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The LDs step up the tactical squeeze on LAB voters in Devon – politicalbetting.com

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  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,402
    edited June 2022

    ComRes has 58 to 34 that the strike IS justified and 66% saying GOVT not doing enough
    All in the wordings
    Justifued vs support

    Another example of the same effect:

    How you talk about pay rises makes a different to what people think is reasonable.

    Yesterday we polled teachers on what rise they’d give to the profession.
    In one version, we added context (‘anchors’) & in another just straight %s.


    https://twitter.com/miss_mcinerney/status/1539267930893991942

    Ask teachers without context, and they go for 4-6%. Tell them inflation is expected to peak around 11%, and the peak goes up to that.

    The other conculsion I take is that we haven't collectively clocked how bad inflation is and is going to get.
    I think you are right in your latter conclusion.
    Don't reckon many would realise that 7% is a real terms cut.
    I also sense a feeling around that this is very temporary, and that prices will soon go back to how they were.
    There's an entire 2 generations who simply have never experienced rising prices over a sustained period.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,094
    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    In fact Sir Keir would do worse than coining the phrase “Britain needs a pay rise” for the next election.

    Except that everyone will shout back “and how are you going to pay it??”

    Cue: tumbleweed
    People don't care how things will be paid for if they generally trust the person promising it. Corbyn in 2019 did not have the credibility to get away with that, and Boris was focusing on other things anyway.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,506

    76% say the strike has not impacted them and with just 3% in Wales using the railways has WFH dealt a major blow to the industry

    https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1539259823891554306?t=D4Dzr2wFy-kIuMOw7m2aEw&s=19

    You have a really good question there Big G - the union boss should be asked for his opinion “do you see a future for this industry in this age of home working”.

    It’s a serious question for government too isn’t it, if it’s now a retracting industry, a customer base lost for ever, not a growth industry because the customers won’t be there, militant union and spoiling for the fight government are both in it together to transform the industry together by recognising each other’s interests and not hurting each other’s interests. Or can’t it ever proceed sensible and fair like that, am I being naive?
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:


    TimS said:

    I am

    Updated YouGov for BJO
    Britons tend to oppose the rail workers strikes taking place this week

    All Britons
    Support 37% / Oppose 45%

    Con voters
    Support 18% / Oppose 72%

    Lab voters
    Support 65% / Oppose 18%

    https://t.co/0J86iNrRWO https://t.co/KHoARzP4tj

    Strong Support/Oppose now at 14/27

    Interesting. I find a lot of polling difficult as read the questions way too literally. I don't really support the strikes taking place - I want there to be a resolution instead. But I very clearly blame the government, not the unions or even the rail bosses with impossible budgets to reconcile.
    An interesting polling question would be something like:

    "Do you think the government has done enough to seek to resolve the rail dispute and prevent the strikes taking place?".

    I suspect the answer would be a resounding 'no', even from many folk totally opposed to the strikes.
    It is more than possible Boris and the cabinet have taken the decision to take on the RMT and to arrive at a settlement circa 4-5% subject to modernisation as a bench mark for the public sector

    This is an economic and political struggle that could go either way but I believe this is a fight the government want to take on
    In the miner’s strike it (belatedly) worked because it came at the end of over a decade of excessive Union power.

    It won’t work now. The unions haven’t had much of any power recently, and most people are thinking good for them. I suspect a fair few may be inspired to join a Union. Times have changed and the (“high wage economy”) Tories don’t get it. Most people want a pay rise. Not just train drivers.
    Train drivers aren't actually on strike.
    Do train spotters get today off, or is it a premium day?
    I visited Reading, Twyford and Maidenhead yesterday to beat the strike :)
    You’ll get through this Sunil. We all will.

    Be Strong. 💪🏻
    Also undertook my Special Railway Operation last Thursday to do the Trafford Centre tram line in Manchester last Thursday!

    So how many drops was that for you, Sunil?
    In England, just need Dale Rail (Sundays only) on the National Rail network, also awaiting the opening of the tram to Blackpool North station, and the London Overground to Barking Riverside.
    How many combat drops?
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,994
    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    mwadams said:

    Leon said:

    I think it behoves us all to read this document on getting racism out of maths, a document which is now part of the Californian education system. Here's an excerpt about "white supremacy" in the mathematics classroom




    NOTES ON TERMS
    The terms used in the engagement section of this resource are ideas presented in the dismantling Racism workbook
    (2016) notebook, grounded on the work of Jones and Okun (2001). It is important to read this article first to fully
    understand the terms that are identified as characteristics of white supremacy culture in organizations. We contextualize these ideas into the math classroom to make visible how white supremacy culture plays out in these spaces.

    As a visual indicator, we italicize the terms used to identify white supremacy characteristics as
    defined by Jones and Okun (2001). They are as follows:

    • Perfectionism
    • Sense of Urgency
    • Defensiveness
    • Quantity Over Quality
    • Worship of the Written Word
    • Paternalism
    • Either/Or Thinking
    • Power Hoarding
    • Fear of Open Conflict
    • Individualism
    • Only One Right Way
    • Progress is Bigger, More
    • Objectivity
    • Right to Comfort

    Damn those white kids doing maths with their "objectivity", "sense of urgency", perfectionism", and "fear of open conflict", what maths needs is "subjectivity", "a sense of Whatever", "who cares if its right", and "open conflict"

    https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf

    Hmmm. The rest of the document is an excellent approach to inclusivity and engagement in maths teaching, and I'd warmly commend it to the group. So I thought I'd also take ten minutes to see what this list is about.

    https://www.uuare.org/cwsc/

    Good link there. And the discussion of objectivity in terms of worldview, which would include things such as previous experiences of being taught maths, variation of approaches to problems (e.g. analytical, visual), is absolutely applicable to maths teaching. You can easily see how a dominant culture applying a single 'objective' approach to teaching might exclude those who do not share that.

    So I think we can untwist our knickers here. Remember, this is about *teaching* maths. And it isn't about white kids per se, it's about white supremacist teachers constructing an environment which demonstrates their theories that white kids in their classes are "better" at maths than black kids.
    Just checked that link


    Here we go. Here is the list of things included under Perfectionism, which in just one of the.....


    "CHARACTERISTICS OF WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE
    by Tema Okun (original article)

    This is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture which show up in our organizations:

    PERFECTIONISM

    little appreciation expressed among people for the work that others are doing; appreciation that is expressed usually directed to those who get most of the credit anyway

    more common is to point out either how the person or work is inadequate

    or even more common, to talk to others about the inadequacies of a person or their work without ever talking directly to them

    mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making them as opposed to being seen for what they are: mistakes

    making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, doing wrong with being wrong

    little time, energy, or money put into reflection or identifying lessons learned that can improve practice, in other words little or no learning from mistakes

    tendency to identify what’s wrong; little ability to identify, name, and appreciate what’s right"


    In short: white people and white teachers and white kids are intrinsically nasty, mean, selfish, self-centred, spiteful, critical, guilt-ridden and so on, and so forth

    This is pure, bilious racism. This has fuck all to do with "whiteness". Imagine ascribing these characterstics to "blackness" or "Jewishness" or "Chineseness"
    That is some pretty moronic and offensive stuff.

    People should focus their ire purely on crap like that and not dilute the attack by overusing the woke label. Because then that ridiculous stuff will just get overlooked.
    Exactly, it’s nonsense. Same mistake as finding some Neanderthal on BBCQT and declaring he represents all Brexiteers or people with moderately right of centre views.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,506
    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    In fact Sir Keir would do worse than coining the phrase “Britain needs a pay rise” for the next election.

    Except that everyone will shout back “and how are you going to pay it??”

    Cue: tumbleweed
    People don't care how things will be paid for if they generally trust the person promising it. Corbyn in 2019 did not have the credibility to get away with that, and Boris was focusing on other things anyway.
    Boris was promising the Earth, and the electorate did not ask how he was going to pay for it, rendering Leon’s post naive. The electorate believed in massive cash windfalls from Brexit is truth,
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,094
    IshmaelZ said:

    North Shropshire was a 23k con Maj, almost entirely before partygate. Honiton is 24k. Why is there any doubt it goes lib dem on Thursday?

    Lightning needing to strike twice.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061

    IshmaelZ said:


    TimS said:

    I am

    Updated YouGov for BJO
    Britons tend to oppose the rail workers strikes taking place this week

    All Britons
    Support 37% / Oppose 45%

    Con voters
    Support 18% / Oppose 72%

    Lab voters
    Support 65% / Oppose 18%

    https://t.co/0J86iNrRWO https://t.co/KHoARzP4tj

    Strong Support/Oppose now at 14/27

    Interesting. I find a lot of polling difficult as read the questions way too literally. I don't really support the strikes taking place - I want there to be a resolution instead. But I very clearly blame the government, not the unions or even the rail bosses with impossible budgets to reconcile.
    An interesting polling question would be something like:

    "Do you think the government has done enough to seek to resolve the rail dispute and prevent the strikes taking place?".

    I suspect the answer would be a resounding 'no', even from many folk totally opposed to the strikes.
    It is more than possible Boris and the cabinet have taken the decision to take on the RMT and to arrive at a settlement circa 4-5% subject to modernisation as a bench mark for the public sector

    This is an economic and political struggle that could go either way but I believe this is a fight the government want to take on
    In the miner’s strike it (belatedly) worked because it came at the end of over a decade of excessive Union power.

    It won’t work now. The unions haven’t had much of any power recently, and most people are thinking good for them. I suspect a fair few may be inspired to join a Union. Times have changed and the (“high wage economy”) Tories don’t get it. Most people want a pay rise. Not just train drivers.
    Train drivers aren't actually on strike.
    Do train spotters get today off, or is it a premium day?
    I visited Reading, Twyford and Maidenhead yesterday to beat the strike :)
    You’ll get through this Sunil. We all will.

    Be Strong. 💪🏻
    Also undertook my Special Railway Operation last Thursday to do the Trafford Centre tram line in Manchester last Thursday!

    So how many drops was that for you, Sunil?
    In England, just need Dale Rail (Sundays only) on the National Rail network, also awaiting the opening of the tram to Blackpool North station, and the London Overground to Barking Riverside.
    I would say one day you'll be able to do the proposed Norfolk Orbital but at the current rate of progress we are talking 2150!
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,402

    76% say the strike has not impacted them and with just 3% in Wales using the railways has WFH dealt a major blow to the industry

    https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1539259823891554306?t=D4Dzr2wFy-kIuMOw7m2aEw&s=19

    You have a really good question there Big G - the union boss should be asked for his opinion “do you see a future for this industry in this age of home working”.

