was workable and preferable to the Bolshevik alternative - and so he was a threat to them.

 

[Red]

Who pays for the benefits in the first place.......unbelievable.

Everybody who pays tax, which as I've already evidenced unemployed people themselves.

 

[johnnytodd]

Everybody who pays tax, which as I've already evidenced unemployed people themselves.

keep of them mushies lad, they're cooking your noggin