Here are three of the welfare programs some of you, apparently, think the United States doesn't have:
Medicare: "It primarily provides health insurance for Americans aged 65 and older, but also for some younger people with disability status as determined by the SSA, including people with end stage renal disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease).
In 2018, according to the 2019 Medicare Trustees Report, Medicare provided health insurance for over 59.9 million individuals—more than 52 million people aged 65 and older and about 8 million younger people.[1] According to annual Medicare Trustees reports and research by the government's MedPAC group, Medicare covers about half of healthcare expenses of those enrolled. Enrollees almost always cover most of the remaining costs by taking additional private insurance and/or by joining a public Part C or Part D Medicare health plan.[2] In 2020, US federal government spending on Medicare was $776.2 billion." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)
Medicaid: "Medicaid is the largest source of funding for medical and health-related services for people with low income in the United States, providing free health insurance to 74 million low-income and disabled people (23% of Americans) as of 2017,[3][4][5] as well as paying for half of all U.S. births in 2019.[6] It is a means-tested program that is jointly funded by the state and federal governments and managed by the states,[7] with each state currently having broad leeway to determine who is eligible for its implementation of the program. As of 2017, the total annual cost of Medicaid was just over $600 billion, of which the federal government contributed $375 billion and states an additional $230 billion." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid
SNAP: In the United States, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),[1] formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, is a federal program that provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people. It is a federal aid program, administered by the United States Department of Agriculture under the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), though benefits are distributed by specific departments of U.S. states (e.g. Division of Social Services, Department of Health and Human Services, etc.).
There are many others, with many variations from state to state.
I would not say these vast systems are a model for the rest of the world, but it is an error to say they don't exist.
Have you lived in the UK? You'd be amazed how liberating it is to be in an ecosystem where medical assistance of any kind is free, like air or tap water.
When I had cancer I read UK and US sites about what to expect and they said much the same thing except the US sites said it all in part 1, and the longer part 2 was then all about how to pay for it. None of that makes it look much better. 50% of a fuck of a lot, still leaves another 50% to be found elsewhere.
Simon Jenkins and Paul Johnson have both claimed that the great mediaeval European cathedrals are the greatest works of art ever accomplished by mankind. They might be right
The destruction of English and Welsh religious art by first the Reformation and secondly by the Puritans must rank as some of the greatest vandalisms of human history.
Melting down Inca treasures and cultural genocide more than matches it.
No doubt the Tories who complained when Labour failed to follow fiscal rules and spent wildly will be up in arms about this.
Oh and of course Ms Truss said that such cuts would fall within fiscal headroom. Maybe that was another "misunderstanding".
Borrowing for general tax cuts is astonishingly feckless. Sound Money was the thing I could relate to about the Conservative Party. The only thing, yes, but an important thing. With that ditched I'm lost. Can't see what the point of them is now.
Mr. Pete, was it Mr. Leon or Mr. Royale who constructed the kneeling police, or the desire of the former Met Commissioner to explicitly have an anti-white hiring practice?
The culture was cooked up and prosecuted by the left, who are aghast that the right have the temerity to actually disagree with it.
Oh come off it Morris, and when we produce our very own Anders Brevik, we will regret the fuss we made over nothing.
If and when we produve our own Anders Brevik it will be precisley because of what Morris describes.
Nonsense, it is alt- right shock jocks like @Leon winding the coiled spring and stirring the pot.
So f*****' what if a footballer takes the knee?
The culture wars are pushing America close to actual civil war. But, sure, they don’t exist and they are all invented by the “alt right”
Yeah but the Civil War will happen because the faux outraged minority are vexing the majority.
I heard a woman being interviewed a few years ago who explained how after watching Fox News her father became very angry. She disabled Fox News and her father no longer became angry.
People like Steve Bannon make the bullets for an angry and frustrated testosterone filled teenage virgin to shoot up a Congregationalist Chapel, or alternatively make him (and it is mainly him) so angry he feels the urge to drive his F100 truck through a crowd of black revellers.
Appalling but it is a mistake to think the problem only exists on the right. Defund the police is madness.
Defund the police may be madness, but so is keeping funding them with military levels of guns and weapons, which is a bigger problem in the US than unfunded police departments. Don't hear quite so much criticism of that type of madness.
I used to instinctively hate the calls to “defund the police” but I think I get that there is an element of sense in it. Defunding and making them consider their priorities and responses in the US might lead to less drastic encounters between the police and the public.
The clincher for me was watching a Netflix doc called 137 shots. The long and short of it is that a car with two black people in it drives quickly past a policeman in Cleveland one night and it backfires.
The policeman radios that he’s been shot at in a drive-by. The police catch up to the car and surround it and shoot 137 (minimum) times from feet away.
The reasons it made me consider more carefully defunding the US police were that having 15 police surrounding a car shooting (and they ended up shooting at each other thinking it was coming from the car) is overkill (pun unintended). If they had fewer officers then a stand off might have resulted in a less frenzied attack on the car. One of the officers at the end was standing on the car bonnet and fired about twenty times through the windshield.
The craziest thing was the footage of 67 police cars lit up racing after the car. 67! If you have 67 cars free to chase one car then something is wrong. If they had fewer resources then they would have to be more careful about how they approach situations and rather than shock and awe so the police feel invulnerable and thus don’t think cleverly they would have to act smarter and hopefully with less crazy consequences.
Spoiler alert below:
The victims in the car were unarmed. Nobody went to jail. One officer lost his job years later.
Nuts.
Defunding in the sense of reprioritization and even a reduction of specific elements of policing is a really good idea, especially with the amounts of military surplus stuff.
It's just a really really shit slogan which sone choose to complain about it being misunderstood rather than find a better one.
One of the things that has really hit home for me the last week, is just how much the UK is a two-tier system - plebs and patricians. It is that binary. A lot of ink has been spilled since the financial crisis about the 1%, the vanishing middle class and so on, but there is altogether something different at work in Britain.
I think societies work best when there is a degree of social mobility for all. The "football pyramid" model of society if you like. But what we actually have is a super league to which the likes of 99% of us will never be invited.
The ossification of our society and class system is exactly what makes the UK such a popular place for the elites of other countries to launder their ill gotten gains. They know it's safe from revolution and regime change here. And the last week has been a fantastic ad for that...
Yes and many of the sons and daughters of aristocrats end up working in the City and enrich themselves further....the UK under a patina of modernity is still a very cap doffing place....thankfully as the country becomes multi ethnic things will change and this is the hope fir the future
A bunch more of the real aristo kids do nothing or art or drugs, like kids from all parts of society, just with more money to burn. If you wanted diversity you'd get more in the City than in the aristo class or Whitehall or dare I say in the BBC where diversity is skin deep.
No-one said it was mainly aristos who work in the City. It isn't. At least when there was still open outcry there were some like Nick Leeson who came from the proletariat. Many in the City work in fairly menial roles too. And the City has always welcomed spivs. It's spiv heaven FFS.
Nor is it especially common among aristos to go into the City.
The contention as I understood it was that some aristos and landed types fall into banks etc. in the City just because of their backgrounds, not because they've got any skill or intelligence. They remain as thick as pigsh*t. Leeson describes how a member of the Baring family itself declared that it "isn't terribly difficult" to make loads of money trading the derivatives markets in Singapore. He'd read the bottom line, but he was unaware at that time that Leeson's apparently huge profits were illusory. What is idiotic is that he genuinely thought it was really easy to make loads of money. Of course it isn't easy. The guy had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, was a respected figure at one of the nobbiest banks in the City, and he had no idea! It is NOT easy to make loads of money trading the markets. It's extremely difficult. Leeson coming from a working class background is of course aware of that.
