It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
Ridiculous. ALL politics has failed
Because Humanity is failing. Birth rates plunge. The climate roils. People R gettin stupid
We are all fucked
You remind me if my father as he was getting older. Convinced he would see the end times.
I though Brexit was supposed to have reinvigorated you.
Yes yes. Old codger. Summer wine. Blah blah
Perhaps you should consider the possibility that we are, as a species, quite comprehensively fucked in a way we haven’t been since WW2 at least - and possibly as far back as the Ice Age
There was probably an old Roman git in about AD 379 who kept saying “Look, these Ostrogoths worry me” and everyone said “oh shut up, the empire is fine, have a fried dormouse”
Mmm. If we have to choose in terms of likelihoods, between your turning into a ranty old git, and the imminent end of civilisation, that's a tough one....
Remarkable how the silence about this genocide persisted for so long.
https://twitter.com/YMonastyrskyi/status/1596607491667902465 The Holodomor is more than just the genocide and approximately 4 million deaths that affected nearly every Ukrainian family. It is a tragedy of untold stories that were frequently kept secret out of fear…
… My grandmother Aza, who was 4 years old in 1932, came from the Poltava region village of Ryaske. In 1932-1933, nearly 40 percent of this village's population perished from hunger, including some of my grandmother's family...
… My grandmother was nearly 80 years old when she realized why her entire family had migrated from the Poltava region to the Luhansk region. Then she discovered why her grandfather and two aunts had died so close together in January 1933...
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
Free the Canaan One.
We need him back.
What happened? I missed it, whatever it was. I'd miss him. Unusual range of interests, and he was known to change his mind on the evidence (alleged wokery of NT and slavery, for instance).
I concur. This place is definitely going downhill. I’m not convinced it’s primarily the below-the-line contributors fault. Some of the main posts are dire (mind you, that’s hardly a novel problem), and technically this place is stone-age. It’s hard to pinpoint the problem, but the whole blog is less compelling than it was, say, a decade ago.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
Ridiculous. ALL politics has failed
Because Humanity is failing. Birth rates plunge. The climate roils. People R gettin stupid
We are all fucked
You remind me if my father as he was getting older. Convinced he would see the end times.
I though Brexit was supposed to have reinvigorated you.
Yes yes. Old codger. Summer wine. Blah blah
Perhaps you should consider the possibility that we are, as a species, quite comprehensively fucked in a way we haven’t been since WW2 at least - and possibly as far back as the Ice Age
There was probably an old Roman git in about AD 379 who kept saying “Look, these Ostrogoths worry me” and everyone said “oh shut up, the empire is fine, have a fried dormouse”
You might be right, but really please compare to the 60s where we all thought the world was going to end any minute in mushroom clouds and if not that we we doomed to return to the stone age as oil was going to run out. Neither happened. How is it different?
Exhibit A. In the 1960s we did not face incontrovertible climate crisis, with attendant migration disasters
And so on
As it happens, I am not entirely pessimistic. I think we are on the cusp of a technological revolution - esp AI - which might save us (tho it also brings hazards). However it is foolish and juvenile to deny that we face a polycrisis of unprecedented challenges
So an incontrovertible climate crisis is worse than the incontrovertible fact that we were all going to die in a mushroom cloud or incontrovertibly going to run out of oil and be sent back to the stone age? Neither of those things turned out to be incontrovertible. Climate change might be. Hopefully we will stop it being, like we did with those 2 incontrovertible facts from the 60s
Climate change is a huge challenge, not because the planet will be destroyed, or will burn, as some hyperbole likes to scream about an average 2 deg c temp rise, all while using pictures of bush fires to illustrate this, forgetting that the bush life cycle needs fire for renewal. The challenge is how we maintain and improve the living standards of all, and that means balancing the currently shit lives of too many of the global south, or whatever the current term is, against those of people in the rich nations. In a just work, everyone everywhere would have the same life chances. It goes without saying that we are a million miles from that. But is 2022 scarier or worse than 1962, or 1939? Or 1348? I don’t think so. We know the scale of the challenge. And we have incredible scientific and engineering abilities. FFS we developed a vaccine against a novel deadly virus within weeks, tested same and started vaccinating people in under 10 months. In the U.K. we have increased renewable power generation on an incredible scale. Challenges of storage aside, it’s possible now to envisage using no fossil fuel for electricity. That’s progress. I fear @leon has been doomscroling twitter again. I also note he has not travelled for a couple of weeks, and it’s winter, so the black dog is feeling up on him. Time to book a flight…
I hear you. And I have been looking at flights…
But I do genuinely think we face an almost unequalled suite of challenges and emergencies. Right now about 1/4 of humanity - east Asia - is constantly wearing masks. We’ve somehow come to accept this as normal. It is not. It is a global madness
And that’s on top of climate change, war in Europe, western decline, England’s terrible rugby team. The times is bad
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
No I won’t move on. I am a PB elder (as are you). It’s my duty to speak out! The tribe is menaced by snowflakery
You can only have robust and interesting debate if people are themselves robust. Otherwise we will end up like mastodon (shudder)
It wasn't "debate" - it was him personally abusing others to get a rise for his own entertainment, usually whilst under the influence, to deal with his own deeply buried self-hatred.
It's not snowflakery to object to this; it made the forum deeply unpleasant place at times and actually lowered the quality of debate as people with other interesting perspectives withdrew. You can't just demand people take relentless insults, abuse, accusations of racism and doxxing and argue they're not 'robust' when they vociferously object, or withdraw. It's not reasonable. Just how it's not reasonable for a landlord to tolerate an angry drunk ranting that clears the bar, night after night, even if one or two regulars get a bit wistful about it once he's barred.
I am happy to stand-up for eccentric posters with 'problems' who adds more value that they take away, Rod Crosby for example, but he was not one of them. Sorry.
I would never claim to have any expertise in Somerset voting behaviour, but I was under the impression that this part of England was more of a Con/LD battleground?
Relevant to the comment upthread regarding the absence of the Lib Dems.
Ex industrial/mining communities. Moggs predecessor was Labour.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
No I won’t move on. I am a PB elder (as are you). It’s my duty to speak out! The tribe is menaced by snowflakery
You can only have robust and interesting debate if people are themselves robust. Otherwise we will end up like mastodon (shudder)
Agree - nobody should expect a hugbox when entering a political debate on the internet. Or else what's the point?
What was Ishmael banned for? He's a grumpy old sod and I've argued with him once or twice but I enjoyed his posts, even the invectives.
Not been on here much this week, as it feels a bit like PB's greatest!? hits (Brexit etc) rather than current affairs (except football).
Starmer’s initial focus is to regain the redwall seats to have any chance of government. Hence he will not even consider any significantly softer Brexit deal until after the next general election and Labour is in government
It's amazing how seriously some people take the tweeted thoughts of an opposition politician two years out from an election campaign.
As things stand, the mood of the nation seems to consist of:
1 Brexit is turning out a bit rubbish.
2 None of the options for moving forward look that attractive.
3 Are you sure there isn't a unicorn available somewhere? We'd really like a unicorn.
4 Farage is still scary and not to be summoned.
That's a recipe for grumpy stasis, as we're seeing. It's not stable in the long run, but it can persist for quite a while. And whilst it could be a decisive break in a pro-Brexit way, it's easier to envision it going the other way.
But for now, it just sits there, getting increasingly whiffy.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
Ridiculous. ALL politics has failed
Because Humanity is failing. Birth rates plunge. The climate roils. People R gettin stupid
We are all fucked
You remind me if my father as he was getting older. Convinced he would see the end times.
I though Brexit was supposed to have reinvigorated you.
Yes yes. Old codger. Summer wine. Blah blah
Perhaps you should consider the possibility that we are, as a species, quite comprehensively fucked in a way we haven’t been since WW2 at least - and possibly as far back as the Ice Age
There was probably an old Roman git in about AD 379 who kept saying “Look, these Ostrogoths worry me” and everyone said “oh shut up, the empire is fine, have a fried dormouse”
You might be right, but really please compare to the 60s where we all thought the world was going to end any minute in mushroom clouds and if not that we we doomed to return to the stone age as oil was going to run out. Neither happened. How is it different?
Exhibit A. In the 1960s we did not face incontrovertible climate crisis, with attendant migration disasters
And so on
As it happens, I am not entirely pessimistic. I think we are on the cusp of a technological revolution - esp AI - which might save us (tho it also brings hazards). However it is foolish and juvenile to deny that we face a polycrisis of unprecedented challenges
So an incontrovertible climate crisis is worse than the incontrovertible fact that we were all going to die in a mushroom cloud or incontrovertibly going to run out of oil and be sent back to the stone age? Neither of those things turned out to be incontrovertible. Climate change might be. Hopefully we will stop it being, like we did with those 2 incontrovertible facts from the 60s
Climate change is a huge challenge, not because the planet will be destroyed, or will burn, as some hyperbole likes to scream about an average 2 deg c temp rise, all while using pictures of bush fires to illustrate this, forgetting that the bush life cycle needs fire for renewal. The challenge is how we maintain and improve the living standards of all, and that means balancing the currently shit lives of too many of the global south, or whatever the current term is, against those of people in the rich nations. In a just work, everyone everywhere would have the same life chances. It goes without saying that we are a million miles from that. But is 2022 scarier or worse than 1962, or 1939? Or 1348? I don’t think so. We know the scale of the challenge. And we have incredible scientific and engineering abilities. FFS we developed a vaccine against a novel deadly virus within weeks, tested same and started vaccinating people in under 10 months. In the U.K. we have increased renewable power generation on an incredible scale. Challenges of storage aside, it’s possible now to envisage using no fossil fuel for electricity. That’s progress. I fear @leon has been doomscroling twitter again. I also note he has not travelled for a couple of weeks, and it’s winter, so the black dog is feeling up on him. Time to book a flight…
I hear you. And I have been looking at flights…
But I do genuinely think we face an almost unequalled suite of challenges and emergencies. Right now about 1/4 of humanity - east Asia - is constantly wearing masks. We’ve somehow come to accept this as normal. It is not. It is a global madness
And that’s on top of climate change, war in Europe, western decline, England’s terrible rugby team. The times is bad
Have you considered becoming a Lib Dem once again?
