So. Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Nothing printable. 🤬
Good for you. Chapeau. This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
All governments everywhere are amoral and it will be the same when starmer is in charge. It is the nature of governements
No it isn't . That's the counsel of despair. If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
I am exercising my right to free speech while I can if thats ok, I have ceased voting as the three main parties I could vote for a stinking carcass of a pretence at choice as they are idiots. Haven't voted now since 2010 as only parties available have been con, lab, ld and they are two cheeks of the same arse with lds' being the perineum
Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.
Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.
I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.
Most comedy ages very poorly.
Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes. The humour in both series is never cruel.
The humour in Blackadder is never cruel?
Mocking Baldric, and Edmund and everyone else dying a brutal death every six episodes has more than a hint of cruelty* to it - but we're all in on the cruelty and its not cruel against anyone or any class of people being "othered".
* Apart from Goes Forth obviously which is a completely poignant tragedy rather than cruelty.
And that poor Bishop from the Black Monks of St. Herod. He was dreadfully treated.
Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.
Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.
I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.
Most comedy ages very poorly.
Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes. The humour in both series is never cruel.
A lot of comedy features people who are, essentially, trapped, or stuck, in a situation and the humour comes from it and those around them.
Transplant Fletcher from Slade Prison in Going Straight and it sank like the Titanic, for example.
I think comedy that ages well tends to be less contemporary and has a few series to develop the characters and the relationships.
You Rang My Lord and Ever Decreasing Circles are two of my absolute favourite comedies. They work so well and the characters and their relationships are so well developed. Both had perfect endings too.
Its interesting looking at comedies that are still funny though at how you can date them.
Take Friends, from the 90s it in many ways still feels modern and its still funny today but it would never be made the same way today as it was then. It was quite modern at the time with discussing homosexuality etc but can be rather homophobic by today's standards, especially the way Chandler's dad is mocked/the butt of jokes for being a transvestite. And the cast being all-white also dates it as being from the 20th century too, you wouldn't get that in a prime time comedy series nowadays.
No you wouldn’t but then you don’t get too many prime time comedies these days anyway. It’s a dying art. Ghosts. Not Going Out (about to be retired) and the Beeb will sometimes try a new one which flops. ITV is a sitcom desert these days, the channel that gave us some great comedies too.
Panel,shows still survive but the sketch show is a dying art too.
Friends has been called out for all of the above and one of the writers got into a bit of a pickle over it.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
You have to be kidding, mince and about as funny as a slap with a brick
Intellectual comedy Malc, probably a bit beyond you.
The first scene n Fleabag. The main character breaking the fourth wall while being done up the backside. Edgy stuff. I found it all a little ‘look at us, we’re being clever/edgy’
Never seen detectorists but I like the lead actors. May try to find it.
It's like the hard and fast memorable first line in a novel rule. Certainly arresting and memorable. But War and Peace and the Harry Potter series thrived without obeying it. So it isn't really a rule.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a novel in possession of a memorable first line is bound to be a best seller.
'Eh bien, mon prince, Gênes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages, des estates, de la famille Buonaparte. '
Here's my contention: all novels with great first lines are great novels; not all great novels have great first lines.
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Seats Lab 509 SNP 50 Con 45 LD 23 PC 4 G 1
Also has RefUK on 6% but zero seats. I highly doubt they would get that much at an actual general election and if some of that vote goes back to the Tories, the Tories would be clearly the main opposition
So. Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Nothing printable. 🤬
Good for you. Chapeau. This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
All governments everywhere are amoral and it will be the same when starmer is in charge. It is the nature of governements
No it isn't . That's the counsel of despair. If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
I am exercising my right to free speech while I can if thats ok, I have ceased voting as the three main parties I could vote for a stinking carcass of a pretence at choice as they are idiots. Haven't voted now since 2010 as only parties available have been con, lab, ld and they are two cheeks of the same arse with lds' being the perineum
Democracy should be a participatory system, not a consumer system. If there isn't a party you feel you can vote for then it's part of your duty as an active citizen of a democracy to find like-minded people and form a party of your own, or else to stand for election as an independent, or to find someone you can convince to stand as an independent who you could support.
Democracy should be something that we do, rather than something that is done to us.
So. Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Nothing printable. 🤬
Good for you. Chapeau. This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
All governments everywhere are amoral and it will be the same when starmer is in charge. It is the nature of governements
No it isn't . That's the counsel of despair. If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
I am exercising my right to free speech while I can if thats ok, I have ceased voting as the three main parties I could vote for a stinking carcass of a pretence at choice as they are idiots. Haven't voted now since 2010 as only parties available have been con, lab, ld and they are two cheeks of the same arse with lds' being the perineum
Fair enough. I remain sunnily optimistic that tomorrow will be better than today. Other opinions are equally valid.
So. Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Nothing printable. 🤬
Good for you. Chapeau. This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
All governments everywhere are amoral and it will be the same when starmer is in charge. It is the nature of governements
No it isn't . That's the counsel of despair. If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
I am exercising my right to free speech while I can if thats ok, I have ceased voting as the three main parties I could vote for a stinking carcass of a pretence at choice as they are idiots. Haven't voted now since 2010 as only parties available have been con, lab, ld and they are two cheeks of the same arse with lds' being the perineum
Democracy should be a participatory system, not a consumer system. If there isn't a party you feel you can vote for then it's part of your duty as an active citizen of a democracy to find like-minded people and form a party of your own, or else to stand for election as an independent, or to find someone you can convince to stand as an independent who you could support.
Democracy should be something that we do, rather than something that is done to us.
