Best Of

From last thread, directed to @kinabalu :

So you are a self-confessed tax-avoider for all your left-of-centre champagne socialism. Such hypocrisy that is so typical of Labour supporters, particularly personified by Rayner and her two council house sales, Starmer and his tax-free benefit in kind clothing and Reeves with her lies on her CV and dodgy attitude to expenses.

You believe that you are some sort of special case, and your virtue is unsullied because you vote for the Labour Party

How nice of you to repeat your unpleasant jibes so more people can see them!

If someone is claiming murder is wrong but its allowed in law if its murder of a lower class person and they murder someone....would you not call them out on it even if what they did was legal?

There are things that are legal I wouldn't do because I believe them to be wrong and not what I believe in, Kinablu says these things are wrong but does them because he can and it benefits him is the point

There are also things that are legal that I don't do because I believe them to be wrong. Eg wearing speedos on the heath.

But on this tax thing. You're seriously suggesting that left wing political views should be penalised with a higher effective tax rate than everybody else?

C'mon that's a total joke. Stop messing around. This is a forum of national repute.

Hypocrisy always gets called out.

See the US politicians who denounce “nationalised healthcare”, while using the free comprehensive insurance (nothing excluded), for life, provided by 5 minutes membership of the Senate or Congress.

Hypocrisy is a sloppily used term. It means do as I say not as I do.

Thus if (say) you slag people off for using a tax break but do it yourself. That's hypocrisy.

But if you simply express a view that the break shouldn't be available (and would support its removal) but use it yourself, that isn't.

I admit to a certain excitement at JFK files being released. The discrepancy between the trauma doctors and the official autopsy has always intrigued me.

Personally, I think most of the conspiracy theories are bollocks and a lot is just down to the chaos of the event and/or incompetence.

I think the question is, why did LHO kill Kennedy. I think there are three main options

* Self-radicalised lone gunman
* The Soviets
* Criminal associates of LBJ (ie the Mob)

I used to think the third was the likeliest, but of course we are now much more acquainted with the first

Half the files seem to be a re-release of the ones Biden released, and the most of the rest utterly tedious.
But there is this bombshell doing the rounds.

I admit to a certain excitement at JFK files being released. The discrepancy between the trauma doctors and the official autopsy has always intrigued me.

Personally, I think most of the conspiracy theories are bollocks and a lot is just down to the chaos of the event and/or incompetence.

I think the question is, why did LHO kill Kennedy. I think there are three main options

* Self-radicalised lone gunman
* The Soviets
* Criminal associates of LBJ (ie the Mob)

I used to think the third was the likeliest, but of course we are now much more acquainted with the first

Half the files seem to be a re-release of the ones Biden released, and the most of the rest utterly tedious.
But there is this bombshell doing the rounds.

LOL either you are winding us up @Nigelb (and if you are it is a good one) or the nutters have reached a new low. She was a completely unknown 16 year old at the time.

But no-one can prove Hillary Clinton wasn't at the grassy knoll.

I supported Jenrick, and have been pretty disparaging on Kemi, but yesterday she gave probably her best intervention so far, and did it in an authentically 'Kemi' way - that is to say a modern 'Ted Talk' sort of feel.

The response seems to have been very good, and it opens up a fruitful avenue of opposition as Labour begins to inflict increasing hardship to meet the Net Zero target.

The environmental and climate justification for moving to Net Zero isn’t going to go away and is likely going to get more immediate and obvious in the next decade and a half.

We can argue about how we get to Net Zero but not about whether we should and Badenoch’s response was more about pandering to the climate change deniers than dealing with the real world.

Conservatives have traditionally been pragmatic types and have adapted to a changing world when required - oddly enough I take the view Conservatives could probably get us to Net Zero quicker and easier than Labour but to pander to those unwilling or unable to accept the world is changing isn’t Conservative at all and is part of the reason why the likes of Badenoch and Jenrick are seen as irrelevant to the current debate.

There are genuine concerns about the journey to Net Zero/renewables. What Badenoch misses is that most people still want it to happen.