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
Ridiculous. ALL politics has failed
Because Humanity is failing. Birth rates plunge. The climate roils. People R gettin stupid
We are all fucked
You remind me if my father as he was getting older. Convinced he would see the end times.
I though Brexit was supposed to have reinvigorated you.
Yes yes. Old codger. Summer wine. Blah blah
Perhaps you should consider the possibility that we are, as a species, quite comprehensively fucked in a way we haven’t been since WW2 at least - and possibly as far back as the Ice Age
There was probably an old Roman git in about AD 379 who kept saying “Look, these Ostrogoths worry me” and everyone said “oh shut up, the empire is fine, have a fried dormouse”
You might be right, but really please compare to the 60s where we all thought the world was going to end any minute in mushroom clouds and if not that we we doomed to return to the stone age as oil was going to run out. Neither happened. How is it different?
Exhibit A. In the 1960s we did not face incontrovertible climate crisis, with attendant migration disasters
And so on
As it happens, I am not entirely pessimistic. I think we are on the cusp of a technological revolution - esp AI - which might save us (tho it also brings hazards). However it is foolish and juvenile to deny that we face a polycrisis of unprecedented challenges
So an incontrovertible climate crisis is worse than the incontrovertible fact that we were all going to die in a mushroom cloud or incontrovertibly going to run out of oil and be sent back to the stone age? Neither of those things turned out to be incontrovertible. Climate change might be. Hopefully we will stop it being, like we did with those 2 incontrovertible facts from the 60s
Climate change is a huge challenge, not because the planet will be destroyed, or will burn, as some hyperbole likes to scream about an average 2 deg c temp rise, all while using pictures of bush fires to illustrate this, forgetting that the bush life cycle needs fire for renewal. The challenge is how we maintain and improve the living standards of all, and that means balancing the currently shit lives of too many of the global south, or whatever the current term is, against those of people in the rich nations. In a just work, everyone everywhere would have the same life chances. It goes without saying that we are a million miles from that. But is 2022 scarier or worse than 1962, or 1939? Or 1348? I don’t think so. We know the scale of the challenge. And we have incredible scientific and engineering abilities. FFS we developed a vaccine against a novel deadly virus within weeks, tested same and started vaccinating people in under 10 months. In the U.K. we have increased renewable power generation on an incredible scale. Challenges of storage aside, it’s possible now to envisage using no fossil fuel for electricity. That’s progress. I fear @leon has been doomscroling twitter again. I also note he has not travelled for a couple of weeks, and it’s winter, so the black dog is feeling up on him. Time to book a flight…
I hear you. And I have been looking at flights…
But I do genuinely think we face an almost unequalled suite of challenges and emergencies. Right now about 1/4 of humanity - east Asia - is constantly wearing masks. We’ve somehow come to accept this as normal. It is not. It is a global madness
And that’s on top of climate change, war in Europe, western decline, England’s terrible rugby team. The times is bad
Asian nations have worn masks for a long, long time, generally against all airborne viruses. If you work at Uni as I do, you will have been familiar with this, they were them in winter a lot, even when they study in the U.K. In the west most people have got rid of the hateful things, although I kinda don’t mind in healthcare settings if asked to wear one. That’s where all the sick people are after all…
Young people are influenced by social media, but schools play an important part in reinforcing woke beliefs. A clear majority of British schoolchildren are being indoctrinated with cultural socialist ideas. Among the 18-year-olds I sampled, 63 per cent were taught or heard from an adult at school about at least one of “white privilege”, “unconscious bias” or “systemic racism” – three concepts derived from critical race theory. If we include radical feminist ideas such as “patriarchy” or the idea of many genders, this rises to 78 per cent. Those who have been taught more of these critical social justice (CSJ) ideas are more likely to favour political correctness as a way of protecting disadvantaged groups, rather than viewing PC as stifling free expression.
Those young people who dissent from orthodoxy do so at their own risk, and the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda forces them to self-censor. A majority of Right-leaning young people who said they were taught at least three of five CSJ concepts worried about being expelled or punished for voicing their opinions. Nearly half of Right-leaning employees under 35 who have taken diversity training worry about being fired or losing their reputation.
My work shows that the public opposes wokeness by more than two to one across 25 issues, and these questions split the Left while uniting the Right. Yet the Tories seem incapable of tacking the spread of cultural socialism in schools, the NHS, the police and civil service. Conservative MPs lack both the conviction and courage to act, unlike their US Republican counterparts like Ron DeSantis. Too many are business liberals who pray at the altar of economic dynamism and care little about the country’s culture and traditions. This is reflected in the unprecedented net migration figure of over half a million and the years-long inattention to the flow of asylum seekers crossing the Channel.
If most Britons no longer believe in freedom of speech or scientific reason and view our past as a racist nightmare, this is not some “culture war” sideshow. It undermines the very essence of British civilisation.
“MIT tells prospective faculty how to write a successful diversity statement.”
“Woe to those students who have immersed themselves wholly in quantum mechanics or classical literature out of the love of the field and of knowledge. Without a track record in promoting diversity, as well as a philosophy of diversity, those people are doomed.”
I’m developing a new Theory of Omnigeddon. Right now, every major society on earth is self destructing in its own peculiar way
In the east it’s masks, plunging birth rates, zero covid. In the west, it’s Woke, insane migration, and plunging birth rates. Etc
I find myself egging on DeSantis but I doubt much can be done at a Presidential level.
I think this thing has to be fought state by state, through educational and cultural institutions.
Same applies here, but our politicians are too cowardly and back down at the first sign of opposition from the broadcast media and civil service.
Don't forget woke Twittermobs and, above all, our parasitic legal profession, which makes a fortune every year out of proposing yet more laws which they make money from enforcing and making as complex as possible.
Politicians need a make a considered argument from first principles in public on this issue, for several years, for it to get any traction in shifting opinion - as well as using the DfE to emphasise the teaching of British values in schools to counteract malignant Wokery, making sure Ofsted know it too, and to also take the kids gloves off for the universities that act as incubators for this sort of stuff.
My view is that it's like Japanese knotweed, and it needs to be pulled up by the roots.
I would never claim to have any expertise in Somerset voting behaviour, but I was under the impression that this part of England was more of a Con/LD battleground?
Relevant to the comment upthread regarding the absence of the Lib Dems.
Ex industrial/mining communities. Moggs predecessor was Labour.
Kind of. That’s only the Wansdyke part. Bath was LD.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
No I won’t move on. I am a PB elder (as are you). It’s my duty to speak out! The tribe is menaced by snowflakery
You can only have robust and interesting debate if people are themselves robust. Otherwise we will end up like mastodon (shudder)
It wasn't "debate" - it was him personally abusing others to get a rise for his own entertainment, usually whilst under the influence, to deal with his own deeply buried self-hatred.
It's not snowflakery to object to this; it made the forum deeply unpleasant place at times and actually lowered the quality of debate as people with other interesting perspectives withdrew. You can't just demand people take relentless insults, abuse, accusations of racism and doxxing and argue they're not 'robust' when they vociferously object, or withdraw. It's not reasonable. Just how it's not reasonable for a landlord to tolerate an angry drunk ranting that clears the bar, night after night, even if one or two regulars get a bit wistful about it once he's barred.
I am happy to stand-up for eccentric posters with 'problems' who adds more value that they take away, Rod Crosby for example, but he was not one of them. Sorry.
You really pick the wrong battles sometimes.
You obviously take this personally so I won’t labour the point. We disagree. So be it
Tbh I think debate everywhere is suffering as quirky, thorny, prickly but necessary voices get repressed, and we are left with inoffensive boring Woke people agreeing with each other, while still managing to be snide
It’s why I am cheering on Elon at Twitter. He has identified the problem and he is trying to fix it. He may fail - but bravo
I would never claim to have any expertise in Somerset voting behaviour, but I was under the impression that this part of England was more of a Con/LD battleground?
Relevant to the comment upthread regarding the absence of the Lib Dems.
Ex industrial/mining communities. Moggs predecessor was Labour.
Kind of. That’s only the Wansdyke part. Bath was LD.
I’ve family there. Radstock. Midsomer Norton. All ex industrial. Bath is unique, atypical of the area
Young people are influenced by social media, but schools play an important part in reinforcing woke beliefs. A clear majority of British schoolchildren are being indoctrinated with cultural socialist ideas. Among the 18-year-olds I sampled, 63 per cent were taught or heard from an adult at school about at least one of “white privilege”, “unconscious bias” or “systemic racism” – three concepts derived from critical race theory. If we include radical feminist ideas such as “patriarchy” or the idea of many genders, this rises to 78 per cent. Those who have been taught more of these critical social justice (CSJ) ideas are more likely to favour political correctness as a way of protecting disadvantaged groups, rather than viewing PC as stifling free expression.