I no longer believe in our current democratic model, I do not believe it delivers in the 20th century. This is how we got to brexit, all main political parties believed in the eu and continued pulling us in and no one else to vote for even when they promised a lisbon referendum they defaulted.
We need a democracy where we can pick and choose policies and hold politicians accountable both for the cost (known before voting for the policies) and the delivery (having a this is the target and we can evaluate on it)
Representative democracy is fine for the 19th century where it could take 3 days to get from your constituency to london....now we have the ability to make it more immediate
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
I respect your view but...
To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.
Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.
Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
Well said.
Forget the fact that more evil has been done in this world in the name of communism than any other philosophy. Forget the fact more people have been murdered in the name of communism than fascism. Forget the fact more death camps happened under communism than fascism.
Strip away all that, and you're still left with a rotten, evil, hatefilled philosophy.
That people here excuse it, is flabbergasting.
Communism and Fascism are both unmitigatedly evil. There is nothing redeeming about either. If you want to run it purely by the numbers, communism is "worse" in that it has murdered more, but both are pure evil.
More so than religion?
Communism is a mere pimple on the enormous buttock that is religious extremism.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
I respect your view but...
To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.
Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.
Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
Well said.
Forget the fact that more evil has been done in this world in the name of communism than any other philosophy. Forget the fact more people have been murdered in the name of communism than fascism. Forget the fact more death camps happened under communism than fascism.
Strip away all that, and you're still left with a rotten, evil, hatefilled philosophy.
That people here excuse it, is flabbergasting.
Communism and Fascism are both unmitigatedly evil. There is nothing redeeming about either. If you want to run it purely by the numbers, communism is "worse" in that it has murdered more, but both are pure evil.
More so than religion?
Communism is a mere pimple on the enormous buttock that is religious extremism.
There is no difference in detail between religous cult based stuff and politically ideological cult based stuff. They both become belief totems
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Seats Lab 509 SNP 50 Con 45 LD 23 PC 4 G 1
Also has RefUK on 6% but zero seats. I highly doubt they would get that much at an actual general election and if some of that vote goes back to the Tories, the Tories would be clearly the main opposition
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
I respect your view but...
To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.
Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.
Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
Someone says they are a nazi you will treat them with scorn and contempt as would I,
Difference is
Someone says they are a communist you will think they are a good chap despite the millions of deaths whereas I will treat them equally with scorn and contempt and call them scum.
No equivocation here, its just you equivocating
Communism is the belief in the collective ownership of things. Deeply dumb. Fundamentally denuding of freedom. Always seems to end badly.
But is belief in the collective ownership of "things" on the same plane as belief that certain groups of people should be exterminated?
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
I respect your view but...
To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.
Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.
Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
Someone says they are a nazi you will treat them with scorn and contempt as would I,
Difference is
Someone says they are a communist you will think they are a good chap despite the millions of deaths whereas I will treat them equally with scorn and contempt and call them scum.
No equivocation here, its just you equivocating
Communism is the belief in the collective ownership of things. Deeply dumb. Fundamentally denuding of freedom. Always seems to end badly.
But is belief in the collective ownership of "things" on the same plane as belief that certain groups of people should be exterminated?
Can you name a communist state that hasnt exterminated certain groups of people?
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
I respect your view but...
To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.
Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.
Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
Well said.
Forget the fact that more evil has been done in this world in the name of communism than any other philosophy. Forget the fact more people have been murdered in the name of communism than fascism. Forget the fact more death camps happened under communism than fascism.
Strip away all that, and you're still left with a rotten, evil, hatefilled philosophy.
That people here excuse it, is flabbergasting.
Communism and Fascism are both unmitigatedly evil. There is nothing redeeming about either. If you want to run it purely by the numbers, communism is "worse" in that it has murdered more, but both are pure evil.
More so than religion?
Communism is a mere pimple on the enormous buttock that is religious extremism.
There is no difference in detail between religous cult based stuff and politically ideological cult based stuff. They both become belief totems
When the "idea" becomes more important than the individual, bad things almost always end up happening.
So. Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Nothing printable. 🤬
Good for you. Chapeau. This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
All governments everywhere are amoral and it will be the same when starmer is in charge. It is the nature of governements
No it isn't . That's the counsel of despair. If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
I am exercising my right to free speech while I can if thats ok, I have ceased voting as the three main parties I could vote for a stinking carcass of a pretence at choice as they are idiots. Haven't voted now since 2010 as only parties available have been con, lab, ld and they are two cheeks of the same arse with lds' being the perineum
Democracy should be a participatory system, not a consumer system. If there isn't a party you feel you can vote for then it's part of your duty as an active citizen of a democracy to find like-minded people and form a party of your own, or else to stand for election as an independent, or to find someone you can convince to stand as an independent who you could support.
Democracy should be something that we do, rather than something that is done to us.
I no longer believe in our current democratic model, I do not believe it delivers in the 20th century. This is how we got to brexit, all main political parties believed in the eu and continued pulling us in and no one else to vote for even when they promised a lisbon referendum they defaulted.
We need a democracy where we can pick and choose policies and hold politicians accountable both for the cost (known before voting for the policies) and the delivery (having a this is the target and we can evaluate on it)
Representative democracy is fine for the 19th century where it could take 3 days to get from your constituency to london....now we have the ability to make it more immediate
Not all policies can be accurately modeled in terms of financial or other costs, nor might their impacts be readily apparent in easily measurable ways within a certain timeframe to enable simple evaluation. What to do if other day to day priorities mean an approved policy must be set aside, or an unforeseen event derails it, or it turns out to be totally ineffective but the public say do it again anyway. What purpose would a politician even have (you might say this is a benefit), since if it is about delivering a policy that was voted upon there's no need for a middleman, just have the civil service be required to enact it.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
I respect your view but...
