80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
Putting thast into context: one of the worst hit areas in the Blitz in the UK was Clydebank. Where I believe the figures were a third destroyed and a third badly damaged (the rest was plain damaged but realtviely easily repairable).
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Statue bothering, here we come! Hurrah!
I think the solution is to purpose build a number of statues of historic figures everyone hates (rather than many that exist of who might be bad by standard of our times, but no one had really heard of), and then let people go to town tearing those ones down.
He never stopped to think how keen the Ukrainians are to join the EU.
It should be perfectly possible to consider that the UK should not be in the EU, but that it would be of a very great benefit of Ukraine to be in the EU, and he probably does think that, but such blunt and silly allusions undermine that by connecting the ridiculous rhetoric of our Brexit debates to a very different issue.
Quite. In terms of quality if governance it goes Westminster parliamentary democracy > European Commission bureaucracy > Ukrainian semi-democracy > Russian dictatorship.
Apparently, Ukraine has received only a fraction of the promised Strela anti-aircraft missiles . WELT AM SONNTAG learned this from Ukrainian government circles. Only 500 pieces were delivered to Ukraine.
However, the federal government had pledged 2,700 such missiles at the beginning of March. The handover only took place in Poland on Thursday evening. According to Ukrainian government circles, no further Strela deliveries are planned.
I wonder if Germany, like Russia, is having a sudden realisation about the position of its military.
More likely the old "Oh great, we've got some tins of beans in the cupboard ... *looks* ... oh ****, most of them are 10 years out of date" routine. The Strelas must be about 24 years old at best. (I think Malmesbury noted that originally?)
For anyone who needs to lift their spirits, Ukraine claiming a special forces operation has killed a second Lt. General in as many days, head of the 35th Army Alexander Semyonovich Sanchik up near Kyiv. If the original esitmate of 20 Generals on the ground is true, that's about 13rd confirmed KIA, extrapolating that out for fun means that a Russian General deployed to Ukraine for a year could expect to be killed 3 or 4 times in that year.
That might well be true, but what an appalling insult to the Ukrainians to make such a comparison.
Yes, I always view people saying "my cause is just like X" with suspicion - you get anti-vaxxers saying it's like the holocaust, people annoyed about a planning decision saying it's like Stalinism, and, precisely, Johnson saying Brexit is like Ukrainian survival. Generally the comparison trivialises the suffiering of the people someone's calling in aid of of their hobby-horse. I'd quite like to see a year of national service overseas building wells in rural Somalia, just to give everyone a sense of bloody perspective.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
I think there's a middle ground (but then I would). Yes, highlight parts and examples. But your Republican example is actually what I think needs to be avoided, as yes you can win but it turns things way more toxic than you need to, and might well embed some of the lesser stuff that they still want to avoid, as people make that partisan. As the hospital example shows people even in extremis will stick to the 'rules'.
I think highlighting, without blathering on about the evils of wokery for an entire campaign etc as part of a 'war', will lead to sufficiently good results for them as people go 'Well, I'm not transphobic/homophobic/racist, but some of this stuff seems pretty bonkers'.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Statue bothering, here we come! Hurrah!
I think the solution is to purpose build a number of statues of historic figures everyone hates (rather than many that exist of who might be bad by standard of our times, but no one had really heard of), and then let people go to town tearing those ones down.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
I think there's a middle ground (but then I would). Yes, highlight parts and examples. But your Republican example is actually what I think needs to be avoided, as yes you can win but it turns things way more toxic than you need to, and might well embed some of the lesser stuff that they still want to avoid, as people make that partisan. As the hospital example shows people even in extremis will stick to the 'rules'.
I think highlighting, without blathering on about the evils of wokery for an entire campaign etc as part of a 'war', will lead to sufficiently good results for them as people go 'Well, I'm not transphobic/homophobic/racist, but some of this stuff seems pretty bonkers'.
It’s too late for that. It’s already toxic. Lives are being ruined by this Woke shit and, as we see, women are being raped and then told “no that’s impossible”. The battle must be joined
It ties in with the Woke debate. People still try to deny that Woke exists, or, if it does, that it matters. Well here is proof that it exists and that yes it really matters
Part of Wokeness is the elevation of extreme identity politics to a (deliberately?) destructive level - way beyond common sense. Critical Race Theory is one example: all white people are inherently racist and can never atone, etc
Another is the trans debate and “intersectionality” - the *value* of your identity depends on how oppressed you are. A trans person is apparently more oppressed than almost anyone therefore they must be protected more than others, lest you commit the awful crime of transphobia
Hence you get the grotesque situation where a woman’s legitimate rape complaint is flatly denied, as to admit it would be “transphobic”: denying the self-identified gender of the rapist by calling her “a man”
Perhaps the criminal law needs a different standard. We already have beyond reasonable doubt v balance of probabilities in civil law. Perhaps there needs to be a different standard that a "woman" has to pass the test of their gender being beyond reasonable doubt before being accepted - and not "because I say I am a woman".
The slight reservation I have about this is that it reminds me of the gays in the armed forces debate. The hypothesis of that was that gays might get excited by their male colleagues being naked etc and be a threat to them because they are that way inclined. It was, of course, complete nonsense. There was no more risk of a gay person being predatory than a hetrosexual person being so. We moved past that with little difficulty.
I have no doubt that trans people are exactly the same. The vast majority of them will, like heterosexuals or gays, be completely harmless and a threat to no one. But a loophole has been created and exploited by what are in fact heterosexual predators to get into what are meant to be protected spaces.
How do we deal with this loophole? One way, as I mentioned on the previous thread, is to gender neutralise the crime as we have in Scotland. The other is to set the goalposts for these protected areas slightly higher. So, in the general community you can self identify as whatever you like but if you want to get into those protected spaces you need to be sufficiently far along in the treatment that you are no longer biologically functional as a male.
Quite why this practical issue has caused so much hysteria simply baffles me.
Because the debate is treated as completely binary.
Which is ironic given the subject…..
I confess the usage may not have been entirely coincidental. One must have one's little jokes.
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
I will be really surprised if it is still in Ukrainian hands by Monday night. But it does echo we had to destroy the village to save the village, doesn't it?
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
I think there's a middle ground (but then I would). Yes, highlight parts and examples. But your Republican example is actually what I think needs to be avoided, as yes you can win but it turns things way more toxic than you need to, and might well embed some of the lesser stuff that they still want to avoid, as people make that partisan. As the hospital example shows people even in extremis will stick to the 'rules'.
I think highlighting, without blathering on about the evils of wokery for an entire campaign etc as part of a 'war', will lead to sufficiently good results for them as people go 'Well, I'm not transphobic/homophobic/racist, but some of this stuff seems pretty bonkers'.