Of course having a massive inheritance to start with can make you look like a financial genius. One guy starts trading with 50k. One bear market or a few bad trades hes finished. Another starts with 2 million Loses 25% in a bear market is still ok. Of course a skilled trader can make money with 50k but that takes years of experience
Of all the things to worry about in Britain right now, the monarchy is not in my top 100.
I'm more concerned with the fact that about 78,000 largely male elderly voters got to choose an uncharismatic dishcloth and impose her as PM, frankly.
Then there's the justice system, the police, prisons, the education system, the fact that we can't build so much as a garden shed without it costing three trillion quid and taking 38 years, greedy executives at the top, the lack of housing unaffordable by anyone who isn't already a squillionaire, a social care system which is creaking at the seams, ditto the NHS, our gross negligence and worse to children in our care etc.,. And so on. Plenty more could go on the list.
More constitutional tinkering is yet another avoidance technique - to not face up to and take action about the very real problems politicians have talked about for years and done the square root of fuck all about.
Good night.
Those elderly mostly male voters did nothing of the sort. They chose a new leader for their party, nothing more.
At no time did that take away or change the right of our elected MPs to vote down that new leader and either pick another one from the exiting Parliament or call a GE. Nothing about how Truss was chosen changed the basic principle that we elect our MPs and they then choose who will be PM.
Constitutionally, that’s absolutely correct.
Looked at from a point of view of democracy, though, it’s pretty piss poor. As is, of course, FPTP - which it would also be absurd to criticise from a constitutional perspective.
Why is first past the post piss poor? I think there are arguments for and against first past the post, but I don’t think it’s obviously worse than PR systems.
Oh yes it is! FPTP really means the leading candidate (or party) grabs the lot. Conservatives see nothing wrong in this, of course. But everybody else does - or ought to.
This is why I do not understand the position of the Labour Party over the years.
Perhaps because they understand that in many PR systems it is the electorate who lose as the parties carve things up for themselves and ignore the wishes of the electorate all in the name of 'compromise'.
What is wrong with compromise?
It doesn't mean what you and I would like it to mean. What it actually means is politicians dumping the commitments they made to the electorate and doing so under the fig leaf of having to compromise to form a government. As was shown by the behaviour of the Lib Dems in 2010.
I think we need to get a little perspective on the Queue.
Let's say 100 people file past every minute. That is 6000 per hour. That is 144,000 per day That is 860,000 over six days
860,000 is approximately 1.3% of the UK population or 1 in 78 people. Still a lot and noteworthy given the queuing time but a fairly small minority of the population.
That's come up a few times and it looks silly to me everytime.
Is a million strong march in need of perspective as it's a tiny percentage? 500k signing a petition?
Even 1% of people doing something, especially something that requires time and effort, is not just noteworthy its fairly remarkable. That's totally in perspective.
Of all the things to worry about in Britain right now, the monarchy is not in my top 100.
I'm more concerned with the fact that about 78,000 largely male elderly voters got to choose an uncharismatic dishcloth and impose her as PM, frankly.
Then there's the justice system, the police, prisons, the education system, the fact that we can't build so much as a garden shed without it costing three trillion quid and taking 38 years, greedy executives at the top, the lack of housing unaffordable by anyone who isn't already a squillionaire, a social care system which is creaking at the seams, ditto the NHS, our gross negligence and worse to children in our care etc.,. And so on. Plenty more could go on the list.
More constitutional tinkering is yet another avoidance technique - to not face up to and take action about the very real problems politicians have talked about for years and done the square root of fuck all about.
Good night.
Those elderly mostly male voters did nothing of the sort. They chose a new leader for their party, nothing more.
At no time did that take away or change the right of our elected MPs to vote down that new leader and either pick another one from the exiting Parliament or call a GE. Nothing about how Truss was chosen changed the basic principle that we elect our MPs and they then choose who will be PM.
Constitutionally, that’s absolutely correct.
Looked at from a point of view of democracy, though, it’s pretty piss poor. As is, of course, FPTP - which it would also be absurd to criticise from a constitutional perspective.
Why is first past the post piss poor? I think there are arguments for and against first past the post, but I don’t think it’s obviously worse than PR systems.
Oh yes it is! FPTP really means the leading candidate (or party) grabs the lot. Conservatives see nothing wrong in this, of course. But everybody else does - or ought to.
This is why I do not understand the position of the Labour Party over the years.
Perhaps because they understand that in many PR systems it is the electorate who lose as the parties carve things up for themselves and ignore the wishes of the electorate all in the name of 'compromise'.
What is wrong with compromise?
It doesn't mean what you and I would like it to mean. What it actually means is politicians dumping the commitments they made to the electorate and doing so under the fig leaf of having to compromise to form a government. As was shown by the behaviour of the Lib Dems in 2010.
Politicians will always dump commitments if it is in their interests. Looking across the democratic world, electoral systems hardly seem to matter. It's hardly ever possible to say France did X and Germany did Y because one has a strong president and the other has lists.
Like i say in this country the monarchy is heavily intertwined with the aristocracy and the aristocracy benefit themselves from the cap doffing shown to the monarchy. However i dont think in an increasingly multi ethnic Britain they will enjoy the same advantage
Interesting spot on the Today program about the queue. An academic and four research assistants have been trying to address how 'representative' it is of the country, and have spent a day or so counting and interviewing samples of those in line. Politically it's a little odd - well over 50% Conservative voters, but also majority Remainer. And a large majority saying they are there as an expression of gratitude, rather than grief.
(Somewhere in the first half an hour if you're interested.)
I don't find it at all surprising that people who value the Queens work ethic and the institutions that support that and are willing to, and can afford to, stand for a long time to say thanks include a much higher than average proportion of traditional Conservative Remainers.
Don't understand this work ethic stuff. She had a job. She did it.
She could have retired from that job. As it is she went on light duties. As there are few 'musts' and many 'can's, it's a choice how busy to be.
One of the things that has really hit home for me the last week, is just how much the UK is a two-tier system - plebs and patricians. It is that binary. A lot of ink has been spilled since the financial crisis about the 1%, the vanishing middle class and so on, but there is altogether something different at work in Britain.
I think societies work best when there is a degree of social mobility for all. The "football pyramid" model of society if you like. But what we actually have is a super league to which the likes of 99% of us will never be invited.
The ossification of our society and class system is exactly what makes the UK such a popular place for the elites of other countries to launder their ill gotten gains. They know it's safe from revolution and regime change here. And the last week has been a fantastic ad for that...
Social mobility depends a bit on how you measure it, but is probably better in the UK than most of the world. The PM and LOTO are both good examples. By most measures it is higher in UK than in the USA for example
That is not to say that class advantage doesn't persist, but it is not as ossified as it was in continental aristocracies. The British monarchy and aristocracy have always managed to evolve, and welcome the newly rich. Hence a Russian oligarch in the Lords, there is plenty of historical tradition of that.
I think we need to get a little perspective on the Queue.
Let's say 100 people file past every minute. That is 6000 per hour. That is 144,000 per day That is 860,000 over six days
860,000 is approximately 1.3% of the UK population or 1 in 78 people. Still a lot and noteworthy given the queuing time but a fairly small minority of the population.
That's come up a few times and it looks silly to me everytime.
Is a million strong march in need of perspective as it's a tiny percentage? 500k signing a petition?
Even 1% of people doing something, especially something that requires time and effort, is not just noteworthy its fairly remarkable. That's totally in perspective.
Quite. I would go if the wait was 3 or 4 hours and I could go out to lunch afterwards and there's probably 25 like me for every hard-core fan actually doing it.
You want a wacky perspective there's 5 people doing it for every 1 that died of Covid.
Of all the things to worry about in Britain right now, the monarchy is not in my top 100.
I'm more concerned with the fact that about 78,000 largely male elderly voters got to choose an uncharismatic dishcloth and impose her as PM, frankly.
