For purposes of politics and punting, it's fortunate for PBers that both HYUFD (today?) and NPxMP (Monday?) will be canvassing the mean streets of Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Do we have anyone that's gone to ground (so to speak) in North Shropshire? Leon is (or was) not too far from this turf.
I went to to school in Ruyton XI Towns in the constituency, but that was a bit ago.
"not big enough to make one town, far less eleven" - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
While a medical student he spent time there as an unpaid doctor's assistant; the local yokels got him to work for them for free!
And the rest, as they say, is history . . . and literature . . .
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
Though it was the centre right party in Germany that put the Nazis in government. The SDP and Communists were strongly opposed. Why do you think that was?
Boris Johnson has shelved his dream for a bridge or tunnel connecting Northern Ireland with Scotland, after a review concluded it would be too technically challenging and expensive.
The Prime Minister tasked Sir Peter Hendy, the Network Rail chairman, with launching a feasibility study into the idea as part of a wider investigation into upgrading connectivity across the Union.
The review, expected to be published this coming week, has ruled out the proposal for a fixed-link connecting Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK for the foreseeable future.
A government source told The Telegraph: “Hendy has examined if this is affordable and practical and he concludes it would be technically very challenging at the moment.
“That’s not to say it won't become viable at some point in the future, but at the moment it would be very, very difficult and expensive.”
I was expecting it to go ahead - after all it’s western rather than eastern Scotland and it’s only Yorkshire / North east England that doesn’t deserve things
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
Though it was the centre right party in Germany that put the Nazis in government. The SDP and Communists were strongly opposed. Why do you think that was?
Well the Communists didn’t like the idea of the anti-Communist party being in government.
The Zentrum (?) - it’s been a long time since I read up on German history - saw it as a case of helping their enemy’s enemy
Boris Johnson has shelved his dream for a bridge or tunnel connecting Northern Ireland with Scotland, after a review concluded it would be too technically challenging and expensive.
The Prime Minister tasked Sir Peter Hendy, the Network Rail chairman, with launching a feasibility study into the idea as part of a wider investigation into upgrading connectivity across the Union.
The review, expected to be published this coming week, has ruled out the proposal for a fixed-link connecting Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK for the foreseeable future.
A government source told The Telegraph: “Hendy has examined if this is affordable and practical and he concludes it would be technically very challenging at the moment.
“That’s not to say it won't become viable at some point in the future, but at the moment it would be very, very difficult and expensive.”
I was expecting it to go ahead - after all it’s western rather than eastern Scotland and it’s only Yorkshire / North east England that doesn’t deserve things
Its being replaced in the next Tory manifesto with a Ladder to Heaven to be built from Mansfield.
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so."
If only Wikipedia had existed when I was 5 I wouldn’t have needed to go to school or university as it’s an absolutely flawless source of absolute facts compiled only by experts with impeccable credentials and not an open source depository of the opinions of anyone who can be arsed to update it.
I consider myself educated by an article on Wikipedia - fuck my qualifications I can just say to a potential employer that I have been educated by Wikipedia and therefore I am beyond criticism or nuance in any argument.
I appreciate it must be annoying for you to have made the stupid mistake of thinking Hitler was in any way not right-wing but I am glad to have helped with your education.
Boris Johnson has shelved his dream for a bridge or tunnel connecting Northern Ireland with Scotland, after a review concluded it would be too technically challenging and expensive.
The Prime Minister tasked Sir Peter Hendy, the Network Rail chairman, with launching a feasibility study into the idea as part of a wider investigation into upgrading connectivity across the Union.
The review, expected to be published this coming week, has ruled out the proposal for a fixed-link connecting Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK for the foreseeable future.
A government source told The Telegraph: “Hendy has examined if this is affordable and practical and he concludes it would be technically very challenging at the moment.
“That’s not to say it won't become viable at some point in the future, but at the moment it would be very, very difficult and expensive.”
I was expecting it to go ahead - after all it’s western rather than eastern Scotland and it’s only Yorkshire / North east England that doesn’t deserve things
It would certainly fit with this government's approach to detail to cancel HS2 Eastern and Cross Pennine Rail link HS3 on Thursday and then announce a tunnel to Ireland on Saturday.
For purposes of politics and punting, it's fortunate for PBers that both HYUFD (today?) and NPxMP (Monday?) will be canvassing the mean streets of Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Do we have anyone that's gone to ground (so to speak) in North Shropshire? Leon is (or was) not too far from this turf.
Bless, if @Leon is in the area he will surely be holed up in a Michelin-starred gastropub full of fellow Londoners, writing a puff-piece for the Speccie or Times or whoever pays his travel bill?
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
Pretty sure he was a socialist. It was in the party name.
Drexler was a socialist. Hitler wasn't. Anything but.
"The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right, fascist political party in the United Kingdom."</>
If you define racists as far right then automatically all racists are going to be far right regardless of whether they are left or right wing economically. That's just because you've defined it that way though.
Excluding racism, nationality, border, migration etc then list their socio-economic policies and say where they fall on a left/right spectrum.
For purposes of politics and punting, it's fortunate for PBers that both HYUFD (today?) and NPxMP (Monday?) will be canvassing the mean streets of Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Do we have anyone that's gone to ground (so to speak) in North Shropshire? Leon is (or was) not too far from this turf.
I went to to school in Ruyton XI Towns in the constituency, but that was a bit ago.
"not big enough to make one town, far less eleven" - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
While a medical student he spent time there as an unpaid doctor's assistant; the local yokels got him to work for them for free!
And the rest, as they say, is history . . . and literature . . .
Thanks, I never knew that
Written out in full it's the longest place name in England
Boris Johnson has shelved his dream for a bridge or tunnel connecting Northern Ireland with Scotland, after a review concluded it would be too technically challenging and expensive.
The Prime Minister tasked Sir Peter Hendy, the Network Rail chairman, with launching a feasibility study into the idea as part of a wider investigation into upgrading connectivity across the Union.
The review, expected to be published this coming week, has ruled out the proposal for a fixed-link connecting Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK for the foreseeable future.
A government source told The Telegraph: “Hendy has examined if this is affordable and practical and he concludes it would be technically very challenging at the moment.
“That’s not to say it won't become viable at some point in the future, but at the moment it would be very, very difficult and expensive.”
I was expecting it to go ahead - after all it’s western rather than eastern Scotland and it’s only Yorkshire / North east England that doesn’t deserve things
I'm fine with with Yorkshire/North east England getting the main conduit to & from NI and their ultra Protestant lovelies. Not sure anyone deserves that, mind.
Edit: NW England of course, a route from NI to NE England would be circuitous!
No surprise from me (4 times sectioned since 2011 [3 if you don't count the "voluntary" one])
If you don’t mind me asking, do you think, with a clear head - in hindsight - sectioning was appropriate? Presumably the authorities considered you a danger to yourself - do you now think that assessment was correct?
Genuine question (and fair enough if you don’t want to discuss it publicly on a forum).
I find peoples level headed assessments of their previous mental health episodes quite interesting and useful. Often, eg, in documentaries, we get people looking back on their mental health episodes and expressing gratitude at the way they were “handled” - was that your experience?
I'll continue this on the next thread if you like - just post that again on new thread.
Hi
OK-
I gave up trying to plead my sanity to the authorties after I had a Compulsary Treatment Order given to me by a Mental Health Tribunal.
In one of the four occasions I was sectioned I admit I did have some strange thoughts in my head - but I'd already been sectioned 3 times by then.
You take good care of yourself and be kind to yourself
My family has experience of serious mental health issues, and it is so important that you do know help is available and everyone on here should be supportive
All the very best
Good luck with getting much help from NHS.
Not the best comment Malc and to be fair we have been helped over the last 30 years and successfully
You are lucky then , I have family members who have had absolute crap service. @Big_G_NorthWales
David Jones @DavidJonesMP · 10h Austria is sadly playing with fire in making vaccination mandatory. We in this country must never go down that route. Compulsory vaccine is outlawed under the Public Health Act 1984. It must remain so.
Boris Johnson has shelved his dream for a bridge or tunnel connecting Northern Ireland with Scotland, after a review concluded it would be too technically challenging and expensive.