Those young people who dissent from orthodoxy do so at their own risk, and the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda forces them to self-censor. A majority of Right-leaning young people who said they were taught at least three of five CSJ concepts worried about being expelled or punished for voicing their opinions. Nearly half of Right-leaning employees under 35 who have taken diversity training worry about being fired or losing their reputation.
My work shows that the public opposes wokeness by more than two to one across 25 issues, and these questions split the Left while uniting the Right. Yet the Tories seem incapable of tacking the spread of cultural socialism in schools, the NHS, the police and civil service. Conservative MPs lack both the conviction and courage to act, unlike their US Republican counterparts like Ron DeSantis. Too many are business liberals who pray at the altar of economic dynamism and care little about the country’s culture and traditions. This is reflected in the unprecedented net migration figure of over half a million and the years-long inattention to the flow of asylum seekers crossing the Channel.
If most Britons no longer believe in freedom of speech or scientific reason and view our past as a racist nightmare, this is not some “culture war” sideshow. It undermines the very essence of British civilisation.
Why are (some on) the right such snowflakes on this? If they disagree, then argue their side and have faith in their ability to win the argument. It's nothing new having raving left teachers - I was taught by an actual communist and a member of the SWP but it didn't get me voting for Corbyn.
I am not sure what Kaufman's beef is anyway. Does any white British person, let alone white US person, seriously dispute that their life would be much harder in all sorts of ways if they were black? What is terribly wrong about using "systemic racism" as shorthand for that state of affairs?
Because it implies that the 'system' is racist, and therefore gives rises to assaults on the institutions and structures of the state, rather than arguing that racist attitudes are still endemic in far too much of the population, which is a social problem.
There is a world of difference between the latter and the former.
Has anyone considered that Leon is actually an AI?
Him having "AI are going to take over the world any day now" as one of his options in his algorithm could be all an in-joke.
# = RAND(1-8). Goto LIST#
LIST 1 - Aliens are here! LIST 2 - AI are going to take over the world any day now! LIST 3 - Lab leak! LIST 4 - The Wokerati! LIST 5 - We're all doomed! LIST 6 - Hunter Biden's Laptop! LIST 7 - Look at my travel pictures! LIST 8 - You're all boring now!
If [DISAGREEMENT], goto [INSULT LIST]. Then return to LIST#.
IN LIST 1-8, search for [CONFIRMATION BIAS]. Add to LIST 1-8.
Remarkable how the silence about this genocide persisted for so long.
https://twitter.com/YMonastyrskyi/status/1596607491667902465 The Holodomor is more than just the genocide and approximately 4 million deaths that affected nearly every Ukrainian family. It is a tragedy of untold stories that were frequently kept secret out of fear…
… My grandmother Aza, who was 4 years old in 1932, came from the Poltava region village of Ryaske. In 1932-1933, nearly 40 percent of this village's population perished from hunger, including some of my grandmother's family...
… My grandmother was nearly 80 years old when she realized why her entire family had migrated from the Poltava region to the Luhansk region. Then she discovered why her grandfather and two aunts had died so close together in January 1933...
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
Ridiculous. ALL politics has failed
Because Humanity is failing. Birth rates plunge. The climate roils. People R gettin stupid
We are all fucked
You remind me if my father as he was getting older. Convinced he would see the end times.
I though Brexit was supposed to have reinvigorated you.
Yes yes. Old codger. Summer wine. Blah blah
Perhaps you should consider the possibility that we are, as a species, quite comprehensively fucked in a way we haven’t been since WW2 at least - and possibly as far back as the Ice Age
There was probably an old Roman git in about AD 379 who kept saying “Look, these Ostrogoths worry me” and everyone said “oh shut up, the empire is fine, have a fried dormouse”
You might be right, but really please compare to the 60s where we all thought the world was going to end any minute in mushroom clouds and if not that we we doomed to return to the stone age as oil was going to run out. Neither happened. How is it different?
Exhibit A. In the 1960s we did not face incontrovertible climate crisis, with attendant migration disasters
And so on
As it happens, I am not entirely pessimistic. I think we are on the cusp of a technological revolution - esp AI - which might save us (tho it also brings hazards). However it is foolish and juvenile to deny that we face a polycrisis of unprecedented challenges
So an incontrovertible climate crisis is worse than the incontrovertible fact that we were all going to die in a mushroom cloud or incontrovertibly going to run out of oil and be sent back to the stone age? Neither of those things turned out to be incontrovertible. Climate change might be. Hopefully we will stop it being, like we did with those 2 incontrovertible facts from the 60s
Climate change is a huge challenge, not because the planet will be destroyed, or will burn, as some hyperbole likes to scream about an average 2 deg c temp rise, all while using pictures of bush fires to illustrate this, forgetting that the bush life cycle needs fire for renewal. The challenge is how we maintain and improve the living standards of all, and that means balancing the currently shit lives of too many of the global south, or whatever the current term is, against those of people in the rich nations. In a just work, everyone everywhere would have the same life chances. It goes without saying that we are a million miles from that. But is 2022 scarier or worse than 1962, or 1939? Or 1348? I don’t think so. We know the scale of the challenge. And we have incredible scientific and engineering abilities. FFS we developed a vaccine against a novel deadly virus within weeks, tested same and started vaccinating people in under 10 months. In the U.K. we have increased renewable power generation on an incredible scale. Challenges of storage aside, it’s possible now to envisage using no fossil fuel for electricity. That’s progress. I fear @leon has been doomscroling twitter again. I also note he has not travelled for a couple of weeks, and it’s winter, so the black dog is feeling up on him. Time to book a flight…
I hear you. And I have been looking at flights…
But I do genuinely think we face an almost unequalled suite of challenges and emergencies. Right now about 1/4 of humanity - east Asia - is constantly wearing masks. We’ve somehow come to accept this as normal. It is not. It is a global madness
And that’s on top of climate change, war in Europe, western decline, England’s terrible rugby team. The times is bad
Asian nations have worn masks for a long, long time, generally against all airborne viruses. If you work at Uni as I do, you will have been familiar with this, they were them in winter a lot, even when they study in the U.K. In the west most people have got rid of the hateful things, although I kinda don’t mind in healthcare settings if asked to wear one. That’s where all the sick people are after all…
This is drivel. I am extremely well traveled. Especially in East Asia
Right now 95% of Bangkok is wearing masks ALL THE TIME. I am reliably informed by friends out there. It is not “winter” - it is the lovely sunny dry season. Hot but clear
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
No I won’t move on. I am a PB elder (as are you). It’s my duty to speak out! The tribe is menaced by snowflakery
You can only have robust and interesting debate if people are themselves robust. Otherwise we will end up like mastodon (shudder)
It wasn't "debate" - it was him personally abusing others to get a rise for his own entertainment, usually whilst under the influence, to deal with his own deeply buried self-hatred.
It's not snowflakery to object to this; it made the forum deeply unpleasant place at times and actually lowered the quality of debate as people with other interesting perspectives withdrew. You can't just demand people take relentless insults, abuse, accusations of racism and doxxing and argue they're not 'robust' when they vociferously object, or withdraw. It's not reasonable. Just how it's not reasonable for a landlord to tolerate an angry drunk ranting that clears the bar, night after night, even if one or two regulars get a bit wistful about it once he's barred.
I am happy to stand-up for eccentric posters with 'problems' who adds more value that they take away, Rod Crosby for example, but he was not one of them. Sorry.
You really pick the wrong battles sometimes.
You obviously take this personally so I won’t labour the point. We disagree. So be it
Tbh I think debate everywhere is suffering as quirky, thorny, prickly but necessary voices get repressed, and we are left with inoffensive boring Woke people agreeing with each other, while still managing to be snide
It’s why I am cheering on Elon at Twitter. He has identified the problem and he is trying to fix it. He may fail - but bravo
I don't take it personally, although I got tired of his personal insults and attempts to paint others as racists, because he himself was a repressed one and struggled with it; I just think you've called it wrong.
There are plenty of non-Woke people on here (ironically, he wasn't one of them) and I think his voice was far from necessary. He didn't add anything of interest that ever provoked my thinking.
I listed out earlier posters with all sorts of perspectives and points of view (left/centre/right) who I think were necessary voices and almost all of them have chosen to withdraw from the site.
You might do better to reflect on and consider why.
On topic, yes Brexit is a pile of shite, as many of us wisely predicted.
But, we aren’t going back into the EU so we need to work out how to make the best of it.
Regulatory alignment and a benign visa regime for young workers would be the obvious frame.
Brexit is a pile of shit but the status quo isn't an alternative. We seem to be falling out with the French big time. I've now been stopped by the police twice on my motor scooter for minor infringements. On each occasion I was told I needed an international driving licence and a helmet and gloves with a CE mark. The first time caused me problems but by the second I'd read up and discovered I didn't need an international driving license so I had a leg to stand on and they let me go without a fine for the helmet and gloves.
But it's the first time in years that the French police have been anything other than easy going. This on top of being put in a holding pen at Nice airport where four EU flights were waved through while UK flights were kept in a holding pen with a flight which required serious passport scrutiny or visas.
It's all very well being flavour of the month in Australia but unlike Australia the EU have around 65 million British visitors a year
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
Free the Canaan One.
We need him back.
What happened? I missed it, whatever it was. I'd miss him. Unusual range of interests, and he was known to change his mind on the evidence (alleged wokery of NT and slavery, for instance).
Too many people were “offended” by him. Also he doubted the veracity of a pollster
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
Brandreth claiming he'd heard The Queen had a form of myeloma, bone marrow cancer, which would explain her tiredness, weight loss, and mobility problems, particularly in the last year or so of her life - even though her death certificate claimed she died of old age.