It’s too late for that. It’s already toxic. Lives are being ruined by this Woke shit and, as we see, women are being raped and then told “no that’s impossible”. The battle must be joined
Yes, but that's the point - focus on the core ridiculous examples and potential dangers, don't just use woke as a catch all term of abuse as the Republicans now do. My concern is Tories want to do the latter and 'anything' will be woke, which may well take away from the actually worrisome stuff.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
For anyone who needs to lift their spirits, Ukraine claiming a special forces operation has killed a second Lt. General in as many days, head of the 35th Army Alexander Semyonovich Sanchik up near Kyiv. If the original esitmate of 20 Generals on the ground is true, that's about 13rd confirmed KIA, extrapolating that out for fun means that a Russian General deployed to Ukraine for a year could expect to be killed 3 or 4 times in that year.
That does lift the spirits, especially since the Mauripol news looks bad.
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
I will be really surprised if it is still in Ukrainian hands by Monday night. But it does echo we had to destroy the village to save the village, doesn't it?
At what point does Zelensky say he wants peace or do we believe he already does and the Russians don't.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
I disagree and agree with @kle4 Yes you can find nutty woke stuff and we can all spot it for what it is and when it arises you want to grab the person responsible and shout at them 'What is wrong with you ', but that is it. The rest of the time 99.9% of us get on with our lives not being affected by it except for an occasional 'tut, tut'. You are paranoid on the subject.
Sobering to read some of the comments on this thread about relatives' experiences - they were such an amazing generation. My own parents were lucky - my father had a desk job in intelligence (which he almost never talked about, loyal to the Official Secrets Act), my mother worked for UNRRA for refugees, and talked matter-of-factly as the worst moment being driving through Hammersmith while the buildings on both sides were on fire. Neither experienced any harm at all.
On a more cheerful note, it's always fun to argue about lists, and here's the happiness list, with FINLAND winning again. Makes sense!
Finland, Finland, Finland The country where I quite want to be Your mountains so lofty Your treetops so tall Finland, Finland, Finland Finland has it all
Finland’s not really mountainous.
That reminds me of how Norway tried, but failed, to gift Finland a mountaintop close to their mutual border, for Finland’s 100th anniversary, that would have become the highest point in Finland. Such an imaginative gift.
That is an interesting gift, any idea why it failed?
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
I will be really surprised if it is still in Ukrainian hands by Monday night. But it does echo we had to destroy the village to save the village, doesn't it?
At what point does Zelensky say he wants peace or do we believe he already does and the Russians don't.
He's already said they do. and given they are not the aggressor I'm sure that's true. Whether he is willing or able to concede territorial losses as the Russians will demand as a minimum I think would require several more major losses at the least, since at present the creeping Russian advance is still encouraging more resistance, not a fear they must concede now or lose even more.
'It can seem churlish and ungrateful to criticise the NHS'
To quote Nigel Lawson
'The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a national religion'
All the more powerful coming from a right wing Conservative. The trouble with anything near sacred is how do you criticise it? Love the NHS all you want if that is your thing but beware any institution put on an unchallenged pedestal.
It wasn’t that long ago people were standing on their doorsteps applauding this institution.
I don't think they were actually. It was 'clap for carers' no? That's a subtle difference. People were on the frontline in a pandemic exposing themselves to a high level of risk. Of course it became appropriated as being about the institution itself.
And most people have a fairly rational picture of the NHS - does its best on meagre resources by international standards, has long waiting times, generally decent when you get there, but makes mistakes. The attitude is not remotely like followers of a religion. It's only the hardcore types who, deep down, wish it didn't exist, who see a cultish worship going on. The realistic debate is simply between people who want to spend more and shorten waiting times, as we did in 2005-2010, and people who are OK with it as a default and will go private if they can and they have a serious problem.
Sobering to read some of the comments on this thread about relatives' experiences - they were such an amazing generation. My own parents were lucky - my father had a desk job in intelligence (which he almost never talked about, loyal to the Official Secrets Act), my mother worked for UNRRA for refugees, and talked matter-of-factly as the worst moment being driving through Hammersmith while the buildings on both sides were on fire. Neither experienced any harm at all.
On a more cheerful note, it's always fun to argue about lists, and here's the happiness list, with FINLAND winning again. Makes sense!
Finland, Finland, Finland The country where I quite want to be Your mountains so lofty Your treetops so tall Finland, Finland, Finland Finland has it all
Finland’s not really mountainous.
That reminds me of how Norway tried, but failed, to gift Finland a mountaintop close to their mutual border, for Finland’s 100th anniversary, that would have become the highest point in Finland. Such an imaginative gift.
That is an interesting gift, any idea why it failed?
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Drawing Bayesian inferences after extensive sampling, I've determined that it's 99-percent certain that anyone who uses "woke" as pejorative will turn out to be a fuckhead. Please don't blame me for pointing this out--it's just science.
Sobering to read some of the comments on this thread about relatives' experiences - they were such an amazing generation. My own parents were lucky - my father had a desk job in intelligence (which he almost never talked about, loyal to the Official Secrets Act), my mother worked for UNRRA for refugees, and talked matter-of-factly as the worst moment being driving through Hammersmith while the buildings on both sides were on fire. Neither experienced any harm at all.
On a more cheerful note, it's always fun to argue about lists, and here's the happiness list, with FINLAND winning again. Makes sense!
Finland, Finland, Finland The country where I quite want to be Your mountains so lofty Your treetops so tall Finland, Finland, Finland Finland has it all
Finland’s not really mountainous.
That reminds me of how Norway tried, but failed, to gift Finland a mountaintop close to their mutual border, for Finland’s 100th anniversary, that would have become the highest point in Finland. Such an imaginative gift.
That is an interesting gift, any idea why it failed?
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Drawing Bayesian inferences after extensive sampling, I've determined that it's 99-percent certain that anyone who uses "woke" as pejorative will turn out to be a fuckhead. Please don't blame me for pointing this out--it's just science.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
I disagree and agree with @kle4 Yes you can find nutty woke stuff and we can all spot it for what it is and when it arises you want to grab the person responsible and shout at them 'What is wrong with you ', but that is it. The rest of the time 99.9% of us get on with our lives not being affected by it except for an occasional 'tut, tut'. You are paranoid on the subject.
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
I will be really surprised if it is still in Ukrainian hands by Monday night. But it does echo we had to destroy the village to save the village, doesn't it?
At what point does Zelensky say he wants peace or do we believe he already does and the Russians don't.
He has already said that but I think his real position will depend on the ability of the Ukrainian armed forces to regain ground against the Russians. That will be much more challenging than playing defence as they have to date and will involve deploying more of their own (and captured) armour than they have to date, taking heavier casualties. Still, Russians on the retreat would set a very different context for any substantive negotiations.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
I disagree and agree with @kle4 Yes you can find nutty woke stuff and we can all spot it for what it is and when it arises you want to grab the person responsible and shout at them 'What is wrong with you ', but that is it. The rest of the time 99.9% of us get on with our lives not being affected by it except for an occasional 'tut, tut'. You are paranoid on the subject.
No, just better informed.