The Prime Minister tasked Sir Peter Hendy, the Network Rail chairman, with launching a feasibility study into the idea as part of a wider investigation into upgrading connectivity across the Union.
The review, expected to be published this coming week, has ruled out the proposal for a fixed-link connecting Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK for the foreseeable future.
A government source told The Telegraph: “Hendy has examined if this is affordable and practical and he concludes it would be technically very challenging at the moment.
“That’s not to say it won't become viable at some point in the future, but at the moment it would be very, very difficult and expensive.”
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
Pretty sure he was a socialist. It was in the party name.
Drexler was a socialist. Hitler wasn't. Anything but.
"The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right, fascist political party in the United Kingdom."</>
If you define racists as far right then automatically all racists are going to be far right regardless of whether they are left or right wing economically. That's just because you've defined it that way though.
Excluding racism, nationality, border, migration etc then list their socio-economic policies and say where they fall on a left/right spectrum.
BNP: Socially conservative; climate change deniers; calling for the reintroduction of capital punishment and national service; anti-EU; pro-'Christian values' (if not Christianity per se); anti-abortion; economically protectionist; anti-globalisation; against multiculturalism; against a perceived 'mainstream media elite'...
All sounds pretty right-wing to me tbh.
Granted the BNP not embraced neoliberalism but then Johnson's Tories have now ditched that too.
Telegraph header is brutal for Johnson, only time will tell as to whether this is a temporary blip for Johnson or not
77% of Tory voters think the government is too soft? How many migrants do they want drowned before they are being tough enough? Remember that the attempt to make it a criminal offence for RNLI volunteers to do their job was aimed as a sop to these voters.
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
You don't seem to have got as far as my comment at 10:03 in which I clearly consider anti-semitism as racism
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including racism. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments"
And later on where I make clear that we should have no further role in the Israel/Palestine dispute at 10:35
"Not a word that I have ever encountered. Certainly sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians does spill over to anti-semitism.
Personally I think that British influence and actions in the Middle East over the last Century or so have been a litany of mistakes in which we have managed to offend all sides. We should steer clear of any further involvement."
I know that you habitually mis-represent my views on a variety of issues, but to make it perfectly clear, I consider anti-semitism as bad as any other form of racism. I just do not favour "cancelling" people, but rather rebutting their prejudices.
Yeah sure you do.
It is possible that I know my own beliefs than you do!
No I don't think you do. I think you need some unconscious bias training. Do they offer that on the NHS?
Also well done @malcolmg for tipping Buzz over another posters tips which were beaten one soundly.
Thank you Topping.
Have I missed a winning 4 legger from you, Malcolm?
I got a nice Trixie last Sunday , 11/4, 3/1 and 100/30 had forgotten to check and only noticed this morning. I got one today as well but they were all short prices.
Are you any good at horse race betting? Or just fun?
I just do it for fun , and not as much as I used to. I like the jumps but don't spend enough time on it nowadays. I keep my head above water but don't bet big.
I almost never bet on sports. A fun few pounds here and there. I just don't have the expertise.
I do bet on politics though. I think I have some small edge, but mainly I just love the complexity and challenge of the bets. Next PM? A thousand factors.
I like going to the meetings but obviously not been last couple of years. It is good for an interest as long as you are sensible and don't bet money you cannot afford to write off.
For purposes of politics and punting, it's fortunate for PBers that both HYUFD (today?) and NPxMP (Monday?) will be canvassing the mean streets of Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Do we have anyone that's gone to ground (so to speak) in North Shropshire? Leon is (or was) not too far from this turf.
Bless, if @Leon is in the area he will surely be holed up in a Michelin-starred gastropub full of fellow Londoners, writing a puff-piece for the Speccie or Times or whoever pays his travel bill?
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
Pretty sure he was a socialist. It was in the party name.
Drexler was a socialist. Hitler wasn't. Anything but.
"The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right, fascist political party in the United Kingdom."</>
If you define racists as far right then automatically all racists are going to be far right regardless of whether they are left or right wing economically. That's just because you've defined it that way though.
Excluding racism, nationality, border, migration etc then list their socio-economic policies and say where they fall on a left/right spectrum.
BNP: Socially conservative; climate change deniers; calling for the reintroduction of capital punishment and national service; anti-EU; pro-'Christian values' (if not Christianity per se); anti-abortion; economically protectionist; anti-globalisation; against multiculturalism; against a perceived 'mainstream media elite'...
All sounds pretty right-wing to me tbh.
Granted the BNP not embraced neoliberalism but then Johnson's Tories have now ditched that too.
Today Republican Senator Pat Toomey and I sent a letter to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressing Congress's bipartisan concern that a failure to implement the Northern Ireland Protocols could compromise the Good Friday Agreement. https://www.murphy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/northern_ireland_letter.pdf
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
You don't seem to have got as far as my comment at 10:03 in which I clearly consider anti-semitism as racism
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including racism. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments"
And later on where I make clear that we should have no further role in the Israel/Palestine dispute at 10:35
"Not a word that I have ever encountered. Certainly sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians does spill over to anti-semitism.
Personally I think that British influence and actions in the Middle East over the last Century or so have been a litany of mistakes in which we have managed to offend all sides. We should steer clear of any further involvement."
I know that you habitually mis-represent my views on a variety of issues, but to make it perfectly clear, I consider anti-semitism as bad as any other form of racism. I just do not favour "cancelling" people, but rather rebutting their prejudices.
Yeah sure you do.
It is possible that I know my own beliefs than you do!
No I don't think you do. I think you need some unconscious bias training. Do they offer that on the NHS?
As you only know me on here why cannot you find any comment that I have made that is anti-semitic, yet are convinced that I am?
I think it says more about you and your prejudices than anything about me.
David Jones @DavidJonesMP · 10h Austria is sadly playing with fire in making vaccination mandatory. We in this country must never go down that route. Compulsory vaccine is outlawed under the Public Health Act 1984. It must remain so.
AIUI Austria is not forcing people to be vaccinated, rather it is locking-down those who refuse. Have I got that wrong?
Today Republican Senator Pat Toomey and I sent a letter to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressing Congress's bipartisan concern that a failure to implement the Northern Ireland Protocols could compromise the Good Friday Agreement. https://www.murphy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/northern_ireland_letter.pdf
I am not sure if you have not been listening because it does not suit you but the mood music has changed with both sides confirming a new settlement will be reached which when it is will see both sides move on
For purposes of politics and punting, it's fortunate for PBers that both HYUFD (today?) and NPxMP (Monday?) will be canvassing the mean streets of Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Do we have anyone that's gone to ground (so to speak) in North Shropshire? Leon is (or was) not too far from this turf.
Bless, if @Leon is in the area he will surely be holed up in a Michelin-starred gastropub full of fellow Londoners, writing a puff-piece for the Speccie or Times or whoever pays his travel bill?
(He says, feeling rather jealous.)
So, he's in Ludlow?
Hereford, last I heard - so not far.
It was a good post from Leon, I have been looking at property prices for a possible retirement relocation.
David Jones @DavidJonesMP · 10h Austria is sadly playing with fire in making vaccination mandatory. We in this country must never go down that route. Compulsory vaccine is outlawed under the Public Health Act 1984. It must remain so.
AIUI Austria is not forcing people to be vaccinated, rather it is locking-down those who refuse. Have I got that wrong?
No, it really is making vaccination compulsory, from Feb next year.
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
Pretty sure he was a socialist. It was in the party name.
Drexler was a socialist. Hitler wasn't. Anything but.
"The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right, fascist political party in the United Kingdom."</>
If you define racists as far right then automatically all racists are going to be far right regardless of whether they are left or right wing economically. That's just because you've defined it that way though.
Excluding racism, nationality, border, migration etc then list their socio-economic policies and say where they fall on a left/right spectrum.
BNP: Socially conservative; climate change deniers; calling for the reintroduction of capital punishment and national service; anti-EU; pro-'Christian values' (if not Christianity per se); anti-abortion; economically protectionist; anti-globalisation; against multiculturalism; against a perceived 'mainstream media elite'...
All sounds pretty right-wing to me tbh.
Granted the BNP not embraced neoliberalism but then Johnson's Tories have now ditched that too.