If true, I imagine a small group of people knew this was coming some time ago.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
Leon's prediction:
"Labour will win big. It's certain."
20 seat Tory majority now nailed on.
Should be noted Starmer's current poll lead is about the same as Cameron's in 2008 but 2010 ended up a hung parliament
Young people are influenced by social media, but schools play an important part in reinforcing woke beliefs. A clear majority of British schoolchildren are being indoctrinated with cultural socialist ideas. Among the 18-year-olds I sampled, 63 per cent were taught or heard from an adult at school about at least one of “white privilege”, “unconscious bias” or “systemic racism” – three concepts derived from critical race theory. If we include radical feminist ideas such as “patriarchy” or the idea of many genders, this rises to 78 per cent. Those who have been taught more of these critical social justice (CSJ) ideas are more likely to favour political correctness as a way of protecting disadvantaged groups, rather than viewing PC as stifling free expression.
Those young people who dissent from orthodoxy do so at their own risk, and the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda forces them to self-censor. A majority of Right-leaning young people who said they were taught at least three of five CSJ concepts worried about being expelled or punished for voicing their opinions. Nearly half of Right-leaning employees under 35 who have taken diversity training worry about being fired or losing their reputation.
My work shows that the public opposes wokeness by more than two to one across 25 issues, and these questions split the Left while uniting the Right. Yet the Tories seem incapable of tacking the spread of cultural socialism in schools, the NHS, the police and civil service. Conservative MPs lack both the conviction and courage to act, unlike their US Republican counterparts like Ron DeSantis. Too many are business liberals who pray at the altar of economic dynamism and care little about the country’s culture and traditions. This is reflected in the unprecedented net migration figure of over half a million and the years-long inattention to the flow of asylum seekers crossing the Channel.
If most Britons no longer believe in freedom of speech or scientific reason and view our past as a racist nightmare, this is not some “culture war” sideshow. It undermines the very essence of British civilisation.
Why are (some on) the right such snowflakes on this? If they disagree, then argue their side and have faith in their ability to win the argument. It's nothing new having raving left teachers - I was taught by an actual communist and a member of the SWP but it didn't get me voting for Corbyn.
I am not sure what Kaufman's beef is anyway. Does any white British person, let alone white US person, seriously dispute that their life would be much harder in all sorts of ways if they were black? What is terribly wrong about using "systemic racism" as shorthand for that state of affairs?
Because it implies that the 'system' is racist, and therefore gives rises to assaults on the institutions and structures of the state, rather than arguing that racist attitudes are still endemic in far too much of the population, which is a social problem.
There is a world of difference between the latter and the former.
It's a puzzling expression, sure, which Macpherson seems to have pulled out of his arse for the Lawrence enquiry, but it just means there's too much racism in the institution. It ought to refer to organisations which have actual sub committees for impeding the promotion of non-Europeans, derogations from the race relations act enshrined in the rules, etc. but there are very few of those.
Brandreth claiming he'd heard The Queen had a form of myeloma, bone marrow cancer, which would explain her tiredness, weight loss, and mobility problems, particularly in the last year or so of her life - even though her death certificate claimed she died of old age.
If true, I imagine a small group of people knew this was coming some time ago.
Hardly controversial, if true. She was surely entitled to a degree of medical confidentiality, and ultimately what difference did it make?
Edit: oh, and I just spotted it was Gyles Brandreth - not sure why I bothered to respond now.
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
On topic, yes Brexit is a pile of shite, as many of us wisely predicted.
But, we aren’t going back into the EU so we need to work out how to make the best of it.
Regulatory alignment and a benign visa regime for young workers would be the obvious frame.
Brexit is a pile of shit but the status quo isn't an alternative. We seem to be falling out with the French big time. I've now been stopped by the police twice on my motor scooter for minor infringements. On each occasion I was told I needed an international driving licence and a helmet and gloves with a CE mark. The first time caused me problems but by the second I'd read up and discovered I didn't need an international driving license so I had a leg to stand on and they let me go without a fine for the helmet and gloves.
But it's the first time in years that the French police have been anything other than easy going. This on top of being put in a holding pen at Nice airport where four EU flights were waved through while UK flights were kept in a holding pen with a flight which required serious passport scrutiny or visas.
It's all very well being flavour of the month in Australia but unlike Australia the EU have around 65 million British visitors a year
Moving motor vehicles between the UK and France now relies on interpretation of the thick-as-shit-officials on both sides of the border of the 1990 Istanbul Convention. Total pain in the dick. Thanks, leavers.
Remarkable how the silence about this genocide persisted for so long.
https://twitter.com/YMonastyrskyi/status/1596607491667902465 The Holodomor is more than just the genocide and approximately 4 million deaths that affected nearly every Ukrainian family. It is a tragedy of untold stories that were frequently kept secret out of fear…
… My grandmother Aza, who was 4 years old in 1932, came from the Poltava region village of Ryaske. In 1932-1933, nearly 40 percent of this village's population perished from hunger, including some of my grandmother's family...
… My grandmother was nearly 80 years old when she realized why her entire family had migrated from the Poltava region to the Luhansk region. Then she discovered why her grandfather and two aunts had died so close together in January 1933...
Anne Applebaum’s “Red Famine” is worth a read.
When the UN was drafting its definition of genocide the USSR insisted on it excluding the slaughter of people by class specifically to exclude the Holodomor from the definition. But genocide it was. No wonder the Ukrainians hate the Russians. What is being done now to them by Russia will only deepen the hatred. Understandably.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
Free the Canaan One.
We need him back.
What happened? I missed it, whatever it was. I'd miss him. Unusual range of interests, and he was known to change his mind on the evidence (alleged wokery of NT and slavery, for instance).
I hate it when I miss something on pb. I must be the only one who doesn't know who Charles is, yet I can't ask as that would break the golden rule of doxing someone and I can't be arsed to go through the threads and it feels wrong to do so.
If you believe your opponents are guilty of Wrongthink and if you believe, as many nationalists do, that unionists have been hoodwinked into voting against their own best interests, you will struggle to understand them. If you cannot understand them you are unlikely to persuade them. At some level, Sturgeon really does believe her people are better Scots than their opponents. That dogmatic arrogance is her downfall. It helps explain why she is such a polarising figure and why, in the end, she is just a shouter, not a persuader.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
Free the Canaan One.
We need him back.
What happened? I missed it, whatever it was. I'd miss him. Unusual range of interests, and he was known to change his mind on the evidence (alleged wokery of NT and slavery, for instance).
I hate it when I miss something on pb. I must be the only one who doesn't know who Charles is, yet I can't ask as that would break the golden rule of doxing someone and I can't be arsed to go through the threads.
It's pretty disappointing when you find out. You'd think he was somebody genuinely important like Graham Norton from the way people on here lined up to slurp his nuts.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
Leon's prediction:
"Labour will win big. It's certain."
20 seat Tory majority now nailed on.
Should be noted Starmer's current poll lead is about the same as Cameron's in 2008 but 2010 ended up a hung parliament
Bit of an exaggeration. The average CON lead briefly touched 20% once in 2008; the average LAB lead has been between 20% and 30% for the past two months.
Young people are influenced by social media, but schools play an important part in reinforcing woke beliefs. A clear majority of British schoolchildren are being indoctrinated with cultural socialist ideas. Among the 18-year-olds I sampled, 63 per cent were taught or heard from an adult at school about at least one of “white privilege”, “unconscious bias” or “systemic racism” – three concepts derived from critical race theory. If we include radical feminist ideas such as “patriarchy” or the idea of many genders, this rises to 78 per cent. Those who have been taught more of these critical social justice (CSJ) ideas are more likely to favour political correctness as a way of protecting disadvantaged groups, rather than viewing PC as stifling free expression.
Those young people who dissent from orthodoxy do so at their own risk, and the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda forces them to self-censor. A majority of Right-leaning young people who said they were taught at least three of five CSJ concepts worried about being expelled or punished for voicing their opinions. Nearly half of Right-leaning employees under 35 who have taken diversity training worry about being fired or losing their reputation.
My work shows that the public opposes wokeness by more than two to one across 25 issues, and these questions split the Left while uniting the Right. Yet the Tories seem incapable of tacking the spread of cultural socialism in schools, the NHS, the police and civil service. Conservative MPs lack both the conviction and courage to act, unlike their US Republican counterparts like Ron DeSantis. Too many are business liberals who pray at the altar of economic dynamism and care little about the country’s culture and traditions. This is reflected in the unprecedented net migration figure of over half a million and the years-long inattention to the flow of asylum seekers crossing the Channel.
If most Britons no longer believe in freedom of speech or scientific reason and view our past as a racist nightmare, this is not some “culture war” sideshow. It undermines the very essence of British civilisation.
Why are (some on) the right such snowflakes on this? If they disagree, then argue their side and have faith in their ability to win the argument. It's nothing new having raving left teachers - I was taught by an actual communist and a member of the SWP but it didn't get me voting for Corbyn.
I am not sure what Kaufman's beef is anyway. Does any white British person, let alone white US person, seriously dispute that their life would be much harder in all sorts of ways if they were black? What is terribly wrong about using "systemic racism" as shorthand for that state of affairs?
Because it implies that the 'system' is racist, and therefore gives rises to assaults on the institutions and structures of the state, rather than arguing that racist attitudes are still endemic in far too much of the population, which is a social problem.
There is a world of difference between the latter and the former.