Nope paranoid. I think you have posted adequate evidence of your repeated panicking here for that definition to stick.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
I think there's a middle ground (but then I would). Yes, highlight parts and examples. But your Republican example is actually what I think needs to be avoided, as yes you can win but it turns things way more toxic than you need to, and might well embed some of the lesser stuff that they still want to avoid, as people make that partisan. As the hospital example shows people even in extremis will stick to the 'rules'.
I think highlighting, without blathering on about the evils of wokery for an entire campaign etc as part of a 'war', will lead to sufficiently good results for them as people go 'Well, I'm not transphobic/homophobic/racist, but some of this stuff seems pretty bonkers'.
It’s too late for that. It’s already toxic. Lives are being ruined by this Woke shit and, as we see, women are being raped and then told “no that’s impossible”. The battle must be joined
I'd like to see the Tories take the gloves off in this fight (anchored in common sense and fairness) but I don't think they will.
Even Boris Johnson equivocates on the "what is a woman?" stuff.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
If I were a woman, I'd feel safer with Starmer than with Boris.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
I think there's a middle ground (but then I would). Yes, highlight parts and examples. But your Republican example is actually what I think needs to be avoided, as yes you can win but it turns things way more toxic than you need to, and might well embed some of the lesser stuff that they still want to avoid, as people make that partisan. As the hospital example shows people even in extremis will stick to the 'rules'.
I think highlighting, without blathering on about the evils of wokery for an entire campaign etc as part of a 'war', will lead to sufficiently good results for them as people go 'Well, I'm not transphobic/homophobic/racist, but some of this stuff seems pretty bonkers'.
It’s too late for that. It’s already toxic. Lives are being ruined by this Woke shit and, as we see, women are being raped and then told “no that’s impossible”. The battle must be joined
I'd like to see the Tories take the gloves off in this fight (anchored in common sense and fairness) but I don't think they will.
Even Boris Johnson equivocates on the "what is a woman?" stuff.
Because it’s an argument you just can’t win without annoying one party or the other - so the sane approach (heck I’m calling Bozo sane) is to do anything and everything you can to avoid making an actual comment.
'It can seem churlish and ungrateful to criticise the NHS'
To quote Nigel Lawson
'The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a national religion'
All the more powerful coming from a right wing Conservative. The trouble with anything near sacred is how do you criticise it? Love the NHS all you want if that is your thing but beware any institution put on an unchallenged pedestal.
It wasn’t that long ago people were standing on their doorsteps applauding this institution.
I don't think they were actually. It was 'clap for carers' no? That's a subtle difference. People were on the frontline in a pandemic exposing themselves to a high level of risk. Of course it became appropriated as being about the institution itself.
And most people have a fairly rational picture of the NHS - does its best on meagre resources by international standards, has long waiting times, generally decent when you get there, but makes mistakes. The attitude is not remotely like followers of a religion. It's only the hardcore types who, deep down, wish it didn't exist, who see a cultish worship going on. The realistic debate is simply between people who want to spend more and shorten waiting times, as we did in 2005-2010, and people who are OK with it as a default and will go private if they can and they have a serious problem.
Much as I'm for spending somewhat more and better on healthcare, the "meagre resources by international standards" line is not really supported by the data. We are above OECD median spend per capita, comparable with most western countries both per capita and by GDP. A very modest upward adjustment of the kind likely to be applied by any future Labour Gov would put us in the top tier of European spending by both measures.
One of the big distorting factors in the stats that makes us (and practically everyone else) look "worse" is the shocking amount the US spends on healthcare for some of the worst health outcomes in the western world.
Sobering to read some of the comments on this thread about relatives' experiences - they were such an amazing generation. My own parents were lucky - my father had a desk job in intelligence (which he almost never talked about, loyal to the Official Secrets Act), my mother worked for UNRRA for refugees, and talked matter-of-factly as the worst moment being driving through Hammersmith while the buildings on both sides were on fire. Neither experienced any harm at all.
On a more cheerful note, it's always fun to argue about lists, and here's the happiness list, with FINLAND winning again. Makes sense!
Finland, Finland, Finland The country where I quite want to be Your mountains so lofty Your treetops so tall Finland, Finland, Finland Finland has it all
Finland’s not really mountainous.
That reminds me of how Norway tried, but failed, to gift Finland a mountaintop close to their mutual border, for Finland’s 100th anniversary, that would have become the highest point in Finland. Such an imaginative gift.
That is an interesting gift, any idea why it failed?
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
I disagree and agree with @kle4 Yes you can find nutty woke stuff and we can all spot it for what it is and when it arises you want to grab the person responsible and shout at them 'What is wrong with you ', but that is it. The rest of the time 99.9% of us get on with our lives not being affected by it except for an occasional 'tut, tut'. You are paranoid on the subject.
No, just better informed.
Nope paranoid. I think you have posted adequate evidence of your repeated panicking here for that definition to stick.
No, just better informed
To be fair, the average age of PB - eg you - is about 70. To be truly aware of The Wokeness, and what it is doing, you have to be young enough to be working - and working in an industry where it is impacting. It is noticeable that younger PB-ers are, in general, considerably more aware of Woke, and its dangers
Woke has washed over my trade. You wouldn't believe the viciousness of the sex toy TERF wars.
Without that personal upfront experience, stories about Woke can sound like fables from a faraway and slightly unbelievable country, surely exaggerated
So you are forgiven for you ignorance, it's just your age
Trains are being loaded with dead Russian soldiers in the dead of night after their deaths in Ukraine to hide true death toll, claim Belarus locals who say they have seen 2,500 bodies in two weeks
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
I will be really surprised if it is still in Ukrainian hands by Monday night. But it does echo we had to destroy the village to save the village, doesn't it?
They are destroying the town to encourage other towns to surrender. The old Ghengis Khan approach
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
I will be really surprised if it is still in Ukrainian hands by Monday night. But it does echo we had to destroy the village to save the village, doesn't it?
At what point does Zelensky say he wants peace or do we believe he already does and the Russians don't.
He wants peace but not on terms the Russians are prepared to offer
'It can seem churlish and ungrateful to criticise the NHS'
To quote Nigel Lawson
'The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a national religion'
All the more powerful coming from a right wing Conservative. The trouble with anything near sacred is how do you criticise it? Love the NHS all you want if that is your thing but beware any institution put on an unchallenged pedestal.
It wasn’t that long ago people were standing on their doorsteps applauding this institution.
I don't think they were actually. It was 'clap for carers' no? That's a subtle difference. People were on the frontline in a pandemic exposing themselves to a high level of risk. Of course it became appropriated as being about the institution itself.
And most people have a fairly rational picture of the NHS - does its best on meagre resources by international standards, has long waiting times, generally decent when you get there, but makes mistakes. The attitude is not remotely like followers of a religion. It's only the hardcore types who, deep down, wish it didn't exist, who see a cultish worship going on. The realistic debate is simply between people who want to spend more and shorten waiting times, as we did in 2005-2010, and people who are OK with it as a default and will go private if they can and they have a serious problem.