David Jones @DavidJonesMP · 10h Austria is sadly playing with fire in making vaccination mandatory. We in this country must never go down that route. Compulsory vaccine is outlawed under the Public Health Act 1984. It must remain so.
AIUI Austria is not forcing people to be vaccinated, rather it is locking-down those who refuse. Have I got that wrong?
David Jones @DavidJonesMP · 10h Austria is sadly playing with fire in making vaccination mandatory. We in this country must never go down that route. Compulsory vaccine is outlawed under the Public Health Act 1984. It must remain so.
AIUI Austria is not forcing people to be vaccinated, rather it is locking-down those who refuse. Have I got that wrong?
No, it really is making vaccination compulsory, from Feb next year.
Not sure how that can be enforced.
Thanks. Interesting. Those extreme left-wing governments, eh! 😉
David Jones @DavidJonesMP · 10h Austria is sadly playing with fire in making vaccination mandatory. We in this country must never go down that route. Compulsory vaccine is outlawed under the Public Health Act 1984. It must remain so.
AIUI Austria is not forcing people to be vaccinated, rather it is locking-down those who refuse. Have I got that wrong?
David Jones @DavidJonesMP · 10h Austria is sadly playing with fire in making vaccination mandatory. We in this country must never go down that route. Compulsory vaccine is outlawed under the Public Health Act 1984. It must remain so.
AIUI Austria is not forcing people to be vaccinated, rather it is locking-down those who refuse. Have I got that wrong?
No, it really is making vaccination compulsory, from Feb next year.
Not sure how that can be enforced.
Isn’t voting compulsory in some countries? I seem to recall Australia? I’d imagine similar policing, I.e. more in principle than reality. One wonders if it’s more a ramped up vaccine passport, than a genuine want to make it criminal. Psychological pressure?
Today Republican Senator Pat Toomey and I sent a letter to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressing Congress's bipartisan concern that a failure to implement the Northern Ireland Protocols could compromise the Good Friday Agreement. https://www.murphy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/northern_ireland_letter.pdf
I am not sure if you have not been listening because it does not suit you but the mood music has changed with both sides confirming a new settlement will be reached which when it is will see both sides move on
David Jones @DavidJonesMP · 10h Austria is sadly playing with fire in making vaccination mandatory. We in this country must never go down that route. Compulsory vaccine is outlawed under the Public Health Act 1984. It must remain so.
AIUI Austria is not forcing people to be vaccinated, rather it is locking-down those who refuse. Have I got that wrong?
No, it really is making vaccination compulsory, from Feb next year.
Not sure how that can be enforced.
Thanks. Interesting. Those extreme left-wing governments, eh! 😉
A Green-OVP (Liberal Conservative) coalition, the right wing populist Freedom Party is opposed, I believe.
For purposes of politics and punting, it's fortunate for PBers that both HYUFD (today?) and NPxMP (Monday?) will be canvassing the mean streets of Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Do we have anyone that's gone to ground (so to speak) in North Shropshire? Leon is (or was) not too far from this turf.
I went to to school in Ruyton XI Towns in the constituency, but that was a bit ago.
"not big enough to make one town, far less eleven" - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
While a medical student he spent time there as an unpaid doctor's assistant; the local yokels got him to work for them for free!
And the rest, as they say, is history . . . and literature . . .
Thanks, I never knew that
Written out in full it's the longest place name in England
Neither did I until I googled and wikied it.
And thanks for your mentioning Ruyton X1 Towns which I also never heard of until your post. Just the kind of thing that makes even hardened Fenians have a soft spot for England & the English - on their own home ground, anyway.
I was also mightily impressed that when I have my booster on Thursday at 4pm it was showing on my patient records for my GP's surgery by 6pm the same day.
Today Republican Senator Pat Toomey and I sent a letter to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressing Congress's bipartisan concern that a failure to implement the Northern Ireland Protocols could compromise the Good Friday Agreement. https://www.murphy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/northern_ireland_letter.pdf
I am not sure if you have not been listening because it does not suit you but the mood music has changed with both sides confirming a new settlement will be reached which when it is will see both sides move on
Paul Mainwood @PaulMainwood · 6h If you're 40+ and it's more than 5 months since your 2nd dose, you should be able to book your booster now (system will offer dates from 2nd dose + 6 months).
Servers will update over the weekend, so it's can be worth trying again later or on Monday.
I was also mightily impressed that when I have my booster on Thursday at 4pm it was showing on my patient records for my GP's surgery by 6pm the same day.
I agree. We shouldn’t be amazed as it’s electronic, but a lifetime of dealing with the nhs suggests otherwise... Will never forget my paper records file during leukeamia treatment.
For purposes of politics and punting, it's fortunate for PBers that both HYUFD (today?) and NPxMP (Monday?) will be canvassing the mean streets of Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Do we have anyone that's gone to ground (so to speak) in North Shropshire? Leon is (or was) not too far from this turf.
Bless, if @Leon is in the area he will surely be holed up in a Michelin-starred gastropub full of fellow Londoners, writing a puff-piece for the Speccie or Times or whoever pays his travel bill?
(He says, feeling rather jealous.)
So, he's in Ludlow?
Hereford, last I heard - so not far.
It was a good post from Leon, I have been looking at property prices for a possible retirement relocation.
It was to be fair. I was being very churlish - apols @Leon.
It was thought of @Leon being 'on the ground' in N Shropshire to report on the byelection mood that prompted me.
Any opinion polls tonight? We could do with one to divert us away from the tedious "fascists are really socialists", and "who do left-wingers hate the most?" stuff, let alone the rancorous allegations of anti-semitism aimed at anybody who dares question Israel's foreign policy.
People who question Israel's foreign policy, but absolutely nobody else's, need looking at, though.
Nonsense. Many people have dual citizenship with Israel and tight and close personal connections. We expect the same behaviour from the Israelis as we expect from our government here. The same would apply to our closest neighbours in Europe. Which thankfully we get. Israel by contrast are close to a rogue nation and it disgusts many of us.
I was also mightily impressed that when I have my booster on Thursday at 4pm it was showing on my patient records for my GP's surgery by 6pm the same day.
I agree. We shouldn’t be amazed as it’s electronic, but a lifetime of dealing with the nhs suggests otherwise... Will never forget my paper records file during leukeamia treatment.
My wife needs a replacement shoulder and yesterday at the hospital she had 6 xrays, walked down the corridor and the surgeon had already processed the information and was able to discuss it with us
Unfortunately at 82 she feels it is too big an operation and also the recovery is long and possibility of infections, so she is carrying on with pain killers as necessary for another year
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
The counter-argument is that you have a blind spot that mirrors those of quite left wing people who cannot see that communism has any connection with their own beliefs. Yet everyone else who isn’t left wing can see that communism is simply regular left wing beliefs in a powerful state, loyalty to the party line, redistribution of wealth and mistrust of private capital, taken to the extreme.
Similarly it doesn’t take genius to join the dots from the regular right-wing promotion of family, religion, strong leadership, nationalistic patriotism, support for business, immigration controls, the armed forces, etc. and project such views to the extreme. Just imagine HY in charge of the country and you are well on the way there.
What both extremes share is a disregard for individual liberty, interest in outcomes over process, and obsession with ideological purity.
For purposes of politics and punting, it's fortunate for PBers that both HYUFD (today?) and NPxMP (Monday?) will be canvassing the mean streets of Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Do we have anyone that's gone to ground (so to speak) in North Shropshire? Leon is (or was) not too far from this turf.
Bless, if @Leon is in the area he will surely be holed up in a Michelin-starred gastropub full of fellow Londoners, writing a puff-piece for the Speccie or Times or whoever pays his travel bill?
(He says, feeling rather jealous.)
So, he's in Ludlow?
Hereford, last I heard - so not far.
It was a good post from Leon, I have been looking at property prices for a possible retirement relocation.
It was to be fair. I was being very churlish - apols @Leon.
It was thought of @Leon being 'on the ground' in N Shropshire to report on the byelection mood that prompted me.
Leon's got a sharp eye, and does not (totally) let his preconceptions color his observations. Am sure that he'd been slurping fancy soup and guzzling posh plonk, but that would NOT dull his other senses such as tuning into the word on the mean streets of Wem, Mydall and Cockshutt.