It's a puzzling expression, sure, which Macpherson seems to have pulled out of his arse for the Lawrence enquiry, but it just means there's too much racism in the institution. It ought to refer to organisations which have actual sub committees for impeding the promotion of non-Europeans, derogations from the race relations act enshrined in the rules, etc. but there are very few of those.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
Free the Canaan One.
We need him back.
What happened? I missed it, whatever it was. I'd miss him. Unusual range of interests, and he was known to change his mind on the evidence (alleged wokery of NT and slavery, for instance).
I hate it when I miss something on pb. I must be the only one who doesn't know who Charles is, yet I can't ask as that would break the golden rule of doxing someone and I can't be arsed to go through the threads and it feels wrong to do so.
Charles is the King, pal. Happened a couple of months ago apparently.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
Free the Canaan One.
We need him back.
What happened? I missed it, whatever it was. I'd miss him. Unusual range of interests, and he was known to change his mind on the evidence (alleged wokery of NT and slavery, for instance).
I concur. This place is definitely going downhill. I’m not convinced it’s primarily the below-the-line contributors fault. Some of the main posts are dire (mind you, that’s hardly a novel problem), and technically this place is stone-age. It’s hard to pinpoint the problem, but the whole blog is less compelling than it was, say, a decade ago.
This has been a constant refrain for the last 18 years. The site is fine. Thread headers are fine, below the line comments are fine. Posters go and posters come, but mostly they stay. I don't know what more you can want technically - all that's really needed is a bunch of words. (Just because something is technically possible doesn't make it necessary or desirable, a lesson Mark Zuckerberg and car manufacturers have yet to learn.) And by the standards of the last six years, politics is gratifyingly quiet at the moment. So it's no wonder the focus sometimes drifts to other matters.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
Leon's prediction:
"Labour will win big. It's certain."
20 seat Tory majority now nailed on.
Should be noted Starmer's current poll lead is about the same as Cameron's in 2008 but 2010 ended up a hung parliament
Bit of an exaggeration. The average CON lead briefly touched 20% once in 2008; the average LAB lead has been between 20% and 30% for the past two months.
Bigger actually, in August 2008 Yougov had the Tories 22% ahead, Mori had the Tories 24% ahead yet it ended up a hung parliament. The Tories had had double digit leads for months too.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
Free the Canaan One.
We need him back.
What happened? I missed it, whatever it was. I'd miss him. Unusual range of interests, and he was known to change his mind on the evidence (alleged wokery of NT and slavery, for instance).
I hate it when I miss something on pb. I must be the only one who doesn't know who Charles is, yet I can't ask as that would break the golden rule of doxing someone and I can't be arsed to go through the threads and it feels wrong to do so.
Charles is the King, pal. Happened a couple of months ago apparently.
Next you will be telling me his mum posted here also. What was her pb name?
The first major free trade agreement signed by Britain after Brexit has been branded a failure after new figures showed exports had fallen since it came into force.
Liz Truss signed a “historic” deal with Japan as trade secretary in October 2020, describing it as a “landmark moment for Britain”. It was claimed it would boost trade by billions of pounds and help the UK recover from the pandemic.
However, figures collated by the Department for International Trade show exports to Japan fell from £12.3bn to £11.9bn in the year to June 2022. Exports in goods fell 4.9% to £6.1bn and services fell 2% to £5.8bn.
Bizarre to assume that no other factors may have affected things over the past 2 years. Unless they factored in the COVID effect.
Bizarre that nothing is ever the fault of Brexit yet, as the poll indicates, only 12% of voters think it's going well.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
Starmer needs to appeal to the redwall voters more than you and Owen Jones
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
Leon's prediction:
"Labour will win big. It's certain."
20 seat Tory majority now nailed on.
Should be noted Starmer's current poll lead is about the same as Cameron's in 2008 but 2010 ended up a hung parliament
Bit of an exaggeration. The average CON lead briefly touched 20% once in 2008; the average LAB lead has been between 20% and 30% for the past two months.
Bigger actually, in August 2008 Yougov had the Tories 22% ahead, Mori had the Tories 24% ahead yet it ended up a hung parliament. The Tories had had double digit leads for months too.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
Free the Canaan One.
We need him back.
What happened? I missed it, whatever it was. I'd miss him. Unusual range of interests, and he was known to change his mind on the evidence (alleged wokery of NT and slavery, for instance).
I hate it when I miss something on pb. I must be the only one who doesn't know who Charles is, yet I can't ask as that would break the golden rule of doxing someone and I can't be arsed to go through the threads and it feels wrong to do so.
Charles is the King, pal. Happened a couple of months ago apparently.
Next you will be telling me his mum posted here also. What was her pb name?
Even Charles mentioned he was from a banking family, not that difficult to work out from there
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
If the very impressive Mr Sunak went full-frontal Single Market, the Conservatives would lose the RedWall but clean up everywhere else.
Starmer is so politically inept he cannot read the EU tealeaves. Sunak can. If he went EEA including FoM, I'd vote for him.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
Starmer needs to appeal to the redwall voters more than you and Owen Jones
To be honest his words today are astonishing and there are far more people in the country who want a closer relationship with the EU than there are ERG members which Starmer's seems to have joined overnight
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
Free the Canaan One.
We need him back.
What happened? I missed it, whatever it was. I'd miss him. Unusual range of interests, and he was known to change his mind on the evidence (alleged wokery of NT and slavery, for instance).
I hate it when I miss something on pb. I must be the only one who doesn't know who Charles is, yet I can't ask as that would break the golden rule of doxing someone and I can't be arsed to go through the threads and it feels wrong to do so.
Charles is the King, pal. Happened a couple of months ago apparently.
Next you will be telling me his mum posted here also. What was her pb name?
Has anyone considered that Leon is actually an AI?
Him having "AI are going to take over the world any day now" as one of his options in his algorithm could be all an in-joke.
# = RAND(1-8). Goto LIST#
LIST 1 - Aliens are here! LIST 2 - AI are going to take over the world any day now! LIST 3 - Lab leak! LIST 4 - The Wokerati! LIST 5 - We're all doomed! LIST 6 - Hunter Biden's Laptop! LIST 7 - Look at my travel pictures! LIST 8 - You're all boring now!
If [DISAGREEMENT], goto [INSULT LIST]. Then return to LIST#.
IN LIST 1-8, search for [CONFIRMATION BIAS]. Add to LIST 1-8.
That's funny. The algorithm wouldn't need to be an awful lot more complicated than that to actually work.
Only things missing are: LIST 7a - I wish I was in Bangkok! and LIST 7b - I'm frustrated about my sex life!
Maybe also..
LIST 9 - The [RANDWORD] [RANDWORD] is amazing and I know the author! and LIST 10 - My tip on [RANDPOLITICIAN] on [RANDPOLITICALEVENT] will come in and I'm the greatest tipster ever!
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
Most Labour voters will tolerate almost anything provided Starmer delivers a Labour victory.
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
If the very impressive Mr Sunak went full-frontal Single Market the Conservatives would lose the RedWall but clean up everywhere else.
Starmer is so politically inept he cannot read the EU tealeaves. Sunak can. If he went EEA including FoM, I'd vote for him.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
Leon's prediction:
"Labour will win big. It's certain."
20 seat Tory majority now nailed on.
Should be noted Starmer's current poll lead is about the same as Cameron's in 2008 but 2010 ended up a hung parliament
Bit of an exaggeration. The average CON lead briefly touched 20% once in 2008; the average LAB lead has been between 20% and 30% for the past two months.
Bigger actually, in August 2008 Yougov had the Tories 22% ahead, Mori had the Tories 24% ahead yet it ended up a hung parliament. The Tories had had double digit leads for months too.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
Leon's prediction:
"Labour will win big. It's certain."
20 seat Tory majority now nailed on.
Should be noted Starmer's current poll lead is about the same as Cameron's in 2008 but 2010 ended up a hung parliament
Bit of an exaggeration. The average CON lead briefly touched 20% once in 2008; the average LAB lead has been between 20% and 30% for the past two months.
Bigger actually, in August 2008 Yougov had the Tories 22% ahead, Mori had the Tories 24% ahead yet it ended up a hung parliament. The Tories had had double digit leads for months too.
Naughty HY! Reaching for the Kantor! You know full well Kantor putting Tories on only 30 and Labour up on 45 is a poor one for the Tories.
The Sunday Papers oddly have all gone Tory bashing. Telegraph bashing their NHS performance, Mail and Express fuming at their migrant mismanagement, and Observer claiming post Brexit trade deals aren’t up to it.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
If the very impressive Mr Sunak went full-frontal Single Market, the Conservatives would lose the RedWall but clean up everywhere else.
Starmer is so politically inept he cannot read the EU tealeaves. Sunak can. If he went EEA including FoM, I'd vote for him.
No, if the Conservatives went full EEA plus free movement they could well be overtaken by RefUK as Farage would come back to lead them while Labour won a landslide, so Farage could end up Leader of the Opposition to PM Starmer
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
Leon's prediction:
"Labour will win big. It's certain."
20 seat Tory majority now nailed on.
Should be noted Starmer's current poll lead is about the same as Cameron's in 2008 but 2010 ended up a hung parliament
Bit of an exaggeration. The average CON lead briefly touched 20% once in 2008; the average LAB lead has been between 20% and 30% for the past two months.
Bigger actually, in August 2008 Yougov had the Tories 22% ahead, Mori had the Tories 24% ahead yet it ended up a hung parliament. The Tories had had double digit leads for months too.
Naughty HY! Reaching for the Kantor! You know full well Kantor putting Tories on only 30 and Labour up on 45 is a poor one for the Tories.