To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.
Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.
Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
Someone says they are a nazi you will treat them with scorn and contempt as would I,
Difference is
Someone says they are a communist you will think they are a good chap despite the millions of deaths whereas I will treat them equally with scorn and contempt and call them scum.
No equivocation here, its just you equivocating
Communism is the belief in the collective ownership of things. Deeply dumb. Fundamentally denuding of freedom. Always seems to end badly.
But is belief in the collective ownership of "things" on the same plane as belief that certain groups of people should be exterminated?
Can you name a communist state that hasnt exterminated certain groups of people?
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
I respect your view but...
To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.
Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.
Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
Well said.
Forget the fact that more evil has been done in this world in the name of communism than any other philosophy. Forget the fact more people have been murdered in the name of communism than fascism. Forget the fact more death camps happened under communism than fascism.
Strip away all that, and you're still left with a rotten, evil, hatefilled philosophy.
That people here excuse it, is flabbergasting.
Communism and Fascism are both unmitigatedly evil. There is nothing redeeming about either. If you want to run it purely by the numbers, communism is "worse" in that it has murdered more, but both are pure evil.
More so than religion?
Communism is a mere pimple on the enormous buttock that is religious extremism.
There is no difference in detail between religous cult based stuff and politically ideological cult based stuff. They both become belief totems
When the "idea" becomes more important than the individual, bad things almost always end up happening.
So. Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Nothing printable. 🤬
Good for you. Chapeau. This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
All governments everywhere are amoral and it will be the same when starmer is in charge. It is the nature of governements
No it isn't . That's the counsel of despair. If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
I am exercising my right to free speech while I can if thats ok, I have ceased voting as the three main parties I could vote for a stinking carcass of a pretence at choice as they are idiots. Haven't voted now since 2010 as only parties available have been con, lab, ld and they are two cheeks of the same arse with lds' being the perineum
Democracy should be a participatory system, not a consumer system. If there isn't a party you feel you can vote for then it's part of your duty as an active citizen of a democracy to find like-minded people and form a party of your own, or else to stand for election as an independent, or to find someone you can convince to stand as an independent who you could support.
Democracy should be something that we do, rather than something that is done to us.
You are suggesting that it's not just a plat du jour menu I'm choosing from, but that I might actually have to mix the ingredients myself?
What next? Wiping my own arse? Turning up at council meetings? God!
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
I respect your view but...
To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.
Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.
Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
Well said.
Forget the fact that more evil has been done in this world in the name of communism than any other philosophy. Forget the fact more people have been murdered in the name of communism than fascism. Forget the fact more death camps happened under communism than fascism.
Strip away all that, and you're still left with a rotten, evil, hatefilled philosophy.
That people here excuse it, is flabbergasting.
Communism and Fascism are both unmitigatedly evil. There is nothing redeeming about either. If you want to run it purely by the numbers, communism is "worse" in that it has murdered more, but both are pure evil.
More so than religion?
Communism is a mere pimple on the enormous buttock that is religious extremism.
There is no difference in detail between religous cult based stuff and politically ideological cult based stuff. They both become belief totems
When the "idea" becomes more important than the individual, bad things almost always end up happening.
Which is the point I have been making
And I don't disagree with it.
I'm merely making the point that believing in the collective ownership of "things" may be dumb but it does not mean that you automatically support murdering swathes of the population.
So. Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Nothing printable. 🤬
Good for you. Chapeau. This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
All governments everywhere are amoral and it will be the same when starmer is in charge. It is the nature of governements
No it isn't . That's the counsel of despair. If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
I am exercising my right to free speech while I can if thats ok, I have ceased voting as the three main parties I could vote for a stinking carcass of a pretence at choice as they are idiots. Haven't voted now since 2010 as only parties available have been con, lab, ld and they are two cheeks of the same arse with lds' being the perineum
Democracy should be a participatory system, not a consumer system. If there isn't a party you feel you can vote for then it's part of your duty as an active citizen of a democracy to find like-minded people and form a party of your own, or else to stand for election as an independent, or to find someone you can convince to stand as an independent who you could support.
Democracy should be something that we do, rather than something that is done to us.
I no longer believe in our current democratic model, I do not believe it delivers in the 20th century. This is how we got to brexit, all main political parties believed in the eu and continued pulling us in and no one else to vote for even when they promised a lisbon referendum they defaulted.
We need a democracy where we can pick and choose policies and hold politicians accountable both for the cost (known before voting for the policies) and the delivery (having a this is the target and we can evaluate on it)
Representative democracy is fine for the 19th century where it could take 3 days to get from your constituency to london....now we have the ability to make it more immediate
There are essentially two routes from here to there.
One is that you form a party called something like, "The Direct Democracy Party" and you convince enough of your fellow citizens to vote for you that you can use control of the current system to change it to your desired system.
The second is that you try to bring about the collapse of the current system, and then intervene in the revolutionary ferment to bring about the change to your preferred system. Though, even in that scenario it would probably help to be organised with a group of like-minded individuals.
One of the main reasons we got to Brexit is because people like Nigel Farage decided in the distant past (some time in the 90s?) that none of the established parties represented their views, and so they worked on building up a new party. They argued for their point of view, and convinced more people to agree with them and vote for them. And ultimately they got what they wanted - Britain has left the EU.