For purposes of politics and punting, it's fortunate for PBers that both HYUFD (today?) and NPxMP (Monday?) will be canvassing the mean streets of Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Do we have anyone that's gone to ground (so to speak) in North Shropshire? Leon is (or was) not too far from this turf.
Bless, if @Leon is in the area he will surely be holed up in a Michelin-starred gastropub full of fellow Londoners, writing a puff-piece for the Speccie or Times or whoever pays his travel bill?
(He says, feeling rather jealous.)
So, he's in Ludlow?
Hereford, last I heard - so not far.
It was a good post from Leon, I have been looking at property prices for a possible retirement relocation.
It was to be fair. I was being very churlish - apols @Leon.
It was thought of @Leon being 'on the ground' in N Shropshire to report on the byelection mood that prompted me.
Leon's got a sharp eye, and does not (totally) let his preconceptions color his observations. Am sure that he'd been slurping fancy soup and guzzling posh plonk, but that would NOT dull his other senses such as tuning into the word on the mean streets Wem, Mydall and Cockshutt.
... so long as he can find an Albanian taxi driver to quiz.
David Jones @DavidJonesMP · 10h Austria is sadly playing with fire in making vaccination mandatory. We in this country must never go down that route. Compulsory vaccine is outlawed under the Public Health Act 1984. It must remain so.
AIUI Austria is not forcing people to be vaccinated, rather it is locking-down those who refuse. Have I got that wrong?
They’ve moved on
Everyone is locked down and you get fined if you refuse vaccination
For purposes of politics and punting, it's fortunate for PBers that both HYUFD (today?) and NPxMP (Monday?) will be canvassing the mean streets of Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Do we have anyone that's gone to ground (so to speak) in North Shropshire? Leon is (or was) not too far from this turf.
Bless, if @Leon is in the area he will surely be holed up in a Michelin-starred gastropub full of fellow Londoners, writing a puff-piece for the Speccie or Times or whoever pays his travel bill?
(He says, feeling rather jealous.)
So, he's in Ludlow?
Hereford, last I heard - so not far.
It was a good post from Leon, I have been looking at property prices for a possible retirement relocation.
It was to be fair. I was being very churlish - apols @Leon.
It was thought of @Leon being 'on the ground' in N Shropshire to report on the byelection mood that prompted me.
Leon's got a sharp eye, and does not (totally) let his preconceptions color his observations. Am sure that he'd been slurping fancy soup and guzzling posh plonk, but that would NOT dull his other senses such as tuning into the word on the mean streets Wem, Mydall and Cockshutt.
That certainly makes a change from reporting the nation’s mood based on a handful of conversations at Primrose Hill. An account that wasn’t on the money, if I remember correctly.
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
The counter-argument is that you have a blind spot that mirrors those of quite left wing people who cannot see that communism has any connection with their own beliefs. Yet everyone else who isn’t left wing can see that communism is simply regular left wing beliefs in a powerful state, loyalty to the party line, redistribution of wealth and mistrust of private capital, taken to the extreme.
Similarly it doesn’t take genius to join the dots from the regular right-wing promotion of family, religion, strong leadership, nationalistic patriotism, support for business, immigration controls, the armed forces, etc. and project such views to the extreme. Just imagine HY in charge of the country and you are well on the way there.
What both extremes share is a disregard for individual liberty, interest in outcomes over process, and obsession with ideological purity.
Telegraph header is brutal for Johnson, only time will tell as to whether this is a temporary blip for Johnson or not
77% of Tory voters think the government is too soft? How many migrants do they want drowned before they are being tough enough? Remember that the attempt to make it a criminal offence for RNLI volunteers to do their job was aimed as a sop to these voters.
'attempt'? Hasn't it gone through? (not been keeping up.)
David Jones @DavidJonesMP · 10h Austria is sadly playing with fire in making vaccination mandatory. We in this country must never go down that route. Compulsory vaccine is outlawed under the Public Health Act 1984. It must remain so.
AIUI Austria is not forcing people to be vaccinated, rather it is locking-down those who refuse. Have I got that wrong?
They’ve moved on
Everyone is locked down and you get fined if you refuse vaccination
Telegraph header is brutal for Johnson, only time will tell as to whether this is a temporary blip for Johnson or not
77% of Tory voters think the government is too soft? How many migrants do they want drowned before they are being tough enough? Remember that the attempt to make it a criminal offence for RNLI volunteers to do their job was aimed as a sop to these voters.
'attempt'? Hasn't it gone through? (not been keeping up.)
I bloody hope not. I can't wait for the first court case if it does go through. The Government would be crucified and rightly so.
Telegraph header is brutal for Johnson, only time will tell as to whether this is a temporary blip for Johnson or not
77% of Tory voters think the government is too soft? How many migrants do they want drowned before they are being tough enough? Remember that the attempt to make it a criminal offence for RNLI volunteers to do their job was aimed as a sop to these voters.
Oh dear. I was hoping they were shedding support because of a wising up to charlatan Johnson rather than because they are perceived as not tough enough on migrants. If it's that, the game hasn't really changed at all.
For purposes of politics and punting, it's fortunate for PBers that both HYUFD (today?) and NPxMP (Monday?) will be canvassing the mean streets of Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Do we have anyone that's gone to ground (so to speak) in North Shropshire? Leon is (or was) not too far from this turf.
Bless, if @Leon is in the area he will surely be holed up in a Michelin-starred gastropub full of fellow Londoners, writing a puff-piece for the Speccie or Times or whoever pays his travel bill?
(He says, feeling rather jealous.)
So, he's in Ludlow?
Hereford, last I heard - so not far.
It was a good post from Leon, I have been looking at property prices for a possible retirement relocation.
It was to be fair. I was being very churlish - apols @Leon.
It was thought of @Leon being 'on the ground' in N Shropshire to report on the byelection mood that prompted me.
Leon's got a sharp eye, and does not (totally) let his preconceptions color his observations. Am sure that he'd been slurping fancy soup and guzzling posh plonk, but that would NOT dull his other senses such as tuning into the word on the mean streets Wem, Mydall and Cockshutt.
That certainly makes a change from reporting the nation’s mood based on a handful of conversations at Primrose Hill. An account that wasn’t on the money, if I remember correctly.
I distinguish, whenever possible, between Leon's reportage and his polemics. Plus I'm an optimist!
Late in the day to be on-topic, but it's a fascinating chart this one.
That 14 of the first 15 turnovers were to none of the above parties.
That list of Labour and Conservative turnovers: Dudley (twice), Wallsall North, Dagenham, Barking, Ashfield. It is almost like the red wall has actually existed for decades! Staffs SE is less obvious, but we're still on the edge of Birmingham here.
OK, let's hazard some explanations:
The biggest swings are available from the furthest back, UKIP or Galloway starting near 0 simply have more swing available than any seat available than for any seat you could see Labour or Tories turning over, and the LDs can also do none of the above from low bases. There's a little more to it than that, but that is part of this.
Largish Labour <-> Conservative swings are only on when there is nobody else, which means very third party hostile, red wall type seats, but the swings here (in the list of biggest swings, mind) are a bit bigger than polling of the time suggested and are heavily concentrated on two periods - Labour (post IMF, I think) and Conservatives (post ERM exit & Blair).
The polls at those points had underlying swimgs since previous GE of about 10% Lab-> Con in late 76 early 77 and about 16% Con->Lab in 94-96. (Labour's last gain, Corby, with 12% swing, outperformed the around 8% suggested by the polls of the time).
We are probably around 6-7% Con->Lab seeing since GE 19, so low double figures swing might be the upper expectation for OBS, with LDs coming from low and eating Labour votes in NS having more scope for bigger swings.
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
The counter-argument is that you have a blind spot that mirrors those of quite left wing people who cannot see that communism has any connection with their own beliefs. Yet everyone else who isn’t left wing can see that communism is simply regular left wing beliefs in a powerful state, loyalty to the party line, redistribution of wealth and mistrust of private capital, taken to the extreme.
Similarly it doesn’t take genius to join the dots from the regular right-wing promotion of family, religion, strong leadership, nationalistic patriotism, support for business, immigration controls, the armed forces, etc. and project such views to the extreme. Just imagine HY in charge of the country and you are well on the way there.
What both extremes share is a disregard for individual liberty, interest in outcomes over process, and obsession with ideological purity.