The Sunday Papers oddly have all gone Tory bashing. Telegraph bashing their NHS performance, Mail and Express fuming at their migrant mismanagement, and Observer claiming post Brexit trade deals aren’t up to it.
Politicians use statistics in the same way that a drunk uses lamp-posts—for support rather than illumination.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
Ridiculous. ALL politics has failed
Because Humanity is failing. Birth rates plunge. The climate roils. People R gettin stupid
We are all fucked
You remind me if my father as he was getting older. Convinced he would see the end times.
I though Brexit was supposed to have reinvigorated you.
Whilst rarely agreeing with Leon I broadly agree with him that humanity is failing.
We are trashing the planet we live on at a rate that cannot be sustained and through a combination of greed, corruption and self-interest we are not going to do nearly enough to change that. That is what is different from previous predictions of the end of the world variety.
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
If the very impressive Mr Sunak went full-frontal Single Market the Conservatives would lose the RedWall but clean up everywhere else.
Starmer is so politically inept he cannot read the EU tealeaves. Sunak can. If he went EEA including FoM, I'd vote for him.
I would be delighted
Starmer is claiming a failed Conservative project for himself that only bigots remain on board with. The hopeless Starmer would be better off realising he is clueless and has no political nous whatsoever, and hand over the reins to someone more sensible. He is no Blair, he is Kinnock. 1992 beckons.
I can see the Conservatives buying BINO before Labour. Sunak is a sharp guy. I am expecting the U turn sooner rather than later.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
Most Labour voters will tolerate almost anything provided Starmer delivers a Labour victory.
That’s what Starmer gets - he doesn’t need to persuade Labour voters.
Something the Conservatives seem to have forgotten and Sturgeon has never learned.
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
If the very impressive Mr Sunak went full-frontal Single Market, the Conservatives would lose the RedWall but clean up everywhere else.
Starmer is so politically inept he cannot read the EU tealeaves. Sunak can. If he went EEA including FoM, I'd vote for him.
Starmer is painting himself into a corner, at this rate if he wins the next general election he will end up with less room to manoeuvre than the Tories. Effectively he's already moved Labour's position to the UK public's cakeist position, which may be politically popular but is also the hardest thing to deliver. If Labour win it will be very difficult for them to resolve the Brexit issue.
This is the indicative votes all over again, ruling things out one-by-one, rather than asking "what do we want?" and "how can we get it?"
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
Yes, sadly I think that's true.
I can believe all what you say - what isn't acceptable is to make excuses for it and pass the buck though.
Far too many people choose the easy path when dealing with poor behaviour, and the first step is to call it out with the individual - it evens happen when dealing with poor performance of an employee, many would simply prefer not to and pass the problem onto someone else.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
Most Labour voters will tolerate almost anything provided Starmer delivers a Labour victory.
That’s what Starmer gets - he doesn’t need to persuade Labour voters.
Something the Conservatives seem to have forgotten and Sturgeon has never learned.
Starmer has got this so wrong. BJO is 100% correct, the man is a clown.
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
If the very impressive Mr Sunak went full-frontal Single Market, the Conservatives would lose the RedWall but clean up everywhere else.
Starmer is so politically inept he cannot read the EU tealeaves. Sunak can. If he went EEA including FoM, I'd vote for him.
No, if the Conservatives went full EEA plus free movement they could well be overtaken by RefUK as Farage would come back to lead them while Labour won a landslide, so Farage could end up Leader of the Opposition to PM Starmer
Agree on this- this iteration of Conservatism has nailed its trousers to the diamond hard Brexit mast. Even if it wanted to, it couldn't climb down while everyone is watching, it would be too embarrassing. And the minority who like Brexit are about the only voters still backing them.
The more interesting question remains how big the "this is a mistake" majority needs to get for the awkward national conversations to start.
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
If the very impressive Mr Sunak went full-frontal Single Market the Conservatives would lose the RedWall but clean up everywhere else.
Starmer is so politically inept he cannot read the EU tealeaves. Sunak can. If he went EEA including FoM, I'd vote for him.
I would be delighted
Starmer is claiming a failed Conservative project for himself that only bigots remain on board with. The hopeless Starmer would be better off realising he is clueless and has no political nous whatsoever, and hand over the reins to someone more sensible. He is no Blair, he is Kinnock. 1992 beckons.
I can see the Conservatives buying BINO before Labour. Sunak is a sharp guy. I am expecting the U turn sooner rather than later.
If Sunak and Hunt went BINO it would be May 2019 all over again, Farage would take most Tory voters and the Tories would collapse to 3rd and face Canada 1993 annihilation.
Most Labour voters would stick with Labour as they want the Tories gone more than BINO. Leftwingers who want BINO would go Green or SNP anyway, never Tory. Working class Labour voters would stick to Starmer even more if the Tories backed free movement but Starmer still opposed it.
At most it would win over a handful of upper middle class LDs in the bluewall to Sunak but more than offset by the leakage of Leave voting Tories to Farage
Brexit is an institution. Some people put Brexit before country.
Not at all, Brexit is a process. It seems unfair to me to condemn the process when it hasn't actually been allowed to happen.
I suppose that just as the proponents of Brexit never specified what it would be, the apologists of Brexit will always be able to claim that it hasn't really been.
Remarkable how the silence about this genocide persisted for so long.
https://twitter.com/YMonastyrskyi/status/1596607491667902465 The Holodomor is more than just the genocide and approximately 4 million deaths that affected nearly every Ukrainian family. It is a tragedy of untold stories that were frequently kept secret out of fear…
… My grandmother Aza, who was 4 years old in 1932, came from the Poltava region village of Ryaske. In 1932-1933, nearly 40 percent of this village's population perished from hunger, including some of my grandmother's family...
… My grandmother was nearly 80 years old when she realized why her entire family had migrated from the Poltava region to the Luhansk region. Then she discovered why her grandfather and two aunts had died so close together in January 1933...
Had the NY Times taken Walter Durranty’s Pulitzer down yet? I know it wasn’t revoked.
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
Devastated, i don't think so. Most remainers can understand that it will be far more fruitful to have this debate when Labour are in government, not when then are in opposition. Catchee monkey.
Brexit is an institution. Some people put Brexit before country.
Not at all, Brexit is a process. It seems unfair to me to condemn the process when it hasn't actually been allowed to happen.
Brexit is a "process". A process of mismanaged, chaotic decline. Sunak understands this. The New Sunak Conservatives need to jettison Brexit as a failed Johnson project.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
Yes, sadly I think that's true.
I can believe all what you say - what isn't acceptable is to make excuses for it and pass the buck though.
Far too many people choose the easy path when dealing with poor behaviour, and the first step is to call it out with the individual - it evens happen when dealing with poor performance of an employee, many would simply prefer not to and pass the problem onto someone else.
It is also why I am so concerned about Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Bill. We are in the process of creating a loophole that such vile people will readily exploit. Having worked hard as a society to protect some of our most vulnerable we are opening the door to more abuse. I have enormous sympathy for people who are transgender. They are as entitled to respect and decency as anyone else. But we cannot open the doors of safe places for those with evil intent. We have been there and bought the T-shirt many times before.
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
If the very impressive Mr Sunak went full-frontal Single Market, the Conservatives would lose the RedWall but clean up everywhere else.
It's strange that so many people here are so adamant that the future is very simple and they can read it.
Somehow I can't believe they have done much betting.
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
Devastated, i don't think so. Most remainers can understand that it will be far more fruitful to have this debate when Labour are in government, not when then are in opposition. Catchee monkey.
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
Devastated, i don't think so. Most remainers can understand that it will be far more fruitful to have this debate when Labour are in government, not when then are in opposition. Catchee monkey.
I think Starmer's history with Corbynism tells us how we will deal with Brexit. That is he'll avoid any criticism of it until he achieves power, but once he does he'll completely dismantle it.
Brexit is an institution. Some people put Brexit before country.
Not at all, Brexit is a process. It seems unfair to me to condemn the process when it hasn't actually been allowed to happen.
Brexit is a "process". A process of mismanaged, chaotic decline. Sunak understands this. The New Sunak Conservatives need to jettison Brexit as a failed Johnson project.
Jettison Brexit and the Tories face the fate of the Liberals in the 1920s, Farage's party would overtake them as Labour overtook the Liberals then.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
Most Labour voters will tolerate almost anything provided Starmer delivers a Labour victory.
That’s what Starmer gets - he doesn’t need to persuade Labour voters.
Something the Conservatives seem to have forgotten and Sturgeon has never learned.
Starmer has got this so wrong. BJO is 100% correct, the man is a clown.
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
Devastated, i don't think so. Most remainers can understand that it will be far more fruitful to have this debate when Labour are in government, not when then are in opposition. Catchee monkey.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
Yes, sadly I think that's true.
I can believe all what you say - what isn't acceptable is to make excuses for it and pass the buck though.
Far too many people choose the easy path when dealing with poor behaviour, and the first step is to call it out with the individual - it evens happen when dealing with poor performance of an employee, many would simply prefer not to and pass the problem onto someone else.
It is also why I am so concerned about Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Bill. We are in the process of creating a loophole that such vile people will readily exploit. Having worked hard as a society to protect some of our most vulnerable we are opening the door to more abuse. I have enormous sympathy for people who are transgender. They are as entitled to respect and decency as anyone else. But we cannot open the doors of safe places for those with evil intent. We have been there and bought the T-shirt many times before.
I fear that's a losing battle because the zeitgeist is at a place right now where that's seen as transphobia and so people will only come to their senses when the downstream consequences become very clear.
