O/T:- Banks

[Jampie]

Some males are a threat to females. It's not trans hate. It's females wanting to maintain our safety, comfort and dignity. Oh and our own sports. Can I ask why you think single s*x spaces exist and are enshrined in law?

Some males are a threat to females, yes. Stating that is obviously not trans hate.

However, the supposed threat posed to women by trans women is overblown to the level of being largely nonexistent. How many actual incidents can you highlight?

Single *** spaces are enshrined in law for cultural reasons. I don't see the relevance of this line of inquiry.

As for sports, I think that's a discussion for sporting bodies (much as I think tran***uality is a discussion for medical professionals and patients), and I don't see why people are so angry about it all, except that they're whipped up into a frenzy over it by manipulative, lying press.

Trans people aren't a threat. The people who own the press absolutely are.

[Old_pie]

What exactly are the benefits of Brexit?

They are not going to appear overnight are they? Or is that what you thought would happen? It's going to take time for institutions and practices to settle to a new order. Having left trade negotiations to the EU we had lost the skills of carrying out such deals ourselves.

Just recently https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66172158:

"A new global company being launched by French motor giant Renault and Chinese carmaker Geely is set to have its headquarters in the UK.

The firms will invest up to €7bn ($7.7bn; £6bn) to develop low-emission petrol, diesel and hybrid engines.

It will employ about 19,000 workers at its 17 engine factories, as well as five research and development hubs."

We've not had a fair wind in our sails with the triple whammies of Covid, Ukraine, Global Warming, a bit like Notts' first season in the NL being curtailed when all was looking good.

Personally I'm disappointed that there hasn't been the leadership competence to move deal with all the issues and that sentiment extends to both sides of the political fence. But we will adapt and we will be free of the decades of wrangling and bickering, a bit like handbags, that have blighted our attempts at being European. We're not, it's not in our DNA. It never has been in any era. Prime Minister after Prime Minister struggled to try to retain our Britishness and be a part of Europe. The reason a referendum was held (and remember that there wasn't one to have political union with Europe) was the constant arguments going on with the EU and that's why Cameron promised a vote if he was elected. The British public had mainly made its mind up then, before all the spin and smoke and mirrors that sensible Brexiteers saw through and ignored.

In our time in the EU we would not give up the £, or the pint, we did not join the Schengen travel area and no doubt many other schemes that our European neighbours embraced. Nothing wrong with the schemes - just not in our DNA.

We're starting to sort out trade deals and new laws. Different I know, but we have regained (or have the opportunity to regain) our own dignity and destiny away from the bureaucratic, faceless and undemocratic machine that is the EU.

No-one said it would be easy but don't go around spouting that everyone who voted Brexit was fooled. Some, maybe many, understand that we joined a trading market, for which we voted, and then got sucked into something unwittingly until it manifested itself as a cancer.

[Magpies1959]

Good to see today that the BBC have sent Mr Farage an apology over their inaccurate report as to why his account at Coutts was closed. It was reported to have been closed for not having insufficient funds, but it turns out it was more to do with his political views, very scary, but very good news that the people involved with this have been rumbled, not just for Mr Farage, but for all of us.

[Elite_Pie]

They are not going to appear overnight are they? Or is that what you thought would happen?

I was absolutely certain it wouldn't happen, and I think I've been proved right. But the vision sold by the leave campaign was pretty much that the benefits would appear overnight. After all, "why should we send the EU £350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead". I must have missed the bus with the slogan "It will all come good eventually, but it won't happen overnight".

We're starting to sort out trade deals and new laws. Different I know, but we have regained (or have the opportunity to regain) our own dignity and destiny away from the bureaucratic, faceless and undemocratic machine that is the EU.

Incredible! So why the f@ck are we "starting to sort out trade deals and new laws"? I know these thing take time, but the promise was that we had 'oven ready' deals once the vote was sorted. Again, promises that turned out to be lies.

The funniest thing about your reply is that "we have regained (or have the opportunity to regain) our own dignity"! That's the saddest thing about Brexit for me, for centuries as Great Britain we have built a proud reputation as a nation of decency, honesty, kindness, compassion and fair play. That reputation has been trashed ever since Brexit, which is heartbreaking.

[Elite_Pie]

Good to see today that the BBC have sent Mr Farage an apology over their inaccurate report as to why his account at Coutts was closed.

Agree, but why did it take so long? If you get it wrong, just accept it and apologise.

The BBC haven't done themselves any favours here.

[cher1]

Some males are a threat to females, yes. Stating that is obviously not trans hate.

However, the supposed threat posed to women by trans women is overblown to the level of being largely nonexistent. How many actual incidents can you highlight?

Single *** spaces are enshrined in law for cultural reasons. I don't see the relevance of this line of inquiry.

As for sports, I think that's a discussion for sporting bodies (much as I think tran***uality is a discussion for medical professionals and patients), and I don't see why people are so angry about it all, except that they're whipped up into a frenzy over it by manipulative, lying press.

Trans people aren't a threat. The people who own the press absolutely are.

Trans women commit male pattern crime, unsurprisingly. 99% of s*xual offences are committed by males. In the UK, around 50% (although it may be as high as 61.3%) of trans women in prison have been convicted of at least one s*xual offence. In 2022 that was 87 trans women in prison who had committed s*xual offence. That's not non existent. It's 44% in Canada if you want another figure.

The risk to women isn't specifically trans women, it's males. Let males into female changing rooms, guess what happens to s*xual offences? Let males into female prisons and guess what happens. Should Adam Graham be in a women's prison? Really? Or 'Karen White'? Karen s*xually assaulted women as a fully intact male in a women's prison.

