With enormous regret, SLAB is today advising supporters not to vote for ANY Scottish Labour candidate in this election. There are several pro-trans Labour candidates standing on 7 May, but a vote for them would now sadly be an endorsement of explicit transphobia. #NoVotesLabourInMay #TransRightsNow

Oh hey this is some of my favourite right wing doublethink - they say on the one hand that identity politics are bullshit, that identities and associated experiences don't matter and don't need accounting for... But then place people they like on a pedestal on the basis of identity and experience.

I may as well keep repeating that the UK is walking briskly down this same path and, unless courts and parliaments act quickly to pull it out of this barrel roll it won't just be be trans people who are hurt.

one of my favorite moments of TNG is when Picard is immediately unable to contain his horse autism

cmon man you're not supposed to just tweet this stuff out

Indeed, GPEW and Die Linke seem to have been on a similar trajectory recently - Die Linke has seen explosive growth in the last year and it's not because they support cuts.

But go on, tell me which *actual* GPEW policies (not long term hopes) you think are far left.
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You appear to be misinformed. GPEW backs 'humanitarian, diplomatic and *security* support for Ukraine', and a deeper defence relationship with Europe. Also, Die Linke certainly don't seem to support social spending cuts? They *did*, and it nearly killed them. Now they do not.
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'Far left' and yet the policies are broadly just standard European social democracy. Even the supposed 'we must leave NATO' policy is actually 'we should reform it or else construct an alternative, without the US and with a no first use nuclear policy'.

Honestly, I'm off to do other things now. Ross Greer is not even the only leader of the SGP, and he certainly isn't in charge of GPEW policies. Reforming NATO is a real policy, and not *joining* it as an independent nation is one too. That's all, have fun being mad online, and goodbye.

Cool, then complain about him personally over that rather than just railing against everything the Greens say and pretending they don't have policies.
bsky.app/profile/mech...

Zach Polanski is not the party. He isn't going to come up with the whole plan solo, and GPEW policy presently remains reforming NATO from within.

For the SGP, the question would be whether to *join* after independence, and they think it'd be better to be like Ireland. What more policy is necessary?

As for Ross Greer - sounds like you have a personal animus towards him too. Maybe you should stop attacking the various Green Parties of the entire UK just because you don't like the guy who currently leads one of them. 'It doesn't exist' isn't a real complaint about a future facing policy.
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'The alternative doesn't exist'

Neither do hospitals until they are built, or unions until they are made. Like, what a bizarre response.

'We want to build an alternative to NATO'

'It doesn't exist'

Well yeah... Because it hasn't been built yet. Fucking hell man.
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That is a policy. It is not 'no alternative, we're taking our ball and going home'.

For Ross Greer, I don't know if he'd join that alternative, because I'm not sure anyone has asked him. He probably doesn't make childish puns out of your name though, so there's a moral win there.
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The proposal is to functionally have a NATO that doesn't have a US in it. You mentioned Polanski - current GPEW policy is to try and do that from within, reforming the existing NATO. Polanski's personal view is the alternative - building a new one with existing members - is more viable.
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Alright fine, sure, maybe it's a bit of a dig to phrase it that way.

But the thing is, it isn't sealioning to ask if you genuinely think a European alliance isn't a real alternative. Because I'm not asking in bad faith. I genuinely want to know if you think an alternative alliance is impossible.

Not whole cloth - the alternative is obviously a European defensive alliance that isn't focused around the US, which has been a pretty common talking point in the last year. Is it not a real alternative for them either? Or is it just the UK that's not allowed better things?
bsky.app/profile/euan...

Benjamin Netanyahu’s long career was built on conflict avoidance—then, October 7 transformed and radicalized him, @Yair_Rosenberg argues:

OMFG they think we are the dumbest people who ever lived.

I just can't believe we'd be having a discussion about divisive politics in the same way if Goodwin, an actual blood and soil nationalist who would dispute if those same Muslim voters were English, had won. I can't believe we're having it without evidence that Muslim voters did swing majorly Green!

"Socially conservative muslim voters chose the trans positive left wing woman for the party led by a gay Jewish man because of patriarchal family voting built on a sectarian hatred of Israel" Requires a series of logical leaps so large that it's astonishing it's become embedded logic.

this is so good. they're realising about a decade after everyone else has, mind

Yes - a poor mandate with an outsized majority won through the vagaries of the voting system and half the opposition staying at home or getting spoilered by third parties. In any reasonable setup they'd have been scrambling for a coalition.

'If we insist on having a single seat system, then there should be ranked choice voting to ensure majority support for a candidate.'

Direct quote from the very first response I gave that included a solution. All I did was expand on that afterwards to say I would prefer a wider reform.

You *literally* asked how else it should work.

Okay, and? We're obviously not just talking about this one election, but about the generalities of how it *should* work. You're just being obtuse and acting like better things aren't possible, we should just accept that 28% support for a winning candidate is fine forever.

Like, stop acting as if this is some bold uncharted territory, and not a solved problem in most European countries, including in both Scotland and Wales!

I am suggesting that we reconsider the whole system. If we insist on having a single seat system, then there should be ranked choice voting to ensure majority support for a candidate. But better than we move to some sort of multi seat STV, so results are proportional at national level.

This means that whether your views will ever have *any* local representation at all depends on the lottery of where you live, and whether you have *national* representation depends often on a relatively small number of swing seats.

Good proportional systems resolve both issues.

The average constituency seat in the UK either never has political representation for a fraction of voters because it's ultra safe for one party, or it's a marginal that has disproportionate power at national level by swinging elections, but in turn represents less than half its own electorate.

So? It has the same electoral system as the other 649 - this 'one seat' replicated across the UK determines the government.

I've never understood the obsession with FPTP in the UK and US as if it's a *good* system and not just an easy one. Most of the developed world has moved on for a reason.