flamingos

Labour has called on Nigel Farage to take action after an image emerged from a Reform local election stunt depicting female cabinet ministers as cows in an abattoir.

The roadside setup in Hertsmere, Hertfordshire, shows deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, chancellor Rachel Reeves and education secretary Bridget Phillipson depicted as cows waiting to be slaughtered.

The stunt, pictured by a passerby and passed to The Independent, was damned as “dehumanising” and “misogynistic”. Reform local election stunt depicting leading female cabinet ministers as cows in an abattoir.
[…]
Reform did not initially answer questions on the issue, but responding to The Independent at a press conference in London, Mr Farage said: “All sorts of appalling things get said and done by people fighting in elections, at local and national level, and we get it done to us.

“If one or two of our people do it to them, maybe they think it’s funny. It probably isn’t very funny.

“I can’t pretend we’re perfect. What I can tell you is that one of the ways in which we have professionalised this party is to put people through a vetting process. And I think we’ve come up with a slate of elected councillors and mayors and a new MP that we can genuinely be very proud of.

“If there is the odd lapse in taste, then I regret it, but it’s kind of called politics.”

Good day all, in response to the increase in transphobia we've experience since the For Women Scotland v Scotland Supreme Court decision, seemingly a mix of genuine malice and people tripping up with a topic they're unfamiliar with, I've taken the initiative to write some guidelines on how to engage in the topic and clearing up some common misconceptions.

https://guide.feddit.uk/politics/transphobia.html

I'm not all that happy with them, I want something more comprehensive but my time has been pretty taxed lately and I don't want my perfectionism to stand in the way of having these out. If there's any issues, glaring omissions or whatnot, then please let me know or make a pull request here.

Context

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Keir Starmer is at odds with his powerful chief of staff over whether to scrap a two-child cap on benefits, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, a costly policy move that the British prime minister is under pressure to make after bruising local election results.

Starmer favors lifting the limit as a way to demonstrate the ruling Labour Party’s commitment to alleviating child poverty, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing internal government matters. His chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, however, has been one of the main opponents of the move, contesting the estimated £2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) expense ahead of the government’s most recent fiscal statement in March.
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Starmer has faced repeated calls from Labour lawmakers to reverse the cap, which currently limits child benefit payments to two children per household. Rather than heed pressure to change the policy immediately upon entering government in July, the government delayed a decision by announcing a consultation on a broader child poverty strategy. McSweeney urged Starmer at that time to rule out scrapping the two-child cap, according to people familiar with the matter. He argued that polling shows that Labour voters view the cap as fair, the people said. Starmer pushed back and removing the cap has remained an option under consideration by the government.

Starmer, Chancellor of Exchequer Rachel Reeves and Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall proposed scrapping the cap in the March statement, according to the people, before concluding there wasn’t enough money to fund it. McSweeney was again opposed to the idea, the people said.

The Downing Street official said any suggestion that McSweeney had blocked a worked-up plan supported by three ministers would not be true.
[…]
Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown added to the pressure on Starmer on Wednesday, saying that scrapping the cap was “the cost-effective way of getting more children out of poverty” in an interview with ITV. He separately told Sky News that Reeves could raise £3 billion by either increasing taxes on the gambling industry or reducing the interest paid to commercial banks for their deposits held by the Bank of England.

One government figure in favor of the scrapping the cap countered McSweeney’s polling argument by pointing out that most Labour voters also don’t want child poverty to go up. Lifting the cap is the most financially efficient way of doing that, the person said.

Police have been issued guidance on how to search women’s homes for abortion drugs and check their phones for menstrual cycle tracking apps after unexpected pregnancy loss.

New guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on “child death investigation” advises officers to search for “drugs that can terminate pregnancy” in cases involving stillbirths. The NPCC, which sets strategic direction for policing across the country UK, also suggests a woman’s digital devices could be seized to help investigators “establish a woman’s knowledge and intention in relation to the pregnancy”. That could include checking a woman’s internet searches, messages to friends and family, and health apps, “such as menstrual cycle and fertility trackers”, it states.

Details are also provided for how police could bypass legal requirements for a court order to obtain medical records about a woman’s abortion from NHS providers.

Toot

Dozens have thrown their support behind a letter urging the government to "delay" the proposals, which they blasted as "the biggest attack on the welfare state" since Tory austerity.

The MPs - who are restless after Labour's poor showing at last week's local elections - warned the prime minister that his plans to slash the welfare bill by £5bn a year were "impossible to support" without a "change in direction".

In the letter, seen by Sky News, the MPs said the reforms - which will tighten eligibility criteria for incapacity benefits - had caused a "huge amount of anxiety among disabled people and their families".

"The planned cuts of more than £7bn represent the biggest attack on the welfare state since George Osborne ushered in the years of austerity and over three million of our poorest and most disadvantaged will be affected," they wrote.
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A government impact assessment in March found an additional 250,000 people - including 50,000 children - could be pushed into relative poverty in the financial year ending 2030.

The MPs went on to say that while the benefits system needed reform, this needed to be done "with a genuine dialogue with disabled people's organisations".

"We also need to invest in creating job opportunities and ensure the law is robust enough to provide employment protections against discrimination," they added.

"Without a change in direction, the green paper will be impossible to support."

Keir Starmer has defended his plans to curb net migration after an angry backlash from MPs, businesses and industry to a speech in which he said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tough new policies.

The rhetoric was likened by some critics to the language of Enoch Powell, and the prime minister was accused of pandering to the populist right by insisting he intended to “take back control of our borders” and end a “squalid chapter” of rising inward migration.

Some politicians claimed that his words had echoed Powell’s notorious “rivers of blood” speech, which imagined a future multicultural Britain where the white population “found themselves made strangers in their own country”.

When asked to respond to accusations he had adopted Powell’s rhetoric, Starmer told the Guardian: “Migrants make a massive contribution to the UK, and I would never denigrate that.”

But in words that could further enrage his critics, Starmer insisted that new migrants must “learn the language and integrate” once in the UK. He said: “Britain is an inclusive and tolerant country, but the public expect that people who come here should be expected to learn the language and integrate.”
[…]
Starmer was speaking before the publication of a 69-page immigration white paper that sets out details of how the government intends to introduce restrictions across all forms of visas to the UK.

A new Home Office assessment showing the impact of changes to study and work visas and the introduction of English language tests said there would be about 100,000 fewer people entering the UK. It suggests net migration could fall to 300,000 by 2029, but the government declined to confirm a target.

Net migration, the difference between the number of people moving to the UK and the number leaving, was 728,000 in the 12 months to June 2024. Under the previous Conservative government, the figure rose to more than 900,000.

Starmer said that the current immigration system “encourages some businesses to bring in lower-paid workers rather than invest in our young people”.

Rain Newton-Smith, the Confederation of British Industry’s chief executive, said: “The reality for businesses is that it is more expensive and difficult to fill a vacancy with immigration than if they could hire locally or train workers … When considered alongside the large fees and accompanying charges, foreign workers are simply not the ‘easy’ or ‘cheap’ alternative.”