Has this guy never driven outside the UK, where it isn't exactly uncommon to see bi or tri-lingual signs.
It's everything that is inane and tragi-comic about Britain today.
I don't know what's worse. The fact that he wrote it, that fact that he posted it, that fact that his university apologised for it, the fact that the Telegraph published it, the fact that you posted it on PB or the fact that I'm replying to it.
OK, it's me. I'm the worst (goes to beat self up)
Quite right, off you pop to Conservative Home for the rest of the day ;-)
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
Absolutely but your audience is wrong. Just about everyone on PB condemned out of hand as fanciful and insane if not near-murderous even to whisper the idea that lockdowns were bad for a huge number of reasons including financial ones.
I'm sure your post won't get many likes and anyone who agrees with you should look carefully at their own posting history to see how they responded at the time.
I keep banging on about it (this is, after all, PB) but only @contrarian consistently stated what a calamity lockdown was and would be and boy was he right.
There were plenty saying that Starmer was wrong to go harder, longer on lockdowns. We would have lost another Christmas if it had been down to him.
This is the man man would now have as PM? Colour me unconvinced...
“Johnson Variant” - what a prat. Completely wrong too. Still, at least he’s boring
The Johnson Variant, that was about as twattish as the time he was pictured looking at wallpaper 😂😂
I really hope that the Covid inquiry also looks into this sort of stuff as well: what the opposition says and does feeds into government decisions, good and bad.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
So send the military in to liberate the populace and destroy Hamas.
2 birds, one stone.
If they were willing to do it in a way that we generally tried to in Afghanistan then I would agree all the way. But they won't. They are simply flattening the place with no regard for Palestinian casualties.
Barclays' former boss has been banned from holding senior positions in the UK after he mischaracterised his relationship with convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
Jes Staley has also been fined £1.8m, said the Financial Conduct Authority.
The regulator said Mr Staley had claimed not to be close to Epstein when in reality he viewed him as a "cherished" friend.
Why is it "disgraceful" not to do something? Hyperbolic, odd, choice of word.
Do we light up the arch in every country's flag everywhere in the world that is under attack or has had atrocities committed against it?
They did after the bataclan attack. Look, I’m all in favour of getting rid of virtue signalling, but we all know why the FA and PL won’t show sympathy towards Israel.
"The Football Association is unlikely to light the Wembley arch in the colours of the Israel flag because of fears of a backlash from some communities."
Don't want to show solidarity with a nation that suffered a massive terrorist attack for fear of offending their sympathisers.
Same reason the usual suspects who are normally so vocal on twitter are silent.
I'll be at the match tomorrow and can provide live commentary on all the virtue signalling action.
THE eco-zealot who dumped glitter on Sir Keir Starmer at the Labour Party conference while demanding “democracy” is a privileged globe-trotting rich kid.
Jobless XR moaner Yaz Ashmawi, 28, studied at a private school in the oil-rich UAE and enjoys a £750,000 second home in Devon.
As much as he as an individual will annoy me - so what? Like, 13 flights in ten years is not that much and if he has realised that the privileges of his upbringing give him some ability to make the world a better place - good? That's exactly what people with power and money should do. I understand why poor and precarious people don't protest - they have little option but to do what they must.
You're right. It's not that much. However if you are a protestor for XR or JSO then for your message to be effective you have got to practice what you preach. Otherwise you are just a hypocrite.
I suggest it's actually quite a lot. Given his wealth it may also be business class:
He has jetted to 13 countries on four continents in ten years
I would say that if he is serious about what he alleges are his beliefs, he should be aiming not to fly at all and substantially achieving it.
It reminds of the attention-seeking XR convict featured in the media from my area, who when I followed up turned out to live in a valuable farmhouse renting out holiday barn conversions for a living, and neither the farmhouse nor the barn conversions had even half-decent energy efficiency.
In my book hypocrites don't deserve a hearing, particularly hypocrites who are not modelling whatever they seek to impose on everyone else.
But I know that's not a popular view on PB.
He's 28 - 13 years mean some of these flights he would have been 15? So family holidays where he may not have had a choice? Also - like maybe he got a better understanding of climate change in his early 20s (like me)
Was the Yazmeister protesting about climate change in this instance? He shouted something about democracy iirc.