As someone in favour of EU membership I'd have been much happier if Nigel Farage and the rest of them had decided that life was too short, but however much I disagree with their policy, or found much of their arguments dishonest, or outright offensive, essentially their success in achieving Brexit was the result of the democratic system we have working as intended. I am left mainly to rue that my side of the debate lacked advocates with the same determination and skills of persuasion.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
I respect your view but...
To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.
Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.
Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
Well said.
Forget the fact that more evil has been done in this world in the name of communism than any other philosophy. Forget the fact more people have been murdered in the name of communism than fascism. Forget the fact more death camps happened under communism than fascism.
Strip away all that, and you're still left with a rotten, evil, hatefilled philosophy.
That people here excuse it, is flabbergasting.
Communism and Fascism are both unmitigatedly evil. There is nothing redeeming about either. If you want to run it purely by the numbers, communism is "worse" in that it has murdered more, but both are pure evil.
More so than religion?
Communism is a mere pimple on the enormous buttock that is religious extremism.
There is no difference in detail between religous cult based stuff and politically ideological cult based stuff. They both become belief totems
When the "idea" becomes more important than the individual, bad things almost always end up happening.
Which is the point I have been making
And I don't disagree with it.
I'm merely making the point that believing in the collective ownership of "things" may be dumb but it does not mean that you automatically support murdering swathes of the population.
Its an idea that puts the collective over the individual, if you can give me example on a nation sized basis where it has worked then I will concede the point
So. Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Nothing printable. 🤬
Good for you. Chapeau. This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
All governments everywhere are amoral and it will be the same when starmer is in charge. It is the nature of governements
No it isn't . That's the counsel of despair. If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
I am exercising my right to free speech while I can if thats ok, I have ceased voting as the three main parties I could vote for a stinking carcass of a pretence at choice as they are idiots. Haven't voted now since 2010 as only parties available have been con, lab, ld and they are two cheeks of the same arse with lds' being the perineum
Democracy should be a participatory system, not a consumer system. If there isn't a party you feel you can vote for then it's part of your duty as an active citizen of a democracy to find like-minded people and form a party of your own, or else to stand for election as an independent, or to find someone you can convince to stand as an independent who you could support.
Democracy should be something that we do, rather than something that is done to us.
I no longer believe in our current democratic model, I do not believe it delivers in the 20th century. This is how we got to brexit, all main political parties believed in the eu and continued pulling us in and no one else to vote for even when they promised a lisbon referendum they defaulted.
We need a democracy where we can pick and choose policies and hold politicians accountable both for the cost (known before voting for the policies) and the delivery (having a this is the target and we can evaluate on it)
Representative democracy is fine for the 19th century where it could take 3 days to get from your constituency to london....now we have the ability to make it more immediate
There are essentially two routes from here to there.
One is that you form a party called something like, "The Direct Democracy Party" and you convince enough of your fellow citizens to vote for you that you can use control of the current system to change it to your desired system.
The second is that you try to bring about the collapse of the current system, and then intervene in the revolutionary ferment to bring about the change to your preferred system. Though, even in that scenario it would probably help to be organised with a group of like-minded individuals.
One of the main reasons we got to Brexit is because people like Nigel Farage decided in the distant past (some time in the 90s?) that none of the established parties represented their views, and so they worked on building up a new party. They argued for their point of view, and convinced more people to agree with them and vote for them. And ultimately they got what they wanted - Britain has left the EU.
As someone in favour of EU membership I'd have been much happier if Nigel Farage and the rest of them had decided that life was too short, but however much I disagree with their policy, or found much of their arguments dishonest, or outright offensive, essentially their success in achieving Brexit was the result of the democratic system we have working as intended. I am left mainly to rue that my side of the debate lacked advocates with the same determination and skills of persuasion.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
I respect your view but...
To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.
Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.
Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
Someone says they are a nazi you will treat them with scorn and contempt as would I,
Difference is
Someone says they are a communist you will think they are a good chap despite the millions of deaths whereas I will treat them equally with scorn and contempt and call them scum.
No equivocation here, its just you equivocating
Communism is the belief in the collective ownership of things. Deeply dumb. Fundamentally denuding of freedom. Always seems to end badly.
But is belief in the collective ownership of "things" on the same plane as belief that certain groups of people should be exterminated?
So. Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Nothing printable. 🤬
Good for you. Chapeau. This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
All governments everywhere are amoral and it will be the same when starmer is in charge. It is the nature of governements
No it isn't . That's the counsel of despair. If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
I am exercising my right to free speech while I can if thats ok, I have ceased voting as the three main parties I could vote for a stinking carcass of a pretence at choice as they are idiots. Haven't voted now since 2010 as only parties available have been con, lab, ld and they are two cheeks of the same arse with lds' being the perineum
Democracy should be a participatory system, not a consumer system. If there isn't a party you feel you can vote for then it's part of your duty as an active citizen of a democracy to find like-minded people and form a party of your own, or else to stand for election as an independent, or to find someone you can convince to stand as an independent who you could support.
Democracy should be something that we do, rather than something that is done to us.
You are suggesting that it's not just a plat du jour menu I'm choosing from, but that I might actually have to mix the ingredients myself?
What next? Wiping my own arse? Turning up at council meetings? God!
I know. Whisper it quietly, but it sounds an awful lot like The Big Society.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
I respect your view but...
To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.
Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.
Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
Well said.
Forget the fact that more evil has been done in this world in the name of communism than any other philosophy. Forget the fact more people have been murdered in the name of communism than fascism. Forget the fact more death camps happened under communism than fascism.