Then there's the justice system, the police, prisons, the education system, the fact that we can't build so much as a garden shed without it costing three trillion quid and taking 38 years, greedy executives at the top, the lack of housing unaffordable by anyone who isn't already a squillionaire, a social care system which is creaking at the seams, ditto the NHS, our gross negligence and worse to children in our care etc.,. And so on. Plenty more could go on the list.
More constitutional tinkering is yet another avoidance technique - to not face up to and take action about the very real problems politicians have talked about for years and done the square root of fuck all about.
Good night.
Those elderly mostly male voters did nothing of the sort. They chose a new leader for their party, nothing more.
At no time did that take away or change the right of our elected MPs to vote down that new leader and either pick another one from the exiting Parliament or call a GE. Nothing about how Truss was chosen changed the basic principle that we elect our MPs and they then choose who will be PM.
Constitutionally, that’s absolutely correct.
Looked at from a point of view of democracy, though, it’s pretty piss poor. As is, of course, FPTP - which it would also be absurd to criticise from a constitutional perspective.
Why is first past the post piss poor? I think there are arguments for and against first past the post, but I don’t think it’s obviously worse than PR systems.
Oh yes it is! FPTP really means the leading candidate (or party) grabs the lot. Conservatives see nothing wrong in this, of course. But everybody else does - or ought to.
This is why I do not understand the position of the Labour Party over the years.
Perhaps because they understand that in many PR systems it is the electorate who lose as the parties carve things up for themselves and ignore the wishes of the electorate all in the name of 'compromise'.
What is wrong with compromise?
It doesn't mean what you and I would like it to mean. What it actually means is politicians dumping the commitments they made to the electorate and doing so under the fig leaf of having to compromise to form a government. As was shown by the behaviour of the Lib Dems in 2010.
As a sometime LD voter I can see your point.
They sold their souls in 2010 particularly with their capitulation over student loans, and one could argue they facilitated both austerity and inadvertently Brexit. Clegg empowered Cameron with coalition when C and S would have worked just fine.
One of the things that has really hit home for me the last week, is just how much the UK is a two-tier system - plebs and patricians. It is that binary. A lot of ink has been spilled since the financial crisis about the 1%, the vanishing middle class and so on, but there is altogether something different at work in Britain.
I think societies work best when there is a degree of social mobility for all. The "football pyramid" model of society if you like. But what we actually have is a super league to which the likes of 99% of us will never be invited.
The ossification of our society and class system is exactly what makes the UK such a popular place for the elites of other countries to launder their ill gotten gains. They know it's safe from revolution and regime change here. And the last week has been a fantastic ad for that...
A fantastic ad taking the form of possibly the biggest parade of capdoffing ever, all presented as if it's dignified.
There's no respect at the top towards the proles here. Proles are essentially seen as oxygen thieves. There's not even any respect from the uneducated petty bourgeoisie either (whose mass party is of course the Tory party, although that's not its only function), who associate anyone they feel is beneath them socially with notions of dirt and subhumanity and filth.
That's not so in most other countries. Say some working class or poor peasant man is let's say a grandfather, he's fathered 5 children and he's got 15 grandchildren and they're having a family gathering. In most places in the world, that guy - assuming nobody's got any good reason to think he's a criminal or smth - is going to be respected. In Britain the petty bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, and aristo class will almost to a person view him as scum.
Britain is the country of Thomas Malthus, H G Wells, Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, etc., who all fantasised about those they saw as the dross of society getting wiped out because they deserved it.
So have any PBers been to see the Queen or is it all mouth and no trousers on here?
Eabhal (in Edinburgh) and Casino_Royale (London) have both paid their respects in person, while Garethofthevale is currently in The Queue.
There may be others I have missed.
@Casino_Royale wrote a very moving description of his visit on the previous thread. Worth seeking out and reading.
Yes that long comment by @Casino_Royale was a really good explanation of why an intelligent royalist/patriot like him might want to do this seemingly bizarre thing. The queue itself was half the point. A penitential pilgrimage. And a chance to meet others with similar feelings
And then he saw her majesty at rest and he got some closure on his angry grief
Because some people really are grieving. Quite unexpected people too
And that grief encompasses so much. Those that are grieving directly for the loss of the Queen Those of us grieving by proxy for the recently deceased, many of those during lockdown when grief itself was assaulted (this now is the communal grief stolen from us) Those that have taken stock at this momemt of national change and grieve for where we are and where we are headed Those grieving for times past that we shall not see again Those caught up in the tide of emotion and swept along by it
I'm going to watch the funeral, which might have an impact, but thus far I'm not feeling quite as much about this as I'd expected to.
Interesting spot on the Today program about the queue. An academic and four research assistants have been trying to address how 'representative' it is of the country, and have spent a day or so counting and interviewing samples of those in line. Politically it's a little odd - well over 50% Conservative voters, but also majority Remainer. And a large majority saying they are there as an expression of gratitude, rather than grief.
(Somewhere in the first half an hour if you're interested.)
I don't find it at all surprising that people who value the Queens work ethic and the institutions that support that and are willing to, and can afford to, stand for a long time to say thanks include a much higher than average proportion of traditional Conservative Remainers.
Don't understand this work ethic stuff. She had a job. She did it.
One of the things that has really hit home for me the last week, is just how much the UK is a two-tier system - plebs and patricians. It is that binary. A lot of ink has been spilled since the financial crisis about the 1%, the vanishing middle class and so on, but there is altogether something different at work in Britain.
I think societies work best when there is a degree of social mobility for all. The "football pyramid" model of society if you like. But what we actually have is a super league to which the likes of 99% of us will never be invited.
The ossification of our society and class system is exactly what makes the UK such a popular place for the elites of other countries to launder their ill gotten gains. They know it's safe from revolution and regime change here. And the last week has been a fantastic ad for that...
Social mobility depends a bit on how you measure it, but is probably better in the UK than most of the world. The PM and LOTO are both good examples. By most measures it is higher in UK than in the USA for example
That is not to say that class advantage doesn't persist, but it is not as ossified as it was in continental aristocracies. The British monarchy and aristocracy have always managed to evolve, and welcome the newly rich. Hence a Russian oligarch in the Lords, there is plenty of historical tradition of that.
No i think the usa is more meritocratic. Look at top journalists in the USA and there is not the Ivy league domination akin to the oxbridge domination in the UK Wall Street is competitive and ruthless but you wont get the aristocratic duffers you are still likely to find in the City And Silicon Valkey is pretty meritocratic
And it helps that the USA got rid of the monarchy so there isnt a cap doffing servile mentality in the population
One of the things that has really hit home for me the last week, is just how much the UK is a two-tier system - plebs and patricians. It is that binary. A lot of ink has been spilled since the financial crisis about the 1%, the vanishing middle class and so on, but there is altogether something different at work in Britain.
I think societies work best when there is a degree of social mobility for all. The "football pyramid" model of society if you like. But what we actually have is a super league to which the likes of 99% of us will never be invited.
The ossification of our society and class system is exactly what makes the UK such a popular place for the elites of other countries to launder their ill gotten gains. They know it's safe from revolution and regime change here. And the last week has been a fantastic ad for that...
A fantastic ad taking the form of possibly the biggest parade of capdoffing ever, all presented as if it's dignified.
There's no respect at the top towards the proles here. Proles are essentially seen as oxygen thieves. There's not even any respect from the uneducated petty bourgeoisie either (whose mass party is of course the Tory party, although that's not its only function), who associate anyone they feel is beneath them socially with notions of dirt and subhumanity and filth.
That's not so in most other countries. Say some working class or poor peasant man is let's say a grandfather, he's fathered 5 children and he's got 15 grandchildren and they're having a family gathering. In most places in the world, that guy - assuming nobody's got any good reason to think he's a criminal or smth - is going to be respected. In Britain the petty bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, and aristo class will almost to a person view him as scum.