There is a difference: communism is - simplifying - more socialism with more violence and force; social democracy is watered down socialism. They all exist on a spectrum.
The far right has some elements - patriotism converted to nationalism - which exist on a spectrum with the centre right. However the centre right has many elements of liberalism, especially on economics but also individual liberty which is diametrically opposed to what the the far right believes in (they have the state is supremacy to the individual)
I was also mightily impressed that when I have my booster on Thursday at 4pm it was showing on my patient records for my GP's surgery by 6pm the same day.
I agree. We shouldn’t be amazed as it’s electronic, but a lifetime of dealing with the nhs suggests otherwise... Will never forget my paper records file during leukeamia treatment.
My wife needs a replacement shoulder and yesterday at the hospital she had 6 xrays, walked down the corridor and the surgeon had already processed the information and was able to discuss it with us
Unfortunately at 82 she feels it is too big an operation and also the recovery is long and possibility of infections, so she is carrying on with pain killers as necessary for another year
My mother just got a new hip. Been waiting two years, and had to go private or she'd have been waiting another year in constant pain.
Telegraph header is brutal for Johnson, only time will tell as to whether this is a temporary blip for Johnson or not
77% of Tory voters think the government is too soft? How many migrants do they want drowned before they are being tough enough? Remember that the attempt to make it a criminal offence for RNLI volunteers to do their job was aimed as a sop to these voters.
Oh dear. I was hoping they were shedding support because of a wising up to charlatan Johnson rather than because they are perceived as not tough enough on migrants. If it's that, the game hasn't really changed at all.
I think it was @Stuartinromford who made the astute point this morning that this is a government of folk used to saying "make it so" and it happening. No amount of repeating the mantras "Australian points system", nor "take back control" seems to be reducing the number of boats. Almost as if slogans aren't magical incantations or something.
Today Republican Senator Pat Toomey and I sent a letter to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressing Congress's bipartisan concern that a failure to implement the Northern Ireland Protocols could compromise the Good Friday Agreement. https://www.murphy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/northern_ireland_letter.pdf
I am not sure if you have not been listening because it does not suit you but the mood music has changed with both sides confirming a new settlement will be reached which when it is will see both sides move on
David Jones @DavidJonesMP · 10h Austria is sadly playing with fire in making vaccination mandatory. We in this country must never go down that route. Compulsory vaccine is outlawed under the Public Health Act 1984. It must remain so.
AIUI Austria is not forcing people to be vaccinated, rather it is locking-down those who refuse. Have I got that wrong?
They’ve moved on
Everyone is locked down and you get fined if you refuse vaccination
So while this move in Austria is not something I support, it's not something new out revolutionary.
IIRC Austria under the Habsburgs was an early leader in public health starting, for example Emperor Joseph II establishing sanitary cordon on border to prevent spread of plague, etc. from the neighboring Ottoman Empire.
If I may make a small suggestion: The discussion of Hitler (and many other subjects) would be improved if you were to use more than one axis.
For example, in the 2016 American presidential election, I advised those for whom conservative social issues were most important to vote for Donald Trump. I advised those who wanted a realistic foreign policy to vote for Clinton. And I advised those who wanted a free-market economic policy, to vote for the Libertarian, Gary Johnson. Translating this into the usual way of discussing issues in the US, I saw Trump as on the right on social issues, on the left in foreign policy, and toward the center on economic policy.
It has been a while since I read Shirer, so I won't suggest what axes make the most sense for 1930s Germany, other than dictatorship-democracy, but I am sure many commenters here will be able to add axes to that.
(The Libertarian Party in the United States likes to use a two-axis scheme, which I consider insufficient.
For the record: I didn't like any of the choices, so I cast a write-in ballot for Mitt Romney.)
I was also mightily impressed that when I have my booster on Thursday at 4pm it was showing on my patient records for my GP's surgery by 6pm the same day.
I agree. We shouldn’t be amazed as it’s electronic, but a lifetime of dealing with the nhs suggests otherwise... Will never forget my paper records file during leukeamia treatment.
My wife needs a replacement shoulder and yesterday at the hospital she had 6 xrays, walked down the corridor and the surgeon had already processed the information and was able to discuss it with us
Unfortunately at 82 she feels it is too big an operation and also the recovery is long and possibility of infections, so she is carrying on with pain killers as necessary for another year
My mother just got a new hip. Been waiting two years, and had to go private or she'd have been waiting another year in constant pain.
I am sorry to hear that but the surgeon did offer her the operation but we collectively decided not to proceed at present
I was also mightily impressed that when I have my booster on Thursday at 4pm it was showing on my patient records for my GP's surgery by 6pm the same day.
I agree. We shouldn’t be amazed as it’s electronic, but a lifetime of dealing with the nhs suggests otherwise... Will never forget my paper records file during leukeamia treatment.
My wife needs a replacement shoulder and yesterday at the hospital she had 6 xrays, walked down the corridor and the surgeon had already processed the information and was able to discuss it with us
Unfortunately at 82 she feels it is too big an operation and also the recovery is long and possibility of infections, so she is carrying on with pain killers as necessary for another year
My mother just got a new hip. Been waiting two years, and had to go private or she'd have been waiting another year in constant pain.
I am sorry to hear that but the surgeon did offer her the operation but we collectively decided not to proceed at present
Mind you she has been a year on the waiting list
No, it's all good so far - she's dodged Covid, and is recovering well. Though the first week was touch & go.
Telegraph header is brutal for Johnson, only time will tell as to whether this is a temporary blip for Johnson or not
77% of Tory voters think the government is too soft? How many migrants do they want drowned before they are being tough enough? Remember that the attempt to make it a criminal offence for RNLI volunteers to do their job was aimed as a sop to these voters.
Oh dear. I was hoping they were shedding support because of a wising up to charlatan Johnson rather than because they are perceived as not tough enough on migrants. If it's that, the game hasn't really changed at all.
I think it was @Stuartinromford who made the astute point this morning that this is a government of folk used to saying "make it so" and it happening. No amount of repeating the mantras "Australian points system", nor "take back control" seems to be reducing the number of boats. Almost as if slogans aren't magical incantations or something.
Yep, rhetoric being exposed as only that. But what I mean is it doesn't bode so great for the political change I'm hoping for if it's strong border type sentiment driving people away from the Cons.
Late in the day to be on-topic, but it's a fascinating chart this one.
That 14 of the first 15 turnovers were to none of the above parties.
That list of Labour and Conservative turnovers: Dudley (twice), Wallsall North, Dagenham, Barking, Ashfield. It is almost like the red wall has actually existed for decades! Staffs SE is less obvious, but we're still on the edge of Birmingham here.
OK, let's hazard some explanations:
The biggest swings are available from the furthest back, UKIP or Galloway starting near 0 simply have more swing available than any seat available than for any seat you could see Labour or Tories turning over, and the LDs can also do none of the above from low bases. There's a little more to it than that, but that is part of this.
Largish Labour <-> Conservative swings are only on when there is nobody else, which means very third party hostile, red wall type seats, but the swings here (in the list of biggest swings, mind) are a bit bigger than polling of the time suggested and are heavily concentrated on two periods - Labour (post IMF, I think) and Conservatives (post ERM exit & Blair).
The polls at those points had underlying swimgs since previous GE of about 10% Lab-> Con in late 76 early 77 and about 16% Con->Lab in 94-96. (Labour's last gain, Corby, with 12% swing, outperformed the around 8% suggested by the polls of the time).
We are probably around 6-7% Con->Lab seeing since GE 19, so low double figures swing might be the upper expectation for OBS, with LDs coming from low and eating Labour votes in NS having more scope for bigger swings.
Equally interesting is that there are exactly zero SDP wins on that table.
Eric Topol @EricTopol · 7h The US has 59% of its population fully vaccinated. That's the same rate as 4 countries in Europe, currently with some of the highest fatality rates in the world.
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
The counter-argument is that you have a blind spot that mirrors those of quite left wing people who cannot see that communism has any connection with their own beliefs. Yet everyone else who isn’t left wing can see that communism is simply regular left wing beliefs in a powerful state, loyalty to the party line, redistribution of wealth and mistrust of private capital, taken to the extreme.
