hypochondriac

People crave authenticity. I might disagree with everything Karl Turner says but every time I've listened to him speak it's engaging, heartfelt and real. There's other considerations ns of course but that sort of thing will go a long way towards winning someone's vote.

I'm happy for you though. Or sorry it happened.

Karl Turner MP is a cracking bloke and might actually persuade me to vote Labour if he were my MP.

Or it was just mentioned maybe that something seemed to be off but they didn't think it was a serious enough matter to escalate further? There's usually context to these things.

That's not really comparable to this alleged situation is it.

Well someone is lying then. Seems an odd thing to make up though unless they are just trying to undermine the vote.

How would Manchester Council know what they told an official at a polling station?

I read on social media -could be wrong-that they had responded to say that they had reported it to the polling stations at the times it occurred.

You would imagine a lot of them voted in the GE and like you say I doubt many more of them voted. They just likely switched their vote to the Greens.

Yeah I don't subscribe to that I'm afraid. I work with many Muslims, my father in law and his family are Muslim and on an individual level they are kind and as far as I can tell good people who I don't have a problem with. It very clearly isn't all Muslims but it is enough of a group who claim to be Muslim that it is a problem. Failure to integrate is a huge issue admitted by honest people on the left and the right.

As it happens I agree. Not helpful to stereotype every Muslim voter. The issue of block voting is serious enough without allowing people to dismiss it by exaggerating the problem.

That's why I said it is a hope but certainly not an expectation. TBF Labour haven't currently adopted it but look set to do so.

When I see groups of Jewish men raping young British girls on a mass scale across the UK and doing things like branding them with the star of David on their buttocks and quoting verses from the Torah as justification for their actions with police forces turning a blind eye for fear of being branded antisemitic then I'd consider that more of a pertinent problem to our country. There's a legitimate argument that antisemitism could be used to silence legitimate criticism of actual atrocities committed in Gaza which I would not support but it's also less relevant to my country which is what I care about most (plus there are other factors in that but I'm not revisiting that here.)

At least if the vote were truly secret you could get away with voting for whoever you wanted without repercussions.

They'd get the same answer from me if they tried to get me to wear a burkha but I'm not an Arab woman under a religiously dogmatic form of a patriarchy so it's easy for me to say.

Because the word and its misapplication has been used to silence criticism of Islam and was a contributing factor to a climate that led to rape gangs in the UK. Of course words and definitions of words matter. As the article I posted argues, there's a decent argument for not having a specific definition due to the potential for harm there is. We know for example that discrimination against all faiths can occur but we don't have an official working definition of Christianophobia or Sikhaphobia- we prosecute people who commit those crimes under existing public order and equality acts.

I may have got it wrong but I thought it meant that more than one person had gone into the polling station presumably family members in order to ensure that other family members were voting the correct way. Is that right?

I know it's social media but the quote I saw this morning was that the observers had mentioned it to the polling stations at the time.

What if you dislike the religion but you're also not a fan of many of those who purport to be followers of the religion but engage in activities that some other followers would disavow?

It's not a pointless rabbit hole, it's the very foundation of the entire point I was making and a leading reason for the problem. The interpretation of the term is why there is an issue and like I said, the article I posted which you have ignored explains that well. We won't agree you're better off agreeing to disagree. My hope is that a definition is not adopted officially and if it is it is repealed as soon as another government gets in power.

Of course that exists who would suggest otherwise? The issue is that bringing in any term needs to be very tightly defined so that it is not misapplied. There's a decent argument for not having a definition outlined here: Labour’s watered-down ‘Islamophobia’ definition will still undermine free speech "It said anyone using the phrases “Muslim grooming gangs” and “Asian grooming gangs” was an “Islamophobe”." "It includes “prejudicial stereotyping” as a form of anti-Muslim hatred, and that could inhibit a social worker or school teacher in a Muslim area from drawing attention to child sexual exploitation, not to mention female genital mutilation or forced marriages." "The danger of any definition, however carefully drawn, is that it will make people think twice before referring to Muslims doing anything wrong, prioritising them above people of other faiths. Indeed, that perception – that the Government is granting Islam a privileged status – may itself fuel anti-Muslim hatred. Recent polling by JL Partners found that only 20 per cent of the public is in favour of an official definition, with 31 per cent thinking it a wholly or somewhat “bad” thing." "Defenders of this initiative point to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which was adopted by Theresa May’s government in 2016 and endorsed by all her Conservative successors. Why should Jews have an official, state-approved definition of anti-Semitism, but not Muslims of anti-Muslim hatred? The obvious rejoinder is that Jews are more likely to be the victims of violent attacks. There’s also the thin-end-of-the-wedge argument. If Muslims, then why not similar protections for Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists? Except they’re not necessary because stirring up religious hatred is already prohibited by the Public Order Act 1986 and discriminating against people on the basis of their religion or belief is prohibited by the Equality Act 2010. To my mind, the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is more defensible because it was produced by an alliance of 35 governments around the world committed to Holocaust education, Holocaust remembrance and Holocaust research, not a working group convened by a now disgraced Labour politician. But if the object of the exercise is to reduce attacks on British Muslims, the experience of British Jews in the wake of October 7 2023 tells us that rolling out state-approved definitions of racial and religious hatred doesn’t work. In 2024, the Community Security Trust recorded 3,528 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, the second-highest annual total on record, and 1,521 in the first half of 2025."

I know you like to tell everyone on the forum what I believe but I'm quite capable of answering for myself.

Well there we will have to agree to disagree. I don't think the word is irrelevant at all and fear of being labelled with that word is one reason for why the rape gangs have persisted for as long as they have. People don't understand what is meant by it and that is the very root of the problem because it has been misapplied both unwittingly and wilfully by people with an agenda. My criticism of block voting is universal, it just so happens that this constituency contained a high number of Muslim voters and there are concerns that they were block voting along religious lines so it very much is relevant to this discussion.

It's not confined to a minority of bad faith actors though. The definition posted above defines it as a dislike of Islam. We know that there have been religious groups using it to try to get legitimate criticism silenced and we know that justice has been delayed or denied due to fear of being labelled Islamophobic. Attempting to bring in an official definition of the word IMO will do much more harm than good due to what I already posted. Violence or open discrimination against someone because they are a Muslim is already illegal and as far as I am aware is already prosecuted.

Supporters of the term like to pretend it means something it does not to try to make it sound like people who oppose the term are suggesting that violence or criminal acts committed against an individual because they are a Muslim are not a thing. That's clearly not the case.