Strip away all that, and you're still left with a rotten, evil, hatefilled philosophy.
That people here excuse it, is flabbergasting.
Communism and Fascism are both unmitigatedly evil. There is nothing redeeming about either. If you want to run it purely by the numbers, communism is "worse" in that it has murdered more, but both are pure evil.
More so than religion?
Communism is a mere pimple on the enormous buttock that is religious extremism.
There is no difference in detail between religous cult based stuff and politically ideological cult based stuff. They both become belief totems
When the "idea" becomes more important than the individual, bad things almost always end up happening.
Which is the point I have been making
And I don't disagree with it.
I'm merely making the point that believing in the collective ownership of "things" may be dumb but it does not mean that you automatically support murdering swathes of the population.
That is true, it just seems to be one of the (unfortunately many many) isms that seems to easily drive people to supporting that sort of thing.
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Seats Lab 509 SNP 50 Con 45 LD 23 PC 4 G 1
Also has RefUK on 6% but zero seats. I highly doubt they would get that much at an actual general election and if some of that vote goes back to the Tories, the Tories would be clearly the main opposition
It needs massive OEM engineering support. This is one of the reasons the RAF collapsed Typhoon ops to just two bases. In the RAF everything except flying them is contracted out or privatised. This would mean BAE/Eurofighter/Eurojet employee presence in large numbers inside Ukraine. Or basing them in Poland or Romania which risks starting WW3. Although that does seem to be quite a popular option on here.
It needs the agreement of Spain, Italy and GERMANY; even for UK owned airframes.
It's a golden intelligence gathering opportunity for the RF if they shoot one down or, even better, compromise a pilot with money or threatening to decapitate their kids so they fly one to Russia or Belarus. F-16 isn't seen as such a risk because Egypt, Greece, Turkey and Pakistan already have them. The GRU have their own parking spaces inside those air forces.
If the UK were to do it the most obvious route would be to disband IX(B) at Lossie and give Ukraine their 4 x Tranche 1/Block 5 jets. These are the only tranche 1s the RAF have in front line service.
The press release/leak only said TRAINING on NATO compatible a/c without being specific on type. A Hawk T1A is NATO compatible fighter...
So. Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Nothing printable. 🤬
Good for you. Chapeau. This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
All governments everywhere are amoral and it will be the same when starmer is in charge. It is the nature of governements
No it isn't . That's the counsel of despair. If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
I am exercising my right to free speech while I can if thats ok, I have ceased voting as the three main parties I could vote for a stinking carcass of a pretence at choice as they are idiots. Haven't voted now since 2010 as only parties available have been con, lab, ld and they are two cheeks of the same arse with lds' being the perineum
Democracy should be a participatory system, not a consumer system. If there isn't a party you feel you can vote for then it's part of your duty as an active citizen of a democracy to find like-minded people and form a party of your own, or else to stand for election as an independent, or to find someone you can convince to stand as an independent who you could support.
Democracy should be something that we do, rather than something that is done to us.
I no longer believe in our current democratic model, I do not believe it delivers in the 20th century. This is how we got to brexit, all main political parties believed in the eu and continued pulling us in and no one else to vote for even when they promised a lisbon referendum they defaulted.
We need a democracy where we can pick and choose policies and hold politicians accountable both for the cost (known before voting for the policies) and the delivery (having a this is the target and we can evaluate on it)
Representative democracy is fine for the 19th century where it could take 3 days to get from your constituency to london....now we have the ability to make it more immediate
There are essentially two routes from here to there.
One is that you form a party called something like, "The Direct Democracy Party" and you convince enough of your fellow citizens to vote for you that you can use control of the current system to change it to your desired system.
The second is that you try to bring about the collapse of the current system, and then intervene in the revolutionary ferment to bring about the change to your preferred system. Though, even in that scenario it would probably help to be organised with a group of like-minded individuals.
One of the main reasons we got to Brexit is because people like Nigel Farage decided in the distant past (some time in the 90s?) that none of the established parties represented their views, and so they worked on building up a new party. They argued for their point of view, and convinced more people to agree with them and vote for them. And ultimately they got what they wanted - Britain has left the EU.
As someone in favour of EU membership I'd have been much happier if Nigel Farage and the rest of them had decided that life was too short, but however much I disagree with their policy, or found much of their arguments dishonest, or outright offensive, essentially their success in achieving Brexit was the result of the democratic system we have working as intended. I am left mainly to rue that my side of the debate lacked advocates with the same determination and skills of persuasion.
may I im you?
You're welcome to message me, but I wouldn't describe it as instant messaging, as it's good night from me.
It needs massive OEM engineering support. This is one of the reasons the RAF collapsed Typhoon ops to just two bases. In the RAF everything except flying them is contracted out or privatised. This would mean BAE/Eurofighter/Eurojet employee presence in large numbers inside Ukraine. Or basing them in Poland or Romania which risks starting WW3. Although that does seem to be quite a popular option on here.
It needs the agreement of Spain, Italy and GERMANY; even for UK owned airframes.
It's a golden intelligence gathering opportunity for the RF if they shoot one down or, even better, compromise a pilot with money or threatening to decapitate their kids so they fly one to Russia or Belarus. F-16 isn't seen as such a risk because Egypt, Greece, Turkey and Pakistan already have them. The GRU have their own parking spaces inside those air forces.
If the UK were to do it the most obvious route would be to disband IX(B) at Lossie and give Ukraine their 4 x Tranche 1/Block 5 jets. These are the only tranche 1s the RAF have in front line service.