Britain is the country of Thomas Malthus, H G Wells, Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, etc., who all fantasised about those they saw as the dross of society getting wiped out because they deserved it.
You really ought to come and visit us*. Britain isn't like that at all.
Interesting spot on the Today program about the queue. An academic and four research assistants have been trying to address how 'representative' it is of the country, and have spent a day or so counting and interviewing samples of those in line. Politically it's a little odd - well over 50% Conservative voters, but also majority Remainer. And a large majority saying they are there as an expression of gratitude, rather than grief.
(Somewhere in the first half an hour if you're interested.)
I don't find it at all surprising that people who value the Queens work ethic and the institutions that support that and are willing to, and can afford to, stand for a long time to say thanks include a much higher than average proportion of traditional Conservative Remainers.
Don't understand this work ethic stuff. She had a job. She did it.
Like most, I am not planning on working til my nineties.
One of the things that has really hit home for me the last week, is just how much the UK is a two-tier system - plebs and patricians. It is that binary. A lot of ink has been spilled since the financial crisis about the 1%, the vanishing middle class and so on, but there is altogether something different at work in Britain.
I think societies work best when there is a degree of social mobility for all. The "football pyramid" model of society if you like. But what we actually have is a super league to which the likes of 99% of us will never be invited.
The ossification of our society and class system is exactly what makes the UK such a popular place for the elites of other countries to launder their ill gotten gains. They know it's safe from revolution and regime change here. And the last week has been a fantastic ad for that...
A fantastic ad taking the form of possibly the biggest parade of capdoffing ever, all presented as if it's dignified.
There's no respect at the top towards the proles here. Proles are essentially seen as oxygen thieves. There's not even any respect from the uneducated petty bourgeoisie either (whose mass party is of course the Tory party, although that's not its only function), who associate anyone they feel is beneath them socially with notions of dirt and subhumanity and filth.
That's not so in most other countries. Say some working class or poor peasant man is let's say a grandfather, he's fathered 5 children and he's got 15 grandchildren and they're having a family gathering. In most places in the world, that guy - assuming nobody's got any good reason to think he's a criminal or smth - is going to be respected. In Britain the petty bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, and aristo class will almost to a person view him as scum.
Britain is the country of Thomas Malthus, H G Wells, Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, etc., who all fantasised about those they saw as the dross of society getting wiped out because they deserved it.
Whereas Russian leaders don’t just fantasise about this, they go ahead and ACTUALLY KILL THE PROLES. In their millions. Especially the dodgy ones from outlying regions
Mr. Pete, was it Mr. Leon or Mr. Royale who constructed the kneeling police, or the desire of the former Met Commissioner to explicitly have an anti-white hiring practice?
The culture was cooked up and prosecuted by the left, who are aghast that the right have the temerity to actually disagree with it.
Oh come off it Morris, and when we produce our very own Anders Brevik, we will regret the fuss we made over nothing.
If and when we produve our own Anders Brevik it will be precisley because of what Morris describes.
Nonsense, it is alt- right shock jocks like @Leon winding the coiled spring and stirring the pot.
So f*****' what if a footballer takes the knee?
The culture wars are pushing America close to actual civil war. But, sure, they don’t exist and they are all invented by the “alt right”
Yeah but the Civil War will happen because the faux outraged minority are vexing the majority.
I heard a woman being interviewed a few years ago who explained how after watching Fox News her father became very angry. She disabled Fox News and her father no longer became angry.
People like Steve Bannon make the bullets for an angry and frustrated testosterone filled teenage virgin to shoot up a Congregationalist Chapel, or alternatively make him (and it is mainly him) so angry he feels the urge to drive his F100 truck through a crowd of black revellers.
Appalling but it is a mistake to think the problem only exists on the right. Defund the police is madness.
I don't, but the reaction from the alt right exceeds the action.
On a completely different topic, it’s time to start keeping an eye on weather conditions for the coming gas-limited winter.
It’s just starting to get cold enough for domestic and commercial heating in some of the cooler parts of Europe, and dark enough for meaningful electricity usage from lighting. The ideal weather conditions through the winter and next spring are:
- Windy in North and Western Europe, to get the wind turbines firing - Sunny in Southern Europe for solar (winter sun is too weak to make a difference in the North) - Wet in Norway to maximise their hydro electric output - Mild across the whole continent (though ideally freezing in the Donbass for all those poorly clad Russian soldiers)
Ie a strongly positive North Atlantic Oscillation and screaming westerlies.
The first batch of seasonal climate forecasts are not encouraging. They’re showing higher than normal pressure in the North Atlantic and low pressure over the Med. Which means limited wind for the turbines, dry weather in Norway, low light levels in Southern Europe, and cold weather in Germany and C Europe. Ie a negative NAO. Good news for Putin if it happens.
Today is an example of what we want in the UK. Wind at decent 10gw, solar hitting 7gw, nuclear at the top of its recent range and CCGT generation only 3.8gw with most turbines idle.
One of the things that has really hit home for me the last week, is just how much the UK is a two-tier system - plebs and patricians. It is that binary. A lot of ink has been spilled since the financial crisis about the 1%, the vanishing middle class and so on, but there is altogether something different at work in Britain.
I think societies work best when there is a degree of social mobility for all. The "football pyramid" model of society if you like. But what we actually have is a super league to which the likes of 99% of us will never be invited.
The ossification of our society and class system is exactly what makes the UK such a popular place for the elites of other countries to launder their ill gotten gains. They know it's safe from revolution and regime change here. And the last week has been a fantastic ad for that...
Social mobility depends a bit on how you measure it, but is probably better in the UK than most of the world. The PM and LOTO are both good examples. By most measures it is higher in UK than in the USA for example
That is not to say that class advantage doesn't persist, but it is not as ossified as it was in continental aristocracies. The British monarchy and aristocracy have always managed to evolve, and welcome the newly rich. Hence a Russian oligarch in the Lords, there is plenty of historical tradition of that.
No i think the usa is more meritocratic. Look at top journalists in the USA and there is not the Ivy league domination akin to the oxbridge domination in the UK Wall Street is competitive and ruthless but you wont get the aristocratic duffers you are still likely to find in the City And Silicon Valkey is pretty meritocratic
And it helps that the USA got rid of the monarchy so there isnt a cap doffing servile mentality in the population
America has by some measures less social mobility than UK and other European countries, at least into the top quintile.
Here are three of the welfare programs some of you, apparently, think the United States doesn't have:
Medicare: "It primarily provides health insurance for Americans aged 65 and older, but also for some younger people with disability status as determined by the SSA, including people with end stage renal disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease).
In 2018, according to the 2019 Medicare Trustees Report, Medicare provided health insurance for over 59.9 million individuals—more than 52 million people aged 65 and older and about 8 million younger people.[1] According to annual Medicare Trustees reports and research by the government's MedPAC group, Medicare covers about half of healthcare expenses of those enrolled. Enrollees almost always cover most of the remaining costs by taking additional private insurance and/or by joining a public Part C or Part D Medicare health plan.[2] In 2020, US federal government spending on Medicare was $776.2 billion." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)
Medicaid: "Medicaid is the largest source of funding for medical and health-related services for people with low income in the United States, providing free health insurance to 74 million low-income and disabled people (23% of Americans) as of 2017,[3][4][5] as well as paying for half of all U.S. births in 2019.[6] It is a means-tested program that is jointly funded by the state and federal governments and managed by the states,[7] with each state currently having broad leeway to determine who is eligible for its implementation of the program. As of 2017, the total annual cost of Medicaid was just over $600 billion, of which the federal government contributed $375 billion and states an additional $230 billion." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid
SNAP: In the United States, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),[1] formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, is a federal program that provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people. It is a federal aid program, administered by the United States Department of Agriculture under the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), though benefits are distributed by specific departments of U.S. states (e.g. Division of Social Services, Department of Health and Human Services, etc.).