    It’s a serious question for government too isn’t it, if it’s now a retracting industry, a customer base lost for ever, not a growth industry because the customers won’t be there, militant union and spoiling for the fight government are both in it together to transform the industry together by recognising each other’s interests and not hurting each other’s interests. Or can’t it ever proceed sensible and fair like that, am I being naive?
    It's a retracting industry with a whole bunch of Tory MP's demanding new lines and stations in their constituencies.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,994
    kle4 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    North Shropshire was a 23k con Maj, almost entirely before partygate. Honiton is 24k. Why is there any doubt it goes lib dem on Thursday?

    Lightning needing to strike twice.
    Not the same impotent rage as back then. Resigned shrugging. Pessimism. Our vote won’t count. Etc. I reckon the Tories will hold.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,506
    kle4 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    North Shropshire was a 23k con Maj, almost entirely before partygate. Honiton is 24k. Why is there any doubt it goes lib dem on Thursday?

    Lightning needing to strike twice.
    My reasoning goes like this. Remember I called Shropshire North right, made some money, and took lots of PB flak in build up.. My gut feeling on this one is different. My reasoning is when the big turn round in Shropshire North happened, Downing Street party’s was all the political and main news even Ant and Dec being angry, but this happens against a different backdrop, so all that anger has to be baked in now despite off the news and electorate not moved on with partygate fatigue. Is it baked in to all Tory performance now? Secondly, if it was general election you won’t get uniform swinging, you may get 7 somewhere, 2 nearby, 5 down the road - all constituency electorates have their own psychology and views of things. Do you trust this particular electorate to be on same wave length as mid term bloody nose or is it not in their DNA.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,094
    I'm sure we all deserved that, but why?
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Leon, like little known drunken islamaphobic poster SeanT before him, failing to understand that a text about white supremecy is not about what he thinks it is about.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    edited June 2022
    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Not forgetting the Archbishop of Canterbury, Prince Charles and Prince William, the BBC, most police and of course virtually all universities and the England football team! All woke
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,287
    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,506
    dixiedean said:

    76% say the strike has not impacted them and with just 3% in Wales using the railways has WFH dealt a major blow to the industry

    https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1539259823891554306?t=D4Dzr2wFy-kIuMOw7m2aEw&s=19

    You have a really good question there Big G - the union boss should be asked for his opinion “do you see a future for this industry in this age of home working”.

    It’s a serious question for government too isn’t it, if it’s now a retracting industry, a customer base lost for ever, not a growth industry because the customers won’t be there, militant union and spoiling for the fight government are both in it together to transform the industry together by recognising each other’s interests and not hurting each other’s interests. Or can’t it ever proceed sensible and fair like that, am I being naive?
    It's a retracting industry with a whole bunch of Tory MP's demanding new lines and stations in their constituencies.
    I, like Big G, only have the question not the answer. To what extent does hybrid working now change the business model and projections?

    I would guess quite a lot. It will probably need more investment in weekends than weekdays now is my guess.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061

    kle4 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    North Shropshire was a 23k con Maj, almost entirely before partygate. Honiton is 24k. Why is there any doubt it goes lib dem on Thursday?

    Lightning needing to strike twice.
    My reasoning goes like this. Remember I called Shropshire North right, made some money, and took lots of PB flak in build up.. My gut feeling on this one is different. My reasoning is when the big turn round in Shropshire North happened, Downing Street party’s was all the political and main news even Ant and Dec being angry, but this happens against a different backdrop, so all that anger has to be baked in now despite off the news and electorate not moved on with partygate fatigue. Is it baked in to all Tory performance now? Secondly, if it was general election you won’t get uniform swinging, you may get 7 somewhere, 2 nearby, 5 down the road - all constituency electorates have their own psychology and views of things. Do you trust this particular electorate to be on same wave length as mid term bloody nose or is it not in their DNA.
    I still think LD win by 5000 votes or so but the odd line in reports has made me wonder, like how the same raw anger that was present in N Shropshire isn't there, a throwaway about 'hes doing his best' responses etc.....
    Set against that is the LD bullshit made up internal poll garbage 'its so close guys!!' = LDs winning here
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,784
    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    mwadams said:

    Leon said:

    I think it behoves us all to read this document on getting racism out of maths, a document which is now part of the Californian education system. Here's an excerpt about "white supremacy" in the mathematics classroom




    NOTES ON TERMS
    The terms used in the engagement section of this resource are ideas presented in the dismantling Racism workbook
    (2016) notebook, grounded on the work of Jones and Okun (2001). It is important to read this article first to fully
    understand the terms that are identified as characteristics of white supremacy culture in organizations. We contextualize these ideas into the math classroom to make visible how white supremacy culture plays out in these spaces.

    As a visual indicator, we italicize the terms used to identify white supremacy characteristics as
    defined by Jones and Okun (2001). They are as follows:

    • Perfectionism
    • Sense of Urgency
    • Defensiveness
    • Quantity Over Quality
    • Worship of the Written Word
    • Paternalism
    • Either/Or Thinking
    • Power Hoarding
    • Fear of Open Conflict
    • Individualism
    • Only One Right Way
    • Progress is Bigger, More
    • Objectivity
    • Right to Comfort

    Damn those white kids doing maths with their "objectivity", "sense of urgency", perfectionism", and "fear of open conflict", what maths needs is "subjectivity", "a sense of Whatever", "who cares if its right", and "open conflict"

    https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf

    Hmmm. The rest of the document is an excellent approach to inclusivity and engagement in maths teaching, and I'd warmly commend it to the group. So I thought I'd also take ten minutes to see what this list is about.

    https://www.uuare.org/cwsc/

    Good link there. And the discussion of objectivity in terms of worldview, which would include things such as previous experiences of being taught maths, variation of approaches to problems (e.g. analytical, visual), is absolutely applicable to maths teaching. You can easily see how a dominant culture applying a single 'objective' approach to teaching might exclude those who do not share that.

    So I think we can untwist our knickers here. Remember, this is about *teaching* maths. And it isn't about white kids per se, it's about white supremacist teachers constructing an environment which demonstrates their theories that white kids in their classes are "better" at maths than black kids.
    Just checked that link


    Here we go. Here is the list of things included under Perfectionism, which in just one of the.....


    "CHARACTERISTICS OF WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE
    by Tema Okun (original article)

    This is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture which show up in our organizations:

    PERFECTIONISM

    little appreciation expressed among people for the work that others are doing; appreciation that is expressed usually directed to those who get most of the credit anyway

    more common is to point out either how the person or work is inadequate

    or even more common, to talk to others about the inadequacies of a person or their work without ever talking directly to them

    mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making them as opposed to being seen for what they are: mistakes

    making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, doing wrong with being wrong

    little time, energy, or money put into reflection or identifying lessons learned that can improve practice, in other words little or no learning from mistakes

    tendency to identify what’s wrong; little ability to identify, name, and appreciate what’s right"


    In short: white people and white teachers and white kids are intrinsically nasty, mean, selfish, self-centred, spiteful, critical, guilt-ridden and so on, and so forth

    This is pure, bilious racism. This has fuck all to do with "whiteness". Imagine ascribing these characterstics to "blackness" or "Jewishness" or "Chineseness"
    That is some pretty moronic and offensive stuff.

    People should focus their ire purely on crap like that and not dilute the attack by overusing the woke label. Because then that ridiculous stuff will just get overlooked.
    Apparently the Daily Mail is now attacking builders for being Woke.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,402

    dixiedean said:

    76% say the strike has not impacted them and with just 3% in Wales using the railways has WFH dealt a major blow to the industry

    https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1539259823891554306?t=D4Dzr2wFy-kIuMOw7m2aEw&s=19

    You have a really good question there Big G - the union boss should be asked for his opinion “do you see a future for this industry in this age of home working”.

    It’s a serious question for government too isn’t it, if it’s now a retracting industry, a customer base lost for ever, not a growth industry because the customers won’t be there, militant union and spoiling for the fight government are both in it together to transform the industry together by recognising each other’s interests and not hurting each other’s interests. Or can’t it ever proceed sensible and fair like that, am I being naive?
    It's a retracting industry with a whole bunch of Tory MP's demanding new lines and stations in their constituencies.
    I, like Big G, only have the question not the answer. To what extent does hybrid working now change the business model and projections?

    I would guess quite a lot. It will probably need more investment in weekends than weekdays now is my guess.
    To answer that question you need to ask the question almost never asked in this country.
    What is the purpose of the railways?
    Answer that and go from there.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,632
    Fuck's sake.

    NOBODY CLICK THAT!
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,632
    Alistair said:

    Leon, like little known drunken islamaphobic poster SeanT before him, failing to understand that a text about white supremecy is not about what he thinks it is about.

    I miss SeanT, who can forget his musings on the Glasgow bin crash.

    I think he wanted to deport every Muslim to Madagascar that day.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,759
    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:


    TimS said:

    I am

    Updated YouGov for BJO
    Britons tend to oppose the rail workers strikes taking place this week

    All Britons
    Support 37% / Oppose 45%

    Con voters
    Support 18% / Oppose 72%

    Lab voters
    Support 65% / Oppose 18%

    https://t.co/0J86iNrRWO https://t.co/KHoARzP4tj

    Strong Support/Oppose now at 14/27

    Interesting. I find a lot of polling difficult as read the questions way too literally. I don't really support the strikes taking place - I want there to be a resolution instead. But I very clearly blame the government, not the unions or even the rail bosses with impossible budgets to reconcile.
    An interesting polling question would be something like:

    "Do you think the government has done enough to seek to resolve the rail dispute and prevent the strikes taking place?".

    I suspect the answer would be a resounding 'no', even from many folk totally opposed to the strikes.
    It is more than possible Boris and the cabinet have taken the decision to take on the RMT and to arrive at a settlement circa 4-5% subject to modernisation as a bench mark for the public sector

    This is an economic and political struggle that could go either way but I believe this is a fight the government want to take on
    In the miner’s strike it (belatedly) worked because it came at the end of over a decade of excessive Union power.

