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Commentaire de l'actualité (gaie ou non!) sur terre, au ciel, à gauche, à droite, de Genève, de Londres ou d'ailleurs
News and views (gay or not!) on earth, in heaven, left or right, from Geneva, London or elsewhere

Cooperation vs. competition [click]

In Britain, I am struck how much society is geared for competition rather than cooperation, be it the school system, debating competitions or first past the post. You need a balance between the two, of course. This game looks like an interesting way to show how the Swiss society (and direct democracy, woefully misunderstood here) works.
#politix

Micro-local community farm [click]

In my city neighbourhood in the heart of London UK, we have a few « guerilla gardens »: the ground around trees lining the street transformed by inhabitants growing wonderful flowers. But this is an altogether different level!

#innovation

Death of Lord Hutton, Andrew Sullivan returns to the blog [click]

Hutton was a hero of swissroll.info, see our posts from August-September 2003.

An occasion to mark the anniversary of this blog, started on 3 August 2003. As we explained elsewhere, Jean-Paul Guisan (aka Guillaume Barry) and I were inspired to start one by reading blogs ourselves, notably the Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan. He stopped 5 years ago, being a confirmed commentator in mainstream media – but it’s due to reappear as The Weekly Dish! Behold!

#politix #webpublishing

Les vrais problèmes des trans [click]

Cet article illustre admirablement la réalité des problèmes auxquels les personnes trans sont confrontées. Ils sont spécifiques et méritent d’être portés par une organisation dédiée plutôt que d’être maladroitement assimilés aux gays, lesbiennes et bisexuel-le-s, qui ont la chance d’être bien dans leur corps et vivent simplement une attraction pour les personnes du même sexe (ou des deux sexes). #LGB

Sex, gender and protecting the rights of women, gay men, lesbians and bi as well as trans [click]

#LGB

Best general introduction to the subject l’ve read so far!

Partis: fin de la dualité et pas seulement du clivage gauche / droite

L’avenir est à la proportionnelle partout! Cela fait un moment que je ne crois plus au clivage gauche / droite: la droite n’est de loin pas (ou plus) la caricature que l’on en fait à gauche; la gauche ne s’est pas trouvé de nouvelle raison d’être depuis que la combinaison d’une économie de marché régulée …

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Death of Labour and rebirth of a progressive party [click]

On Un Swissroll, my take on the British General Election (in French). I share here my views on the state of the Left and it’s future.

The 2015 surprise election of Corbyn as leader of Labour has been followed by a complete change of the party:

  • The fraction of far left dinosaurs around Corbyn has taken over all the levers of control inside the party. They have no intention to surrender them despite their appalling result at the General Election: they want a corbynite after Corbyn.

  • After 4 years the composition of the membership has been transformed, thanks to waves of younger and idealistic members: the party is now solidly out of tune with the aspirations of the voters and society at large, and revolutionarily proud of it!

Some people have started (re)joining Labour in order to take part in the election of the next leadership. But it will go nowhere without organising a proper campaign to transform the party again: now is not the time to trust some invisible hand! Basically, we need a drive for one million Labour (former) voters to join, but where is the potential leader with a clear program of renewal? I don’t really see this happening.

However, there is an alternative: accepting that we are at the end of an historical cycle for a Left based on class struggle (after all, Social-Democracy did win the argument for a regulated market economy with welfare provision!). Corbyn has destroyed Labour, but Johnson is also destroying the old Right.The next elections will be in 4 or 5 years. Now is the time to build anew the two main parties.

Better to abandon the politically, ethically and financially bankrupt remains of the Labour Party to the corbynites. We need the 120 or 150 pragmatic MPs (at the start) to breakaway and elect their leader, who will immediately take over as leader of HM Opposition and the Shadow Cabinet, then call on Labour members and all interested citizens to join and for Unions to stop supporting the corbynite party. They have nothing to loose and a few years to organise. The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan joining the new party could be a welcome boost…

#politix

Elections britanniques 2019

La défaite du Labour de Corbyn est historique, mais ne suffira probablement pas à sauver la gauche traditionnelle de la disparition Six semaines de campagne. Jamais eu autant de visites à domicile1, de tracts et de lettres personnelles des trois principaux partis2, car la circonscription où nous habitons ( fortement Remain, le sortant conservateur ne …

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Sex-change sorrow: on detransitioning [click]

I don’t want to look obsessed and flood this feed with the discussion around T in the LGB(T) community, but this article is really important.

The author is Andrew Sullivan, who is a serious gay, right-wing and Catholic (of a sort) thinker in the Anglosphere (educated in Britain, living in America). And the article is full of facts which are hard to find, and raises all the proper questions in a non-judgemental manner.

I read it in today’s Times in London (News Review), which requires registration, but it is available from the New York magazine website.

#LGB

Dropping the T: time to distinguish between sexual orientation and gender [click]

As reported by The Times, London:

For several years now a schism has been building within the LGBT community between Stonewall [the umbrella organisation in the UK] and those alarmed by its trajectory. This reached its logical end on Tuesday night with the birth of a breakaway group, provisionally titled the LGB Alliance [on Twitter: @AllianceLGB].

Conway Hall in Holborn was full of distinguished lesbians and gay men: local government officers, a consultant psychiatrist, psychotherapists, academics, doctors, a BBC producer, film-makers. All once stood behind Stonewall. Indeed the broadcaster Simon Fanshawe was a founder member and the former American Express vice-president Kate Harris a major fundraiser.

Yet they believe that since 2015, when the charity incorporated trans rights into its remit, Stonewall has ceased to represent them. They say it endorses sexist stereotypes promoting the notion that a “butch” girl or a “feminine” boy is in the wrong body and needs treatment when most gender non-conforming children turn out, like them, to be gay.

Their first demand is that the Equality and Human Rights Commission investigates the advice Stonewall (which receives an annual £600,000 in government grants) gives to public bodies from councils to police. They say it misrepresents the Equality Act by replacing the legally protected characteristic biological “sex” with “gender identity”. From this alleged deceit has come gender-neutral school toilets, police recording male-bodied rapists as “female” or the NHS admitting self-identified trans women onto female wards. The LGB Alliance calls this “Stonewall Law” and plans to fight it.

#LGB