I think the smart thing to do for the Conservatives is to suggest Labour are failing on Net Zero (particularly around EVs) and moan that they aren't making it easy for responsible citizens to make the transition. I would also try to own the non-environmental benefits, like increased energy security, levelling up, cheaper energy etc etc, while leaving the eco-flummery to Labour. A really easy way to do this would be to focus on our electricity imports from France. Let's wean ourselves off European energy.

At the moment, her strategy makes sense if you get all your information from facebook/twitter, which is dominated by Reform types who hyperventilate negativity about everything.

...

The last of the few: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/the-last-surviving-battle-of-britain-pilot-dies-aged-105/ar-AA1B70Yn?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=5995d76659d2489bb6e1e2f0cf05a0d1&ei=38

Edit, apologies, I see I am a day behind.

It bears repeating. A fascinating story.

The sad thing is that in the news report about him on the Today programme yesterday they felt the need to explain what the Battle of Britain was.

It felt somewhat strange that the reporters/editors of Today think that people who listen to their programme need to have the BoB explained to them.

I noted that, too. The sad thing is that we're getting old.
Battle of Britain is no longer the piece of universal popular culture that it was a generation back.

The Battle of Britain was 85 years ago.

That's like me learning about the Boer Wars when I was 10. OK, the BoB is much more important an event than that, but some of my contemporaries' fathers had fought in WW2 and it had finished only 30 years previously, which is like, er, 1995 is now (can't think of anything that happened then)

So while WW2 was an epoch-making event and the ever-present background to the world many of us grew up in, it is now fairly ancient history

Morning, PB.

And the real worry is that the new right are now beginning to normalise Nazism. Twitter is increasingly full of very large amounts of normalised, extreme antisemitism, and earlier this week the central Maga figure Tucker Carlson implied it might have been better if Hitler had occupied Europe.

Imagine if the Axis Powers had won, we'd all be driving German cars and looking and listening to Japanese consumer electronics.

And @Foxy

Fascism has always appealed to bullies, and (more importantly), weak people who wish to share in the glory of the bully.

The curious thing is that the sort of people fascists glorify, Confederates, Nazis, Spartans, were in reality, pathetic losers. Degenerate democracies have by far, a better military record.

Fascism, including the MAGA incarnation, is all about winning over society's losers - Trump talks about this quite explicitly. Trump is a master at this - identifying points of shame, humiliation and disgust, telling a story about how malign forces - domestic and foreign - have been keeping his base down. Telling them how he will help then win - they'll get tired of winning! He will vanquish their enemies, the elites who to blame for his base's woes. It's a movement built on shame, rage and scapegoating. It's going to take us to some dark places.

The Trump and Putin supporting doesn't seem to be doing Farage any damage.
Perhaps at this point we have to accept that for the majority of the electorate it's just name recognition... "He's on TV a lot, he'll do"
We need a pollster prepared to spice it up, throw in Linneker. Micah Richards, Holly Willoughby, Vernon Kay, Janet SP, Hitler and Stalin as options and expose the public.

TSE's mention of Countdown reminds me of what a friend told me about another inane daytime show, Pointless. Apparently the recognition levels for anything to do with politics are embarrassingly low. Whilst it would appear huge numbers can name the entire cast list of Hollyoaks few can name the current PM. Ask something obscure, like who is Chancellor of the Exchequer, or President of France, and you are likely to register a flat zero.

Of course people want Farage as PM. They recognise him from the telly. They hate the existing politicians, who have dismally failed to make them personally rich, so they would quite naturally prefer someone they can actually recognise and think might at least be a bit of fun.

Perhaps we should try it. It pretty much what they have done in the USA,

The last of the few: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/the-last-surviving-battle-of-britain-pilot-dies-aged-105/ar-AA1B70Yn?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=5995d76659d2489bb6e1e2f0cf05a0d1&ei=38

Edit, apologies, I see I am a day behind.

It bears repeating. A fascinating story.

The sad thing is that in the news report about him on the Today programme yesterday they felt the need to explain what the Battle of Britain was.

It felt somewhat strange that the reporters/editors of Today think that people who listen to their programme need to have the BoB explained to them.

It's ancient history now, and people have forgotten that once we fought Fascists, rather than voted for them.

I have the awful feeling that we are going to need that lesson again.