#Fuck Labour

[scottishcommune]

If anyone's wondering how the UK's Labour government is going, the news today is that they're planning more public spending cuts for the autumn, as well as ramping up deportations to levels not seen since 2018 under Theresa May

[noagskryf]

Labour: we want to support the public

Labour: we will keep the price cap on buses

Labour: but we will be making buses more expensive

Labour: also you can't drive places

Labour: and we won't fund councils to fix the roads

Labour: also we're ignoring that many places, especially rural areas, are difficult to get around in

Labour: we're also ignoring the fact that disabled people often need public transport because they can't drive for whatever reason

Labour: we're also ignoring the fact that kids rely on public transport because they can't drive and their parents might not be able to drive them

Labour: we support the public

[northern-punk-lad]

Labour proud to support attacking women of colour

[timey-acey222]

american politics: criminal vs dementia patient

british politics: terf vs terf

fuck this im moving to germany

[llyfrenfys]

I know the news about JK Rowling and Labour is bleak - but for those of you who didn't watch, yesterday I watched the BBC Wales leaders debate and the Tory (David T.C. Davies) said something about 'protecting women's rights from trans ideology'. To which members of the studio audience audibly groaned and a few shouted shame on you.

Yes, it's massively disappointing that Starmer is yet again trying to pander to the transphobes. But the debate last night was about cost of living, the NHS, the housing ladder, immigration and benefit reform. Most of the electorate (in the nicest possible way) don't care about trans people. Most people are fine with trans people and care more about being able to feed their kids than culture war policies.

Of course, if a Labour government gets in in Westminster we need to continue to hold them to account if they try and pursue any transphobic policy. But for now, pay it no mind and look after yourself.

[fondwand]

Labour won by a history making landslide-- and I hope what this bloody, broken country takes from that is a beginning, not an end. let this not be the only pitiful, half hearted move towards the left, towards a better country, that we make before returning to ouroboros levels of conservatism. let this just be the first stumbling step for change.

[shortqueershakespeare]

please please UK people remember to call and email your MPs, put pressure on them to convey that you DO NOT SUPPORT the genocide

push them to talk to the government about it

my MP is a piece of shit, so it won't move the needle much but at least he can't claim his constituents support this fucking genocide. express your disgust at the defunding of UNWRA. at the sending of weapons. Please, please, do what you can. If anyone has links to templates, please post them below but remember to tweak them slightly so that they don't get filtered out

complain to Keir Starmer if you're a labour party member. Complain if you're leaving because of this. Keep being vocal.

[sowhatifiliveinfukuoka]

[earhartsease]

jfc fuck Starmer (and in any case trans people's right to use the bathrooms of their gender is currently upheld in law)

oh of course it's the Times newspaper interviewing him, that bastion of respectable (i.e. moneyed) right wing british arseholes

[bisexualseraphim]

I gotta say, I am seriously fucking concerned with the amount of people here who seem to wholeheartedly believe that the correct answer to the genocide against Palestine is ANOTHER genocide except the other way around. Please stand back for 2 minutes and seriously think about whether you think it’s ever a helpful or just cause to advocate for the deaths of millions of people, especially when plenty of said people are Jews whose families fled there after barely surviving the Holocaust because hardly anywhere else would treat them like human beings or accept them at all since the antisemitism that allowed the Holocaust to happen was not solely in Germany and didn’t magically disappear after the war ended.

Look. The situation is simple when you boil it down to this: Israel is bombing and starving Palestinians like fish in a barrel and doesn’t want to allow aid to Gaza, which consists of a population of over 50% children. Israel allowed the Nakba and displacement of Palestinians for decades and tries to hide it from public view. This is genocide. The Israeli government is at fault for this. Israel holds the power here because they have the power to bomb and starve millions of people and force them out of their homes, and Palestine certainly does not. It’s an utterly horrific, inhumane thing to do with no excuses for it and it needs to stop. This is the simple part that is glaringly obvious for everyone to see and it’s almost laughable for anyone to deny it.

