The difference between Starmer and Sunak on "what is a woman" is that Starmer is desperately trying to avoid a trap that the right-wing client press is trying to get him to fall into; he also understands that there is a huge gap between the legal definition of a woman and the philosophical one; whereas Sunak is gleefully stoking a culture war that is the Tories only hope of avoiding a wipeout, regardless of the effect on vulnerable individuals. I watched that interview with Sunak this morning and felt physically sick. "blah blah terrible tragedy, blah blah utmost respect, blah blah best of humanity". As if the constant using of the trans issue as a culture war wedge, where in reality it affects a tiny tiny part of the population, didn't have a role in raising anti-trans hostility. I was praying that the interviewer would finish by asking him "was Brianna Ghey a woman?" to see how he'd try to weasel out of it. Alas, of course, no. What is a woman Lloyd?
I don’t necessarily agree. Green voters leaving Labour is not a big worry for them. Where would they go? Not to the Right. Maybe the Greens could win one more seat. On the other hand, millions of voters concerned about economic competency could easily leave Labour if its plans don’t add up. Lose them and it won’t enact any green measures. Starmer is speaking today, so hopefully he’ll recommit to green investment as the economy allows it. Better the pain now.
Yup, that was the exact thing that stood out to me while I was listening to the radio news in the car this morning. It's the obvious question. He'd have no answer to it except deflection and bluster. Which is exactly what he accuses Starmer of because this stuff is nuanced and tricky and as you say, as much philosophical as legal or biological.
It's not the BBC's job to avoid criticism. It's the BBC's job to report independently and without fear or favour. It does not do that anything like enough any more (if it ever did – I am willing to accept that my memory of what our media used to be like may be tinged by a rosy-tinted glow). Your reading of the news and how it works doesn't chime with mine, but then, what do I know. Maybe nothing. But there was nothing smart about joining together two unconnected news stories. Nothing smart at all.
Well, I think we will just have to disagree on this. It's not its job to avoid criticism, no; but it is required to remain politically neutral as between parties. Generally speaking I think it does a reasonable job of that. After all, the late lamented ZZ used to bleat on regularly about its 'leftie bias', which suggested to me that it was doing fine.
False equivalence isn't neutrality, I'm afraid. Usually, as a journalist, I'd take upsetting 'both sides' equally as some reassurance but the BBC has changed over the past few years. It's happened gradually and so pervasively it's easy to overlook. The media has been infiltrated to such an extent that you have to do far more research than should be necessary to work out what you're being told and why. The BBC has allowed itself to become part of that. Every day there are egregious examples on the BBC. From the likes of Robbie Gibb being on the board to Politics Live billing the Institute of Economic Affairs director of communications as 'Daily Telegraph journalist' as happened this lunchtime. That is a blatant example of hiding from the viewer who is really speaking and why they are there. And it happens day-in, day-out. If you can see all the joins and have the energy to work out why you're being told what you're told, all power to you. I've been worn down by the degradation of the news we're fed. If you see nothing wrong with the way BBC Breakfast reported Starmer and Sunak this morning then you have more in common with the people polishing the news ready for your consumption than I do. I say all this as someone who once (briefly) worked in a job that required me to polish this stuff ready for consumption. I was young and naive and I lasted about five minutes because I saw the dishonesty required.
So why do people still bang on about the BBC's leftie bias? That said, I agree with some of this. I think the BBC is 'frit' (to use a Thatcherism) about renewal of its Charter and accusations of the type that we have often seen in social media, and it has gone too far in the opposite direction. Nonetheless, I'd rather have that than some commerical entity. Wouldn't you? But I'm not convinced this is a good example of that. You say it is false equivalence; how so? It's only false because you yourself have a partiicular political perspective, isn't it? Someone right of centre might well think entirely differently.
To quote Charles Darwin: "A female human is born with ti ts and a fanny, while the male of the species can be recognised by the presence of a c ock and b ollocks at birth."