    It won’t work now. The unions haven’t had much of any power recently, and most people are thinking good for them. I suspect a fair few may be inspired to join a Union. Times have changed and the (“high wage economy”) Tories don’t get it. Most people want a pay rise. Not just train drivers.
    Train drivers aren't actually on strike.
    Do train spotters get today off, or is it a premium day?
    I visited Reading, Twyford and Maidenhead yesterday to beat the strike :)
    You’ll get through this Sunil. We all will.

    Be Strong. 💪🏻
    Also undertook my Special Railway Operation last Thursday to do the Trafford Centre tram line in Manchester last Thursday!

    So how many drops was that for you, Sunil?
    In England, just need Dale Rail (Sundays only) on the National Rail network, also awaiting the opening of the tram to Blackpool North station, and the London Overground to Barking Riverside.
    How many combat drops?
    Sunil strikes me as a man with experience of at least one of the true horrors (Northern, Bakerloo, or anything going to Brighton). I think we all know that these things are best left unsaid.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,585
    MISTY said:

    Foxy said:

    This really isn't an environment to call a snap autumn election. Even Johnson isn't that daft:

    https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1539195414842331137?t=LexXM4DzQsYGeWmA3K1iqQ&s=19

    How well Brits think the govt is handling… (net)

    Inflation -64
    Immigration -62
    Economy -54*
    NHS -51
    Housing -49
    Tax -47
    Transport -36*
    Benefits -36
    Crime -35
    Brexit -33
    Environment -21
    Education -16
    Unemployment -5
    Defence +13
    Terrorism +29

    *Lowest since tracker began Jun 2019 https://t.co/E8pZ9sBKiP


    On top of all the above, the Telegraph reports the government is going to sail very close to the electricity blackouts rocks this winter. Kwarteng is apparently doing a Biden, ie on his hands and knees pleading with energy producers the government itself wanted to shut down to keep open just in case.

    These are the good times. Wait til the winter.
    If you’re in a rural area, buy a diesel generator now, while you still can.

    There’s a real risk of power cuts this winter, and diesel could end up cheaper than grid power anyway.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,094
    edited June 2022
    Received a cheque from British Gas today. Now I've realised I've never received a cheque before in my life. I'm 35.

    Makes me wonder for what reason they send compensation in such a way.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,784
    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,506
    dixiedean said:

    dixiedean said:

    76% say the strike has not impacted them and with just 3% in Wales using the railways has WFH dealt a major blow to the industry

    https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1539259823891554306?t=D4Dzr2wFy-kIuMOw7m2aEw&s=19

    You have a really good question there Big G - the union boss should be asked for his opinion “do you see a future for this industry in this age of home working”.

    It’s a serious question for government too isn’t it, if it’s now a retracting industry, a customer base lost for ever, not a growth industry because the customers won’t be there, militant union and spoiling for the fight government are both in it together to transform the industry together by recognising each other’s interests and not hurting each other’s interests. Or can’t it ever proceed sensible and fair like that, am I being naive?
    It's a retracting industry with a whole bunch of Tory MP's demanding new lines and stations in their constituencies.
    I, like Big G, only have the question not the answer. To what extent does hybrid working now change the business model and projections?

    I would guess quite a lot. It will probably need more investment in weekends than weekdays now is my guess.
    To answer that question you need to ask the question almost never asked in this country.
    What is the purpose of the railways?
    Answer that and go from there.
    This is where the media narrative of the striking is a bit rubbish imo, it’s not just about pay in time of inflation, it’s about how and what speed to change an industry that needing change even before covid created a revolution in home working (did covid really cause the hybrid revolution?).

    I wasn’t around for the miners strike, but I am entitled to a view on it. Militant unions would accept no change at all - the government had prepared long in advance so the strike was pretty much doomed against that planning - but of government want change too quickly in industries it comes as a greater social costs on lives and families than if you manage it more slowly is the truth I think.

    It was inion v government agenda in miner strike just like it’s Union v government agenda in this weeks did[ute - the government are a laughing stock trying to pretend it’s nothing to do with them! 🤣
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,994
    I saw him at a mid range Cotswold pub a few months ago, eating a Sunday roast. Accompanied by a younger woman and a black dog of some sort.

    He really is arresting to look at. Quite unique.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,784

    Alistair said:

    Leon, like little known drunken islamaphobic poster SeanT before him, failing to understand that a text about white supremecy is not about what he thinks it is about.

    I miss SeanT, who can forget his musings on the Glasgow bin crash.

    I think he wanted to deport every Muslim to Madagascar that day.
    Did he blame Bin Laden?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,632
    kle4 said:

    Received a cheque from British Gas today. Now I've realised I've never received a cheque before in my life. I'm 35.

    Makes me wonder for what reason they send compensation in such a way.

    They usually put a little rider saying 'by banking the cheque you agree that you cannot make any further claims against us regarding this matter.'
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,632

    Alistair said:

    Leon, like little known drunken islamaphobic poster SeanT before him, failing to understand that a text about white supremecy is not about what he thinks it is about.

    I miss SeanT, who can forget his musings on the Glasgow bin crash.

    I think he wanted to deport every Muslim to Madagascar that day.
    Did he blame Bin Laden?
    Scots Nats and Muslims.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,784
    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,784

    Alistair said:

    Leon, like little known drunken islamaphobic poster SeanT before him, failing to understand that a text about white supremecy is not about what he thinks it is about.

    I miss SeanT, who can forget his musings on the Glasgow bin crash.

    I think he wanted to deport every Muslim to Madagascar that day.
    Did he blame Bin Laden?
    Scots Nats and Muslims.
    I think you missed my attempt at a joke!
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,784

    Alistair said:

    Leon, like little known drunken islamaphobic poster SeanT before him, failing to understand that a text about white supremecy is not about what he thinks it is about.

    I miss SeanT, who can forget his musings on the Glasgow bin crash.

    I think he wanted to deport every Muslim to Madagascar that day.
    Did he blame Bin Laden?
    Scots Nats and Muslims.
    I think you missed my attempt at a joke!
    It was Wheely bad.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,094

    kle4 said:

    Received a cheque from British Gas today. Now I've realised I've never received a cheque before in my life. I'm 35.

    Makes me wonder for what reason they send compensation in such a way.

    They usually put a little rider saying 'by banking the cheque you agree that you cannot make any further claims against us regarding this matter.'
    Nothing like that mentioned, but I don't have the energy to wrangle with them further, I just wanted this amount they promised and then if I have to pay through the nose to deal with some other supplier's shitty service instead I'll do it.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,838
    Omnium said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:


    TimS said:

    I am

    Updated YouGov for BJO
    Britons tend to oppose the rail workers strikes taking place this week

    All Britons
    Support 37% / Oppose 45%

    Con voters
    Support 18% / Oppose 72%

    Lab voters
    Support 65% / Oppose 18%

    https://t.co/0J86iNrRWO https://t.co/KHoARzP4tj

    Strong Support/Oppose now at 14/27

    Interesting. I find a lot of polling difficult as read the questions way too literally. I don't really support the strikes taking place - I want there to be a resolution instead. But I very clearly blame the government, not the unions or even the rail bosses with impossible budgets to reconcile.
    An interesting polling question would be something like:

    "Do you think the government has done enough to seek to resolve the rail dispute and prevent the strikes taking place?".

    I suspect the answer would be a resounding 'no', even from many folk totally opposed to the strikes.
    It is more than possible Boris and the cabinet have taken the decision to take on the RMT and to arrive at a settlement circa 4-5% subject to modernisation as a bench mark for the public sector

    This is an economic and political struggle that could go either way but I believe this is a fight the government want to take on
    In the miner’s strike it (belatedly) worked because it came at the end of over a decade of excessive Union power.

    It won’t work now. The unions haven’t had much of any power recently, and most people are thinking good for them. I suspect a fair few may be inspired to join a Union. Times have changed and the (“high wage economy”) Tories don’t get it. Most people want a pay rise. Not just train drivers.
    Train drivers aren't actually on strike.
    Do train spotters get today off, or is it a premium day?
    I visited Reading, Twyford and Maidenhead yesterday to beat the strike :)
    You’ll get through this Sunil. We all will.

    Be Strong. 💪🏻
    Also undertook my Special Railway Operation last Thursday to do the Trafford Centre tram line in Manchester last Thursday!

    So how many drops was that for you, Sunil?
    In England, just need Dale Rail (Sundays only) on the National Rail network, also awaiting the opening of the tram to Blackpool North station, and the London Overground to Barking Riverside.
    How many combat drops?
    Sunil strikes me as a man with experience of at least one of the true horrors (Northern, Bakerloo, or anything going to Brighton). I think we all know that these things are best left unsaid.
    The state of one's battledress collar after a ride to Tooting Bec and back again, not to mention the filth on one's handkerchief. And these damn' sliding doors get caught up with one's M16 and the belts for the M60.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,838
    Omnium said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon, like little known drunken islamaphobic poster SeanT before him, failing to understand that a text about white supremecy is not about what he thinks it is about.

    I miss SeanT, who can forget his musings on the Glasgow bin crash.

    I think he wanted to deport every Muslim to Madagascar that day.
    Did he blame Bin Laden?
    Scots Nats and Muslims.
    I think you missed my attempt at a joke!
    It was Wheely bad.
    You're just recycling old material.
    He's a scaffy for old jokes.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,634

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    Was America ever more self-confident than the moment when the delegates at the 1996 Democratic Convention performed the Macarena?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9-6MgMNuTY
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,998
    The breakdown in the wall of separation between church and state in the United States is far worse than some commenters here imagine. Most American civil rights laws actually forbid dicriminating against people on the basis of their religious faiths. (Some of you will be pleased to learn that many of our prosecutors don't bother to enforce those provisions; otherwise companies like Apple and Google might be in serious trouble.)

    Worse than that, many American governments actually pay for religous teachings. Many of you will be shocked to learn that there are chaplains in our armed services, and prisons. There are even chaplains in the House and Senate!

    Which reminds me of this famous exchange: “Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?' someone asked the chaplain. No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.” source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1146485-do-you-pray-for-the-senators-dr-hale-someone-asked

    (Edward Everett Hale was Senate chaplain from 1903-1909.)
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,506

    kle4 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    North Shropshire was a 23k con Maj, almost entirely before partygate. Honiton is 24k. Why is there any doubt it goes lib dem on Thursday?

