Why is Keir Starmer trying to put so many voters off?

Me neither. Mine was 97 - and she’d had dementia for maybe 15 years.
Not a fate I want to emulate!

Blimey, I hope I don’t live a decade more than my mother. She’s 94 and a half already. I’ve got no desire to live to 104.

Callistemon The pressure on population is no longer births. Most countries have a birthrate at or near replacement and a significant number to not even manage that.

The big pressure from population comes through longevity. You, me and millons of old people round the world living a decade or more longer than their parents.

Well of course there would still be the Lib Dems and SNP ?

Changing the subject a tad.

Just imagine that next week we could find ourselves with no party leaders, if Starmer gets found guilty by Durham police, and Johnson is forced out.

Blimey!

MaizieD

M0nica

If the goverment want to increase the birthrate, the way forward is to make it easier to have children and bring them up, free child care, adequate financial support, to name but two

They could try restoring the child allowance to families with more than two children...

I really don't think we should encourage the birth rate.
For the sake of the planet, the whole world population should not increase but we need other nations to get on board with this idea.

Dinahmo, I was not suggesting this is how single and people with no children think. But in the past when I was working and juggling the care of young children, it was an argument a heard from a number of people - and which I scotched.

Agreed Doodledog; carrots always draw a more positive outcome than sticks.

I'm not a fan of the state interfering with lifestyle choices, but if they really want to encourage larger families the way forward would be to have tax allowances for families rather than increase taxes for those without children. Positive measures are always more popular than punitive ones.

Either way up, it's a change in approach from the cap on benefits for those with more than two babies, isn't it?

Monica

I'm one of the child free and I have never moaned about paying taxes for education etc. Like most child free/less people I am fully aware that, apart from anything else, the children that I've helped to educate may one day be looking after me.

I think that most people are well aware that the taxes we pay benefit everyone in one way or another. If they aren't aware then they have to be very very stupid.

Would I be insane for thinking that, before enforcing child births, we should first have the infrastructure in place to accommodate them? Little things like ante natal care not being on the bones of its arse, stop closing maternity wards down, support and supplement child care and nurseries, build more schools in ratio with the houses being built and train more midwives so that every mother has a reasonable expectation of decent care.

M0nica

If the goverment want to increase the birthrate, the way forward is to make it easier to have children and bring them up, free child care, adequate financial support, to name but two

They could try restoring the child allowance to families with more than two children...

Thanks Doodle

Nicolae Ceaușescu borrowed the 1930s Stalinist dogma that population growth would fuel economic growth and fused this idea with the conservatism of his rural childhood. In the first year of his rule, his government issued Decree 770, which outlawed abortion for women under 40 with fewer than four children.
And we all know what happened to him.

Iam64

I had the radio not tv MayBee70, day more please

This is the way he delivered the trickier questions on PMQs. Basically with his back to half of the house, and not making eye contact with the opposition.

If the goverment want to increase the birthrate, the way forward is to make it easier to have children and bring them up, free child care, adequate financial support, to name but two

Taxing childlessness is offensive and probably breaches the Human Rights law.

However, I used to get tired of single people moaning about paying taxes, education etc. So I suggested a simple compromise. I would bear the burden of all the taxation for services used only for children. In there place they had to accept that as they got older more and more of the people in the world would be younger than them and someonee's child and be providing single people with everything from medical and social services, to pulling pints in pubs, driving buses, generaating electricity etc. not to mention financing everything, including their pensions.

Therefore they had to be prepared to go into old age with no tax payer generated income, live without essential services, only eat food they could grow themselves etc etc

Funny how quickly they changed their tune.

I had the radio not tv MayBee70, day more please

Johnson’s body language was very interesting. Sideways on, leaning on the bench, drinking water….

Starmer excellent at PMQs today

RichmondPark

*a Labour Government will renegotiate a very different relationship with our nearest and most important trading partners; a relationship based on respect—respect that is so sorely missing in the way that the current Government treats those partners—and a relationship that will achieve the closest possible frictionless trade for businesses across the United Kingdom and here in Wales.*

Completely reasonable and sensible. I want this.

a Labour Government will renegotiate a very different relationship with our nearest and most important trading partners; a relationship based on respect—respect that is so sorely missing in the way that the current Government treats those partners

... yes, absolutely this.

In the current (and foreseeable) economic and environmental 'climate', a looming trade war with the EU is the very last thing this country needs. Any PM or Party that had the best interests of the nation as their main focus rather than their own self-serving ambitions would not be hankering after such a 'war' simply to bolster its credentials with the rabid anti-EU sceptics, on whom it relies for its support. And would certainly not be blaming its "friends and neighbours" for its own lack of foresight, intelligence and 'savvy' in signing a deal that it insisted was 'oven ready'.

And to all those who're happy that Johnson got Brexit "done" - because that's why you voted for him and his party - it's not done. Signing the deal was the easy bit - living with the consequences is an entirely different kettle of fish and that's the bit we'll have to live with for decades to come. Some of you won't even be around to deal with the disadvantages. As for the advantages, the Minister for Brexit Opportunities himself thinks it might be somewhere in the region of 50 odd years before these manifest themselves to the point where the public at large benefit from them - so he's looking around to see if he can find some at an earlier date.

And in the meantime, the right wing cranks are coming out of the woodwork to suggest 'options' for 'growing our own' workers of the future. A tax on 'childless' couples is the latest wheeze (and that tax would include those who are unable to have children). Stalin would be proud, he instituted something similar in 1941, which I think you mentioned. Women who had less than 3 children were taxed on a monthly basis - presumably until they were coerced into having a third child. I await further 'recommendations' by esteemed demographers and think-tanks on the matter.

Dickens

Glorianny

I don't think being open to something is the same as insisting someone has sex with anyone or denigrating them because they haven't. It's simply saying you could try it. Just as someone else might say try sex with another woman you might like it .
Quite how that translates as it being a duty I don't know. Nor is it proscribing anything.
If I say "you should try Xs chocolate it's delicious." you don't have to do it.

My relationship with a brand of chocolate is quite different from my relationship with another human being.

If I casually try your recommended brand of chocolate and don't like it, there's no harm done. To either me or the chocolate.

If I instinctively do not want sex with a particular person - for whatever reason - but am persuaded by you that I should "try it" because I might "like it"... and I don't like it - then there's huge potential for distress for both parties.

Some lesbians have been persuaded and coerced into having sex with transwomen on the basis that it is transphobic not to do so.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-57853385

I don't think your comparison works.

I think if you don't like it that's fine, tastes differ and someimes change.
Calling anyone transphobic because of a particular sexual leaning is of course entirely wrong. Coercing anyone to have sex with you is entirely wrong.
All sexual encounters surely have the potential to cause distress and harm. You go into them hoping they won't but there is never a guarantee whoever is involved.
I think my comparison works.

Galaxy

Men however they present have always tried to ask lesbians to have sex with them. It homophobic behaviour that's gone on forever.

I think you should qualify that with "some men" Galaxy my DS has a lot of lesbian friends, who wouldn't I think be friends if he had ever tried anything on with them.
Just as some transwomen will try it on with lesbians and some won't.
Alleging that all the people who belong to a certain category behave exactly the same is at the root of all bias and discrimination.

I do agree Daisy Anne.

The analysis I quoted above does not lead me to think that Starmer has taken the wrong line.

He has to walk an extremely narrow line to assemble a disparate group of voters for the next election. That is not going to be easy. I think, because of the man he is, every step will be carefully thought out. I can see nothing to criticise at the moment.

We could not return immediately; as things stand I think he has made the right choice. I do understand why others may not agree.