Okay. You’ve successfully identified the main problem and the “bad guy,” if you want to put it in childish simplistic terms. So the question now is: what next? Say Israel agrees to an immediate ceasefire. What do you, impassioned activist on the internet, propose should be done to solve this situation after that? What should be done to free the Israeli hostages? Do you think the UK and the US, two of the most powerful countries in the world who actively help Israel commit its atrocities against Palestine, will ever do anything to help the Palestinians once Israel loses its power, even if better governments are eventually elected? How should the Palestinian land be claimed back? Where should all the Israeli citizens go? Should they all be forced out to Europe and America, even if that isn’t where they originate from, where the already-rife antisemitism has spiked even further since October 7th and Jews who live thousands of miles from Israel and have nothing to do with Israel’s actions face horrific hate crimes every day? Do Israeli children deserve that? Who’s going to pay for their travel and accommodation? Or, should they all be allowed to stay there and live side by side with the Palestinians? Do you think most Palestinians would be happy to remain neighbours with the citizens of the country that has oppressed them so fiercely for over 75 years, even if said citizens didn’t partake in it or in fact opposed it? What about the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Arab or Palestinian? Do you hold the same opinion of foreign settlers in Israel as you do its citizens whom have made a home there for many generations? How do you discern between settlers and “real” Israelis? Do you see any difference between them at all? Why? And what should be done about Hamas, the group that openly calls for the genocide of all Jews around the world and commits war crimes against Israeli citizens? How much of the history behind Israel’s occupation of Palestine are you aware of? Do you think the British government should be held accountable for splitting Palestine in the first place? How would you go about that? Would it be fair to punish the British people for their government’s actions when British citizens didn’t vote for it? How does that compare to your view of Israel and its citizens, and why?

I am absolutely NOT asking trick questions here or trying to “gotcha!” anyone. I am asking these questions precisely BECAUSE they are extremely difficult to answer, with several of them contradicting each other, and they are meant to get an emotional reaction out of you. I certainly don’t know what the “correct” answers to most of those questions are, and that’s exactly my point: there is no simple answer to a problem that has been going on for decades with such a wide, complex history. Historians and political experts who know all the facts and have studied this shit for years don’t know the answer and it’s honestly insulting to all the people suffering to log on every day and see so many people go “actually 😌 I, a random 20-30 something year old on the internet who isn’t even touched by what’s happening in Palestine, have figured it out before everyone else! Just delete an entire country and all its citizens off the map 😊 This is a moral thing to suggest! And if you disagree with me you’re promoting Zionism/terrorism 😘” There are no simple answers and if you think there is one — and especially if you think that answer is to kick citizens out of the country their family has lived in for generations — then you are both wilfully ignorant and evidently fuelled more by hatred than an actual desire for peace and an end to death and oppression and I don’t believe there is a crumb of sincerity in your activism.

Am I naive enough to think that fighting against oppression and occupation is always going to be peaceful? Obviously not. But you’ve got to think about where and when said violence is actually going to be beneficial, and where and when it’s violence purely for the sake of violence, which is NEVER justified. You can’t advocate for human rights and then turn around and say “oh, but not for you.” EVERYONE deserves food and water. EVERYONE deserves shelter. EVERYONE deserves to receive treatment for sickness or injury. NOBODY deserves cruel and unusual punishment or torture. And EVERYONE deserves to be alive. Those are essential human rights that should never, ever be denied wherever it is possible to give them, and disagreeing with that reflects extremely poorly on you and your principles. Think about what narrative you are pushing when you claim an entire people “deserves” bad things. The constant dehumanisation I see happening in online activism (and far too often in real life too) is actually terrifying and if you want to do some real good in the world, I need everyone reading this to examine their potential internal prejudices, even the ones you don’t think you have, and think about who exactly you’re helping when you express thoughts that perpetuate them, and who you may be harming in the process.

Anyway, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way…

Here are some useful resources if you want to make a difference and help people:

Standing Together (an Israeli movement advocating for ceasefire and peace between Israelis and Palestinians)

Zochrot (an Instagram page that seeks to educate the public about the Nakba)

Parents’ Circle (an organisation run by relatives of Israelis and Palestinians killed in the conflict who advocate for peace)

Operation Olive Branch (a Google Doc of Palestinian families seeking evacuation)

Mesarvot Network (an Instagram page run by young Israelis seeking to refuse the IDF draft and end military violence committed by both Hamas and the IDF)

Other Gaza aid organisations to donate to

[the-notorious-agp]

Happy election day UK folks. How are we all feeling about our choices at the polls?