Much as I'm for spending somewhat more and better on healthcare, the "meagre resources by international standards" line is not really supported by the data. We are above OECD median spend per capita, comparable with most western countries both per capita and by GDP. A very modest upward adjustment of the kind likely to be applied by any future Labour Gov would put us in the top tier of European spending by both measures.
One of the big distorting factors in the stats that makes us (and practically everyone else) look "worse" is the shocking amount the US spends on healthcare for some of the worst health outcomes in the western world.
Scarce resources which are often badly used. I used to work for a company that did patient management software. It works on cheap android tablets and pc's. Hospitals wanted it to work on ipads of course which would cost about 4 times as much as the android tablets for no extra benefit
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
I will be really surprised if it is still in Ukrainian hands by Monday night. But it does echo we had to destroy the village to save the village, doesn't it?
At what point does Zelensky say he wants peace or do we believe he already does and the Russians don't.
Perhaps he could assist the Russians by delivering all the people on their kill lists to them?
They've actually tried to officially give Belarus thirty pieces of silver!
Visegrád 24 @visegrad24 A Ukrainian border guard met with the Ambassador of Belarus to Ukraine, Igor Sergeevich.
He was ordered by the Head of the UA Border Guard to give 30 pieces of silver to the Ambassador so he can give it to the Head of the Belarusian Border Guard
Belarus facilitated the invasion
Shockingly, many people on Twitter fail to understand the meaning of gesture. We recommend them to read up on who Judas was.
'It can seem churlish and ungrateful to criticise the NHS'
To quote Nigel Lawson
'The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a national religion'
All the more powerful coming from a right wing Conservative. The trouble with anything near sacred is how do you criticise it? Love the NHS all you want if that is your thing but beware any institution put on an unchallenged pedestal.
It wasn’t that long ago people were standing on their doorsteps applauding this institution.
We should applaud. Also criticise it. It is over 1 million people, of course it will have very good and very bad within it.
We applaud. We don’t criticise. The sheep like devotion to the NHS makes criticism of it deemed an outrage.
"The NHS is a religion. A sacred cow. Nobody ever criticizes it."
A famous person who wasn't Churchill or Orwell or PJ O'Rourke supposedly said he knew when the stock market was due a crash when his shoeshine boy started talking about shares.
The same principle can imo be applied to spot when an oft-expressed sentiment has completed its journey to ye olde chestnut - and I think we are just about there with this one about the National Health Service.
Not, I stress, to be equating Taz with a shoeshine boy. It just happened to be Taz but could have been almost anybody. That's the point. Almost anybody and just about everybody.
Anyway, now it's made chestnut status that's it. It won't let go. Once you're in you're in. Years from now, when slagging off the NHS has joined the weather, schools and house prices as national ice-breakers, it will still be the case that it's a sacred cow that can never be criticized.
Cyclefree appears to be immune though, thankfully, hence the interesting header. I've bookmarked the Cass report to read. From the exec summary it sounds like a combination of under-resource and lack of flexibility and tailoring of treatment is letting down troubled young people.
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
I will be really surprised if it is still in Ukrainian hands by Monday night. But it does echo we had to destroy the village to save the village, doesn't it?
They are destroying the town to encourage other towns to surrender. The old Ghengis Khan approach
See also Henry V speech at the gates of Harfleur. Bloodthirsty in the extreme. They even cut it out of the Olivier version.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
I will be really surprised if it is still in Ukrainian hands by Monday night. But it does echo we had to destroy the village to save the village, doesn't it?
They are destroying the town to encourage other towns to surrender. The old Ghengis Khan approach
See also Henry V speech at the gates of Harfleur. Bloodthirsty in the extreme. They even cut it out of the Olivier version.
Things are supposed to have progressed in the last 6 or 700 years
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
They've actually tried to officially give Belarus thirty pieces of silver!
Visegrád 24 @visegrad24 A Ukrainian border guard met with the Ambassador of Belarus to Ukraine, Igor Sergeevich.
He was ordered by the Head of the UA Border Guard to give 30 pieces of silver to the Ambassador so he can give it to the Head of the Belarusian Border Guard
Belarus facilitated the invasion
Shockingly, many people on Twitter fail to understand the meaning of gesture. We recommend them to read up on who Judas was.
Sobering to read some of the comments on this thread about relatives' experiences - they were such an amazing generation. My own parents were lucky - my father had a desk job in intelligence (which he almost never talked about, loyal to the Official Secrets Act), my mother worked for UNRRA for refugees, and talked matter-of-factly as the worst moment being driving through Hammersmith while the buildings on both sides were on fire. Neither experienced any harm at all.
On a more cheerful note, it's always fun to argue about lists, and here's the happiness list, with FINLAND winning again. Makes sense!
Finland, Finland, Finland The country where I quite want to be Your mountains so lofty Your treetops so tall Finland, Finland, Finland Finland has it all
Finland’s not really mountainous.
That reminds me of how Norway tried, but failed, to gift Finland a mountaintop close to their mutual border, for Finland’s 100th anniversary, that would have become the highest point in Finland. Such an imaginative gift.
That is an interesting gift, any idea why it failed?
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
Putting thast into context: one of the worst hit areas in the Blitz in the UK was Clydebank. Where I believe the figures were a third destroyed and a third badly damaged (the rest was plain damaged but realtviely easily repairable).
From wiki:
As a result of the raids on the nights of 13 and 14 March 1941, the town was largely destroyed and it suffered the worst destruction and civilian loss of life in all of Scotland. 1,200 people died, 1,000 people were seriously injured, and hundreds more were injured by blast debris. Over the course of the two nights, a total of 439 Luftwaffe bombers dropped in excess of 1,650 incendiary containers and 272 tonnes of bombs.[1] Out of approximately 12,000 houses, only eight remained undamaged[2] — with 4,000 completely destroyed and 4,500 severely damaged. Over 35,000 people were made homeless.
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
I will be really surprised if it is still in Ukrainian hands by Monday night. But it does echo we had to destroy the village to save the village, doesn't it?
They are destroying the town to encourage other towns to surrender. The old Ghengis Khan approach
See also Henry V speech at the gates of Harfleur. Bloodthirsty in the extreme. They even cut it out of the Olivier version.
Things are supposed to have progressed in the last 6 or 700 years
That is the fantasy but anyone who reads Shakespear, or indeed Virgil, knows people haven't actully changed very much.
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
I will be really surprised if it is still in Ukrainian hands by Monday night. But it does echo we had to destroy the village to save the village, doesn't it?
They are destroying the town to encourage other towns to surrender. The old Ghengis Khan approach
See also Henry V speech at the gates of Harfleur. Bloodthirsty in the extreme. They even cut it out of the Olivier version.