The press release/leak only said TRAINING on NATO compatible a/c without being specific on type. A Hawk T1A is NATO compatible fighter...
I don't know how we get any planes into the air at all - it's all a right hassle, all this war stuff.
As for the point about risking WW3 being popular on here, I doubt that very much, though if you listen to the internet glancing in Russia's direction risks WW3, and a bunch of things which were claimed to risk it do not seem to, so it doesn't seem wise to be super confident what would risk it.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
I respect your view but...
To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.
Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.
Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
Someone says they are a nazi you will treat them with scorn and contempt as would I,
Difference is
Someone says they are a communist you will think they are a good chap despite the millions of deaths whereas I will treat them equally with scorn and contempt and call them scum.
No equivocation here, its just you equivocating
Communism is the belief in the collective ownership of things. Deeply dumb. Fundamentally denuding of freedom. Always seems to end badly.
But is belief in the collective ownership of "things" on the same plane as belief that certain groups of people should be exterminated?
The Kulaks say "hello".
No, they don't - someone shot them, starved them, sent them to die in Siberia.
'Cause those sweet sweet factories the Americans were building for Stalin needed paying for.
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Seats Lab 509 SNP 50 Con 45 LD 23 PC 4 G 1
Also has RefUK on 6% but zero seats. I highly doubt they would get that much at an actual general election and if some of that vote goes back to the Tories, the Tories would be clearly the main opposition
Interesting though that Electoral Calculus have signed up to this. I haven't checked but I suspect they are using the current boundaries.
Anyway too far away to worry about. The Tories could well slip a lot lower by the next GE. ;-)
A polling company teaming up with Electoral Calculus and a 28,000 sample for a MRP, is a major polling moment. Maybe it will get a header of its own.
I could have a rational stab at poo pooing it and discrediting if you want me to, in that the recent track record of Find out Now is a small Tory share and big Lab Lead to such an extent they look like outliers among all other polls taken either side of them. Are infrequent political pollsters stronger or weaker at this type of polling than those giving us regular election surveys.
So, taking that Find out Now quirk of Labour favourable outliers into account looking at the Lab MAJORITY of 368 this 28,000 strong sample has produced, I personally very much doubt Labour would get the full 509 seats in a snap election this month, probably just 450 seats for only a 250ish majority.
Sorry Labour Herd but I don’t want you to get too carried away, is all.
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Seats Lab 509 SNP 50 Con 45 LD 23 PC 4 G 1
Also has RefUK on 6% but zero seats. I highly doubt they would get that much at an actual general election and if some of that vote goes back to the Tories, the Tories would be clearly the main opposition
Interesting though that Electoral Calculus have signed up to this. I haven't checked but I suspect they are using the current boundaries.
Anyway too far away to worry about. The Tories could well slip a lot lower by the next GE. ;-)
A polling company teaming up with Electoral Calculus and a 28,000 sample for a MRP, is a major polling moment. Maybe it will get a header of its own.
I could have a rational stab at poo pooing it and discrediting if you want me to, in that the recent track record of Find out Now is a small Tory share and big Lab Lead to such an extent they look like outliers among all other polls taken either side of them. Are infrequent political pollsters stronger or weaker at this type of polling than those giving us regular election surveys.
So, taking that Find out Now quirk of Labour favourable outliers into account looking at the Lab MAJORITY of 368 this 28,000 strong sample has produced, I personally very much doubt Labour would get the full 509 seats in a snap election this month, probably just 450 seats for only a 250ish majority.
Sorry Labour Herd but I don’t want you to get too carried away, is all.
I don’t know if this post helps you at all HY.
It is clearly a very bad poll for the Tories no doubt and Rishi has a lot to do.
What I can't abide however is sensationalist headlines based on inaccurate data.
The headline that the Tories would be overtaken by the SNP on seats was simply wrong on the voteshares given, they just wanted a story and didn't even bother to check the figures properly!
No idea how credible, but this supposed account of the diplomatic jostling behind organising Zelensky's visit itinerary sounds weird, basically saying he was planning to stop off in Paris first but the french didn't get back to him on time.
No idea how credible, but this supposed account of the diplomatic jostling behind organising Zelensky's visit itinerary sounds weird, basically saying he was planning to stop off in Paris first but the french didn't get back to him on time.
It needs massive OEM engineering support. This is one of the reasons the RAF collapsed Typhoon ops to just two bases. In the RAF everything except flying them is contracted out or privatised. This would mean BAE/Eurofighter/Eurojet employee presence in large numbers inside Ukraine. Or basing them in Poland or Romania which risks starting WW3. Although that does seem to be quite a popular option on here.
It needs the agreement of Spain, Italy and GERMANY; even for UK owned airframes.
It's a golden intelligence gathering opportunity for the RF if they shoot one down or, even better, compromise a pilot with money or threatening to decapitate their kids so they fly one to Russia or Belarus. F-16 isn't seen as such a risk because Egypt, Greece, Turkey and Pakistan already have them. The GRU have their own parking spaces inside those air forces.
If the UK were to do it the most obvious route would be to disband IX(B) at Lossie and give Ukraine their 4 x Tranche 1/Block 5 jets. These are the only tranche 1s the RAF have in front line service.
The press release/leak only said TRAINING on NATO compatible a/c without being specific on type. A Hawk T1A is NATO compatible fighter...
I don't know how we get any planes into the air at all - it's all a right hassle, all this war stuff.
As for the point about risking WW3 being popular on here, I doubt that very much, though if you listen to the internet glancing in Russia's direction risks WW3, and a bunch of things which were claimed to risk it do not seem to, so it doesn't seem wise to be super confident what would risk it.