His position as an XR member was likely the idea of a people's assembly as a true democracy. I don't necessarily agree with that, but that is likely his position.
If the people's assembly looked at all the options and decided that we should use more North Sea fossil fuels, would he respect its decision?
I assume so
We have a people's assembly that says we should use more North Sea fossil fuels, its the House of Commons.
Direct democracy and representative democracy are two different things. You can argue that one is more efficient or moral than the other, but to ignore the distinction is not particularly useful.
By direct democracy you mean referenda like the Brexit Referendum? Or something else?
As an aside I think Moeen Ali has made an error of judgement. Now is not the time for unexplained, simplistic shows of support for Palestine which can so easily be misinterpreted as supporting Hamas.
I suspect (I hope?) I probably agree with much of his view on the overall Palestinian situation but he leaves himself open to legitimate attack simply posting pictures of the Palestinian flag under the current circumstances.
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Check my edit out: People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on
Edinburgh is introducing 24/7 bus lanes shortly.
If you have sufficient road capacity, then traffic isn't a problem so its moot.
Unless I'm at a traffic light I spend almost all of my time driving in town at the speed limit, whether it be 30, 40 or 50mph.
Cars and buses driving at 50mph allows far more throughput of vehicles, people and goods than restricting your lanes and creating traffic jams.
You can magic capacity out of nowhere if you take 50 cars off the road and pop those people on a bus.
Same logic for traffic signals for Trams - 250 people onboard have priority over the drivers.
But the buses don't go from door to door, don't take a direct route, and have to stop to let other people on and off. So they'll always be inferior to driving.
Which is why only 2-3 people are on board, not 50.
You seem to be living in a bizarre universe where congestion is the problem. Try living outside of a city, build lower density, and have enough capacity.
If congestion isn't a problem, why do you need more roads?
Buses round me are completely packed. But then we don't have the terrible bus service you have in Warrington, much maligned in your local paper.
Have you not been paying attention?
We need more roads to make more direct routes from point to point. As well as to release capacity by allowing cars to travel fast wherever they're not intending to ultimately be, and allowing local roads to only serve local traffic. The default speed of vehicles moving around should be 50-70mph if they're not in the first or last mile of their journey most of the time.
I don't advocate widening motorways, I see it as a mostly pointless exercise.
I advocate building new roads where they don't currently exist.
Don't widen the M6, build a new M59, a new M580 etc
And here it is!
Wow. That is the epitome of a modern, integrated road network for our times.
Presumably canvassing is now asking people who have already voted by post who they voted for. The Tories might be seeing some green shoots.
Big international news events like wars often tend to help the governing party. Are we all underestimating the effect the Gaza war will have on the Tory poll rate?
We can predict that Starmer, when on the news, will continue to look like a PM on this subject. That won’t hurt Labour. Emphasises that the Corbynite fringe is banished.
However, I do think the Tories had fallen so low thanks to Truss that Sunak also reminding folk he’s from central casting won’t hurt.
On balance I wonder if we’re heading to a 42/32 Labour lead, which will encourage the Tories but basically still means Labour are selling the deal?
Electoral Calculus suggests the cliff edge effects start at around 40/35 to Labour on the new boundaries. Presumably the actual Tory strategy is to limp home to a 2005 Howard result, which would look a lot better on these boundaries.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
So send the military in to liberate the populace and destroy Hamas.
2 birds, one stone.
If they were willing to do it in a way that we generally tried to in Afghanistan then I would agree all the way. But they won't. They are simply flattening the place with no regard for Palestinian casualties.
Its war, that happens. They need to flatten the places which Hamas are using.
There are no easy or peaceful solutions in warfare.
Safe refuge out of Gaza should be allowed for those who don't want to be fighting, many towns or cities have lost 95% of their population in Eastern Ukraine, no reason that won't or shouldn't happen in Gaza City too.
Are we looking at an all-out Middle East war? We haven’t had one for AGES
EXCITING
Israel have been bombing Syria in the last few weeks so it is probably to do with that.
Nice to see some Israeli intelligence can do its job after the clusterfuck that was the weekend. Probably had Frank Spencer in charge the day the intel on Hamas came through.
I think there should be one global electrical plug. I would take whichever is proven to be the safest - which seems to be ours.