You might think wanting single s*x spaces is cultural. I don't. If you think female r*pe victims wanting to be counselled in a single s*x facility, or women not wanting to share ward spaces with males is 'cultural', I respectfully disagree. If you think girls and women dont deserve to feel comfortable in changing rooms, school loos etc, again, I disagree. I'm a DV survivor, if you don't think I'm entitled to any single s*x spaces to talk about what happened to me, or even just to change at a gym away from males, I disagree.

I'm going to leave it there, I know you like to continue debates, but I won't be responding further, this subject had been covered many times on here.

[jackal2]

What exactly are the benefits of Brexit?

Call me a cynic, Elite, but somehow I doubt your question comes from a position of sincerity and a genuine desire to understand more.

The Government did however publish its own 'Benefits of Brexit' document and there are plenty of articles on the internet from a pro-Brexit viewpoint setting out the case for a future outside the EU if you want to find them. I'll grant you they're not always as easy to find as the proliferation of anti-Brexit articles and sentiment because, well, we're not meant to find them as easily, but there's plenty of reading out there from both perspectives.

Also, as Old Pie correctly says, the judgement would always be made over a much longer time period even if there hadn't been some very exceptional events over the past three years.

Of course in a democracy it's not incumbent upon Remainers or Brexiteers to 'justify' their positions to each other anyway - you vote the way you choose and you don't have to explain or 'defend' your reasons if you don't want to, but it has always struck me as ironic that the point the Remainers often hang their hat on as one of their strongest arguments, namely "We'll be far worse off outside the EU!", is in fact one of the best arguments I've ever heard for Brexit!

If we accept for the sake of argument that we were becoming as dependent on the EU as the Remainers would have us believe, then what more proof could we need that we were becoming unhealthily reliant upon, if not locked into, a mechanism that was gradually eating away our sovereignty, independence and the ability to stand on our own two feet?

I'm no relationship counsellor, but co-dependency is generally seen as unhealthy.

[Elite_Pie]

Call me a cynic, Elite, but somehow I doubt your question comes from a position of sincerity and a genuine desire to understand more.

The Government did however publish its own 'Benefits of Brexit' document and there are plenty of articles on the internet from a pro-Brexit viewpoint setting out the case for a future outside the EU if you want to find them. I'll grant you they're not always as easy to find as the proliferation of anti-Brexit articles and sentiment because, well, we're not meant to find them as easily, but there's plenty of reading out there from both perspectives.

Also, as Old Pie correctly says, the judgement would always be made over a much longer time period even if there hadn't been some very exceptional events over the past three years.

Of course in a democracy it's not incumbent upon Remainers or Brexiteers to 'justify' their positions to each other anyway - you vote the way you choose and you don't have to explain or 'defend' your reasons if you don't want to, but it has always struck me as ironic that the point the Remainers often hang their hat on as one of their strongest arguments, namely "We'll be far worse off outside the EU!", is in fact one of the best arguments I've ever heard for Brexit!

If we accept for the sake of argument that we were becoming as dependent on the EU as the Remainers would have us believe, then what more proof could we need that we were becoming unhealthily reliant upon, if not locked into, a mechanism that was gradually eating away our sovereignty, independence and the ability to stand on our own two feet?

I'm no relationship counsellor, but co-dependency is generally seen as unhealthy.

I genuinely want to know how Brexit has benefited us. You didn't tell me. I know there are many for and against arguments on the internet, but you can say that for almost any subject. All you've said is that "it will take a long time". I don't recall that being in the leave manifesto.

I think the 3 main pledges that clinched the vote were these:

1. Let's take control of our borders and stop illegal immigrants.
2. Why should we send millions to the EU when we could give it the NHS?
3. Let's rid ourselves of EU shackles and strike a load of great new trade deals which will leave us all much better off.

All very appealing, but how many have happened? None of them. Not one. None even close.

You can blame Covid, Ukraine, climate change etc until you're blue in the face, but these have presented global challenges rather than being unique to us. The millstone of Brexit has meant our response has been worse than most when the promised benefits should have made it better. You say "the judgement would always be made over a much longer time period". So how long exactly (or even approximately), and why was there no mention of this long delay when they wanted our vote? If the leave campaign had said "there will be benefits eventually, but it will take a long time to see them", do you think the result would have been the same?

[Jampie]

Trans women commit male pattern crime, unsurprisingly. 99% of s*xual offences are committed by males. In the UK, around 50% (although it may be as high as 61.3%) of trans women in prison have been convicted of at least one s*xual offence. In 2022 that was 87 trans women in prison who had committed s*xual offence. That's not non existent. It's 44% in Canada if you want another figure.

87 trans women out of a population of 48,000 in england and wales, or 0.1%, in other words 99.9% of them don't. But people are prejudiced to hell and back because the press constantly tell them to fear. Not non-existent but practically non-existent. I'm pretty sure that's lower than the base population crime rates...

Why do they want you to fear trans women?

Presumably so you ignore the real threats... climate change, high cost of living, useless puppet leadership, that kinda thing.

And it's become really unfashionable to make you hate/fear black people, gay men etc. So it's onto bashing a new even tinier minority. Pay no attention to the very small group of men behind the curtain!

[OchPie]

Good to see today that the BBC have sent Mr Farage an apology over their inaccurate report as to why his account at Coutts was closed. It was reported to have been closed for not having insufficient funds, but it turns out it was more to do with his political views, very scary, but very good news that the people involved with this have been rumbled, not just for Mr Farage, but for all of us.

It wasn't more to do with his political views.

The BBC had reported that it had nothing to do with his political views and that was clearly wrong. When his finances no longer met their commercial criteria - which he himself admitted happened - Coutts had to make a decision whether to make an exception for him. His actions (not political views per se, but yes the very public expression of them) led them to decide it wasn't worth their while to do so.

They kept him as a client for as long as he met their commercial criteria, and dropped him as soon as he didn't.