There are many others, with many variations from state to state.
I would not say these vast systems are a model for the rest of the world, but it is an error to say they don't exist.
Since the Presidential elections are the biggest political betting events, I don't think there are all that many PB regulars unaware of the political battles over Obama's expansion of Medicaid, etc.
One of the things that has really hit home for me the last week, is just how much the UK is a two-tier system - plebs and patricians. It is that binary. A lot of ink has been spilled since the financial crisis about the 1%, the vanishing middle class and so on, but there is altogether something different at work in Britain.
I think societies work best when there is a degree of social mobility for all. The "football pyramid" model of society if you like. But what we actually have is a super league to which the likes of 99% of us will never be invited.
The ossification of our society and class system is exactly what makes the UK such a popular place for the elites of other countries to launder their ill gotten gains. They know it's safe from revolution and regime change here. And the last week has been a fantastic ad for that...
Social mobility depends a bit on how you measure it, but is probably better in the UK than most of the world. The PM and LOTO are both good examples. By most measures it is higher in UK than in the USA for example
That is not to say that class advantage doesn't persist, but it is not as ossified as it was in continental aristocracies. The British monarchy and aristocracy have always managed to evolve, and welcome the newly rich. Hence a Russian oligarch in the Lords, there is plenty of historical tradition of that.
No i think the usa is more meritocratic. Look at top journalists in the USA and there is not the Ivy league domination akin to the oxbridge domination in the UK Wall Street is competitive and ruthless but you wont get the aristocratic duffers you are still likely to find in the City And Silicon Valkey is pretty meritocratic
And it helps that the USA got rid of the monarchy so there isnt a cap doffing servile mentality in the population
Are you sure about that? I thought dominance of top journalists by a few elite schools would be similar everywhere.
Interesting spot on the Today program about the queue. An academic and four research assistants have been trying to address how 'representative' it is of the country, and have spent a day or so counting and interviewing samples of those in line. Politically it's a little odd - well over 50% Conservative voters, but also majority Remainer. And a large majority saying they are there as an expression of gratitude, rather than grief.
(Somewhere in the first half an hour if you're interested.)
I don't find it at all surprising that people who value the Queens work ethic and the institutions that support that and are willing to, and can afford to, stand for a long time to say thanks include a much higher than average proportion of traditional Conservative Remainers.
Yes, this seems to be ignored
To do the queue you need to have time, and probably money, and easy access to London
That narrows the pool of possible visitors considerably
That too was discussed. Clearly London skewed is also Remain skewed; it was still an interesting item.
One of the things that has really hit home for me the last week, is just how much the UK is a two-tier system - plebs and patricians. It is that binary. A lot of ink has been spilled since the financial crisis about the 1%, the vanishing middle class and so on, but there is altogether something different at work in Britain.
I think societies work best when there is a degree of social mobility for all. The "football pyramid" model of society if you like. But what we actually have is a super league to which the likes of 99% of us will never be invited.
The ossification of our society and class system is exactly what makes the UK such a popular place for the elites of other countries to launder their ill gotten gains. They know it's safe from revolution and regime change here. And the last week has been a fantastic ad for that...
A fantastic ad taking the form of possibly the biggest parade of capdoffing ever, all presented as if it's dignified.
There's no respect at the top towards the proles here. Proles are essentially seen as oxygen thieves. There's not even any respect from the uneducated petty bourgeoisie either (whose mass party is of course the Tory party, although that's not its only function), who associate anyone they feel is beneath them socially with notions of dirt and subhumanity and filth.
That's not so in most other countries. Say some working class or poor peasant man is let's say a grandfather, he's fathered 5 children and he's got 15 grandchildren and they're having a family gathering. In most places in the world, that guy - assuming nobody's got any good reason to think he's a criminal or smth - is going to be respected. In Britain the petty bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, and aristo class will almost to a person view him as scum.
Britain is the country of Thomas Malthus, H G Wells, Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, etc., who all fantasised about those they saw as the dross of society getting wiped out because they deserved it.
You really ought to come and visit us*. Britain isn't like that at all.
* when sanctions allow
I am British through and through and you obviously have never thought about Britain properly, you poor thing. You even think you're sophisticated by calling me Russian in what you think is such a witty way. What a fool. Do you even know whether you're saying what you really think or just trying to wind me up?
Of all the things to worry about in Britain right now, the monarchy is not in my top 100.
I'm more concerned with the fact that about 78,000 largely male elderly voters got to choose an uncharismatic dishcloth and impose her as PM, frankly.
Then there's the justice system, the police, prisons, the education system, the fact that we can't build so much as a garden shed without it costing three trillion quid and taking 38 years, greedy executives at the top, the lack of housing unaffordable by anyone who isn't already a squillionaire, a social care system which is creaking at the seams, ditto the NHS, our gross negligence and worse to children in our care etc.,. And so on. Plenty more could go on the list.
More constitutional tinkering is yet another avoidance technique - to not face up to and take action about the very real problems politicians have talked about for years and done the square root of fuck all about.
Good night.
Those elderly mostly male voters did nothing of the sort. They chose a new leader for their party, nothing more.
At no time did that take away or change the right of our elected MPs to vote down that new leader and either pick another one from the exiting Parliament or call a GE. Nothing about how Truss was chosen changed the basic principle that we elect our MPs and they then choose who will be PM.
Constitutionally, that’s absolutely correct.
Looked at from a point of view of democracy, though, it’s pretty piss poor. As is, of course, FPTP - which it would also be absurd to criticise from a constitutional perspective.
Why is first past the post piss poor? I think there are arguments for and against first past the post, but I don’t think it’s obviously worse than PR systems.
Oh yes it is! FPTP really means the leading candidate (or party) grabs the lot. Conservatives see nothing wrong in this, of course. But everybody else does - or ought to.
This is why I do not understand the position of the Labour Party over the years.
Perhaps because they understand that in many PR systems it is the electorate who lose as the parties carve things up for themselves and ignore the wishes of the electorate all in the name of 'compromise'.
What is wrong with compromise?
It doesn't mean what you and I would like it to mean. What it actually means is politicians dumping the commitments they made to the electorate and doing so under the fig leaf of having to compromise to form a government. As was shown by the behaviour of the Lib Dems in 2010.
Politicians will always dump commitments if it is in their interests. Looking across the democratic world, electoral systems hardly seem to matter. It's hardly ever possible to say France did X and Germany did Y because one has a strong president and the other has lists.
Tats no reason to give them 'legitimate' reasons to do so.
I have been busy today but have reviewed todays thread, and indeed last nights, and I would like to make the following observations
It is beyond doubt that the death of the Queen has been a profound event that has upset an enormous number of people, both here and across the globe
The queues are quite unique, and are unlikely to be seen again but to those attempting to create division for their own agenda, including comments on the make up of the crowd, I would just say they are manifestly wrong as there is no doubt we have a varied and broad cultural make up in the UK
Furthermore, I would suggest to republicans, that there are times when sowing division does not benefit their cause and antagonises far more than is necessary, and perversely strengthens the monarchy
I respect greatly @Casino_Royale for the way he wore his heart on his sleeve, and I also respect those who would seek a republic but quietly allow the millions to grieve in whatever way they find solace and even closure
Monday will be remarkable and an enormous global event showcasing the UK at it's best and for once can we just put aside brexit, republicanism, and division and just be immensely proud of our country
I have noticed this forum has a couple of posters, obviously under instruction from Moscow but they are best ignore
Politics can recommence on Tuesday and it will be a very interesting two years to the next GE
Simon Jenkins and Paul Johnson have both claimed that the great mediaeval European cathedrals are the greatest works of art ever accomplished by mankind. They might be right
The destruction of English and Welsh religious art by first the Reformation and secondly by the Puritans must rank as some of the greatest vandalisms of human history.