    Lightning needing to strike twice.
    My reasoning goes like this. Remember I called Shropshire North right, made some money, and took lots of PB flak in build up.. My gut feeling on this one is different. My reasoning is when the big turn round in Shropshire North happened, Downing Street party’s was all the political and main news even Ant and Dec being angry, but this happens against a different backdrop, so all that anger has to be baked in now despite off the news and electorate not moved on with partygate fatigue. Is it baked in to all Tory performance now? Secondly, if it was general election you won’t get uniform swinging, you may get 7 somewhere, 2 nearby, 5 down the road - all constituency electorates have their own psychology and views of things. Do you trust this particular electorate to be on same wave length as mid term bloody nose or is it not in their DNA.
    I still think LD win by 5000 votes or so but the odd line in reports has made me wonder, like how the same raw anger that was present in N Shropshire isn't there, a throwaway about 'hes doing his best' responses etc.....
    Set against that is the LD bullshit made up internal poll garbage 'its so close guys!!' = LDs winning here
    Love the made up newspaper, it looks so bloody real Woolie, the made up opinion poll, made up messaging - it’s not just bar charts we make up! Lol.

    To be honest though, that is the way to fight and win, squeeze every drop of vote out the place. As well as obviously lying, it’s bloody slick campaign. 😇

    We all think it will be close not clear win for anyone? I have this theory it’s not just about counting pebbles, or looking at media narratives, each part of country has it own culture and psychologies will see it all differently. In. Fact this could vary from town to town constituency to constituency.

    If I find out Lib Dems havn’t won, being a northerner, I might post something like, inbred wurzle twats with brains pickled on farmhouse cider incapable of knowing right from wrong as they munch their chittering.

    If anything such a result proves my theory right.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,838

    The breakdown in the wall of separation between church and state in the United States is far worse than some commenters here imagine. Most American civil rights laws actually forbid dicriminating against people on the basis of their religious faiths. (Some of you will be pleased to learn that many of our prosecutors don't bother to enforce those provisions; otherwise companies like Apple and Google might be in serious trouble.)

    Worse than that, many American governments actually pay for religous teachings. Many of you will be shocked to learn that there are chaplains in our armed services, and prisons. There are even chaplains in the House and Senate!

    Which reminds me of this famous exchange: “Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?' someone asked the chaplain. No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.” source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1146485-do-you-pray-for-the-senators-dr-hale-someone-asked

    (Edward Everett Hale was Senate chaplain from 1903-1909.)

    Are those Christian chaplains or Muslim ones or both?
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,994
    edited June 2022

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    Was America ever more self-confident than the moment when the delegates at the 1996 Democratic Convention performed the Macarena?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9-6MgMNuTY
    The West as a whole was never more self confident than in the mid 1990s.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    The opposite he reversed the policies of the social democrat, high tax, high spend Carter and oversaw the economic boom of the 1980s. While also moving America on from the humiliation of Vietnam to begin the process of winning the Cold War and becoming the unchallenged global superpower
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,632
    Rachael Maskell should replace Starmer as Labour leader, she'd win a Blair style landslide at the next general election.

    A new bill could be used to strip Prince Andrew of his title as Duke of York if it becomes law, an MP has said.

    York Central Labour MP Rachael Maskell said there was currently no mechanism to deprive a peer of their title.

    She said her bill would address the desire in York for the city to "sever" its ties with the prince.

    The call for Prince Andrew to relinquish his title has come in the wake of his out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre in the US.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-61880719
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,220

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    And those statements explain so much, because they're quite possibly both true.

    Does Reagan deserve credit for America being as good as it can be under his rule?

    Or the blame for turning an upward trajectory into a downward one?

    In physics, it's the difference between Aristotle and Newton.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,634
    TimS said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    Was America ever more self-confident than the moment when the delegates at the 1996 Democratic Convention performed the Macarena?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9-6MgMNuTY
    The West as a whole was never more self confident than in the mid 1990s.
    When do you expect dialectical progress to kick in again?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,287
    Alistair said:

    Leon, like little known drunken islamaphobic poster SeanT before him, failing to understand that a text about white supremecy is not about what he thinks it is about.

    What's it about then? Do tell?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821

    kle4 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    North Shropshire was a 23k con Maj, almost entirely before partygate. Honiton is 24k. Why is there any doubt it goes lib dem on Thursday?

    Lightning needing to strike twice.
    My reasoning goes like this. Remember I called Shropshire North right, made some money, and took lots of PB flak in build up.. My gut feeling on this one is different. My reasoning is when the big turn round in Shropshire North happened, Downing Street party’s was all the political and main news even Ant and Dec being angry, but this happens against a different backdrop, so all that anger has to be baked in now despite off the news and electorate not moved on with partygate fatigue. Is it baked in to all Tory performance now? Secondly, if it was general election you won’t get uniform swinging, you may get 7 somewhere, 2 nearby, 5 down the road - all constituency electorates have their own psychology and views of things. Do you trust this particular electorate to be on same wave length as mid term bloody nose or is it not in their DNA.
    I still think LD win by 5000 votes or so but the odd line in reports has made me wonder, like how the same raw anger that was present in N Shropshire isn't there, a throwaway about 'hes doing his best' responses etc.....
    Set against that is the LD bullshit made up internal poll garbage 'its so close guys!!' = LDs winning here
    Love the made up newspaper, it looks so bloody real Woolie, the made up opinion poll, made up messaging - it’s not just bar charts we make up! Lol.

    To be honest though, that is the way to fight and win, squeeze every drop of vote out the place. As well as obviously lying, it’s bloody slick campaign. 😇

    We all think it will be close not clear win for anyone? I have this theory it’s not just about counting pebbles, or looking at media narratives, each part of country has it own culture and psychologies will see it all differently. In. Fact this could vary from town to town constituency to constituency.

    If I find out Lib Dems havn’t won, being a northerner, I might post something like, inbred wurzle twats with brains pickled on farmhouse cider incapable of knowing right from wrong as they munch their chittering.

    If anything such a result proves my theory right.
    Oh to upload pics, @MoonRabbit you need to use the Vanilla Forums version of PB.

    https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/10606/the-lds-step-up-the-tactical-squeeze-on-lab-voters-in-devon-politicalbetting-com#latest

    When you start a post or reply, you'll see a "picture" icon near the top right of the editing window, which will allow you to upload pics direct from your phone or computer!
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,557
    Watching C4 news for the first time in ages.
  • I'm sorry but train drivers weren't on the front line during COVID Piers, wut?

    How did people get to work when they had to, how did goods get around, load of nonsense.

    Frankly I wish we weren't having a strike, public sector workers of all kinds should be rewarded
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,433

    Nigelb said:

    MISTY said:

    MISTY said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Sandpit said:

    Scott_xP said:

    BoZO terrified "his" war will end...

    EXC: Boris Johnson is concerned Zelensky is being pressured into agreeing a “s*****” peace deal with Russia because allies are getting tired of war

    He will push Germany, France + others to strengthen support at G7 / Nato talks next week. Source tells me a “big fight” is looming

    https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1539229404882157570

    The PM is right to be concerned.

    Scholz in particular, has been unwavering in his recent support for imports of Russian gas, over being seen to arm Ukraine.
    Things aren't going too well on the Ukraine PR front.

    Allowing Ukrainian corruption to get an airing by blaming the EU for bringing it up was not smart politics. All they needed to do was say 'we're working on it and we will of course aim to meet the standards required by the EU as soon as possible'

    Their closeness to Boris Johnson will also not be playing well. Certainly not in the UK where he's as popular as a sauteed toad but more widely across Europe

    If Ukraine lose their whiter than white status the help for their war effort will crumble as quickly as it built up.
    Putin speaks
    What is it with Old Lefties who are barely able to disguise their desire for Ukraine to lose?

    UGH
    It isn't just the left.

    Trumpist Republicans are completely against this war and detest Biden's 40bn funding for Ukraine.

    To be fair pre-Zelensky Ukraine wasn't necessarily a shining beacon of democracy! And during WWII Ukrainians could be found in some compromising places!
    I read a tweet recently the main political opposition in Ukraine has been banned? not sure what's going on there.
    That would be OPZZh, which supports the Russian invasion.

    They were the second largest party in terms of vote share in the most recent (2019) parliamentary election. With 13% of the vote.
    Seems more complicated than that, if the Wikipedia entry is correct. Others may know more, but apparently one member supported the invasion and was immediately expelled for doing so. The party then came out against the invasion on March 7, but was then suspended anyway on March 20 and banned altogether on June 20. The party is obviously softer-line on Russia but it's hard to see why the banning was justified.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_Platform_—_For_Life
    Is that the one that they arrested (and appeared to have given him a bloody good hiding) the leader, and tried to do a prisoner exchange with the Russians for him?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,094

    Nigelb said:

    MISTY said:

    MISTY said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Sandpit said:

    Scott_xP said:

    BoZO terrified "his" war will end...

    EXC: Boris Johnson is concerned Zelensky is being pressured into agreeing a “s*****” peace deal with Russia because allies are getting tired of war

    He will push Germany, France + others to strengthen support at G7 / Nato talks next week. Source tells me a “big fight” is looming

    https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1539229404882157570

    The PM is right to be concerned.

    Scholz in particular, has been unwavering in his recent support for imports of Russian gas, over being seen to arm Ukraine.
    Things aren't going too well on the Ukraine PR front.

    Allowing Ukrainian corruption to get an airing by blaming the EU for bringing it up was not smart politics. All they needed to do was say 'we're working on it and we will of course aim to meet the standards required by the EU as soon as possible'

    Their closeness to Boris Johnson will also not be playing well. Certainly not in the UK where he's as popular as a sauteed toad but more widely across Europe

    If Ukraine lose their whiter than white status the help for their war effort will crumble as quickly as it built up.
    Putin speaks
    What is it with Old Lefties who are barely able to disguise their desire for Ukraine to lose?

    UGH
    It isn't just the left.

    Trumpist Republicans are completely against this war and detest Biden's 40bn funding for Ukraine.

    To be fair pre-Zelensky Ukraine wasn't necessarily a shining beacon of democracy! And during WWII Ukrainians could be found in some compromising places!
    I read a tweet recently the main political opposition in Ukraine has been banned? not sure what's going on there.
    That would be OPZZh, which supports the Russian invasion.