Of course, when they do, they will blame anyone but themselves and won't thank you or others for being right all along.
Young people are influenced by social media, but schools play an important part in reinforcing woke beliefs. A clear majority of British schoolchildren are being indoctrinated with cultural socialist ideas. Among the 18-year-olds I sampled, 63 per cent were taught or heard from an adult at school about at least one of “white privilege”, “unconscious bias” or “systemic racism” – three concepts derived from critical race theory. If we include radical feminist ideas such as “patriarchy” or the idea of many genders, this rises to 78 per cent. Those who have been taught more of these critical social justice (CSJ) ideas are more likely to favour political correctness as a way of protecting disadvantaged groups, rather than viewing PC as stifling free expression.
Those young people who dissent from orthodoxy do so at their own risk, and the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda forces them to self-censor. A majority of Right-leaning young people who said they were taught at least three of five CSJ concepts worried about being expelled or punished for voicing their opinions. Nearly half of Right-leaning employees under 35 who have taken diversity training worry about being fired or losing their reputation.
My work shows that the public opposes wokeness by more than two to one across 25 issues, and these questions split the Left while uniting the Right. Yet the Tories seem incapable of tacking the spread of cultural socialism in schools, the NHS, the police and civil service. Conservative MPs lack both the conviction and courage to act, unlike their US Republican counterparts like Ron DeSantis. Too many are business liberals who pray at the altar of economic dynamism and care little about the country’s culture and traditions. This is reflected in the unprecedented net migration figure of over half a million and the years-long inattention to the flow of asylum seekers crossing the Channel.
If most Britons no longer believe in freedom of speech or scientific reason and view our past as a racist nightmare, this is not some “culture war” sideshow. It undermines the very essence of British civilisation.
Why are (some on) the right such snowflakes on this? If they disagree, then argue their side and have faith in their ability to win the argument. It's nothing new having raving left teachers - I was taught by an actual communist and a member of the SWP but it didn't get me voting for Corbyn.
I am not sure what Kaufman's beef is anyway. Does any white British person, let alone white US person, seriously dispute that their life would be much harder in all sorts of ways if they were black? What is terribly wrong about using "systemic racism" as shorthand for that state of affairs?
Because it implies that the 'system' is racist, and therefore gives rises to assaults on the institutions and structures of the state, rather than arguing that racist attitudes are still endemic in far too much of the population, which is a social problem.
There is a world of difference between the latter and the former.
Brexit is an institution. Some people put Brexit before country.
Not at all, Brexit is a process. It seems unfair to me to condemn the process when it hasn't actually been allowed to happen.
Brexit is a "process". A process of mismanaged, chaotic decline. Sunak understands this. The New Sunak Conservatives need to jettison Brexit as a failed Johnson project.
Jettison Brexit and the Tories face the fate of the Liberals in the 1920s, Farage's party would overtake them as Labour overtook the Liberals then.
No they won't. Brexit the project is in steep decline. Sunak and Hunt lose the idiots but reclaim BlueWall Remainers and other former Remainers too. You have fallen into the same elephant trap as Statmer.
"The physical and mental health of Ukrainian refugees living on ships in Glasgow and Edinburgh – branded “floating refugee camps” – are being put in danger, amid reports of residents being quarantined with scarlet fever.
...
The Scottish government said it was “providing temporary accommodation that is safe and sustainable until people can be matched to suitable longer-term accommodation”.
Public Health Scotland said it had a “robust surveillance system in place for monitoring infections in Scotland” but that it was a matter for the local NHS board.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “There are clear infection control processes in place on the MS Ambition. No concerns about an outbreak have been reported to the health board. The board does not comment on individual cases.”
Glasgow city council said its staff “have been providing social care, educational support and a range of appropriate safety checks. The council is not the provider of the accommodation and we have no expertise on communicable diseases”."
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
If the very impressive Mr Sunak went full-frontal Single Market the Conservatives would lose the RedWall but clean up everywhere else.
Starmer is so politically inept he cannot read the EU tealeaves. Sunak can. If he went EEA including FoM, I'd vote for him.
I would be delighted
Starmer is claiming a failed Conservative project for himself that only bigots remain on board with. The hopeless Starmer would be better off realising he is clueless and has no political nous whatsoever, and hand over the reins to someone more sensible. He is no Blair, he is Kinnock. 1992 beckons.
I can see the Conservatives buying BINO before Labour. Sunak is a sharp guy. I am expecting the U turn sooner rather than later.
If Sunak and Hunt went BINO it would be May 2019 all over again, Farage would take most Tory voters and the Tories would collapse to 3rd and face Canada 1993 annihilation.
Most Labour voters would stick with Labour as they want the Tories gone more than BINO. Leftwingers who want BINO would go Green or SNP anyway, never Tory. Working class Labour voters would stick to Starmer even more if the Tories backed free movement but Starmer still opposed it.
At most it would win over a handful of upper middle class LDs in the bluewall to Sunak but more than offset by the leakage of Leave voting Tories to Farage
Farage is not the King over the water you claim. He is a multiple times failed Pretender. He is no longer relevant.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
Leon's prediction:
"Labour will win big. It's certain."
20 seat Tory majority now nailed on.
Should be noted Starmer's current poll lead is about the same as Cameron's in 2008 but 2010 ended up a hung parliament
Bit of an exaggeration. The average CON lead briefly touched 20% once in 2008; the average LAB lead has been between 20% and 30% for the past two months.
Bigger actually, in August 2008 Yougov had the Tories 22% ahead, Mori had the Tories 24% ahead yet it ended up a hung parliament. The Tories had had double digit leads for months too.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
Yes, sadly I think that's true.
I can believe all what you say - what isn't acceptable is to make excuses for it and pass the buck though.
Far too many people choose the easy path when dealing with poor behaviour, and the first step is to call it out with the individual - it evens happen when dealing with poor performance of an employee, many would simply prefer not to and pass the problem onto someone else.
Something that is worth thinking about on this.
In my younger days, out on the town 7 days a week, I remember an incident where someone invited along a friend. Who made some ugly remarks to a waitress - which killed evening for everyone and he was not seen again.
We didn’t tolerate that stuff - fine for us. But it makes me wonder, now, the kind of people that said scumbag associate with. Does it work like the various drug scenes, where the like minded find fellow coke heads, while their non-coke heads around them are oblivious?
So you have a situation where the polite, decent men are self isolating from the types who go to strip clubs who in turn are self isolating from….
Much as many people here don’t know, in real life, anyone who has made a racist comment, let alone attacked someone.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
Brexit is an institution. Some people put Brexit before country.
Not at all, Brexit is a process. It seems unfair to me to condemn the process when it hasn't actually been allowed to happen.
Brexit is a "process". A process of mismanaged, chaotic decline. Sunak understands this. The New Sunak Conservatives need to jettison Brexit as a failed Johnson project.
Jettison Brexit and the Tories face the fate of the Liberals in the 1920s, Farage's party would overtake them as Labour overtook the Liberals then.
No they won't. Brexit the project is in steep decline. Sunak and Hunt lose the idiots but reclaim BlueWall Remainers and other former Remainers too. You have fallen into the same elephant trap as Statmer.
The tories have to keep pretending that Brexit isn't doomed to avoid getting their holes gaped by Farage/RefUK at the next GE. Once in opposition they can fall in line with Starmer's inevitable BRINO project. It's a save-the-furniture strategy to try to avoid a catastrophic defeat.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
Yes, sadly I think that's true.
I can believe all what you say - what isn't acceptable is to make excuses for it and pass the buck though.
Far too many people choose the easy path when dealing with poor behaviour, and the first step is to call it out with the individual - it evens happen when dealing with poor performance of an employee, many would simply prefer not to and pass the problem onto someone else.
It is also why I am so concerned about Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Bill. We are in the process of creating a loophole that such vile people will readily exploit. Having worked hard as a society to protect some of our most vulnerable we are opening the door to more abuse. I have enormous sympathy for people who are transgender. They are as entitled to respect and decency as anyone else. But we cannot open the doors of safe places for those with evil intent. We have been there and bought the T-shirt many times before.
I fear that's a losing battle because the zeitgeist is at a place right now where that's seen as transphobia and so people will only come to their senses when the downstream consequences become very clear.
Of course, when they do, they will blame anyone but themselves and won't thank you or others for being right all along.
Or the U.K. Tory government steps in to defend women’s rights and remove any ambiguity from the Equality Act by defining sex as biological sex. Notably a petition to this effect has strongest support in Scotland:
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
Free the Canaan One.
We need him back.
What happened? I missed it, whatever it was. I'd miss him. Unusual range of interests, and he was known to change his mind on the evidence (alleged wokery of NT and slavery, for instance).
I hate it when I miss something on pb. I must be the only one who doesn't know who Charles is, yet I can't ask as that would break the golden rule of doxing someone and I can't be arsed to go through the threads and it feels wrong to do so.
Charles is the King, pal. Happened a couple of months ago apparently.
Next you will be telling me his mum posted here also. What was her pb name?
Even Charles mentioned he was from a banking family, not that difficult to work out from there
Cheers for that hyufd, but I actually don't give tow hoots and was only posting for the fun of it.
Comments
https://twitter.com/YMonastyrskyi/status/1596607491667902465
The Holodomor is more than just the genocide and approximately 4 million deaths that affected nearly every Ukrainian family. It is a tragedy of untold stories that were frequently kept secret out of fear…
… My grandmother Aza, who was 4 years old in 1932, came from the Poltava region village of Ryaske. In 1932-1933, nearly 40 percent of this village's population perished from hunger, including some of my grandmother's family...