Similarly it doesn’t take genius to join the dots from the regular right-wing promotion of family, religion, strong leadership, nationalistic patriotism, support for business, immigration controls, the armed forces, etc. and project such views to the extreme. Just imagine HY in charge of the country and you are well on the way there.
What both extremes share is a disregard for individual liberty, interest in outcomes over process, and obsession with ideological purity.
There is a difference: communism is - simplifying - more socialism with more violence and force; social democracy is watered down socialism. They all exist on a spectrum.
The far right has some elements - patriotism converted to nationalism - which exist on a spectrum with the centre right. However the centre right has many elements of liberalism, especially on economics but also individual liberty which is diametrically opposed to what the the far right believes in (they have the state is supremacy to the individual)
The way I see it:
- Liberalism is the belief system of the urban elites - Socialism is the belief system of the urban poor - Conservatism is the belief system of the rural elite and the rural poor
Most political divides around the world these days seem to be some version of town mouse vs country mouse.
Telegraph header is brutal for Johnson, only time will tell as to whether this is a temporary blip for Johnson or not
77% of Tory voters think the government is too soft? How many migrants do they want drowned before they are being tough enough? Remember that the attempt to make it a criminal offence for RNLI volunteers to do their job was aimed as a sop to these voters.
Oh dear. I was hoping they were shedding support because of a wising up to charlatan Johnson rather than because they are perceived as not tough enough on migrants. If it's that, the game hasn't really changed at all.
I think it was @Stuartinromford who made the astute point this morning that this is a government of folk used to saying "make it so" and it happening. No amount of repeating the mantras "Australian points system", nor "take back control" seems to be reducing the number of boats. Almost as if slogans aren't magical incantations or something.
Yep, rhetoric being exposed as only that. But what I mean is it doesn't bode so great for the political change I'm hoping for if it's strong border type sentiment driving people away from the Cons.
The problem is that there is no solution to the migrant boats that is easy to deliver, and notable that the migrants have switched to boats as lorry arrivals are sharply down. Doing so under existing laws requires the French to act, yet this government trashed any diplomatic influence there.
In practice many asylum claims succeed, but even if they fail deportation simply does not happen such as with the Liverpool bomber.
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so."
If only Wikipedia had existed when I was 5 I wouldn’t have needed to go to school or university as it’s an absolutely flawless source of absolute facts compiled only by experts with impeccable credentials and not an open source depository of the opinions of anyone who can be arsed to update it.
I consider myself educated by an article on Wikipedia - fuck my qualifications I can just say to a potential employer that I have been educated by Wikipedia and therefore I am beyond criticism or nuance in any argument.
I appreciate it must be annoying for you to have made the stupid mistake of thinking Hitler was in any way not right-wing but I am glad to have helped with your education.
Interesting, and disturbing article. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/11/liberal-guns-rights-activist-kyle-rittenhouse.html Liberals really need to look at the fact that they’re going to need to defend themselves. This verdict isn’t this great acquittal of Rittenhouse being absolutely right, and now we can go shoot protestors. But it will empower a segment of the population to say, “Hey, look, we can go shoot legal protestors now without repercussion.” Liberals need to think about that. Liberals need to be aware that there is this right to self-defense. And one side shouldn’t be the only side that’s armed.
Having said that, somewhere between 20 to 25 percent of independent households have guns. And if you put liberals and independents together, they way outnumber Republicans in gun ownership in the U.S., by a lot...
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so."
If only Wikipedia had existed when I was 5 I wouldn’t have needed to go to school or university as it’s an absolutely flawless source of absolute facts compiled only by experts with impeccable credentials and not an open source depository of the opinions of anyone who can be arsed to update it.
I consider myself educated by an article on Wikipedia - fuck my qualifications I can just say to a potential employer that I have been educated by Wikipedia and therefore I am beyond criticism or nuance in any argument.
I appreciate it must be annoying for you to have made the stupid mistake of thinking Hitler was in any way not right-wing but I am glad to have helped with your education.
Telegraph header is brutal for Johnson, only time will tell as to whether this is a temporary blip for Johnson or not
77% of Tory voters think the government is too soft? How many migrants do they want drowned before they are being tough enough? Remember that the attempt to make it a criminal offence for RNLI volunteers to do their job was aimed as a sop to these voters.
Oh dear. I was hoping they were shedding support because of a wising up to charlatan Johnson rather than because they are perceived as not tough enough on migrants. If it's that, the game hasn't really changed at all.
I think it was @Stuartinromford who made the astute point this morning that this is a government of folk used to saying "make it so" and it happening. No amount of repeating the mantras "Australian points system", nor "take back control" seems to be reducing the number of boats. Almost as if slogans aren't magical incantations or something.
Yep, rhetoric being exposed as only that. But what I mean is it doesn't bode so great for the political change I'm hoping for if it's strong border type sentiment driving people away from the Cons.
But it does actually. The Cons need 2 things to lose power. Someone to their right to take the ex- Kippers. Doesn't have to be many. And a lack of enthusiasm to vote from their more middling natural supporters. These depend on delivery being short of the rhetoric. Which, given the promises won't be a stretch. They appear to be arranging both nicely.
Henry Fairlie, who coined the term “establishment” in 1955, argued that “the exercise of power in Britain…cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially”. Surveying the stately procession of sea-bass and grass-fed beef on Monday night (Monday night!) he would have been certain that nothing had changed.
Does the Economist think that we're still in 1955 culinary wise with sea bass and grass fed beef on a Monday night (Monday night!) being the ultimate in sophisticated indulgence ?
Perhaps the idiot who wrote that article should spend some time outside the M25 and see where cattle spend their time.
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
The counter-argument is that you have a blind spot that mirrors those of quite left wing people who cannot see that communism has any connection with their own beliefs. Yet everyone else who isn’t left wing can see that communism is simply regular left wing beliefs in a powerful state, loyalty to the party line, redistribution of wealth and mistrust of private capital, taken to the extreme.
Similarly it doesn’t take genius to join the dots from the regular right-wing promotion of family, religion, strong leadership, nationalistic patriotism, support for business, immigration controls, the armed forces, etc. and project such views to the extreme. Just imagine HY in charge of the country and you are well on the way there.
What both extremes share is a disregard for individual liberty, interest in outcomes over process, and obsession with ideological purity.
There is a difference: communism is - simplifying - more socialism with more violence and force; social democracy is watered down socialism. They all exist on a spectrum.
The far right has some elements - patriotism converted to nationalism - which exist on a spectrum with the centre right. However the centre right has many elements of liberalism, especially on economics but also individual liberty which is diametrically opposed to what the the far right believes in (they have the state is supremacy to the individual)
The way I see it:
- Liberalism is the belief system of the urban elites - Socialism is the belief system of the urban poor - Conservatism is the belief system of the rural elite and the rural poor
Most political divides around the world these days seem to be some version of town mouse vs country mouse.
I think that an over generalisation. Labour have had 22% to 35% of the vote in North Shropshire General elections since 2010 for example. Corbynite Labour got 22% even in 2019, and I think there is some value in Lab to beat LD there. There clearly is a significant Labour base.
Simarly the Lib Dems win in suburban West London, and in areas of SE England that are hardly Urban Elite. Unless of course you draw such a broad line around urban elite that it includes folk like me living in villages in the East Midlands, which makes the term meaningless.
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so."
If only Wikipedia had existed when I was 5 I wouldn’t have needed to go to school or university as it’s an absolutely flawless source of absolute facts compiled only by experts with impeccable credentials and not an open source depository of the opinions of anyone who can be arsed to update it.
I consider myself educated by an article on Wikipedia - fuck my qualifications I can just say to a potential employer that I have been educated by Wikipedia and therefore I am beyond criticism or nuance in any argument.
I appreciate it must be annoying for you to have made the stupid mistake of thinking Hitler was in any way not right-wing but I am glad to have helped with your education.
Late in the day to be on-topic, but it's a fascinating chart this one.
That 14 of the first 15 turnovers were to none of the above parties.
That list of Labour and Conservative turnovers: Dudley (twice), Wallsall North, Dagenham, Barking, Ashfield. It is almost like the red wall has actually existed for decades! Staffs SE is less obvious, but we're still on the edge of Birmingham here.