    They were the second largest party in terms of vote share in the most recent (2019) parliamentary election. With 13% of the vote.
    Seems more complicated than that, if the Wikipedia entry is correct. Others may know more, but apparently one member supported the invasion and was immediately expelled for doing so. The party then came out against the invasion on March 7, but was then suspended anyway on March 20 and banned altogether on June 20. The party is obviously softer-line on Russia but it's hard to see why the banning was justified.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_Platform_—_For_Life
    You may be right, although that is a rather surprising delay from invasion to coming out against the invasion, even for a party which was more pro-Russia than the others.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,497

    kle4 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    North Shropshire was a 23k con Maj, almost entirely before partygate. Honiton is 24k. Why is there any doubt it goes lib dem on Thursday?

    Lightning needing to strike twice.
    My reasoning goes like this. Remember I called Shropshire North right, made some money, and took lots of PB flak in build up.. My gut feeling on this one is different. My reasoning is when the big turn round in Shropshire North happened, Downing Street party’s was all the political and main news even Ant and Dec being angry, but this happens against a different backdrop, so all that anger has to be baked in now despite off the news and electorate not moved on with partygate fatigue. Is it baked in to all Tory performance now? Secondly, if it was general election you won’t get uniform swinging, you may get 7 somewhere, 2 nearby, 5 down the road - all constituency electorates have their own psychology and views of things. Do you trust this particular electorate to be on same wave length as mid term bloody nose or is it not in their DNA.
    I was wrong about ShropN which means I feel that an LD victory at T and H is likely but not certain. Boris tends to get a bit of luck when he needs it, and a massive defeat in T and H could be the thing that sees him off.

    A question insufficiently understood is this: In both SN and T and H Labour came a clear second in the 2019 election. Why is the assumption made that the LDs are the automatic challengers. And why does Labour accept this.

  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,998
    Carnyx asked: "Are those Christian chaplains or Muslim ones or both?"

    In the House and Senate, only Christians, so far. In our prisons, both, and probably others. In our military, Christians, Jews, and, recently, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs.

    (Some Muslim chaplains in our prisons have not always preached peace to the inmates, but this is not a story that, for example, the New York Times, likes to cover, so I can't say much more than that.)
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,402
    algarkirk said:

    kle4 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    North Shropshire was a 23k con Maj, almost entirely before partygate. Honiton is 24k. Why is there any doubt it goes lib dem on Thursday?

    Lightning needing to strike twice.
    My reasoning goes like this. Remember I called Shropshire North right, made some money, and took lots of PB flak in build up.. My gut feeling on this one is different. My reasoning is when the big turn round in Shropshire North happened, Downing Street party’s was all the political and main news even Ant and Dec being angry, but this happens against a different backdrop, so all that anger has to be baked in now despite off the news and electorate not moved on with partygate fatigue. Is it baked in to all Tory performance now? Secondly, if it was general election you won’t get uniform swinging, you may get 7 somewhere, 2 nearby, 5 down the road - all constituency electorates have their own psychology and views of things. Do you trust this particular electorate to be on same wave length as mid term bloody nose or is it not in their DNA.
    I was wrong about ShropN which means I feel that an LD victory at T and H is likely but not certain. Boris tends to get a bit of luck when he needs it, and a massive defeat in T and H could be the thing that sees him off.

    A question insufficiently understood is this: In both SN and T and H Labour came a clear second in the 2019 election. Why is the assumption made that the LDs are the automatic challengers. And why does Labour accept this.

    In return for making absolutely no effort in OBS and Wakefield of course.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,913
    IshmaelZ said:
    He really is. Running rings round the Government Ministers they're throwing at him. Nice change to listen to someone articulate who doesn't flannel. If the strikes go on long enough he might become a star. Such a step change from the ghastly Len McClusky
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,497
    TimS said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    Was America ever more self-confident than the moment when the delegates at the 1996 Democratic Convention performed the Macarena?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9-6MgMNuTY
    The West as a whole was never more self confident than in the mid 1990s.
    "So life was never better than
    In nineteen sixty-three"

  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821

    I'm sorry but train drivers weren't on the front line during COVID Piers, wut?

    How did people get to work when they had to, how did goods get around, load of nonsense.

    Frankly I wish we weren't having a strike, public sector workers of all kinds should be rewarded

    Repeat after mich:
    Train drivers are NOT on strike today.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,262
    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    mwadams said:

    Leon said:

    I think it behoves us all to read this document on getting racism out of maths, a document which is now part of the Californian education system. Here's an excerpt about "white supremacy" in the mathematics classroom




    NOTES ON TERMS
    The terms used in the engagement section of this resource are ideas presented in the dismantling Racism workbook
    (2016) notebook, grounded on the work of Jones and Okun (2001). It is important to read this article first to fully
    understand the terms that are identified as characteristics of white supremacy culture in organizations. We contextualize these ideas into the math classroom to make visible how white supremacy culture plays out in these spaces.

    As a visual indicator, we italicize the terms used to identify white supremacy characteristics as
    defined by Jones and Okun (2001). They are as follows:

    • Perfectionism
    • Sense of Urgency
    • Defensiveness
    • Quantity Over Quality
    • Worship of the Written Word
    • Paternalism
    • Either/Or Thinking
    • Power Hoarding
    • Fear of Open Conflict
    • Individualism
    • Only One Right Way
    • Progress is Bigger, More
    • Objectivity
    • Right to Comfort

    Damn those white kids doing maths with their "objectivity", "sense of urgency", perfectionism", and "fear of open conflict", what maths needs is "subjectivity", "a sense of Whatever", "who cares if its right", and "open conflict"

    https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf

    Hmmm. The rest of the document is an excellent approach to inclusivity and engagement in maths teaching, and I'd warmly commend it to the group. So I thought I'd also take ten minutes to see what this list is about.

    https://www.uuare.org/cwsc/

    Good link there. And the discussion of objectivity in terms of worldview, which would include things such as previous experiences of being taught maths, variation of approaches to problems (e.g. analytical, visual), is absolutely applicable to maths teaching. You can easily see how a dominant culture applying a single 'objective' approach to teaching might exclude those who do not share that.

    So I think we can untwist our knickers here. Remember, this is about *teaching* maths. And it isn't about white kids per se, it's about white supremacist teachers constructing an environment which demonstrates their theories that white kids in their classes are "better" at maths than black kids.
    Just checked that link


    Here we go. Here is the list of things included under Perfectionism, which in just one of the.....


    "CHARACTERISTICS OF WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE
    by Tema Okun (original article)

    This is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture which show up in our organizations:

    PERFECTIONISM

    little appreciation expressed among people for the work that others are doing; appreciation that is expressed usually directed to those who get most of the credit anyway

    more common is to point out either how the person or work is inadequate

    or even more common, to talk to others about the inadequacies of a person or their work without ever talking directly to them

    mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making them as opposed to being seen for what they are: mistakes

    making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, doing wrong with being wrong

    little time, energy, or money put into reflection or identifying lessons learned that can improve practice, in other words little or no learning from mistakes

    tendency to identify what’s wrong; little ability to identify, name, and appreciate what’s right"


    In short: white people and white teachers and white kids are intrinsically nasty, mean, selfish, self-centred, spiteful, critical, guilt-ridden and so on, and so forth

    This is pure, bilious racism. This has fuck all to do with "whiteness". Imagine ascribing these characterstics to "blackness" or "Jewishness" or "Chineseness"
    That is some pretty moronic and offensive stuff.

    People should focus their ire purely on crap like that and not dilute the attack by overusing the woke label. Because then that ridiculous stuff will just get overlooked.
    For some reason, reading that reminds me of Malcolm X's comments about why he didn't want white people in the Movement.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,784
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    The opposite he reversed the policies of the social democrat, high tax, high spend Carter and oversaw the economic boom of the 1980s. While also moving America on from the humiliation of Vietnam to begin the process of winning the Cold War and becoming the unchallenged global superpower
    His attack on the unions and cuts to government spending started the relentless rise in inequality and collapse in social mobility that has left America in the mess it is in now.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,402

    Carnyx asked: "Are those Christian chaplains or Muslim ones or both?"

    In the House and Senate, only Christians, so far. In our prisons, both, and probably others. In our military, Christians, Jews, and, recently, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs.

    (Some Muslim chaplains in our prisons have not always preached peace to the inmates, but this is not a story that, for example, the New York Times, likes to cover, so I can't say much more than that.)

    Have Buddhists too.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,094
    edited June 2022
    algarkirk said:

    kle4 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    North Shropshire was a 23k con Maj, almost entirely before partygate. Honiton is 24k. Why is there any doubt it goes lib dem on Thursday?

    Lightning needing to strike twice.
    My reasoning goes like this. Remember I called Shropshire North right, made some money, and took lots of PB flak in build up.. My gut feeling on this one is different. My reasoning is when the big turn round in Shropshire North happened, Downing Street party’s was all the political and main news even Ant and Dec being angry, but this happens against a different backdrop, so all that anger has to be baked in now despite off the news and electorate not moved on with partygate fatigue. Is it baked in to all Tory performance now? Secondly, if it was general election you won’t get uniform swinging, you may get 7 somewhere, 2 nearby, 5 down the road - all constituency electorates have their own psychology and views of things. Do you trust this particular electorate to be on same wave length as mid term bloody nose or is it not in their DNA.
    I was wrong about ShropN which means I feel that an LD victory at T and H is likely but not certain. Boris tends to get a bit of luck when he needs it, and a massive defeat in T and H could be the thing that sees him off.

    A question insufficiently understood is this: In both SN and T and H Labour came a clear second in the 2019 election. Why is the assumption made that the LDs are the automatic challengers. And why does Labour accept this.

    It's not been without attempted explanation.

    In each case it is, at least in part, about perceived potential for taking Tory protest voters in the seat.

    In Tiverton it is pretty obvious why that would be the LDs - they were traditionally second place in what is a rural West Country seat, which by and large would suggest LDs are better placed than Labour even if the latter came second by a clear margin in the most recent elections. The ceiling on Labour support in such a place is lower - 2017 looks like an aberration.
    So Labour accepting that reality is not that much a surprise - the LDs doing well in such a seat will help Labour better than Labour coming a distant second.

    North Shropshire is perhaps more interesting, as Labour were traditinally second place since 1997, apart from 2010.