Melting down Inca treasures and cultural genocide more than matches it.
Very true; Spanish activity in what is now Spanish-speaking America was vandalism of the highest order
Mr. Pete, was it Mr. Leon or Mr. Royale who constructed the kneeling police, or the desire of the former Met Commissioner to explicitly have an anti-white hiring practice?
The culture was cooked up and prosecuted by the left, who are aghast that the right have the temerity to actually disagree with it.
Oh come off it Morris, and when we produce our very own Anders Brevik, we will regret the fuss we made over nothing.
If and when we produve our own Anders Brevik it will be precisley because of what Morris describes.
Nonsense, it is alt- right shock jocks like @Leon winding the coiled spring and stirring the pot.
So f*****' what if a footballer takes the knee?
The culture wars are pushing America close to actual civil war. But, sure, they don’t exist and they are all invented by the “alt right”
Yeah but the Civil War will happen because the faux outraged minority are vexing the majority.
I heard a woman being interviewed a few years ago who explained how after watching Fox News her father became very angry. She disabled Fox News and her father no longer became angry.
People like Steve Bannon make the bullets for an angry and frustrated testosterone filled teenage virgin to shoot up a Congregationalist Chapel, or alternatively make him (and it is mainly him) so angry he feels the urge to drive his F100 truck through a crowd of black revellers.
Appalling but it is a mistake to think the problem only exists on the right. Defund the police is madness.
Defund the police may be madness, but so is keeping funding them with military levels of guns and weapons, which is a bigger problem in the US than unfunded police departments. Don't hear quite so much criticism of that type of madness.
I used to instinctively hate the calls to “defund the police” but I think I get that there is an element of sense in it. Defunding and making them consider their priorities and responses in the US might lead to less drastic encounters between the police and the public.
The clincher for me was watching a Netflix doc called 137 shots. The long and short of it is that a car with two black people in it drives quickly past a policeman in Cleveland one night and it backfires.
The policeman radios that he’s been shot at in a drive-by. The police catch up to the car and surround it and shoot 137 (minimum) times from feet away.
The reasons it made me consider more carefully defunding the US police were that having 15 police surrounding a car shooting (and they ended up shooting at each other thinking it was coming from the car) is overkill (pun unintended). If they had fewer officers then a stand off might have resulted in a less frenzied attack on the car. One of the officers at the end was standing on the car bonnet and fired about twenty times through the windshield.
The craziest thing was the footage of 67 police cars lit up racing after the car. 67! If you have 67 cars free to chase one car then something is wrong. If they had fewer resources then they would have to be more careful about how they approach situations and rather than shock and awe so the police feel invulnerable and thus don’t think cleverly they would have to act smarter and hopefully with less crazy consequences.
Spoiler alert below:
The victims in the car were unarmed. Nobody went to jail. One officer lost his job years later.
Nuts.
My favourite is the tired lady cop who on returning home finds a black accountant (I think) cooking in her kitchen. She opens fire, blows the mother...... away before realising she is in fact in his flat. Still no harm done.
IshmaelZ asked: "Have you lived in the UK? You'd be amazed how liberating it is to be in an ecosystem where medical assistance of any kind is free, like air or tap water."
Both, for what it is worth, have had signficant scandals in recent years.
I'm not sure if you grasped my main points in my previous comment, so I will repeat it: The US has very large welfare systems, but I do not think they are, on the whole, well designed.
Congratulations to Charles III who today equals the reign of Jane Grey Now on to the hotly disputed 16 days of Aelfweard, son of Edward the Elder
Always felt very sorry for poor Lady Jane Grey! She really didn't deserve the treatment Bloody Mary gave her. Her father-in-law of course was a different matter!
If there was a Queen Jane in the future, would she be Jane I or Jane II?
One of the things that has really hit home for me the last week, is just how much the UK is a two-tier system - plebs and patricians. It is that binary. A lot of ink has been spilled since the financial crisis about the 1%, the vanishing middle class and so on, but there is altogether something different at work in Britain.
I think societies work best when there is a degree of social mobility for all. The "football pyramid" model of society if you like. But what we actually have is a super league to which the likes of 99% of us will never be invited.
The ossification of our society and class system is exactly what makes the UK such a popular place for the elites of other countries to launder their ill gotten gains. They know it's safe from revolution and regime change here. And the last week has been a fantastic ad for that...
Social mobility depends a bit on how you measure it, but is probably better in the UK than most of the world. The PM and LOTO are both good examples. By most measures it is higher in UK than in the USA for example
That is not to say that class advantage doesn't persist, but it is not as ossified as it was in continental aristocracies. The British monarchy and aristocracy have always managed to evolve, and welcome the newly rich. Hence a Russian oligarch in the Lords, there is plenty of historical tradition of that.
No i think the usa is more meritocratic. Look at top journalists in the USA and there is not the Ivy league domination akin to the oxbridge domination in the UK Wall Street is competitive and ruthless but you wont get the aristocratic duffers you are still likely to find in the City And Silicon Valkey is pretty meritocratic
And it helps that the USA got rid of the monarchy so there isnt a cap doffing servile mentality in the population
America has by some measures less social mobility than UK and other European countries, at least into the top quintile.
Interesting that in all the European countries - including the UK - the perception of stratification is worse than the actuality. More people think they will be stuck in the bottom quintile and fewer people think they will be able to reach the top than is actually the case. In the US it is the reverse.
This harks back to the thread header I wrote a couple of years ago about US perception of 'Middle Class' with almost 90% of Americans believing they were Middle Class when in fact, in purely economic terms, less than 2/3rds actually were.
Of all the things to worry about in Britain right now, the monarchy is not in my top 100.
I'm more concerned with the fact that about 78,000 largely male elderly voters got to choose an uncharismatic dishcloth and impose her as PM, frankly.
You are surprised that those elderly men voted for a blonde woman who wears well-fitted dresses, (allegedly) kinky jewellery, and who promised them the world on a plate and all for free?
I thought you understood the world better than that.
[Note to PB: The Oxford comma above was used as an act of rebellion]
I am not surprised. Annoyed. As I was when they did it with Boris and May. The Tory party is behaving as if Britain is their private rotten borough.
What an exceedingly sexist view of events you're both putting your names to.
Nothing sexist about criticising the Tory party. Or Liz Truss for having no charisma - which does matter in a leader because persuading and inspiring others is a necessary part of leadership. I have criticised Boris far more harshly.
Is it true in other countries, they actually let you see the face of the deceased lying at rest?
This is one of the aspects of the lying in state that my Irish wife finds odd. A closed coffin would normally be an indication of a violent death.
When her Nana died it was the first time I had ever seen a dead person, but not unusual for Irish funerals at all.
Common in Italy as well.
It is extremely sexist to accept the garbage statement that Liz Truss won over the Tory Party (a third of whom are women anyway) by wearing tight dresses. Liz had a policy programme that put economic growth at the forefront. Rishi Sunak had a grim prospectus of 'lie back and think of England' in the face of economic headwinds, that would have deepened and worsened any recession. This was about policy, not presentation - as you rightly say, Liz is not a charismatic speaker; we've just had one of those and on policy it was a wasted era.
I think we need to get a little perspective on the Queue.
Let's say 100 people file past every minute. That is 6000 per hour. That is 144,000 per day That is 860,000 over six days
860,000 is approximately 1.3% of the UK population or 1 in 78 people. Still a lot and noteworthy given the queuing time but a fairly small minority of the population.
That's come up a few times and it looks silly to me everytime.
Is a million strong march in need of perspective as it's a tiny percentage? 500k signing a petition?
Even 1% of people doing something, especially something that requires time and effort, is not just noteworthy its fairly remarkable. That's totally in perspective.
Quite. I would go if the wait was 3 or 4 hours and I could go out to lunch afterwards and there's probably 25 like me for every hard-core fan actually doing it.