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

The Labour party have blood on their hands.

[hillo-onyx]

Terrifyingly ghoulish, hope this gets reversed soon but seriously this can't be legal. Even though apparently it is!

[curiouslyodd]

In case the widespread adoption of the godawful, unscientific, exceedingly academically dubious Cass Review wasn't enough, the Prime Minister today announced that if his party remains in power they'll be forcing disabled people back into work by removing the ability for GPs to issue 'fit notes'.

'Ah,' says people who haven't been following British politics, 'so there's hope that this won't happen if the Labour Party gets in!'

Nope. Labour has been vocal about their promises to 'tackle the number of people off work due to long-term illness' - something I'm sure the Tories were glad to see as it made today's announcement politically acceptable.

This is perverse. There's a pretty big reason that there's been such an increase in the number of people with chronic illness - the ongoing pandemic of a disease with a high chance of causing disabling damage to the body. The pandemic that the Tory government let rip through the country, that both the government and Labour are pretending doesn't exist any more and wasn't that bad anyway.

Another big reason is that work has become increasingly toxic and overwhelming to the point people aren't able to cope any more. Quotas keep rising, everybody's expected to work faster, the brief respite that was working from home was extinguished by property owners, people's jobs are constantly at risk and they're taking on more work as their colleagues are fired, and all the while the cost of living is skyrocketing and wages are stagnant. Is it any wonder that people are developing crippling anxiety and depression? That they're making themselves sick through overwork?

Where are they expecting the jobs to come from? Most of the unemployed disabled people I know (me included) are looking for work despite being signed off, and it's impossible. Employers that adequately accommodate disabled workers are extremely rare. Usually you get the most perfunctory of 'support' offered, and get penalised when your disability affects your productivity (but not in those words - they know how to structure things to avoid discrimination lawsuits).

If they had any interest in actually improving work access then they'd institute a mass reform of employment law and culture. That's not what they're suggesting. This isn't about that. It's about dismantling disability welfare.

[that-one-gay-from-the-gay-club]

u can rant about uk politics if u want, that’s what i’ve been doing all morning

Someone asked this VERY QUICKLY after i asked and you know what fair enough

So. Politics.

First of all FUCK EVERYOME WHO TACTICALLY VOTED FOR LABOUR. DID YOU EVEN LOOK AT WHAT YOURE VOTING IN.

Yes, kier starmer has promised to end conversation therapy, but he is still transphobic. Hes said some transphobic shit and do you know what, nobody gets milkshaked twice for being a good person (yes, twice, look it up)

The best party is probably the green party imo, their only fault is that they dont want to go nuclear (if one singular person asks ill do a rant on nuclear power too.). Thats it. Shockingly for politics, theyre a non racist, non homophobic party, who want to conserve the environment.

Tactical voting is not a good thing. Yes, yay, no more conservatives, now we have a laboir government!! Oh, no, now the labour government is doing their own thing. Like last election i remember rishi sunak saying "yeah no we want an inclusive space for ALL withoit discrimination" and now look. I will bet that very quickly, labour will move away from that promise of supporting trans people. And what do they plan to do on resetting the publics view of trans people? Thats so stupid, the damage has been done. All they can do that is pro-trans people is make some laws easier, make it easier for trans people to transition, but I'd put money on that not happening. I dont think theyll make it harder, but it definetly won't be easier. It will already cost me 1.2k every year to get confirmation of my gender dysphoria so i can start testosterone. The labour government still require a diagnosis of gender dysphoria for a person to be "allowed" to be trans.

Add on to this post, i know when you google it labour seems like a not so bad group of people, but theyre not, theyre really not.

"oh mason this rant is centered around trans people, they have other good things going" like what? Like their promise to reduce ALL immigration? Where will they send the migrants huh? Also. IM A TRANS PERSON. TRANS RIGHTS ARE IMPORTANT TO ME.

Do not tactically vote. Vote for the best party, because if everyone does that, the best party will get in

[scottishcommune]

Starmer’s Labour Is Not A Force For Good