  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    edited June 2022
    And now from Opinium, a tie on the strike

    Railway workers will go on strike at various points this week over pay and & proposed job cuts. From what you have seen or heard, do you support or oppose their decision to go on strike?” Support 41%, Oppose 42%, Don’t know 17% @OpiniumResearch for TalkTV, 1,091 UK adults today
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    edited June 2022

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    The opposite he reversed the policies of the social democrat, high tax, high spend Carter and oversaw the economic boom of the 1980s. While also moving America on from the humiliation of Vietnam to begin the process of winning the Cold War and becoming the unchallenged global superpower
    His attack on the unions and cuts to government spending started the relentless rise in inequality and collapse in social mobility that has left America in the mess it is in now.
    Unemployment when Reagan left office in 1989 was 5% compared to 8% when he entered office in 1980. Union power in the US as in the UK pre Thatcher needed to be curbed
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921

    And now from Opinium, a tie on the strike

    Railway workers will go on strike at various points this week over pay and & proposed job cuts. From what you have seen or heard, do you support or oppose their decision to go on strike?” Support 41%, Oppose 42%, Don’t know 17% @OpiniumResearch for TalkTV, 1,091 UK adults today

    Classic wedge issue:

    Conservative voters:
    Support 18%
    Oppose 71%

    Labour voters:
    Support 59%
    Oppose 26%
    https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1539313948830605313?s=20&t=YxiElRDWUzumOdV2OmcM5w
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,647
    dixiedean said:

    Carnyx asked: "Are those Christian chaplains or Muslim ones or both?"

    In the House and Senate, only Christians, so far. In our prisons, both, and probably others. In our military, Christians, Jews, and, recently, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs.

    (Some Muslim chaplains in our prisons have not always preached peace to the inmates, but this is not a story that, for example, the New York Times, likes to cover, so I can't say much more than that.)

    Have Buddhists too.
    We have all of those and more in Leicester, and a Humanist Chaplain too.

    Sometimes people just need to talk to a sympathetic listener.

    It's an old adage, but still valid. "The purpose of religion is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable."
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    edited June 2022
    When it comes to assigning blame, people are more likely to blame the Trade Unions than anyone else.

    However, people are more likely to blame EITHER the government OR the train companies (45%) than blame EITHER the unions OR the workers (40%). https://t.co/QFBfQvHdIJ

    34 'union to blame'
    29 'govt to blame'
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,497
    kle4 said:

    algarkirk said:

    kle4 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    North Shropshire was a 23k con Maj, almost entirely before partygate. Honiton is 24k. Why is there any doubt it goes lib dem on Thursday?

    Lightning needing to strike twice.
    My reasoning goes like this. Remember I called Shropshire North right, made some money, and took lots of PB flak in build up.. My gut feeling on this one is different. My reasoning is when the big turn round in Shropshire North happened, Downing Street party’s was all the political and main news even Ant and Dec being angry, but this happens against a different backdrop, so all that anger has to be baked in now despite off the news and electorate not moved on with partygate fatigue. Is it baked in to all Tory performance now? Secondly, if it was general election you won’t get uniform swinging, you may get 7 somewhere, 2 nearby, 5 down the road - all constituency electorates have their own psychology and views of things. Do you trust this particular electorate to be on same wave length as mid term bloody nose or is it not in their DNA.
    I was wrong about ShropN which means I feel that an LD victory at T and H is likely but not certain. Boris tends to get a bit of luck when he needs it, and a massive defeat in T and H could be the thing that sees him off.

    A question insufficiently understood is this: In both SN and T and H Labour came a clear second in the 2019 election. Why is the assumption made that the LDs are the automatic challengers. And why does Labour accept this.

    It's not been without attempted explanation.

    In each case it is, at least in part, about perceived potential for taking Tory protest voters in the seat.

    In Tiverton it is pretty obvious why that would be the LDs - they were traditionally second place in what is a rural West Country seat, which by and large would suggest LDs are better placed than Labour even if the latter came second by a clear margin in the most recent elections. The ceiling on Labour support in such a place is lower - 2017 looks like an aberration.
    So Labour accepting that reality is not that much a surprise - the LDs doing well in such a seat will help Labour better than Labour coming a distant second.

    North Shropshire is perhaps more interesting, as Labour were traditinally second place since 1997, apart from 2010.



    Thanks. Very helpful. I still think SN is a bit of a mystery in that Labour just appeared to assume that it had no chance from day 1 and it is hard to see why that move was in their interests.

  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,913
    Emily Thornberry is much underrated. I've just seen her interviewed by the admittedly weak Matt Frei but she came across as thoughtful and at least a cut above both government ministers. There's something quite reassuring about her
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,647
    Interesting survey in America. 58% including a quarter of Republicans think that Trump should be charged over his attempted coup.

    https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/americans-think-jan-6-committee-fair-are-not-following-it

    Did anyone say "Lock him up!"?
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,962
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    The opposite he reversed the policies of the social democrat, high tax, high spend Carter and oversaw the economic boom of the 1980s. While also moving America on from the humiliation of Vietnam to begin the process of winning the Cold War and becoming the unchallenged global superpower
    His attack on the unions and cuts to government spending started the relentless rise in inequality and collapse in social mobility that has left America in the mess it is in now.
    Unemployment when Reagan left office in 1989 was 5% compared to 8% when he entered office in 1980. Union power in the US as in the UK pre Thatcher needed to be curbed
    What was UK unemployment when Thatcher became PM and what was it when she left?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,405
    Roger said:

    Emily Thornberry is much underrated. I've just seen her interviewed by the admittedly weak Matt Frei but she came across as thoughtful and at least a cut above both government ministers. There's something quite reassuring about her

    The good Lady Nugee, for it is her, displays little understanding of working class England, as espoused by her apparent disdain for the flag.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,874
    Evening all :)

    Nothing to do with today's strike but Mrs Stodge and I were returning from lunch at Canary Wharf on Sunday afternoon and at West Ham Station, on the Underground platform, I saw a plaque which I'd never seen before.

    It was a simple memorial to one Julius Stephen, a driver, who was murdered on March 15th 1976 in an attack about which I knew nothing:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Ham_station_attack

    I don't know who put up the plaque, who funded it and why it was only installed now but it is a poignant reminder for those who joke about how much today's strikes are like the 1970s what happened to one tube driver on a spring morning.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    Roger said:

    Emily Thornberry is much underrated. I've just seen her interviewed by the admittedly weak Matt Frei but she came across as thoughtful and at least a cut above both government ministers. There's something quite reassuring about her

    She sneers at the working class and sent her kids to a selective school.
    Typical Labour luvvie
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    The opposite he reversed the policies of the social democrat, high tax, high spend Carter and oversaw the economic boom of the 1980s. While also moving America on from the humiliation of Vietnam to begin the process of winning the Cold War and becoming the unchallenged global superpower
    His attack on the unions and cuts to government spending started the relentless rise in inequality and collapse in social mobility that has left America in the mess it is in now.
    Unemployment when Reagan left office in 1989 was 5% compared to 8% when he entered office in 1980. Union power in the US as in the UK pre Thatcher needed to be curbed
    What was UK unemployment when Thatcher became PM and what was it when she left?
    Little different admittedly but inflation fell from 15% in 1979 to 10% in 1990 and under 5% when Major left office
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,094
    Foxy said:

    Interesting survey in America. 58% including a quarter of Republicans think that Trump should be charged over his attempted coup.

    https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/americans-think-jan-6-committee-fair-are-not-following-it

    Did anyone say "Lock him up!"?

    I bet most of that 1/4 would still vote for him though, and would use lack of a charge as an excuse as to why they have to vote for the Republican, even him.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821
    edited June 2022
    Omnium said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:


    TimS said:

    I am

    Updated YouGov for BJO
    Britons tend to oppose the rail workers strikes taking place this week

    All Britons
    Support 37% / Oppose 45%

    Con voters
    Support 18% / Oppose 72%

    Lab voters
    Support 65% / Oppose 18%

    https://t.co/0J86iNrRWO https://t.co/KHoARzP4tj

    Strong Support/Oppose now at 14/27

    Interesting. I find a lot of polling difficult as read the questions way too literally. I don't really support the strikes taking place - I want there to be a resolution instead. But I very clearly blame the government, not the unions or even the rail bosses with impossible budgets to reconcile.
    An interesting polling question would be something like:

    "Do you think the government has done enough to seek to resolve the rail dispute and prevent the strikes taking place?".

    I suspect the answer would be a resounding 'no', even from many folk totally opposed to the strikes.
    It is more than possible Boris and the cabinet have taken the decision to take on the RMT and to arrive at a settlement circa 4-5% subject to modernisation as a bench mark for the public sector

    This is an economic and political struggle that could go either way but I believe this is a fight the government want to take on
    In the miner’s strike it (belatedly) worked because it came at the end of over a decade of excessive Union power.

    It won’t work now. The unions haven’t had much of any power recently, and most people are thinking good for them. I suspect a fair few may be inspired to join a Union. Times have changed and the (“high wage economy”) Tories don’t get it. Most people want a pay rise. Not just train drivers.
    Train drivers aren't actually on strike.
    Do train spotters get today off, or is it a premium day?
    I visited Reading, Twyford and Maidenhead yesterday to beat the strike :)
    You’ll get through this Sunil. We all will.

    Be Strong. 💪🏻
    Also undertook my Special Railway Operation last Thursday to do the Trafford Centre tram line in Manchester last Thursday!

    So how many drops was that for you, Sunil?
    In England, just need Dale Rail (Sundays only) on the National Rail network, also awaiting the opening of the tram to Blackpool North station, and the London Overground to Barking Riverside.
    How many combat drops?
    Sunil strikes me as a man with experience of at least one of the true horrors (Northern, Bakerloo, or anything going to Brighton). I think we all know that these things are best left unsaid.
    "One grizzled veteran of Sunil's London Station-Hopping Campaign of 2008/09 told me: 'Back in season 1994/95, Sunil was content just to travel within the first four Travelcard Zones, you know, a radius of just 10 miles or so around central London. Now, we are on the cusp of doing the whole of Great Britain's national rail and metro networks!'"
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Omnium said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:


    TimS said:

    I am

    Updated YouGov for BJO
    Britons tend to oppose the rail workers strikes taking place this week

    All Britons
    Support 37% / Oppose 45%

    Con voters
    Support 18% / Oppose 72%

    Lab voters
    Support 65% / Oppose 18%

    https://t.co/0J86iNrRWO https://t.co/KHoARzP4tj

    Strong Support/Oppose now at 14/27

    Interesting. I find a lot of polling difficult as read the questions way too literally. I don't really support the strikes taking place - I want there to be a resolution instead. But I very clearly blame the government, not the unions or even the rail bosses with impossible budgets to reconcile.
    An interesting polling question would be something like:

    "Do you think the government has done enough to seek to resolve the rail dispute and prevent the strikes taking place?".