OK, let's hazard some explanations:
The biggest swings are available from the furthest back, UKIP or Galloway starting near 0 simply have more swing available than any seat available than for any seat you could see Labour or Tories turning over, and the LDs can also do none of the above from low bases. There's a little more to it than that, but that is part of this.
Largish Labour <-> Conservative swings are only on when there is nobody else, which means very third party hostile, red wall type seats, but the swings here (in the list of biggest swings, mind) are a bit bigger than polling of the time suggested and are heavily concentrated on two periods - Labour (post IMF, I think) and Conservatives (post ERM exit & Blair).
The polls at those points had underlying swimgs since previous GE of about 10% Lab-> Con in late 76 early 77 and about 16% Con->Lab in 94-96. (Labour's last gain, Corby, with 12% swing, outperformed the around 8% suggested by the polls of the time).
We are probably around 6-7% Con->Lab seeing since GE 19, so low double figures swing might be the upper expectation for OBS, with LDs coming from low and eating Labour votes in NS having more scope for bigger swings.
Equally interesting is that there are exactly zero SDP wins on that table.
Omissions, due to inconsistent basis of quoting swing, I think.
Wikipedia quotes Crosby by-election as swing n/a, since SDP had not previously stood.
Yet for Clacton 2014, where UKIP were absent in 2010, swing is quoted
So, Crosby, on the same basis, with a 33.1% Con -> SDP swing would be well.up.that chart as, I suspect, would others.
Interesting, and disturbing article. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/11/liberal-guns-rights-activist-kyle-rittenhouse.html Liberals really need to look at the fact that they’re going to need to defend themselves. This verdict isn’t this great acquittal of Rittenhouse being absolutely right, and now we can go shoot protestors. But it will empower a segment of the population to say, “Hey, look, we can go shoot legal protestors now without repercussion.” Liberals need to think about that. Liberals need to be aware that there is this right to self-defense. And one side shouldn’t be the only side that’s armed.
Having said that, somewhere between 20 to 25 percent of independent households have guns. And if you put liberals and independents together, they way outnumber Republicans in gun ownership in the U.S., by a lot...
Yes, quite obviously the protestors need to be armed in the future. If they had shot Rittenhouse rather than trying to manually disarm him they would be walking out of court themselves.
If you cannot rely on the police, then you have to be armed yourselves.
Eric Topol @EricTopol · 7h The US has 59% of its population fully vaccinated. That's the same rate as 4 countries in Europe, currently with some of the highest fatality rates in the world.
I think its likely worse for the USA than that suggests as they have relatively high vaccination of kids and consequently relatively lower vaccination of oldies.
The vaccination by age group is vital but difficult to find.
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
The counter-argument is that you have a blind spot that mirrors those of quite left wing people who cannot see that communism has any connection with their own beliefs. Yet everyone else who isn’t left wing can see that communism is simply regular left wing beliefs in a powerful state, loyalty to the party line, redistribution of wealth and mistrust of private capital, taken to the extreme.
Similarly it doesn’t take genius to join the dots from the regular right-wing promotion of family, religion, strong leadership, nationalistic patriotism, support for business, immigration controls, the armed forces, etc. and project such views to the extreme. Just imagine HY in charge of the country and you are well on the way there.
What both extremes share is a disregard for individual liberty, interest in outcomes over process, and obsession with ideological purity.
There is a difference: communism is - simplifying - more socialism with more violence and force; social democracy is watered down socialism. They all exist on a spectrum.
The far right has some elements - patriotism converted to nationalism - which exist on a spectrum with the centre right. However the centre right has many elements of liberalism, especially on economics but also individual liberty which is diametrically opposed to what the the far right believes in (they have the state is supremacy to the individual)
The way I see it:
- Liberalism is the belief system of the urban elites - Socialism is the belief system of the urban poor - Conservatism is the belief system of the rural elite and the rural poor
Most political divides around the world these days seem to be some version of town mouse vs country mouse.
Liberalism - people who can escape if everything falls apart Socialism - people who have nothing to lose if everything falls apart Conservatism - people who lose out if everything falls apart
Interesting, and disturbing article. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/11/liberal-guns-rights-activist-kyle-rittenhouse.html Liberals really need to look at the fact that they’re going to need to defend themselves. This verdict isn’t this great acquittal of Rittenhouse being absolutely right, and now we can go shoot protestors. But it will empower a segment of the population to say, “Hey, look, we can go shoot legal protestors now without repercussion.” Liberals need to think about that. Liberals need to be aware that there is this right to self-defense. And one side shouldn’t be the only side that’s armed.
Having said that, somewhere between 20 to 25 percent of independent households have guns. And if you put liberals and independents together, they way outnumber Republicans in gun ownership in the U.S., by a lot...
Yes, quite obviously the protestors need to be armed in the future. If they had shot Rittenhouse rather than trying to manually disarm him they would be walking out of court themselves.
If you cannot rely on the police, then you have to be armed yourselves.
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so."
If only Wikipedia had existed when I was 5 I wouldn’t have needed to go to school or university as it’s an absolutely flawless source of absolute facts compiled only by experts with impeccable credentials and not an open source depository of the opinions of anyone who can be arsed to update it.
I consider myself educated by an article on Wikipedia - fuck my qualifications I can just say to a potential employer that I have been educated by Wikipedia and therefore I am beyond criticism or nuance in any argument.
I appreciate it must be annoying for you to have made the stupid mistake of thinking Hitler was in any way not right-wing but I am glad to have helped with your education.
The health secretary has begun a review into racial bias in medical equipment amid fears that thousands of ethnic-minority patients died of Covid-19 who should have survived.
Sajid Javid is working with his American counterpart, Xavier Becerra, on introducing new international standards to ensure that medical devices have been tested on all races before they are allowed to be sold.
He has commissioned the review after research showed that oximeters, which monitor oxygen levels in the blood and are used to assess whether Covid-19 patients need lifesaving treatment, are less accurate on people with darker skin.
Fuck me. They work by shining a little blue light through your finger. The idea they might not work so well in someone with a darker skin tone than mine is hardly fucking rocket science.
Red light and infrared in fact, from LEDs. The team that developed it deliberately used cheap, of the shelf components (the infrared LED is the same type found in any remote control) so they can be made at little cost.
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so."
If only Wikipedia had existed when I was 5 I wouldn’t have needed to go to school or university as it’s an absolutely flawless source of absolute facts compiled only by experts with impeccable credentials and not an open source depository of the opinions of anyone who can be arsed to update it.
I consider myself educated by an article on Wikipedia - fuck my qualifications I can just say to a potential employer that I have been educated by Wikipedia and therefore I am beyond criticism or nuance in any argument.
I appreciate it must be annoying for you to have made the stupid mistake of thinking Hitler was in any way not right-wing but I am glad to have helped with your education.
Ummm...
Weren't the Nazis National Socialists?
So why were their opponents the communists ?
This is a very silly debate.
People's Front of Judea...
Not really. This extreme left and extreme right have much in common (none if it good), but they are still left and right.
Today Republican Senator Pat Toomey and I sent a letter to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressing Congress's bipartisan concern that a failure to implement the Northern Ireland Protocols could compromise the Good Friday Agreement. https://www.murphy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/northern_ireland_letter.pdf
I am not sure if you have not been listening because it does not suit you but the mood music has changed with both sides confirming a new settlement will be reached which when it is will see both sides move on
Henry Fairlie, who coined the term “establishment” in 1955, argued that “the exercise of power in Britain…cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially”. Surveying the stately procession of sea-bass and grass-fed beef on Monday night (Monday night!) he would have been certain that nothing had changed.
Does the Economist think that we're still in 1955 culinary wise with sea bass and grass fed beef on a Monday night (Monday night!) being the ultimate in sophisticated indulgence ?
Perhaps the idiot who wrote that article should spend some time outside the M25 and see where cattle spend their time.
Comments
While a medical student he spent time there as an unpaid doctor's assistant; the local yokels got him to work for them for free!
And the rest, as they say, is history . . . and literature . . .
The Zentrum (?) - it’s been a long time since I read up on German history - saw it as a case of helping their enemy’s enemy
Excluding racism, nationality, border, migration etc then list their socio-economic policies and say where they fall on a left/right spectrum.