Which one? There are two. One of them is certainly in it:
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Drawing Bayesian inferences after extensive sampling, I've determined that it's 99-percent certain that anyone who uses "woke" as pejorative will turn out to be a fuckhead. Please don't blame me for pointing this out--it's just science.
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
Putting thast into context: one of the worst hit areas in the Blitz in the UK was Clydebank. Where I believe the figures were a third destroyed and a third badly damaged (the rest was plain damaged but realtviely easily repairable).
From wiki:
As a result of the raids on the nights of 13 and 14 March 1941, the town was largely destroyed and it suffered the worst destruction and civilian loss of life in all of Scotland. 1,200 people died, 1,000 people were seriously injured, and hundreds more were injured by blast debris. Over the course of the two nights, a total of 439 Luftwaffe bombers dropped in excess of 1,650 incendiary containers and 272 tonnes of bombs.[1] Out of approximately 12,000 houses, only eight remained undamaged[2] — with 4,000 completely destroyed and 4,500 severely damaged. Over 35,000 people were made homeless.
Similar levels of damage in Hull and Plymouth.
Sometimes the price of freedom has to be paid.
And Coventry.
There is a reason why the centre of Coventry looks like it was flattened by bombs and rebuilt by idiots.
Formula 1's governing body has said "human error" was responsible for the incorrect application of rules in the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
The FIA said race director Michael Masi had acted in "good faith" during the controversial finale which saw Max Verstappen snatch the championship from Lewis Hamilton on the last lap.
Masi has since been removed from his post and F1 race control restructured.
The report ruled the result and the World Championship "valid and final".
When you can be raped in a hospital, but the hospital will spend a year telling you that you weren't raped, and you are lying, until the hospital is forced to finally admit that yes, you were raped - there is CCTV evidence - and when this happens because of Wokeness, I'd say Wokeness is pretty damn relevant to anyone female.
That's 50% of voters, right there
The Tories need to go big on this. It is the Achilles heel of the Left which by itself can bring the Left down, maybe for good
When you can be raped in a hospital, but the hospital will spend a year telling you that you weren't raped, and you are lying, until the hospital is forced to finally admit that yes, you were raped - there is CCTV evidence - and when this happens because of Wokeness, I'd say Wokeness is pretty damn relevant to anyone female.
That's 50% of voters, right there
The Tories need to go big on this. It is the Achilles heel of the Left which by itself can bring the Left down, maybe for good
'It can seem churlish and ungrateful to criticise the NHS'
To quote Nigel Lawson
'The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a national religion'
All the more powerful coming from a right wing Conservative. The trouble with anything near sacred is how do you criticise it? Love the NHS all you want if that is your thing but beware any institution put on an unchallenged pedestal.
It wasn’t that long ago people were standing on their doorsteps applauding this institution.
I don't think they were actually. It was 'clap for carers' no? That's a subtle difference. People were on the frontline in a pandemic exposing themselves to a high level of risk. Of course it became appropriated as being about the institution itself.
And most people have a fairly rational picture of the NHS - does its best on meagre resources by international standards, has long waiting times, generally decent when you get there, but makes mistakes. The attitude is not remotely like followers of a religion. It's only the hardcore types who, deep down, wish it didn't exist, who see a cultish worship going on. The realistic debate is simply between people who want to spend more and shorten waiting times, as we did in 2005-2010, and people who are OK with it as a default and will go private if they can and they have a serious problem.
Much as I'm for spending somewhat more and better on healthcare, the "meagre resources by international standards" line is not really supported by the data. We are above OECD median spend per capita, comparable with most western countries both per capita and by GDP. A very modest upward adjustment of the kind likely to be applied by any future Labour Gov would put us in the top tier of European spending by both measures.
One of the big distorting factors in the stats that makes us (and practically everyone else) look "worse" is the shocking amount the US spends on healthcare for some of the worst health outcomes in the western world.
Scarce resources which are often badly used. I used to work for a company that did patient management software. It works on cheap android tablets and pc's. Hospitals wanted it to work on ipads of course which would cost about 4 times as much as the android tablets for no extra benefit
Nice to someone else who has done time building software for healthcare. Mine was a decade ago but nothing seems to have changed. And anyone who says "big businesses are just the same" is wrong. They are also terrible, but in different ways. I still see more cargo-cult pretend managers in the public sector.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
Didn’t single sex wards used to be a Labour campaigning point, or was that the tories?
Formula 1's governing body has said "human error" was responsible for the incorrect application of rules in the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
The FIA said race director Michael Masi had acted in "good faith" during the controversial finale which saw Max Verstappen snatch the championship from Lewis Hamilton on the last lap.
Masi has since been removed from his post and F1 race control restructured.
The report ruled the result and the World Championship "valid and final".
On topic - organisational culture, once established, is incredibly difficult to change.
I've experienced this with my latest project's client. A culture has developed where errors in their backend IT systems are completely ignored. Partly this is because there are so many errors, and the staff are too busy trying to develop for change projects. It's also because the experienced staff, who might have been able to debug the errors with less difficulty have left, and new staff continue to leave as soon as they have acquired any knowledge, they have no succession planning, and little attention to preserving organisational knowledge.
It's got so bad that they generally don't notice that large parts of their backend systems have failed completely until sufficient numbers of customers have phoned customer services to complain.
Trying to encourage people to adopt a zero-fault culture - itself something of a Sisyphean task at the best of times - is proving incredibly difficult. Because a cornucopia of faults have been tolerated for so long, no-one believes they have any real impact, until each individual customer complains and the backend data has to be fixed manually in crisis mode, over and over again.
It's incredibly frustrating, and I marvel that they haven't gone out of business. I imagine that dealing with faults and bad working practices in the NHS is the same - except that the NHS doesn't have customers with income attached who might be listened to when they complain, and any complaint about the NHS immediately gets caught up in a political bunfight, so that any complaint is tantamount to calling for the NHS to be privatised and sold off to the most rapacious American healthcare companies.
Defensiveness is the enemy of constructive criticism, and the NHS has felt threatened since its very inception.
Clearly many parts of the NHS do reasonably well at maintaining a culture of continuous improvement, and aiming for clinical excellence, at least to an extent, otherwise the parts that don't wouldn't stick out so badly.
Best of luck to anyone trying to improve the culture of those parts of the NHS that are failing. They will need it.
When you can be raped in a hospital, but the hospital will spend a year telling you that you weren't raped, and you are lying, until the hospital is forced to finally admit that yes, you were raped - there is CCTV evidence - and when this happens because of Wokeness, I'd say Wokeness is pretty damn relevant to anyone female.
That's 50% of voters, right there
The Tories need to go big on this. It is the Achilles heel of the Left which by itself can bring the Left down, maybe for good
What a load of utter rubbish
Tell that to the Democrats in Virginia. And the raped woman in that hospital
'It can seem churlish and ungrateful to criticise the NHS'
To quote Nigel Lawson
'The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a national religion'
All the more powerful coming from a right wing Conservative. The trouble with anything near sacred is how do you criticise it? Love the NHS all you want if that is your thing but beware any institution put on an unchallenged pedestal.