The problem is that the type of plug that is safest is dictated by the type of wiring system used in houses. This is one case where a change is not practical for either option.
Anyway to celebrate SNP-SCon swapsies and combine 2 topics, a photo of ex Tory councillor and hubby of 'disgraced' ex SNP MP Natalie McGarry. Interesting to note that the Labour controlled council supported the flying of the Palestinian flag back then, changed days.
Defections to the Conservatives from any party are very unusual. The only previous examples since 1945 seem to be Reg Prentice (1977), Alan Brown (1962), Ivor Thomas (1948), Alfred Edwards (1948).
Although Sleepy Joe is not up to the job, the big difference is the "professionals" (many ex-Obama officials) are actually running the government, compared to Trump often weird / poorly qualified picks.
Biden was almost catatonic in his dreadful presser yesterday. I still have grave doubts he will stand in 24. He’s just too old and getting older
Well, we're all getting older* but I have a hunch you're right. As I've said before, if Biden's decided not to stand he's not going to say as much until Feb/Mar 2024.
Are we looking at an all-out Middle East war? We haven’t had one for AGES
EXCITING
Israel have been bombing Syria in the last few weeks so it is probably to do with that.
Nice to see some Israeli intelligence can do its job after the clusterfuck that was the weekend. Probably had Frank Spencer in charge the day the intel on Hamas came through.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
Are we looking at an all-out Middle East war? We haven’t had one for AGES
EXCITING
Israel have been bombing Syria in the last few weeks so it is probably to do with that.
Nice to see some Israeli intelligence can do its job after the clusterfuck that was the weekend. Probably had Frank Spencer in charge the day the intel on Hamas came through.
THE eco-zealot who dumped glitter on Sir Keir Starmer at the Labour Party conference while demanding “democracy” is a privileged globe-trotting rich kid.
Jobless XR moaner Yaz Ashmawi, 28, studied at a private school in the oil-rich UAE and enjoys a £750,000 second home in Devon.
As much as he as an individual will annoy me - so what? Like, 13 flights in ten years is not that much and if he has realised that the privileges of his upbringing give him some ability to make the world a better place - good? That's exactly what people with power and money should do. I understand why poor and precarious people don't protest - they have little option but to do what they must.
You're right. It's not that much. However if you are a protestor for XR or JSO then for your message to be effective you have got to practice what you preach. Otherwise you are just a hypocrite.
I suggest it's actually quite a lot. Given his wealth it may also be business class:
He has jetted to 13 countries on four continents in ten years
I would say that if he is serious about what he alleges are his beliefs, he should be aiming not to fly at all and substantially achieving it.
It reminds of the attention-seeking XR convict featured in the media from my area, who when I followed up turned out to live in a valuable farmhouse renting out holiday barn conversions for a living, and neither the farmhouse nor the barn conversions had even half-decent energy efficiency.
In my book hypocrites don't deserve a hearing, particularly hypocrites who are not modelling whatever they seek to impose on everyone else.
But I know that's not a popular view on PB.
He's 28 - 13 years mean some of these flights he would have been 15? So family holidays where he may not have had a choice? Also - like maybe he got a better understanding of climate change in his early 20s (like me)
Was the Yazmeister protesting about climate change in this instance? He shouted something about democracy iirc.
His position as an XR member was likely the idea of a people's assembly as a true democracy. I don't necessarily agree with that, but that is likely his position.
If the people's assembly looked at all the options and decided that we should use more North Sea fossil fuels, would he respect its decision?
I assume so
We have a people's assembly that says we should use more North Sea fossil fuels, its the House of Commons.
Direct democracy and representative democracy are two different things. You can argue that one is more efficient or moral than the other, but to ignore the distinction is not particularly useful.
By direct democracy you mean referenda like the Brexit Referendum? Or something else?
So the idea of a peoples' assembly, from my understanding, is:
Everyone gets to see all the evidence and gets to interrogate the experts directly - not mediated through media and politics. In a logistical form the easiest way to do this would be to have local assemblies that work on a consensus model (only taking decisions which all individuals agree to) and building further consensus with other localised assemblies. It has many things in common with democratic confederalism - apart from the consensus stuff which I typically hate... Is it a logistical nightmare? Yes. Would it produce positive policy? Almost certainly not. Is it philosophically distinct from representative democracy or even a direct referenda - yes.