You want a wacky perspective there's 5 people doing it for every 1 that died of Covid.
Congratulations to Charles III who today equals the reign of Jane Grey Now on to the hotly disputed 16 days of Aelfweard, son of Edward the Elder
Always felt very sorry for poor Lady Jane Grey! She really didn't deserve the treatment Bloody Mary gave her. Her father-in-law of course was a different matter!
If there was a Queen Jane in the future, would she be Jane I or Jane II?
I. Jane was never declared Queen in a lawful manner, as only two towns agreed to proclaim her as such - Berwick and King's Lynn.
I think we need to get a little perspective on the Queue.
Let's say 100 people file past every minute. That is 6000 per hour. That is 144,000 per day That is 860,000 over six days
860,000 is approximately 1.3% of the UK population or 1 in 78 people. Still a lot and noteworthy given the queuing time but a fairly small minority of the population.
I suspect a lot that would like to go won’t because it’s not practical . The true number who would like to pay their respects is probably much more than that figure .
That's a statement of capacity, not a statement of how many people want to go.
I've been quite surprised that capacity was not greater. Looking back at previous similar occasions the numbers in London have been 250-300k for a monarch.
Mr. Pete, was it Mr. Leon or Mr. Royale who constructed the kneeling police, or the desire of the former Met Commissioner to explicitly have an anti-white hiring practice?
The culture was cooked up and prosecuted by the left, who are aghast that the right have the temerity to actually disagree with it.
Oh come off it Morris, and when we produce our very own Anders Brevik, we will regret the fuss we made over nothing.
If and when we produve our own Anders Brevik it will be precisley because of what Morris describes.
Nonsense, it is alt- right shock jocks like @Leon winding the coiled spring and stirring the pot.
So f*****' what if a footballer takes the knee?
The culture wars are pushing America close to actual civil war. But, sure, they don’t exist and they are all invented by the “alt right”
Yeah but the Civil War will happen because the faux outraged minority are vexing the majority.
I heard a woman being interviewed a few years ago who explained how after watching Fox News her father became very angry. She disabled Fox News and her father no longer became angry.
People like Steve Bannon make the bullets for an angry and frustrated testosterone filled teenage virgin to shoot up a Congregationalist Chapel, or alternatively make him (and it is mainly him) so angry he feels the urge to drive his F100 truck through a crowd of black revellers.
Appalling but it is a mistake to think the problem only exists on the right. Defund the police is madness.
Defund the police may be madness, but so is keeping funding them with military levels of guns and weapons, which is a bigger problem in the US than unfunded police departments. Don't hear quite so much criticism of that type of madness.
I used to instinctively hate the calls to “defund the police” but I think I get that there is an element of sense in it. Defunding and making them consider their priorities and responses in the US might lead to less drastic encounters between the police and the public.
The clincher for me was watching a Netflix doc called 137 shots. The long and short of it is that a car with two black people in it drives quickly past a policeman in Cleveland one night and it backfires.
The policeman radios that he’s been shot at in a drive-by. The police catch up to the car and surround it and shoot 137 (minimum) times from feet away.
The reasons it made me consider more carefully defunding the US police were that having 15 police surrounding a car shooting (and they ended up shooting at each other thinking it was coming from the car) is overkill (pun unintended). If they had fewer officers then a stand off might have resulted in a less frenzied attack on the car. One of the officers at the end was standing on the car bonnet and fired about twenty times through the windshield.
The craziest thing was the footage of 67 police cars lit up racing after the car. 67! If you have 67 cars free to chase one car then something is wrong. If they had fewer resources then they would have to be more careful about how they approach situations and rather than shock and awe so the police feel invulnerable and thus don’t think cleverly they would have to act smarter and hopefully with less crazy consequences.
Spoiler alert below:
The victims in the car were unarmed. Nobody went to jail. One officer lost his job years later.
Nuts.
I wonder if an unintended consequence of armed police is a tendency to hair trigger(!) paranoia about possible suspects being armed. The shooting of that unarmed rapper guy in London suggests that.
I don't think the circumstances really support that, though we need the conclusions of the investigation.
There is a lot of material strangely not mentioned by the people trying to portray the incident of the Chris Kaba shooting as a 'police killing of an innocent unarmed man', prominent amongst them a couple of MPs (this latter seems spectacularly misjudged in the midst of a continuing investigation) :
* Not his own car, and it is one which is associated with a previous firearms offence a few days prior. * Kaba is a member of a rap collective known as 67, which ran or runs county lines drugs distribution. In 2019 21 of the people in/associated with the 67 collective, including 2 named individuals in the core (like Kaba) were sentenced to a total of 64 years in prison for drugs offences. * Kaba himself has a history of being charged for firearms offences. * Kaba did not stop and drove away from police. When cornered he continued to ram the police cars with his car, when ordered to leave his vehicle.
In this context the police action seem quite logical / reasonable. And the claims by the campaign may well be a diversionary tactic, or the MPs may have been gulled. I don't know.
Whether the police action is considered justified will ultimately depend on detail around whether a police assessment around lives at risk was reasonable, which we do not have yet.
Mr. Pete, was it Mr. Leon or Mr. Royale who constructed the kneeling police, or the desire of the former Met Commissioner to explicitly have an anti-white hiring practice?
The culture was cooked up and prosecuted by the left, who are aghast that the right have the temerity to actually disagree with it.
Oh come off it Morris, and when we produce our very own Anders Brevik, we will regret the fuss we made over nothing.
If and when we produve our own Anders Brevik it will be precisley because of what Morris describes.
Nonsense, it is alt- right shock jocks like @Leon winding the coiled spring and stirring the pot.
So f*****' what if a footballer takes the knee?
The culture wars are pushing America close to actual civil war. But, sure, they don’t exist and they are all invented by the “alt right”
Yeah but the Civil War will happen because the faux outraged minority are vexing the majority.
I heard a woman being interviewed a few years ago who explained how after watching Fox News her father became very angry. She disabled Fox News and her father no longer became angry.
People like Steve Bannon make the bullets for an angry and frustrated testosterone filled teenage virgin to shoot up a Congregationalist Chapel, or alternatively make him (and it is mainly him) so angry he feels the urge to drive his F100 truck through a crowd of black revellers.
Appalling but it is a mistake to think the problem only exists on the right. Defund the police is madness.
Defund the police may be madness, but so is keeping funding them with military levels of guns and weapons, which is a bigger problem in the US than unfunded police departments. Don't hear quite so much criticism of that type of madness.
I used to instinctively hate the calls to “defund the police” but I think I get that there is an element of sense in it. Defunding and making them consider their priorities and responses in the US might lead to less drastic encounters between the police and the public.
The clincher for me was watching a Netflix doc called 137 shots. The long and short of it is that a car with two black people in it drives quickly past a policeman in Cleveland one night and it backfires.
The policeman radios that he’s been shot at in a drive-by. The police catch up to the car and surround it and shoot 137 (minimum) times from feet away.
The reasons it made me consider more carefully defunding the US police were that having 15 police surrounding a car shooting (and they ended up shooting at each other thinking it was coming from the car) is overkill (pun unintended). If they had fewer officers then a stand off might have resulted in a less frenzied attack on the car. One of the officers at the end was standing on the car bonnet and fired about twenty times through the windshield.
The craziest thing was the footage of 67 police cars lit up racing after the car. 67! If you have 67 cars free to chase one car then something is wrong. If they had fewer resources then they would have to be more careful about how they approach situations and rather than shock and awe so the police feel invulnerable and thus don’t think cleverly they would have to act smarter and hopefully with less crazy consequences.
Spoiler alert below:
The victims in the car were unarmed. Nobody went to jail. One officer lost his job years later.
Nuts.