It wasn’t that long ago people were standing on their doorsteps applauding this institution.
We should applaud. Also criticise it. It is over 1 million people, of course it will have very good and very bad within it.
We applaud. We don’t criticise. The sheep like devotion to the NHS makes criticism of it deemed an outrage.
"The NHS is a religion. A sacred cow. Nobody ever criticizes it."
A famous person who wasn't Churchill or Orwell or PJ O'Rourke supposedly said he knew when the stock market was due a crash when his shoeshine boy started talking about shares.
The same principle can imo be applied to spot when an oft-expressed sentiment has completed its journey to ye olde chestnut - and I think we are just about there with this one about the National Health Service.
Not, I stress, to be equating Taz with a shoeshine boy. It just happened to be Taz but could have been almost anybody. That's the point. Almost anybody and just about everybody.
Anyway, now it's made chestnut status that's it. It won't let go. Once you're in you're in. Years from now, when slagging off the NHS has joined the weather, schools and house prices as national ice-breakers, it will still be the case that it's a sacred cow that can never be criticized.
Cyclefree appears to be immune though, thankfully, hence the interesting header. I've bookmarked the Cass report to read. From the exec summary it sounds like a combination of under-resource and lack of flexibility and tailoring of treatment is letting down troubled young people.
Its not that the NHS cannot be and is not criticised.
Its that for some people it has become an irrational pseudo religion which needs to be worshipped.
Similarly perhaps to the French language in France or beer is in Germany or the constitution is in the USA - if those actually apply rather than just being an impression formed from too much PB.
Now there are always going to be people who have their irrational pseudo religions (football fans as an example) but a problem arises when too many become too fervent in their worship.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
I do wish people would stop talking horseshit.
WTF do the likes of you or fruity Leon or any of the umpteen clueless reactionary dingbats on here know about our party's membership or about racism or about transgender people.
Fuck all. Absolutely sweet fuck all. C'mon. Seriously.
Feel a Covid relapse coming on now. Thanks a bunch.
80% of the housing stock in Mariupol has been destroyed or damaged.
I will be really surprised if it is still in Ukrainian hands by Monday night. But it does echo we had to destroy the village to save the village, doesn't it?
They are destroying the town to encourage other towns to surrender. The old Ghengis Khan approach
See also Henry V speech at the gates of Harfleur. Bloodthirsty in the extreme. They even cut it out of the Olivier version.
Which one? There are two. One of them is certainly in it:
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
Didn’t single sex wards used to be a Labour campaigning point, or was that the tories?
How are single sex wards a help when all you need to do to get on one is say "I identify as a woman" and don't claim it won't happen as it already does for single sex prisons
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
I do wish people would stop talking horseshit.
WTF do the likes of you or fruity Leon or any of the umpteen clueless reactionary dingbats on here know about our party's membership or about racism or about transgender people.
Fuck all. Absolutely sweet fuck all. C'mon. Seriously.
Feel a Covid relapse coming on now. Thanks a bunch.
A lot of people that aren't Labour members seem to spend their days on here telling us how "batshit" the Labour membership is.
I'm an actual Labour member, I can tell you with certainty that is rubbish. The majority of the membership voted for Starmer, voted to get the Corbynites out of the control of the party and are overwhelmingly supportive of Starmer. I know that first hand and the polling confirms this.
A tiny subsection are batshit - but also totally irrelevant.
A lot of people that aren't Labour members seem to spend their days on here telling us how "batshit" the Labour membership is.
I'm an actual Labour member, I can tell you with certainty that is rubbish. The majority of the membership voted for Starmer, voted to get the Corbynites out of the control of the party and are overwhelmingly supportive of Starmer. I know that first hand and the polling confirms this.
A tiny subsection are batshit - but also totally irrelevant.
Was that what stopped batshit Corbyn from ever becoming the leader of the p...... oh wait!
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
I disagree and agree with @kle4 Yes you can find nutty woke stuff and we can all spot it for what it is and when it arises you want to grab the person responsible and shout at them 'What is wrong with you ', but that is it. The rest of the time 99.9% of us get on with our lives not being affected by it except for an occasional 'tut, tut'. You are paranoid on the subject.
No, just better informed.
Nope paranoid. I think you have posted adequate evidence of your repeated panicking here for that definition to stick.
No, just better informed
To be fair, the average age of PB - eg you - is about 70. To be truly aware of The Wokeness, and what it is doing, you have to be young enough to be working - and working in an industry where it is impacting. It is noticeable that younger PB-ers are, in general, considerably more aware of Woke, and its dangers
Woke has washed over my trade. You wouldn't believe the viciousness of the sex toy TERF wars.
Without that personal upfront experience, stories about Woke can sound like fables from a faraway and slightly unbelievable country, surely exaggerated
So you are forgiven for you ignorance, it's just your age
Bollocks, you are just brainwashed. Nice bit of ageism there. Suspect I might be s little more in touch with the young than you might imagine. You don't know who I am. Would you like to name those PB posters on here. I can think of only 1 and he isn't that young, more middle aged.
By the way I have campaigned against what is now caused wokism in the public sector before it had a name and you had ever heard of it. It isn't new and it isn't worse, although a bit different.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
I do wish people would stop talking horseshit.
WTF do the likes of you or fruity Leon or any of the umpteen clueless reactionary dingbats on here know about our party's membership or about racism or about transgender people.
Fuck all. Absolutely sweet fuck all. C'mon. Seriously.
Feel a Covid relapse coming on now. Thanks a bunch.
If you were less narrowminded, incurious and intellectually middlebrow, you'd realise we are talking sense, and that, if you actually listened to us, Labour would benefit. This is a real issue and it is now getting real traction
It has generated more comments than any other story in the paper today, and they are still coming. And most of them are incensed and angry, and shouting at the Lefty Woke people. ie Labour. Most of them are women
Woke is finally emerging into the daylight of public awareness, via stories like this. There is much danger here for The UK Left, just see what is happening to the Dems in America
A lot of people that aren't Labour members seem to spend their days on here telling us how "batshit" the Labour membership is.
I'm an actual Labour member, I can tell you with certainty that is rubbish. The majority of the membership voted for Starmer, voted to get the Corbynites out of the control of the party and are overwhelmingly supportive of Starmer. I know that first hand and the polling confirms this.
A tiny subsection are batshit - but also totally irrelevant.
Well has it occurred to you yet that you don't think the labour membership is batshit crazy because they think like you. Whereas a lot of people maybe looking at you and thinking you are the batshit crazy they are referring to.....after all you once thought Corbyn was a great leader.
To be so obsessed with one issue and to feel the need to post about it minute after minute, day after day, goodness me get some perspective in your life
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
I disagree and agree with @kle4 Yes you can find nutty woke stuff and we can all spot it for what it is and when it arises you want to grab the person responsible and shout at them 'What is wrong with you ', but that is it. The rest of the time 99.9% of us get on with our lives not being affected by it except for an occasional 'tut, tut'. You are paranoid on the subject.