Do you know, I think you are right. 2020s warfare in Europe between an ex superpower and a largish chunk of same ex super power isn’t my specialist subject (that would be the Bible study as I sort of teach it and having Judith instead of Lilith last night I flunked my specialist subject I might as well have said Doreen) but, I follow the war from experts on PB and elsewhere, and all this emergent technology seems to be reducing this war to sitting in trench watching out for enemy slithering towards you. the E.T. rendered older air power somewhat vulnerable, tanks somewhat vulnerable, and whole columns taken out by drones. How do we know the top of the range fighter aircraft are still ahead of the game? They come with all the training and skills needed and all the knowledge support on the ground needed, fighter aircraft as you said come with a lot of hassle.
They can’t be sure if the new aircraft are still ahead of the game and not vulnerable to the 2020s battle space unless they put some into this theatre. That’s why I think they will soon. Call me an outlier in predicting this if you want to.
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Seats Lab 509 SNP 50 Con 45 LD 23 PC 4 G 1
Also has RefUK on 6% but zero seats. I highly doubt they would get that much at an actual general election and if some of that vote goes back to the Tories, the Tories would be clearly the main opposition
Interesting though that Electoral Calculus have signed up to this. I haven't checked but I suspect they are using the current boundaries.
Anyway too far away to worry about. The Tories could well slip a lot lower by the next GE. ;-)
A polling company teaming up with Electoral Calculus and a 28,000 sample for a MRP, is a major polling moment. Maybe it will get a header of its own.
I could have a rational stab at poo pooing it and discrediting if you want me to, in that the recent track record of Find out Now is a small Tory share and big Lab Lead to such an extent they look like outliers among all other polls taken either side of them. Are infrequent political pollsters stronger or weaker at this type of polling than those giving us regular election surveys.
So, taking that Find out Now quirk of Labour favourable outliers into account looking at the Lab MAJORITY of 368 this 28,000 strong sample has produced, I personally very much doubt Labour would get the full 509 seats in a snap election this month, probably just 450 seats for only a 250ish majority.
Sorry Labour Herd but I don’t want you to get too carried away, is all.
I don’t know if this post helps you at all HY.
It is clearly a very bad poll for the Tories no doubt and Rishi has a lot to do.
What I can't abide however is sensationalist headlines based on inaccurate data.
The headline that the Tories would be overtaken by the SNP on seats was simply wrong on the voteshares given, they just wanted a story and didn't even bother to check the figures properly!
But even with you correcting it, it’s still rather tight?
It needs massive OEM engineering support. This is one of the reasons the RAF collapsed Typhoon ops to just two bases. In the RAF everything except flying them is contracted out or privatised. This would mean BAE/Eurofighter/Eurojet employee presence in large numbers inside Ukraine. Or basing them in Poland or Romania which risks starting WW3. Although that does seem to be quite a popular option on here.
It needs the agreement of Spain, Italy and GERMANY; even for UK owned airframes.
It's a golden intelligence gathering opportunity for the RF if they shoot one down or, even better, compromise a pilot with money or threatening to decapitate their kids so they fly one to Russia or Belarus. F-16 isn't seen as such a risk because Egypt, Greece, Turkey and Pakistan already have them. The GRU have their own parking spaces inside those air forces.
If the UK were to do it the most obvious route would be to disband IX(B) at Lossie and give Ukraine their 4 x Tranche 1/Block 5 jets. These are the only tranche 1s the RAF have in front line service.
The press release/leak only said TRAINING on NATO compatible a/c without being specific on type. A Hawk T1A is NATO compatible fighter...
I don't know how we get any planes into the air at all - it's all a right hassle, all this war stuff.
As for the point about risking WW3 being popular on here, I doubt that very much, though if you listen to the internet glancing in Russia's direction risks WW3, and a bunch of things which were claimed to risk it do not seem to, so it doesn't seem wise to be super confident what would risk it.
Do you know, I think you are right. 2020s warfare in Europe between an ex superpower and a largish chunk of same ex super power isn’t my specialist subject (that would be the Bible study as I sort of teach it and having Judith instead of Lilith last night I flunked my specialist subject I might as well have said Doreen) but, I follow the war from experts on PB and elsewhere, and all this emergent technology seems to be reducing this war to sitting in trench watching out for enemy slithering towards you. the E.T. rendered older air power somewhat vulnerable, tanks somewhat vulnerable, and whole columns taken out by drones. How do we know the top of the range fighter aircraft are still ahead of the game? They come with all the training and skills needed and all the knowledge support on the ground needed, fighter aircraft as you said come with a lot of hassle.
They can’t be sure if the new aircraft are still ahead of the game and not vulnerable to the 2020s battle space unless they put some into this theatre. That’s why I think they will soon. Call me an outlier in predicting this if you want to.
I'm not sure if they will end up doing it or not. We do seem to hem and haw about these things, and a lot of training is clearly necessary. And whether it would make an appreciable difference I've no idea at all.
I am sure that the tired old boilerplate line about people who might propose it being casual about world war is, outside of the few cartoonish people, nonsense.
Comments
Now back to the prospects of 1997 redux...
Last night I dreamt I went to Mandleson again.
On the voteshares given the Tories would actually get 55 seats to 47 SNP on the new boundaries and stay the main opposition
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=23&LAB=49&LIB=9&Reform=6&Green=3&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=18.5&SCOTLAB=29.5&SCOTLIB=6.5&SCOTReform=0&SCOTGreen=0&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=43&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019nbbase
Democracy should be something that we do, rather than something that is done to us.