What about people that are intersex? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex And, as there are physical anomalies that don't fit the binary m/f definition, isn't it possible, indeed likely, that there are similar mental anomalies where people feel that they are "in the wrong sex body". I think Starmer was right when he said that 99% of women/men fit into the "normal definition" but the other 1% deserve to have equal rights and be treated with respect.
There almost certainly are and such people deserve the mental health support they need to help them get over their delusional thoughts - what they don't need is to be immediately whisked off to hospital to have their dic k chopped off.
It's false equivalence because shelving a policy is not the same as using a honking culture war issue to stoke division while smirking in the presence of a grieving parent. The framing of news is often subtle. In this case it was about as subtle as a brick through the window. You don't have to be left of centre to see that Sunak saying what he said, in the circumstances he said it, was dreadful. It is my contention – based on a bit of knowledge of how these things go – that the sole reason for mentioning the two stories in the same sentence in the morning headlines was to minimise what Sunak said. People bang on about 'leftie bias' regarding lots of things that aren't good examples of leftie bias. Nice debating with you and you make some good points but, I'm afraid, the BBC has been turned into a willing fool. Until it starts honestly captioning the talking heads that appear on its political panel shows we're having a veil drawn over who is saying what and why they're saying it. That has gone unchecked and unchallenged for so long that the subtle framing of so much of its news output now appears totally normal.
Your last para worries me. If the left starts becomes anti-BBC as well, then I seriously worry for its future. News is always a construction, it's never neutral. It's open to different readings, as we have proved. I accept that your reading is plausible, yes; although I still think that mine is too. From my perspective the Labour story is far more important, and potentially far more negative (politically, not morally).
No one is whisking anyone quickly anywhere. Gender treatment has the same long waiting lists as anything else and even those getting treated have a long counselling process to go through. Trans people are a phenomena appearing since ancient history, across cultures. They are not easily dismissed as ‘delusional’ because they usually don’t have delusions about transgender or anything else. They are a thing, a social fact. The law allows them to live in their chosen gender without discrimination. That isn’t ‘changing biology’ even if some go on to change their personal biology. It would be nice to see Sunak and thousands of conservative opinion formers recognise and support the law, rather than to see trans people as ammunition to get the wokey wokes (i.e. the majority of tolerant British people).
Exactly. The process to "change" is long and includes psychological analysis.... https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/
I don't disagree with you there – and if BBC Breakfast had led solely with the Labour green pledge U-turn instead of bracketing it together with an appalling example of the Prime Minister's punching downwards in a lazy culture war attack I'd have absolutely no complaint. But that's where the subtle framing comes in; the twisting and shape-shifting of the modern BBC is sometimes hard to spot. I've been a staunch supporter but the last six or seven years it has got progressively worse. It's happened slowly and can be difficult to see in isolation but the BBC is a very different beast to the BBC of even a decade ago. I agree with you that news is not neutral. But facts are, and the BBC is increasingly dreadful on facts. Whether it's Fiona Bruce letting provable lies slide by on Question Time or the Daily Politics refusing to caption the likes of Kate Andrews correctly, the BBC as a trusted institution is dead. It's been infiltrated and eaten from the inside. Sad but true. And by the way, I am not left. I am just very, very anti this brand of Conservatives. They are almost all dreadful people who believe dreadful things. They have debased the country and its institutions. They lie and when they're caught in a lie they lie some more. They stand for nothing but themselves. I think back to the Britain of 2012 and think that if we could have seen into the future to today we'd have been appalled by the degradation across all walks of life.
Good post. Although I'm not even convinced that all facts are neutral unless one sees them with one's own eyes. I read too much postmodern philosophy at university...
Not being pedantic at all, I am pointing out that the waits are not in fact 'the same' as those for other forms of care, they are longer. They were recently challenged in judicial review.
You could have written that. It appeared to be another of the grammar corrections of which you are so fond.
Agree with this. If one party can't stop doing nasty things and they end up with a 10:1 ratio of good to bad stories then that's on them, not the Beeb. The Beeb's responsibility should be to report the facts as-is, with minimized bias. My feeling is that any attempt to equivocate automatically goes over those lines.