No, just better informed.
Nope paranoid. I think you have posted adequate evidence of your repeated panicking here for that definition to stick.
No, just better informed
To be fair, the average age of PB - eg you - is about 70. To be truly aware of The Wokeness, and what it is doing, you have to be young enough to be working - and working in an industry where it is impacting. It is noticeable that younger PB-ers are, in general, considerably more aware of Woke, and its dangers
Woke has washed over my trade. You wouldn't believe the viciousness of the sex toy TERF wars.
Without that personal upfront experience, stories about Woke can sound like fables from a faraway and slightly unbelievable country, surely exaggerated
So you are forgiven for you ignorance, it's just your age
Bollocks, you are just brainwashed. Nice bit of ageism there. Suspect I might be s little more in touch with the young than you might imagine. You don't know who I am. Would you like to name those PB posters on here. I can think of only 1 and he isn't that young, more middle aged.
By the way I have campaigned against what is now caused wokism in the public sector before it had a name and you had ever heard of it. It isn't new and it isn't worse, although a bit different.
A lot of people that aren't Labour members seem to spend their days on here telling us how "batshit" the Labour membership is.
I'm an actual Labour member, I can tell you with certainty that is rubbish. The majority of the membership voted for Starmer, voted to get the Corbynites out of the control of the party and are overwhelmingly supportive of Starmer. I know that first hand and the polling confirms this.
A tiny subsection are batshit - but also totally irrelevant.
Well has it occurred to you yet that you don't think the labour membership is batshit crazy because they think like you. Whereas a lot of people maybe looking at you and thinking you are the batshit crazy they are referring to.....after all you once thought Corbyn was a great leader.
Explain how I am batshit, if you'd like to give an example of my views, please do.
I think I am a lot more in touch with the public than you, I said Labour would lead the polls for months and Starmer was a good leader, to much laughter here. Turns out I had more of an idea of what was going on than the "anti woke" brigade
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
Didn’t single sex wards used to be a Labour campaigning point, or was that the tories?
How are single sex wards a help when all you need to do to get on one is say "I identify as a woman" and don't claim it won't happen as it already does for single sex prisons
Except that self declaration is a legitimate reason to discriminate even with gender self ID under the 2010 Equality act, much as @DavidL suggested earlier, provided there is a sound reason
To be so obsessed with one issue and to feel the need to post about it minute after minute, day after day, goodness me get some perspective in your life
If you have a different metaphyiscal view about humanity, it's not just one issue but encompasses everything.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
Didn’t single sex wards used to be a Labour campaigning point, or was that the tories?
How are single sex wards a help when all you need to do to get on one is say "I identify as a woman" and don't claim it won't happen as it already does for single sex prisons
Except that self declaration is a legitimate reason to discriminate even with gender self ID under the 2010 Equality act, much as @DavidL suggested earlier, provided there is a sound reason
A lot of people that aren't Labour members seem to spend their days on here telling us how "batshit" the Labour membership is.
I'm an actual Labour member, I can tell you with certainty that is rubbish. The majority of the membership voted for Starmer, voted to get the Corbynites out of the control of the party and are overwhelmingly supportive of Starmer. I know that first hand and the polling confirms this.
A tiny subsection are batshit - but also totally irrelevant.
Well has it occurred to you yet that you don't think the labour membership is batshit crazy because they think like you. Whereas a lot of people maybe looking at you and thinking you are the batshit crazy they are referring to.....after all you once thought Corbyn was a great leader.
Explain how I am batshit, if you'd like to give an example of my views, please do.
I think I am a lot more in touch with the public than you, I said Labour would lead the polls for months and Starmer was a good leader, to much laughter here. Turns out I had more of an idea of what was going on than the "anti woke" brigade
I already gave one...you used to think Corbyn was a good leader....don't need to say more than that really as I have no reason to think you ability to see batshit crazy when its in front of you has improved
I wasn't criticizing you but Boris. But really even you can't believe it was appropriate to compare the Ukrainian war to the Brexit vote. That is disgusting as everyone else here has said.
People used to say the much the same about the EU- not so much after 2016....
The EU was irrelevant to 99% of voters until Cameron gambled on it and lost
Kinda proves my point - both he and you were quite wrong in knowing what the voters think.
There were plenty of threads on here before the Brexit vote was even promised pointing to polls showing that Europe was not an important issue for the electorate. I always objected to that conclusion, and believed it was a result of framing.
Europe impinged every aspect of UK life. It was impossible to say it was not important as an issue. Everyone had a view. And people generally did not rate it highly as a separate issue because it was never a separate issue, it was integral to everything.
Comments
I think highlighting, without blathering on about the evils of wokery for an entire campaign etc as part of a 'war', will lead to sufficiently good results for them as people go 'Well, I'm not transphobic/homophobic/racist, but some of this stuff seems pretty bonkers'.
https://norwaytoday.info/everyday/norway-tried-and-failed-to-gift-finland-a-mountain-for-its-100th-birthday/
And most people have a fairly rational picture of the NHS - does its best on meagre resources by international standards, has long waiting times, generally decent when you get there, but makes mistakes. The attitude is not remotely like followers of a religion. It's only the hardcore types who, deep down, wish it didn't exist, who see a cultish worship going on. The realistic debate is simply between people who want to spend more and shorten waiting times, as we did in 2005-2010, and people who are OK with it as a default and will go private if they can and they have a serious problem.
Mike Godwin. https://mobile.twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/1504687870006620163
Even Boris Johnson equivocates on the "what is a woman?" stuff.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60804949
One of the big distorting factors in the stats that makes us (and practically everyone else) look "worse" is the shocking amount the US spends on healthcare for some of the worst health outcomes in the western world.
https://norwaytoday.info/everyday/norway-tried-and-failed-to-gift-finland-a-mountain-for-its-100th-birthday/amp/
To be fair, the average age of PB - eg you - is about 70. To be truly aware of The Wokeness, and what it is doing, you have to be young enough to be working - and working in an industry where it is impacting. It is noticeable that younger PB-ers are, in general, considerably more aware of Woke, and its dangers
Woke has washed over my trade. You wouldn't believe the viciousness of the sex toy TERF wars.
Without that personal upfront experience, stories about Woke can sound like fables from a faraway and slightly unbelievable country, surely exaggerated
So you are forgiven for you ignorance, it's just your age
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10630593/Ukraine-war-Buses-carrying-corpses-Russian-soldiers-filmed-heading-Belarus.html
Visegrád 24
@visegrad24
A Ukrainian border guard met with the Ambassador of Belarus to Ukraine, Igor Sergeevich.
He was ordered by the Head of the UA Border Guard to give 30 pieces of silver to the Ambassador so he can give it to the Head of the Belarusian Border Guard
Belarus facilitated the invasion
Shockingly, many people on Twitter fail to understand the meaning of gesture. We recommend them to read up on who Judas was.