… My grandmother was nearly 80 years old when she realized why her entire family had migrated from the Poltava region to the Luhansk region. Then she discovered why her grandfather and two aunts had died so close together in January 1933...
But I do genuinely think we face an almost unequalled suite of challenges and emergencies. Right now about 1/4 of humanity - east Asia - is constantly wearing masks. We’ve somehow come to accept this as normal. It is not. It is a global madness
And that’s on top of climate change, war in Europe, western decline, England’s terrible rugby team. The times is bad
It's not snowflakery to object to this; it made the forum deeply unpleasant place at times and actually lowered the quality of debate as people with other interesting perspectives withdrew. You can't just demand people take relentless insults, abuse, accusations of racism and doxxing and argue they're not 'robust' when they vociferously object, or withdraw. It's not reasonable. Just how it's not reasonable for a landlord to tolerate an angry drunk ranting that clears the bar, night after night, even if one or two regulars get a bit wistful about it once he's barred.
I am happy to stand-up for eccentric posters with 'problems' who adds more value that they take away, Rod Crosby for example, but he was not one of them. Sorry.
You really pick the wrong battles sometimes.
What was Ishmael banned for? He's a grumpy old sod and I've argued with him once or twice but I enjoyed his posts, even the invectives.
Not been on here much this week, as it feels a bit like PB's greatest!? hits (Brexit etc) rather than current affairs (except football).
As things stand, the mood of the nation seems to consist of:
1 Brexit is turning out a bit rubbish.
2 None of the options for moving forward look that attractive.
3 Are you sure there isn't a unicorn available somewhere? We'd really like a unicorn.
4 Farage is still scary and not to be summoned.
That's a recipe for grumpy stasis, as we're seeing. It's not stable in the long run, but it can persist for quite a while. And whilst it could be a decisive break in a pro-Brexit way, it's easier to envision it going the other way.
But for now, it just sits there, getting increasingly whiffy.
My view is that it's like Japanese knotweed, and it needs to be pulled up by the roots.
Tbh I think debate everywhere is suffering as quirky, thorny, prickly but necessary voices get
repressed, and we are left with inoffensive boring Woke people agreeing with each other, while still managing to be snide
It’s why I am cheering on Elon at Twitter. He has identified the problem and he is trying to fix it. He may fail - but bravo
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
There is a world of difference between the latter and the former.
Him having "AI are going to take over the world any day now" as one of his options in his algorithm could be all an in-joke.
# = RAND(1-8). Goto LIST#
LIST 1 - Aliens are here!
LIST 2 - AI are going to take over the world any day now!
LIST 3 - Lab leak!
LIST 4 - The Wokerati!
LIST 5 - We're all doomed!
LIST 6 - Hunter Biden's Laptop!
LIST 7 - Look at my travel pictures!
LIST 8 - You're all boring now!
If [DISAGREEMENT], goto [INSULT LIST]. Then return to LIST#.
IN LIST 1-8, search for [CONFIRMATION BIAS]. Add to LIST 1-8.
Right now 95% of Bangkok is wearing masks ALL THE TIME. I am reliably informed by friends out there. It is not “winter” - it is the lovely sunny dry season. Hot but clear
They are suffering some kind of PTSD
There are plenty of non-Woke people on here (ironically, he wasn't one of them) and I think his voice was far from necessary. He didn't add anything of interest that ever provoked my thinking.
I listed out earlier posters with all sorts of perspectives and points of view (left/centre/right) who I think were necessary voices and almost all of them have chosen to withdraw from the site.
You might do better to reflect on and consider why.
But it's the first time in years that the French police have been anything other than easy going. This on top of being put in a holding pen at Nice airport where four EU flights were waved through while UK flights were kept in a holding pen with a flight which required serious passport scrutiny or visas.
It's all very well being flavour of the month in Australia but unlike Australia the EU have around 65 million British visitors a year
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
"Labour will win big. It's certain."
20 seat Tory majority now nailed on.
Brandreth claiming he'd heard The Queen had a form of myeloma, bone marrow cancer, which would explain her tiredness, weight loss, and mobility problems, particularly in the last year or so of her life - even though her death certificate claimed she died of old age.
If true, I imagine a small group of people knew this was coming some time ago.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
Edit: oh, and I just spotted it was Gyles Brandreth - not sure why I bothered to respond now.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sturgeon-sees-all-her-opponents-as-alien-tnp9w222j
‘NHS, BBC and police staff ask for help next’ after horrifying report on country’s biggest fire service
Times headline. Not a great day for arguing that institutional racism is a myth.
Words matter.
And by the standards of the last six years, politics is gratifyingly quiet at the moment. So it's no wonder the focus sometimes drifts to other matters.
Latest Kantar has Labour only 15% ahead, Labour 45% Sunak Tories 30%
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2010_United_Kingdom_general_election
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
The wiki worm is as good as any:
Starmer is so politically inept he cannot read the EU tealeaves. Sunak can. If he went EEA including FoM, I'd vote for him.
Only things missing are: LIST 7a - I wish I was in Bangkok! and LIST 7b - I'm frustrated about my sex life!
Maybe also..
LIST 9 - The [RANDWORD] [RANDWORD] is amazing and I know the author! and
LIST 10 - My tip on [RANDPOLITICIAN] on [RANDPOLITICALEVENT] will come in and I'm the greatest tipster ever!
It was only Truss who handed Labour 20 to 30% leads with her disastrous budget ie the equivalent of 2008 Tory leads.
However we now have Sunak, the ex Chancellor like Brown and those leads have started to narrow a bit.
We are 2 years out from the next election like 2008 was and Starmer is doing no better than Cameron was then, those are the facts
The Sunday Papers oddly have all gone Tory bashing. Telegraph bashing their NHS performance, Mail and Express fuming at their migrant mismanagement, and Observer claiming post Brexit trade deals aren’t up to it.
I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
-
We are trashing the planet we live on at a rate that cannot be sustained and through a combination of greed, corruption and self-interest we are not going to do nearly enough to change that. That is what is different from previous predictions of the end of the world variety.
I can see the Conservatives buying BINO before Labour. Sunak is a sharp guy. I am expecting the U turn sooner rather than later.
Something the Conservatives seem to have forgotten and Sturgeon has never learned.
This is the indicative votes all over again, ruling things out one-by-one, rather than asking "what do we want?" and "how can we get it?"
I can believe all what you say - what isn't acceptable is to make excuses for it and pass the buck though.
Far too many people choose the easy path when dealing with poor behaviour, and the first step is to call it out with the individual - it evens happen when dealing with poor performance of an employee, many would simply prefer not to and pass the problem onto someone else.
The more interesting question remains how big the "this is a mistake" majority needs to get for the awkward national conversations to start.
We're not there yet.
Most Labour voters would stick with Labour as they want the Tories gone more than BINO. Leftwingers who want BINO would go Green or SNP anyway, never Tory. Working class Labour voters would stick to Starmer even more if the Tories backed free movement but Starmer still opposed it.
At most it would win over a handful of upper middle class LDs in the bluewall to Sunak but more than offset by the leakage of Leave voting Tories to Farage
Somehow I can't believe they have done much betting.
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
In the land of the blind…..
Of course, when they do, they will blame anyone but themselves and won't thank you or others for being right all along.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/where-did-it-all-go-wrong-for-trans-charity-mermaids/
"The physical and mental health of Ukrainian refugees living on ships in Glasgow and Edinburgh – branded “floating refugee camps” – are being put in danger, amid reports of residents being quarantined with scarlet fever.
...
The Scottish government said it was “providing temporary accommodation that is safe and sustainable until people can be matched to suitable longer-term accommodation”.
Public Health Scotland said it had a “robust surveillance system in place for monitoring infections in Scotland” but that it was a matter for the local NHS board.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “There are clear infection control processes in place on the MS Ambition. No concerns about an outbreak have been reported to the health board. The board does not comment on individual cases.”
Glasgow city council said its staff “have been providing social care, educational support and a range of appropriate safety checks. The council is not the provider of the accommodation and we have no expertise on communicable diseases”."
But as much as the polls may narrow, given the likely economic headwinds they may widen.
It's going to be an interesting and possibly difficult couple of years.
In my younger days, out on the town 7 days a week, I remember an incident where someone invited along a friend. Who made some ugly remarks to a waitress - which killed evening for everyone and he was not seen again.
We didn’t tolerate that stuff - fine for us. But it makes me wonder, now, the kind of people that said scumbag associate with. Does it work like the various drug scenes, where the like minded find fellow coke heads, while their non-coke heads around them are oblivious?
So you have a situation where the polite, decent men are self isolating from the types who go to strip clubs who in turn are self isolating from….
Much as many people here don’t know, in real life, anyone who has made a racist comment, let alone attacked someone.
https://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=623243
Its working very nicely for those people who voted for it from Boston to Barnsley.
As we now have full employment and pay rises and better control of immigration.
We've even had the increase in NHS spending and now higher taxes on the high earners.
But perhaps the Conservative 'Britannia unchained' types aren't happy - you'd have to speak to the likes of Liam Fox and Dan Hannan about that.
I suspect they thought their low tax, low regulation nirvana would be created and 'trade' would flourish.
Without understanding what 'trade' actually is.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/funding-for-farmers
https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/common-agricultural-policy/cap-overview/new-cap-2023-27_en
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
A process by which middlemen insert themselves into business transactions for 10%, or maybe 100%, without adding anything of value.
See some of the PPE contracts as an example.
Now that might work when it comes to personal enrichment but it certainly doesn't when it comes to making the whole country richer.