    I suspect the answer would be a resounding 'no', even from many folk totally opposed to the strikes.
    It is more than possible Boris and the cabinet have taken the decision to take on the RMT and to arrive at a settlement circa 4-5% subject to modernisation as a bench mark for the public sector

    This is an economic and political struggle that could go either way but I believe this is a fight the government want to take on
    In the miner’s strike it (belatedly) worked because it came at the end of over a decade of excessive Union power.

    It won’t work now. The unions haven’t had much of any power recently, and most people are thinking good for them. I suspect a fair few may be inspired to join a Union. Times have changed and the (“high wage economy”) Tories don’t get it. Most people want a pay rise. Not just train drivers.
    Train drivers aren't actually on strike.
    Do train spotters get today off, or is it a premium day?
    I visited Reading, Twyford and Maidenhead yesterday to beat the strike :)
    You’ll get through this Sunil. We all will.

    Be Strong. 💪🏻
    Also undertook my Special Railway Operation last Thursday to do the Trafford Centre tram line in Manchester last Thursday!

    So how many drops was that for you, Sunil?
    In England, just need Dale Rail (Sundays only) on the National Rail network, also awaiting the opening of the tram to Blackpool North station, and the London Overground to Barking Riverside.
    How many combat drops?
    Sunil strikes me as a man with experience of at least one of the true horrors (Northern, Bakerloo, or anything going to Brighton). I think we all know that these things are best left unsaid.
    "One grizzled veteran of Sunil's London Station-Hopping Campaign of 2008/09 told me: 'Back in season 1994/95, Sunil was content just to travel within the first four Travelcard Zones, you know, a radius of just 10 miles or so around central London. Now, we are on the cusp of doing the whole of Great Britain's national rail and metro networks!'"
    First of the 9th, obviously. Air Cav. Air mobile.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,262
    Carnyx said:

    The breakdown in the wall of separation between church and state in the United States is far worse than some commenters here imagine. Most American civil rights laws actually forbid dicriminating against people on the basis of their religious faiths. (Some of you will be pleased to learn that many of our prosecutors don't bother to enforce those provisions; otherwise companies like Apple and Google might be in serious trouble.)

    Worse than that, many American governments actually pay for religous teachings. Many of you will be shocked to learn that there are chaplains in our armed services, and prisons. There are even chaplains in the House and Senate!

    Which reminds me of this famous exchange: “Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?' someone asked the chaplain. No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.” source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1146485-do-you-pray-for-the-senators-dr-hale-someone-asked

    (Edward Everett Hale was Senate chaplain from 1903-1909.)

    Are those Christian chaplains or Muslim ones or both?
    IIRC the policy in the US military is to provide a Chaplin of whatever faith is professed by serving members. Whether or not they are permanently attached to the unit, or visit, is down to the number of members of that religion in the unit.

    They don't allow Wicca chaplins, though, again IIRC
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,913

    Roger said:

    Emily Thornberry is much underrated. I've just seen her interviewed by the admittedly weak Matt Frei but she came across as thoughtful and at least a cut above both government ministers. There's something quite reassuring about her

    The good Lady Nugee, for it is her, displays little understanding of working class England, as espoused by her apparent disdain for the flag.
    As the imbecile Johnson has now urinated on the flag more times than most of us can remember it has little symbolic value other than as a urinal for his squalid publicity stunts. So if what you say is true good for Lady Nugee
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,262
    IshmaelZ said:

    Omnium said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:


    TimS said:

    I am

    Updated YouGov for BJO
    Britons tend to oppose the rail workers strikes taking place this week

    All Britons
    Support 37% / Oppose 45%

    Con voters
    Support 18% / Oppose 72%

    Lab voters
    Support 65% / Oppose 18%

    https://t.co/0J86iNrRWO https://t.co/KHoARzP4tj

    Strong Support/Oppose now at 14/27

    Interesting. I find a lot of polling difficult as read the questions way too literally. I don't really support the strikes taking place - I want there to be a resolution instead. But I very clearly blame the government, not the unions or even the rail bosses with impossible budgets to reconcile.
    An interesting polling question would be something like:

    "Do you think the government has done enough to seek to resolve the rail dispute and prevent the strikes taking place?".

    I suspect the answer would be a resounding 'no', even from many folk totally opposed to the strikes.
    It is more than possible Boris and the cabinet have taken the decision to take on the RMT and to arrive at a settlement circa 4-5% subject to modernisation as a bench mark for the public sector

    This is an economic and political struggle that could go either way but I believe this is a fight the government want to take on
    In the miner’s strike it (belatedly) worked because it came at the end of over a decade of excessive Union power.

    It won’t work now. The unions haven’t had much of any power recently, and most people are thinking good for them. I suspect a fair few may be inspired to join a Union. Times have changed and the (“high wage economy”) Tories don’t get it. Most people want a pay rise. Not just train drivers.
    Train drivers aren't actually on strike.
    Do train spotters get today off, or is it a premium day?
    I visited Reading, Twyford and Maidenhead yesterday to beat the strike :)
    You’ll get through this Sunil. We all will.

    Be Strong. 💪🏻
    Also undertook my Special Railway Operation last Thursday to do the Trafford Centre tram line in Manchester last Thursday!

    So how many drops was that for you, Sunil?
    In England, just need Dale Rail (Sundays only) on the National Rail network, also awaiting the opening of the tram to Blackpool North station, and the London Overground to Barking Riverside.
    How many combat drops?
    Sunil strikes me as a man with experience of at least one of the true horrors (Northern, Bakerloo, or anything going to Brighton). I think we all know that these things are best left unsaid.
    "One grizzled veteran of Sunil's London Station-Hopping Campaign of 2008/09 told me: 'Back in season 1994/95, Sunil was content just to travel within the first four Travelcard Zones, you know, a radius of just 10 miles or so around central London. Now, we are on the cusp of doing the whole of Great Britain's national rail and metro networks!'"
    First of the 9th, obviously. Air Cav. Air mobile.

    Kilgore : Smell that? You smell that?
    Lance : What?
    Kilgore : Ozone from the 'leecy, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of ozone in the morning. You know, one time we were at rail station, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' commuter. The smell, you know that ozone smell? The whole station. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,287

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    Was America ever more self-confident than the moment when the delegates at the 1996 Democratic Convention performed the Macarena?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9-6MgMNuTY
    I think you’ve nailed it. Another video of the same event


    https://youtu.be/Avqf7TIL2Y4


    That’s a nicer, happier, bubblier America. Still full of optimism. And total self assurance. What went wrong?

    Looking back, Bin Laden won. He said he would end the American Century, by goading it into over-reaction. And so it was

    American supremacy and total confidence ended on 9/11
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,639

    Roger said:

    Emily Thornberry is much underrated. I've just seen her interviewed by the admittedly weak Matt Frei but she came across as thoughtful and at least a cut above both government ministers. There's something quite reassuring about her

    She sneers at the working class and sent her kids to a selective school.
    Typical Labour luvvie
    One of the reasons why LAB is still a long way from government!
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,070

    And now from Opinium, a tie on the strike

    Railway workers will go on strike at various points this week over pay and & proposed job cuts. From what you have seen or heard, do you support or oppose their decision to go on strike?” Support 41%, Oppose 42%, Don’t know 17% @OpiniumResearch for TalkTV, 1,091 UK adults today

    The polling is all over the place - which suggests that responses are as much to do with the framing of the questions as with anyone’s opinions on the strike (which, if my own are anything to go by, are not entirely straightforward).

    … Most people (58%) believe the rail strikes are justified, according to a survey of more than 2,300 adults by Savanta ComRes.

    Younger adults aged 18-34 (72%) and Labour voters (79%) were more likely to see the strikes as justified compared with their older (aged 55+, 44%) and Conservative-voting (38%) counterparts.

    Three out of five of those polled said they were generally supportive of the principle of industrial action, while just 35% were generally opposed, PA Media reported.

    Two-thirds said the government had not done enough to avoid the strikes, while 61% say the same of the transport secretary, Grant Shapps.

    However, a separate poll of 2,516 adults, published by YouGov on Tuesday afternoon, suggested only 37% of people were supportive of the strike this week, while 45% said they opposed it….



  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,913
    Brilliant denunciation of Brexit on Ch4 News by Torsten Bell. We are significantly poorer and it's ongoing. Poor supercilious John Redwood was left pouting
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    Omnium said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:


    TimS said:

    I am

    Updated YouGov for BJO
    Britons tend to oppose the rail workers strikes taking place this week

    All Britons
    Support 37% / Oppose 45%

    Con voters
    Support 18% / Oppose 72%

    Lab voters
    Support 65% / Oppose 18%

    https://t.co/0J86iNrRWO https://t.co/KHoARzP4tj

    Strong Support/Oppose now at 14/27

    Interesting. I find a lot of polling difficult as read the questions way too literally. I don't really support the strikes taking place - I want there to be a resolution instead. But I very clearly blame the government, not the unions or even the rail bosses with impossible budgets to reconcile.
    An interesting polling question would be something like:

    "Do you think the government has done enough to seek to resolve the rail dispute and prevent the strikes taking place?".

    I suspect the answer would be a resounding 'no', even from many folk totally opposed to the strikes.
    It is more than possible Boris and the cabinet have taken the decision to take on the RMT and to arrive at a settlement circa 4-5% subject to modernisation as a bench mark for the public sector

    This is an economic and political struggle that could go either way but I believe this is a fight the government want to take on
    In the miner’s strike it (belatedly) worked because it came at the end of over a decade of excessive Union power.