Full translation below ⬇️
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1505152792729686019
A famous person who wasn't Churchill or Orwell or PJ O'Rourke supposedly said he knew when the stock market was due a crash when his shoeshine boy started talking about shares.
The same principle can imo be applied to spot when an oft-expressed sentiment has completed its journey to ye olde chestnut - and I think we are just about there with this one about the National Health Service.
Not, I stress, to be equating Taz with a shoeshine boy. It just happened to be Taz but could have been almost anybody. That's the point. Almost anybody and just about everybody.
Anyway, now it's made chestnut status that's it. It won't let go. Once you're in you're in. Years from now, when slagging off the NHS has joined the weather, schools and house prices as national ice-breakers, it will still be the case that it's a sacred cow that can never be criticized.
Cyclefree appears to be immune though, thankfully, hence the interesting header. I've bookmarked the Cass report to read. From the exec summary it sounds like a combination of under-resource and lack of flexibility and tailoring of treatment is letting down troubled young people.
- Was there a rape at this hospital?
- Will you take off the income threshold for immigration?
- Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
https://norwaytoday.info/everyday/norway-tried-and-failed-to-gift-finland-a-mountain-for-its-100th-birthday/#:~:text=But Norway took things a,along the Norwegian-Finnish border.
As a result of the raids on the nights of 13 and 14 March 1941, the town was largely destroyed and it suffered the worst destruction and civilian loss of life in all of Scotland. 1,200 people died, 1,000 people were seriously injured, and hundreds more were injured by blast debris. Over the course of the two nights, a total of 439 Luftwaffe bombers dropped in excess of 1,650 incendiary containers and 272 tonnes of bombs.[1] Out of approximately 12,000 houses, only eight remained undamaged[2] — with 4,000 completely destroyed and 4,500 severely damaged. Over 35,000 people were made homeless.
Similar levels of damage in Hull and Plymouth.
Sometimes the price of freedom has to be paid.
https://youtu.be/tY5nwQRWSCo
The other one is admittedly rather more drastic.
There is a reason why the centre of Coventry looks like it was flattened by bombs and rebuilt by idiots.
It was.
Formula 1's governing body has said "human error" was responsible for the incorrect application of rules in the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
The FIA said race director Michael Masi had acted in "good faith" during the controversial finale which saw Max Verstappen snatch the championship from Lewis Hamilton on the last lap.
Masi has since been removed from his post and F1 race control restructured.
The report ruled the result and the World Championship "valid and final".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60807766
That's 50% of voters, right there
The Tories need to go big on this. It is the Achilles heel of the Left which by itself can bring the Left down, maybe for good
One yearns to know more of her "everyday routines"
I've experienced this with my latest project's client. A culture has developed where errors in their backend IT systems are completely ignored. Partly this is because there are so many errors, and the staff are too busy trying to develop for change projects. It's also because the experienced staff, who might have been able to debug the errors with less difficulty have left, and new staff continue to leave as soon as they have acquired any knowledge, they have no succession planning, and little attention to preserving organisational knowledge.
It's got so bad that they generally don't notice that large parts of their backend systems have failed completely until sufficient numbers of customers have phoned customer services to complain.
Trying to encourage people to adopt a zero-fault culture - itself something of a Sisyphean task at the best of times - is proving incredibly difficult. Because a cornucopia of faults have been tolerated for so long, no-one believes they have any real impact, until each individual customer complains and the backend data has to be fixed manually in crisis mode, over and over again.
It's incredibly frustrating, and I marvel that they haven't gone out of business. I imagine that dealing with faults and bad working practices in the NHS is the same - except that the NHS doesn't have customers with income attached who might be listened to when they complain, and any complaint about the NHS immediately gets caught up in a political bunfight, so that any complaint is tantamount to calling for the NHS to be privatised and sold off to the most rapacious American healthcare companies.
Defensiveness is the enemy of constructive criticism, and the NHS has felt threatened since its very inception.
Clearly many parts of the NHS do reasonably well at maintaining a culture of continuous improvement, and aiming for clinical excellence, at least to an extent, otherwise the parts that don't wouldn't stick out so badly.
Best of luck to anyone trying to improve the culture of those parts of the NHS that are failing. They will need it.
Its that for some people it has become an irrational pseudo religion which needs to be worshipped.
Similarly perhaps to the French language in France or beer is in Germany or the constitution is in the USA - if those actually apply rather than just being an impression formed from too much PB.
Now there are always going to be people who have their irrational pseudo religions (football fans as an example) but a problem arises when too many become too fervent in their worship.
WTF do the likes of you or fruity Leon or any of the umpteen clueless reactionary dingbats on here know about our party's membership or about racism or about transgender people.
Fuck all. Absolutely sweet fuck all. C'mon. Seriously.
Feel a Covid relapse coming on now. Thanks a bunch.
In any case it was Boris who today compared the Ukranian fight for freedom to Brexit, not me
https://twitter.com/mpc_1968/status/1505185664635125767?s=20&t=3MZKB_FshamRfAjZeV4b1g
I'm an actual Labour member, I can tell you with certainty that is rubbish. The majority of the membership voted for Starmer, voted to get the Corbynites out of the control of the party and are overwhelmingly supportive of Starmer. I know that first hand and the polling confirms this.
A tiny subsection are batshit - but also totally irrelevant.
By the way I have campaigned against what is now caused wokism in the public sector before it had a name and you had ever heard of it. It isn't new and it isn't worse, although a bit different.
See the Times story on the rape case
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hospital-dismissed-claim-of-rape-by-trans-attacker-bssxvbqch
It has generated more comments than any other story in the paper today, and they are still coming. And most of them are incensed and angry, and shouting at the Lefty Woke people. ie Labour. Most of them are women
Woke is finally emerging into the daylight of public awareness, via stories like this. There is much danger here for The UK Left, just see what is happening to the Dems in America
I think I am a lot more in touch with the public than you, I said Labour would lead the polls for months and Starmer was a good leader, to much laughter here. Turns out I had more of an idea of what was going on than the "anti woke" brigade
See chapter 3 in this from Parliament:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5802/cmselect/cmwomeq/977/report.html
So the outrage bus need not depart.
That is actually true. lol
Interesting article about the NI protocol from John Rentoul.
Liz Truss shouldn't be pandering to loyalists who are never happy.
Will be interesting to see how the DUP does. We could do with more NI polling.
Overall my prediction is something like
SF 23
DUP 20
Alliance 14
UUP 12
SDLP 11
TUV 3
Grn 2
PBP 1
Others 4
Belfast South and Lagan Valley will be worth watching in particular IMO to see exactly what happens to the DUP as they could well do worse than this.
Europe impinged every aspect of UK life. It was impossible to say it was not important as an issue. Everyone had a view. And people generally did not rate it highly as a separate issue because it was never a separate issue, it was integral to everything.