I wonder if an unintended consequence of armed police is a tendency to hair trigger(!) paranoia about possible suspects being armed. The shooting of that unarmed rapper guy in London suggests that.
I don't think the circumstances really support that, though we need the conclusions of the investigation.
There is a lot of material strangely not mentioned by the people trying to portray the incident of the Chris Kaba shooting as a 'police killing of an innocent unarmed man', prominent amongst them a couple of MPs (this latter seems spectacularly misjudged in the midst of a continuing investigation) :
* Not his own car, and it is one which is associated with a previous firearms offence a few days prior. * Kaba is a member of a rap collective known as 67, which ran or runs county lines drugs distribution. In 2019 21 of the people in/associated with the 67 collective, including 2 named individuals in the core (like Kaba) were sentenced to a total of 64 years in prison for drugs offences. * Kaba himself has a history of being charged for firearms offences. * Kaba did not stop and drove away from police. When cornered he continued to ram the police cars with his car, when ordered to leave his vehicle.
In this context the police action seem quite logical / reasonable. And the claims by the campaign may well be a diversionary tactic, or the MPs may have been gulled. I don't know.
Whether the police action is considered justified will ultimately depend on detail around whether a police assessment around lives at risk was reasonable, which we do not have yet.
It appears you don't need the conclusions of the investigation anyway.
Comments
When I had cancer I read UK and US sites about what to expect and they said much the same thing except the US sites said it all in part 1, and the longer part 2 was then all about how to pay for it. None of that makes it look much better. 50% of a fuck of a lot, still leaves another 50% to be found elsewhere.
It's just a really really shit slogan which sone choose to complain about it being misunderstood rather than find a better one.
One guy starts trading with 50k. One bear market or a few bad trades hes finished.
Another starts with 2 million
Loses 25% in a bear market is still ok.
Of course a skilled trader can make money with 50k but that takes years of experience
Is a million strong march in need of perspective as it's a tiny percentage? 500k signing a petition?
Even 1% of people doing something, especially something that requires time and effort, is not just noteworthy its fairly remarkable. That's totally in perspective.
That is not to say that class advantage doesn't persist, but it is not as ossified as it was in continental aristocracies. The British monarchy and aristocracy have always managed to evolve, and welcome the newly rich. Hence a Russian oligarch in the Lords, there is plenty of historical tradition of that.
You want a wacky perspective there's 5 people doing it for every 1 that died of Covid.
They sold their souls in 2010 particularly with their capitulation over student loans, and one could argue they facilitated both
austerity and inadvertently Brexit. Clegg empowered Cameron with coalition when C and S would have worked just fine.
A fantastic ad taking the form of possibly the biggest parade of capdoffing ever, all presented as if it's dignified.
There's no respect at the top towards the proles here. Proles are essentially seen as oxygen thieves. There's not even any respect from the uneducated petty bourgeoisie either (whose mass party is of course the Tory party, although that's not its only function), who associate anyone they feel is beneath them socially with notions of dirt and subhumanity and filth.
That's not so in most other countries. Say some working class or poor peasant man is let's say a grandfather, he's fathered 5 children and he's got 15 grandchildren and they're having a family gathering. In most places in the world, that guy - assuming nobody's got any good reason to think he's a criminal or smth - is going to be respected. In Britain the petty bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, and aristo class will almost to a person view him as scum.
Britain is the country of Thomas Malthus, H G Wells, Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, etc., who all fantasised about those they saw as the dross of society getting wiped out because they deserved it.
Why we don't have Severus's wall:
https://twitter.com/garius/status/1570771789827166208
I think I heard this mentioned on here many years ago, but it's good to see some detail.
Slightly unusual, no ?
Look at top journalists in the USA and there is not the Ivy league domination akin to the oxbridge domination in the UK
Wall Street is competitive and ruthless but you wont get the aristocratic duffers you are still likely to find in the City
And Silicon Valkey is pretty meritocratic
And it helps that the USA got rid of the monarchy so there isnt a cap doffing servile mentality in the population
* when sanctions allow
It’s just starting to get cold enough for domestic and commercial heating in some of the cooler parts of Europe, and dark enough for meaningful electricity usage from lighting. The ideal weather conditions through the winter and next spring are:
- Windy in North and Western Europe, to get the wind turbines firing
- Sunny in Southern Europe for solar (winter sun is too weak to make a difference in the North)
- Wet in Norway to maximise their hydro electric output
- Mild across the whole continent (though ideally freezing in the Donbass for all those poorly clad Russian soldiers)
Ie a strongly positive North Atlantic Oscillation and screaming westerlies.
The first batch of seasonal climate forecasts are not encouraging. They’re showing higher than normal pressure in the North Atlantic and low pressure over the Med. Which means limited wind for the turbines, dry weather in Norway, low light levels in Southern Europe, and cold weather in Germany and C Europe. Ie a negative NAO. Good news for Putin if it happens.
Today is an example of what we want in the UK. Wind at decent 10gw, solar hitting 7gw, nuclear at the top of its recent range and CCGT generation only 3.8gw with most turbines idle.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/americans-overestimate-social-mobility-in-their-country
I have been busy today but have reviewed todays thread, and indeed last nights, and I would like to make the following observations
It is beyond doubt that the death of the Queen has been a profound event that has upset an enormous number of people, both here and across the globe
The queues are quite unique, and are unlikely to be seen again but to those attempting to create division for their own agenda, including comments on the make up of the crowd, I would just say they are manifestly wrong as there is no doubt we have a varied and broad cultural make up in the UK
Furthermore, I would suggest to republicans, that there are times when sowing division does not benefit their cause and antagonises far more than is necessary, and perversely strengthens the monarchy
I respect greatly @Casino_Royale for the way he wore his heart on his sleeve, and I also respect those who would seek a republic but quietly allow the millions to grieve in whatever way they find solace and even closure
Monday will be remarkable and an enormous global event showcasing the UK at it's best and for once can we just put aside brexit, republicanism, and division and just be immensely proud of our country
I have noticed this forum has a couple of posters, obviously under instruction from Moscow but they are best ignore
Politics can recommence on Tuesday and it will be a very interesting two years to the next GE
No, but I can tell you that parts of the vast US health system do operate that way, notably the Veteran's administration (for veterans with serious service health problems) and the Indian Health Service:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Veterans_Affairs#Costs_for_care
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Health_Service
Both, for what it is worth, have had signficant scandals in recent years.
I'm not sure if you grasped my main points in my previous comment, so I will repeat it: The US has very large welfare systems, but I do not think they are, on the whole, well designed.
This harks back to the thread header I wrote a couple of years ago about US perception of 'Middle Class' with almost 90% of Americans believing they were Middle Class when in fact, in purely economic terms, less than 2/3rds actually were.
I've been quite surprised that capacity was not greater. Looking back at previous similar occasions the numbers in London have been 250-300k for a monarch.
The numbers when published will be interesting.
There is a lot of material strangely not mentioned by the people trying to portray the incident of the Chris Kaba shooting as a 'police killing of an innocent unarmed man', prominent amongst them a couple of MPs (this latter seems spectacularly misjudged in the midst of a continuing investigation) :
* Not his own car, and it is one which is associated with a previous firearms offence a few days prior.
* Kaba is a member of a rap collective known as 67, which ran or runs county lines drugs distribution. In 2019 21 of the people in/associated with the 67 collective, including 2 named individuals in the core (like Kaba) were sentenced to a total of 64 years in prison for drugs offences.
* Kaba himself has a history of being charged for firearms offences.
* Kaba did not stop and drove away from police. When cornered he continued to ram the police cars with his car, when ordered to leave his vehicle.
In this context the police action seem quite logical / reasonable. And the claims by the campaign may well be a diversionary tactic, or the MPs may have been gulled. I don't know.
Whether the police action is considered justified will ultimately depend on detail around whether a police assessment around lives at risk was reasonable, which we do not have yet.