[Watchman]

I think she deserves a thread of her own
The latest from the Minister for Women and Equalities

Kemi Badenoch dismisses idea of trialling menopause leave because it was proposed ‘from a leftwing perspective’ – as it happened
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/li ... SApp_Other

[kreuzberger]

Women*, 40 to 60 years old. That's another tranche of doors that are not worth a canvassing knock.

She's a fucking idiot, isn't she?

*Uterus-Owners, lest another front on the culture war be opened up.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This was also a cracker. Government can't do something that sounds very promising because it's got too much to do. It's only overseeing a trial anyway. It's not like anybody's proposing having 5 prime ministers in 6 years or anything.

The committee urged the government to trial “specific menopause leave so that women are not forced out of work by insensitive and rigid sickness policies”.

Badenoch said anyone could carry out a pilot; it did not have not have to be the government. She went on:

We spend so much time creating new work for government to do, we spread our attention so thinly, that we miss things.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ooh, isn't she clever?

We have so many things that people ask for protected characteristics – carers, single people, having ginger hair, being short, all sorts of things that people ask for as protected characteristics.

Creating a new special characteristic for the menopause is a complete misunderstanding of what protected characteristics are, they are immutable characteristics, we have nine of them that cover everyone.

The menopause can be dealt with, alongside three existing ones: age, sex, and disability, because it is a health condition and many disabilities are health conditions.

These are the protected characteristics. They are not all, as I understand it, immutable.

age
gender reassignment
being married or in a civil partnership
being pregnant or on maternity leave
disability
race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin
religion or belief
sex
sexual orientation

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is also absolutely awful.

Badenoch seems to think Carolyn Harris wrote the report herself (committee has a Tory majority), and after no attempt to justify her intransigence, says "I'm the minister na na na".

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is also pretty dire. As far as I can tell, Nokes summed up Badenoch's position accurately- she isn't going to bother with any of this. Kemi evidently think it's unfair because she didn't actually use those words. World's oldest teenager.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Tory arrogance.

[mattomac]

Noakes did very well here.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I like the way Badenoch says Nokes is being unfair, before saying at the end, yeah some officials will note your concerns.

The absolute contempt for basic scrutiny.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ooh, did Kemi get a letter from her Labour Shadow?

[Crabcakes]

Badenoch’s entire modus operandi seems to be to try and frame anything that isn’t the softest of softball planted questions as some sort of personal attack. Which I suppose is par for the course for the MP whose D.O.A. leadership campaign was in no small part about making it as easy as possible to offend other people.

Is do as I say not as I do the Tory motto, because if it isn’t it really should be.

[Youngian]

Britain is the 24th biggest steel producer so that’s our economy and market supply chains fucked (a dubious claim, anyway). If only there was some way of having greater market security.

[Watchman]

Asked by her Labour opposite number, Nick Thomas-Symonds about government figures showing that the deal will only boost the British economy by about 0.08%, Badenoch claimed that he did not understand the figure properly and that it was not a forecast, but the product of a model. There was a difference, she claimed.

So far out of her depth

[Youngian]

Asked by her Labour opposite number, Nick Thomas-Symonds about government figures showing that the deal will only boost the British economy by about 0.08%, Badenoch claimed that he did not understand the figure properly and that it was not a forecast, but the product of a model. There was a difference, she claimed.

So far out of her depth

Sunak has his work cut out with anti-maths culture right under his nose.

[Yug]

That could actually be where Ricki got the idea of an anti-maths culture from. He thinks the cornucopia of cretins in his own Party are a reflection of the country in microcosm.

If braying Eton- Oxbridge intellectually subnormal fucktards are all you meet every day, then that's all you're going to know.

[Yug]

All you have to do is believe hard enough and magical things will happen

British businesses are missing out on lucrative overseas trade because of 'too many negative tropes' about how difficult it is, an MP has claimed.

Business secretary Kemi Badenoch said businesses need to stop talking themselves down and realise there were 'many resources' out there to help with exporting goods to other countries.

Speaking at the launch of the UK's first E-Commerce Trade Commission, she said: 'We need a change in perception of exporting and how we talk about it. ..

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ropes.html

I rather think that businesses might have slightly more idea of what they're talking about than she has.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Liam Fox used to do this stuff when he had Badenoch’s job.

[Watchman]

I read it as “why aren’t you being part of our one-way trade deals with the other side of the world!”

[kreuzberger]

... the UK's first E-Commerce Trade Commission, she said: 'We need a change in perception of exporting and how we talk about it ...

Good luck with that. Trading with the island, in either direction, is such a pain in the arse that I am surprised if anyone ever bothers these days. I've certainly had enough. But, that's just the thin end of the wedge.

Once the UK revels in its new "freedoms" to ignore our GDPR / DSGVO protections, we'll shut you out, no question.

[Tubby Isaacs]

A word from the Business Secretary, Kemi Hestletine.

The rustling noise you hear is Central Office searching for US states they can send her to for fake trade deals. Douglas Carswell has a suggestion.