    It won’t work now. The unions haven’t had much of any power recently, and most people are thinking good for them. I suspect a fair few may be inspired to join a Union. Times have changed and the (“high wage economy”) Tories don’t get it. Most people want a pay rise. Not just train drivers.
    Train drivers aren't actually on strike.
    Do train spotters get today off, or is it a premium day?
    I visited Reading, Twyford and Maidenhead yesterday to beat the strike :)
    You’ll get through this Sunil. We all will.

    Be Strong. 💪🏻
    Also undertook my Special Railway Operation last Thursday to do the Trafford Centre tram line in Manchester last Thursday!

    So how many drops was that for you, Sunil?
    In England, just need Dale Rail (Sundays only) on the National Rail network, also awaiting the opening of the tram to Blackpool North station, and the London Overground to Barking Riverside.
    How many combat drops?
    Sunil strikes me as a man with experience of at least one of the true horrors (Northern, Bakerloo, or anything going to Brighton). I think we all know that these things are best left unsaid.
    "One grizzled veteran of Sunil's London Station-Hopping Campaign of 2008/09 told me: 'Back in season 1994/95, Sunil was content just to travel within the first four Travelcard Zones, you know, a radius of just 10 miles or so around central London. Now, we are on the cusp of doing the whole of Great Britain's national rail and metro networks!'"
    First of the 9th, obviously. Air Cav. Air mobile.

    Kilgore : Smell that? You smell that?
    Lance : What?
    Kilgore : Ozone from the 'leecy, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of ozone in the morning. You know, one time we were at rail station, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' commuter. The smell, you know that ozone smell? The whole station. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end.
    My usual reminder: those are filipino choppers and they had to keep breaking off filming to attack, for real,presumably identical villages 30 miles away in a war Marcos was having at the time.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,828
    The Telegraph - which has been doing some very good podcasts on the war - had an interesting report today from Kazakhstan. Tokayev refused to back the independence of the Donbass states whilst on stage with Putin. Good for him. However there are worries in Kazakhstan that Putin could attack/invade them. They have a substantial Russian population who tend to believe what Kremlin TV is telling them whilst the native Kazaks do not. Another reminder that the current Russian leadership is extremely dangerous and giving them anything at all should be avoided as far as possible.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,405
    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Emily Thornberry is much underrated. I've just seen her interviewed by the admittedly weak Matt Frei but she came across as thoughtful and at least a cut above both government ministers. There's something quite reassuring about her

    The good Lady Nugee, for it is her, displays little understanding of working class England, as espoused by her apparent disdain for the flag.
    As the imbecile Johnson has now urinated on the flag more times than most of us can remember it has little symbolic value other than as a urinal for his squalid publicity stunts. So if what you say is true good for Lady Nugee
    Labour would quite like their votes though, so I don’t think is a great advert for the party. Rather reminds me of the classic upper middle sneering classes who simply adore the poor, just as long as they don’t have to actually meet them...
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,883
    IshmaelZ said:
    Gullis is an obnoxious sh*t. The people of Stoke N must be ashamed to have voted for him, (well some of them anyway)
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    edited June 2022
    Nigelb said:

    And now from Opinium, a tie on the strike

    Railway workers will go on strike at various points this week over pay and & proposed job cuts. From what you have seen or heard, do you support or oppose their decision to go on strike?” Support 41%, Oppose 42%, Don’t know 17% @OpiniumResearch for TalkTV, 1,091 UK adults today

    The polling is all over the place - which suggests that responses are as much to do with the framing of the questions as with anyone’s opinions on the strike (which, if my own are anything to go by, are not entirely straightforward).

    … Most people (58%) believe the rail strikes are justified, according to a survey of more than 2,300 adults by Savanta ComRes.

    Younger adults aged 18-34 (72%) and Labour voters (79%) were more likely to see the strikes as justified compared with their older (aged 55+, 44%) and Conservative-voting (38%) counterparts.

    Three out of five of those polled said they were generally supportive of the principle of industrial action, while just 35% were generally opposed, PA Media reported.

    Two-thirds said the government had not done enough to avoid the strikes, while 61% say the same of the transport secretary, Grant Shapps.

    However, a separate poll of 2,516 adults, published by YouGov on Tuesday afternoon, suggested only 37% of people were supportive of the strike this week, while 45% said they opposed it….



    Very true. However we see a clear split between Tories and Labour in all the polling and, as such, very possible we might see industrual action firming up certainty to vote in the polls for wavering Tories whereas Labour leaners already more motivated.... a divisive issue like this should be more beneficial to Tories polling wise short term.
    In other words, be ye not shocked by closing gaps shouldst thou be beseiged by them
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    This thread has been

    urged to return to the negotiating table

  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,262

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Emily Thornberry is much underrated. I've just seen her interviewed by the admittedly weak Matt Frei but she came across as thoughtful and at least a cut above both government ministers. There's something quite reassuring about her

    The good Lady Nugee, for it is her, displays little understanding of working class England, as espoused by her apparent disdain for the flag.
    As the imbecile Johnson has now urinated on the flag more times than most of us can remember it has little symbolic value other than as a urinal for his squalid publicity stunts. So if what you say is true good for Lady Nugee
    Labour would quite like their votes though, so I don’t think is a great advert for the party. Rather reminds me of the classic upper middle sneering classes who simply adore the poor, just as long as they don’t have to actually meet them...
    The Head Count are always revolting.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,647

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    Emily Thornberry is much underrated. I've just seen her interviewed by the admittedly weak Matt Frei but she came across as thoughtful and at least a cut above both government ministers. There's something quite reassuring about her

    The good Lady Nugee, for it is her, displays little understanding of working class England, as espoused by her apparent disdain for the flag.
    As the imbecile Johnson has now urinated on the flag more times than most of us can remember it has little symbolic value other than as a urinal for his squalid publicity stunts. So if what you say is true good for Lady Nugee
    Labour would quite like their votes though, so I don’t think is a great advert for the party. Rather reminds me of the classic upper middle sneering classes who simply adore the poor, just as long as they don’t have to actually meet them...
    Yes, PB Tories are all in favour of working class people getting a better deal, including payrises, until the minute they actually try it...
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,664
    edited June 2022
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    The opposite he reversed the policies of the social democrat, high tax, high spend Carter and oversaw the economic boom of the 1980s. While also moving America on from the humiliation of Vietnam to begin the process of winning the Cold War and becoming the unchallenged global superpower
    His attack on the unions and cuts to government spending started the relentless rise in inequality and collapse in social mobility that has left America in the mess it is in now.
    Unemployment when Reagan left office in 1989 was 5% compared to 8% when he entered office in 1980. Union power in the US as in the UK pre Thatcher needed to be curbed
    What was UK unemployment when Thatcher became PM and what was it when she left?
    Little different admittedly but inflation fell from 15% in 1979 to 10% in 1990 and under 5% when Major left office
    RPI was 10.3% when Thatcher came to power in May 1979 and 9.7% in November 1990 when she left office, according to the ONS.

    So, to all intents and purposes, 10% when she arrived, 10% when she left.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/datasets/consumerpriceinflation
  • _Andy__Andy_ Posts: 12
    Hi All. Any tips on TV coverage for Thu's by-elections? Thanks, Andy
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Thanks to right wing media the definition of “woke” continues to expand and will not stop until it comes to mean “anything that’s in opposition to the Conservative party”.

    Unions: woke
    Big business: way too woke
    Pro-European tendencies: woke
    Teaching foreign languages at school: woke
    The metric system: woke as fuck
    Britain’s capital city, the whole of Surrey and Berkshire and all settlements north of Carlisle: yep, you guessed it, woke

    Here you go, a definitive guide to The Wokeness, for dim lefties who keep making this retarded point, believing it to be original if not interesting


    Woke Religion: A Taxonomy
    By
    @peterboghossian
    and
    @ShellenbergerMD



    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=20&t=ZKME03Kosfa8ZzI3mJWkww
    Your retort is exactly the issue. The “anti-woke” have decided that everyone not right wing is therefore their caricature of woke.

    Most of us live our lives, try not to go out of our way to offend people for the sake of it, but object to the more puritanical attitudes of the Roundheads that populate parts of the left.

    But our pretty mainstream, normie and dare I say Blairite, views get grouped the Mail and friends as woke. So guess what, we stop listening to them. If you expand your list of enemies to incorporate most people in the country then generally in a democracy you end up losing.

    Everyone banged on in 2016 about how elite metropolitan Britain invented a fantasy globalist paradise that ignored the real voters. Now their opposite make the same mistake.
    You didn't even read it, and if you did you still probably wouldn't get it

    Intelligent lefties like you that do not accept the existential peril of Wokeness are a major part of the problem. You just think it is cranks, social justice warriors, etc. It is waaaaay beyond that
    No, the difference is I’m comfortable with it because I know social progress works through some form of dialectic.

    If I panicked at every bonkers proclamation by the Christian Right (and OK, some woke warriors do because it’s their oxygen) I’d be a quivering wreck.

    I just don’t have the same world view that we are a declining civilisation wrecked by decadence.
    By far the most important nation in the West is the USA. It is the armoury of the West and it’s ultimate bastion: with the constitutional defence of Free Speech and so forth

    If you don’t see rampant decline in America you’re a fucking moron, with all due respect

    And, yes, the decline is being accelerated by lunatics on the Left AND the Right
    America's problem is huge inequality combined with a collapse in social mobility, which is feeding a downwards spiral of hopelessness, rage and extremism. Its decline could be arrested and reversed by a couple of decades of moderate social democracy. I don't expect this to happen, though.
    America was at its height under Reagan, hardly a social democrat!
    What you mean is that America started going downhill under Reagan.
    The opposite he reversed the policies of the social democrat, high tax, high spend Carter and oversaw the economic boom of the 1980s. While also moving America on from the humiliation of Vietnam to begin the process of winning the Cold War and becoming the unchallenged global superpower
    His attack on the unions and cuts to government spending started the relentless rise in inequality and collapse in social mobility that has left America in the mess it is in now.
    Unemployment when Reagan left office in 1989 was 5% compared to 8% when he entered office in 1980. Union power in the US as in the UK pre Thatcher needed to be curbed
    What was UK unemployment when Thatcher became PM and what was it when she left?
    Little different admittedly but inflation fell from 15% in 1979 to 10% in 1990 and under 5% when Major left office
    Don't forget inflation is cumulative, so when you cheer next year's drop of a percentage point or two your voters might not see it as quite the positive you will.
This discussion has been closed.