Written out in full it's the longest place name in England
Edit: NW England of course, a route from NI to NE England would be circuitous!
David Jones
@DavidJonesMP
·
10h
Austria is sadly playing with fire in making vaccination mandatory. We in this country must never go down that route. Compulsory vaccine is outlawed under the Public Health Act 1984. It must remain so.
Which does tend to tender his more extreme fantasies redundant.
All sounds pretty right-wing to me tbh.
Granted the BNP not embraced neoliberalism but then Johnson's Tories have now ditched that too.
https://www.murphy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/northern_ireland_letter.pdf
I think it says more about you and your prejudices than anything about me.
"I do have a soft spot for Nick Griffin, apart from the usual anti-semitic/anti-black, anti-South Asian blind spot."
"I do have a soft spot for Enoch Powell, apart from the usual anti-semitic, immigrant blind spot."
"I do have a soft spot for Adolf Hitler, apart from the usual anti-semitic blind spot."
Not sure how that can be enforced.
One wonders if it’s more a ramped up vaccine passport, than a genuine want to make it criminal. Psychological pressure?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59336580
Another Sunak bomb to destabilise Johnson who probably signs off these things without looking at detail?
And thanks for your mentioning Ruyton X1 Towns which I also never heard of until your post. Just the kind of thing that makes even hardened Fenians have a soft spot for England & the English - on their own home ground, anyway.
I was also mightily impressed that when I have my booster on Thursday at 4pm it was showing on my patient records for my GP's surgery by 6pm the same day.
Paul Mainwood
@PaulMainwood
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6h
If you're 40+ and it's more than 5 months since your 2nd dose, you should be able to book your booster now (system will offer dates from 2nd dose + 6 months).
Servers will update over the weekend, so it's can be worth trying again later or on Monday.
It was thought of @Leon being 'on the ground' in N Shropshire to report on the byelection mood that prompted me.
Britain’s establishment has split into two, each convinced it is the underdog
The result is extremism, and juvenile squabbling"
https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/11/20/britains-establishment-has-split-into-two-each-convinced-it-is-the-underdog
Unfortunately at 82 she feels it is too big an operation and also the recovery is long and possibility of infections, so she is carrying on with pain killers as necessary for another year
Similarly it doesn’t take genius to join the dots from the regular right-wing promotion of family, religion, strong leadership, nationalistic patriotism, support for business, immigration controls, the armed forces, etc. and project such views to the extreme. Just imagine HY in charge of the country and you are well on the way there.
What both extremes share is a disregard for individual liberty, interest in outcomes over process, and obsession with ideological purity.
Everyone is locked down and you get fined if you refuse vaccination
There's always the 'what sort of person would have an affairlet with this' tack I guess.
2021 - Sidcup Human?
Which is becoming a firm pattern.
Vote for this. We'll explain later.
So while this move in Austria is not something I support, it's not something new out revolutionary.
That 14 of the first 15 turnovers were to none of the above parties.
That list of Labour and Conservative turnovers: Dudley (twice), Wallsall North, Dagenham, Barking, Ashfield. It is almost like the red wall has actually existed for decades! Staffs SE is less obvious, but we're still on the edge of Birmingham here.
OK, let's hazard some explanations:
The biggest swings are available from the furthest back, UKIP or Galloway starting near 0 simply have more swing available than any seat available than for any seat you could see Labour or Tories turning over, and the LDs can also do none of the above from low bases. There's a little more to it than that, but that is part of this.
Largish Labour <-> Conservative swings are only on when there is nobody else, which means very third party hostile, red wall type seats, but the swings here (in the list of biggest swings, mind) are a bit bigger than polling of the time suggested and are heavily concentrated on two periods - Labour (post IMF, I think) and Conservatives (post ERM exit & Blair).
The polls at those points had underlying swimgs since previous GE of about 10% Lab-> Con in late 76 early 77 and about 16% Con->Lab in 94-96. (Labour's last gain, Corby, with 12% swing, outperformed the around 8% suggested by the polls of the time).
We are probably around 6-7% Con->Lab seeing since GE 19, so low double figures swing might be the upper expectation for OBS, with LDs coming from low and eating Labour votes in NS having more scope for bigger swings.
The far right has some elements - patriotism converted to nationalism - which exist on a spectrum with the centre right. However the centre right has many elements of liberalism, especially on economics but also individual liberty which is diametrically opposed to what the the far right believes in (they have the state is supremacy to the individual)
Been waiting two years, and had to go private or she'd have been waiting another year in constant pain.
No amount of repeating the mantras "Australian points system", nor "take back control" seems to be reducing the number of boats.
Almost as if slogans aren't magical incantations or something.
Definite form for firm measures versus pandemic.
For example, in the 2016 American presidential election, I advised those for whom conservative social issues were most important to vote for Donald Trump. I advised those who wanted a realistic foreign policy to vote for Clinton. And I advised those who wanted a free-market economic policy, to vote for the Libertarian, Gary Johnson. Translating this into the usual way of discussing issues in the US, I saw Trump as on the right on social issues, on the left in foreign policy, and toward the center on economic policy.
It has been a while since I read Shirer, so I won't suggest what axes make the most sense for 1930s Germany, other than dictatorship-democracy, but I am sure many commenters here will be able to add axes to that.
(The Libertarian Party in the United States likes to use a two-axis scheme, which I consider insufficient.
For the record: I didn't like any of the choices, so I cast a write-in ballot for Mitt Romney.)
Mind you she has been a year on the waiting list
Though the first week was touch & go.
Eric Topol
@EricTopol
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7h
The US has 59% of its population fully vaccinated. That's the same rate as 4 countries in Europe, currently with some of the highest fatality rates in the world.
- Liberalism is the belief system of the urban elites
- Socialism is the belief system of the urban poor
- Conservatism is the belief system of the rural elite and the rural poor
Most political divides around the world these days seem to be some version of town mouse vs country mouse.
In practice many asylum claims succeed, but even if they fail deportation simply does not happen such as with the Liverpool bomber.
Weren't the Nazis National Socialists?
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/11/liberal-guns-rights-activist-kyle-rittenhouse.html
Liberals really need to look at the fact that they’re going to need to defend themselves. This verdict isn’t this great acquittal of Rittenhouse being absolutely right, and now we can go shoot protestors. But it will empower a segment of the population to say, “Hey, look, we can go shoot legal protestors now without repercussion.” Liberals need to think about that. Liberals need to be aware that there is this right to self-defense. And one side shouldn’t be the only side that’s armed.
Having said that, somewhere between 20 to 25 percent of independent households have guns. And if you put liberals and independents together, they way outnumber Republicans in gun ownership in the U.S., by a lot...
This is a very silly debate.
The Cons need 2 things to lose power. Someone to their right to take the ex- Kippers. Doesn't have to be many.
And a lack of enthusiasm to vote from their more middling natural supporters.
These depend on delivery being short of the rhetoric. Which, given the promises won't be a stretch.
They appear to be arranging both nicely.
Does the Economist think that we're still in 1955 culinary wise with sea bass and grass fed beef on a Monday night (Monday night!) being the ultimate in sophisticated indulgence ?
Perhaps the idiot who wrote that article should spend some time outside the M25 and see where cattle spend their time.
Simarly the Lib Dems win in suburban West London, and in areas of SE England that are hardly Urban Elite. Unless of course you draw such a broad line around urban elite that it includes folk like me living in villages in the East Midlands, which makes the term meaningless.
Wikipedia quotes Crosby by-election as swing n/a, since SDP had not previously stood.
Yet for Clacton 2014, where UKIP were absent in 2010, swing is quoted
So, Crosby, on the same basis, with a 33.1% Con -> SDP swing would be well.up.that chart as, I suspect, would others.
Why do I suspect this has already been covered?
If you cannot rely on the police, then you have to be armed yourselves.
The vaccination by age group is vital but difficult to find.
Socialism - people who have nothing to lose if everything falls apart
Conservatism - people who lose out if everything falls apart
This is also a good article on the issue:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/unsurprising-outcome-rittenhouse-trial/620742/
Those celebrating this verdict, rather than regarding it as a symptom of a fncked up society, need to look at themselves.
This extreme left and extreme right have much in common (none if it good), but they are still left and right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Wooldridge