Republicans Can’t Succumb to Fantasy on Ukraine
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/08/republicans-ukraine-russia-00081832
I remain sunnily optimistic that tomorrow will be better than today.
Other opinions are equally valid.
We need a democracy where we can pick and choose policies and hold politicians accountable both for the cost (known before voting for the policies) and the delivery (having a this is the target and we can evaluate on it)
Representative democracy is fine for the 19th century where it could take 3 days to get from your constituency to london....now we have the ability to make it more immediate
Communism is a mere pimple on the enormous buttock that is religious extremism.
Anyway too far away to worry about. The Tories could well slip a lot lower by the next GE. ;-)
But is belief in the collective ownership of "things" on the same plane as belief that certain groups of people should be exterminated?
What next? Wiping my own arse? Turning up at council meetings? God!
I'm merely making the point that believing in the collective ownership of "things" may be dumb but it does not mean that you automatically support murdering swathes of the population.
One is that you form a party called something like, "The Direct Democracy Party" and you convince enough of your fellow citizens to vote for you that you can use control of the current system to change it to your desired system.
The second is that you try to bring about the collapse of the current system, and then intervene in the revolutionary ferment to bring about the change to your preferred system. Though, even in that scenario it would probably help to be organised with a group of like-minded individuals.
One of the main reasons we got to Brexit is because people like Nigel Farage decided in the distant past (some time in the 90s?) that none of the established parties represented their views, and so they worked on building up a new party. They argued for their point of view, and convinced more people to agree with them and vote for them. And ultimately they got what they wanted - Britain has left the EU.
As someone in favour of EU membership I'd have been much happier if Nigel Farage and the rest of them had decided that life was too short, but however much I disagree with their policy, or found much of their arguments dishonest, or outright offensive, essentially their success in achieving Brexit was the result of the democratic system we have working as intended. I am left mainly to rue that my side of the debate lacked advocates with the same determination and skills of persuasion.
Today in 1977, Rene Levesque, premier of Quebec, runs over and kills Edgar Trottier, a homeless man who was lying in the road.
Levesque is fined $25 for not wearing his glasses. In his car with him is his secretary. He & his wife soon divorce, and he marries his secretary.
https://twitter.com/CraigBaird/status/1622598512507756545?cxt=HHwWgoDR8YGw0IQtAAAA
Down with isms, I say.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=23&LAB=49&LIB=9&Reform=6&Green=3&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=18.5&SCOTLAB=29.5&SCOTLIB=6.5&SCOTReform=0&SCOTGreen=0&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=43&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019base
It needs massive OEM engineering support. This is one of the reasons the RAF collapsed Typhoon ops to just two bases. In the RAF everything except flying them is contracted out or privatised. This would mean BAE/Eurofighter/Eurojet employee presence in large numbers inside Ukraine. Or basing them in Poland or Romania which risks starting WW3. Although that does seem to be quite a popular option on here.
It needs the agreement of Spain, Italy and GERMANY; even for UK owned airframes.
It's a golden intelligence gathering opportunity for the RF if they shoot one down or, even better, compromise a pilot with money or threatening to decapitate their kids so they fly one to Russia or Belarus. F-16 isn't seen as such a risk because Egypt, Greece, Turkey and Pakistan already have them. The GRU have their own parking spaces inside those air forces.
If the UK were to do it the most obvious route would be to disband IX(B) at Lossie and give Ukraine their 4 x Tranche 1/Block 5 jets. These are the only tranche 1s the RAF have in front line service.
The press release/leak only said TRAINING on NATO compatible a/c without being specific on type. A Hawk T1A is NATO compatible fighter...
As for the point about risking WW3 being popular on here, I doubt that very much, though if you listen to the internet glancing in Russia's direction risks WW3, and a bunch of things which were claimed to risk it do not seem to, so it doesn't seem wise to be super confident what would risk it.
'Cause those sweet sweet factories the Americans were building for Stalin needed paying for.
I could have a rational stab at poo pooing it and discrediting if you want me to, in that the recent track record of Find out Now is a small Tory share and big Lab Lead to such an extent they look like outliers among all other polls taken either side of them. Are infrequent political pollsters stronger or weaker at this type of polling than those giving us regular election surveys.
So, taking that Find out Now quirk of Labour favourable outliers into account looking at the Lab MAJORITY of 368 this 28,000 strong sample has produced, I personally very much doubt Labour would get the full 509 seats in a snap election this month, probably just 450 seats for only a 250ish majority.
Sorry Labour Herd but I don’t want you to get too carried away, is all.
I don’t know if this post helps you at all HY.
🌹 LAB: 49% (+16)
🌳 CON: 23% (-22)
MRP Seat Projection:
🌹 LAB: 509 (+306)
🎗️ SNP: 50 (+2)
🌳 CON: 45 (-320)
Via @FindoutnowUK, 27 Jan - 5 Feb.
Changes w/ GE2019.
Any day now…
What I can't abide however is sensationalist headlines based on inaccurate data.
The headline that the Tories would be overtaken by the SNP on seats was simply wrong on the voteshares given, they just wanted a story and didn't even bother to check the figures properly!
https://twitter.com/laurnorman/status/1623424611449806853
They can’t be sure if the new aircraft are still ahead of the game and not vulnerable to the 2020s battle space unless they put some into this theatre. That’s why I think they will soon. Call me an outlier in predicting this if you want to.
New Thread
I am sure that the tired old boilerplate line about people who might propose it being casual about world war is, outside of the few cartoonish people, nonsense.