Although Sleepy Joe is not up to the job, the big difference is the "professionals" (many ex-Obama officials) are actually running the government, compared to Trump often weird / poorly qualified picks.
Since it was Joe who picked them, it would suggest that he is up to the job. (Whether that will still be true in a couple of years' time is another matter.)
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Quite a large proportion of the population wouldn't even have been born back then.
Indeed 43% of the population of Gaza is under 15. The median age is 18.
Barclays' former boss has been banned from holding senior positions in the UK after he mischaracterised his relationship with convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
Jes Staley has also been fined £1.8m, said the Financial Conduct Authority.
The regulator said Mr Staley had claimed not to be close to Epstein when in reality he viewed him as a "cherished" friend.
I think there should be one global electrical plug. I would take whichever is proven to be the safest - which seems to be ours.
Safest until you consider their shape makes them particularly prone to alignment with flat side down and prongs facing upwards on floors, awaiting the ususpecting foot. The reduction in QALYs is surely greater than from any eletrical safety deficiencies in other designs
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
So send the military in to liberate the populace and destroy Hamas.
2 birds, one stone.
If they were willing to do it in a way that we generally tried to in Afghanistan then I would agree all the way. But they won't. They are simply flattening the place with no regard for Palestinian casualties.
Its war, that happens. They need to flatten the places which Hamas are using.
There are no easy or peaceful solutions in warfare.
Safe refuge out of Gaza should be allowed for those who don't want to be fighting, many towns or cities have lost 95% of their population in Eastern Ukraine, no reason that won't or shouldn't happen in Gaza City too.
The civilians in Eastern Ukraine were allowed to leave. The civilians in Gaza are not.
But interesting that you are now (inadvetently) comparing the what is being done to the Palestinians with what was done to the Ukrainians.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
Is there any suggestion that Palestinians outside Gaza oppose Hamas?
Because we have had an awful lot of demos here and elsewhere supporting what Hamas did.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
So send the military in to liberate the populace and destroy Hamas.
2 birds, one stone.
If they were willing to do it in a way that we generally tried to in Afghanistan then I would agree all the way. But they won't. They are simply flattening the place with no regard for Palestinian casualties.
Its war, that happens. They need to flatten the places which Hamas are using.
There are no easy or peaceful solutions in warfare.
Safe refuge out of Gaza should be allowed for those who don't want to be fighting, many towns or cities have lost 95% of their population in Eastern Ukraine, no reason that won't or shouldn't happen in Gaza City too.
The civilians in Eastern Ukraine were allowed to leave. The civilians in Gaza are not.
But interesting that you are now (inadvetently) comparing the what is being done to the Palestinians with what was done to the Ukrainians.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
I think there should be one global electrical plug. I would take whichever is proven to be the safest - which seems to be ours.
Safest until you consider their shape makes them particularly prone to alignment with flat side down and prongs facing upwards on floors, awaiting the ususpecting foot. The reduction in QALYs is surely greater than from any eletrical safety deficiencies in other designs
Ah, but ours can be left plugged in and switched off at the wall thus reducing the hazard.
These daft europlugs don't even have an off switch.
Sunak seems doomed, but one thing he should try, in my opinion, is to contrast his ‘Eat out to help out’ optimism with Sir Keir’s “we better all stay in for a few more months this summer, even though the worst was way behind us” strategy,
“Johnson Variant”, Jesus Christ. He must have been secretly hoping for more cases when we opened up against his advice
"Guys, remember that time I used your money to pay people to go out for pizza and a load of them caught Cofid and died" doesn't sound like a vote winner to me, but I'm happy for the Tories to give it a go.
Obviously I am aware that it’s a risky strategy, but I think it’s worth it to show Sir Keir up as a doom monger that wanted to lock us all indoors (while he was ok with booze ups for himself & friends)
You might regret invoking the memory of Sir Beer Korma – Big-G-Wales will be bothering you every five minutes
It’s quite something that people see Boris letting people who were working together indoors all day have a drink after work as 100 on the outrage index, whilst Sir Keir having one himself is a zero, when the difference is just a technicality
More like 52-48 really, which as we know is not all or nothing
It's not a technicality when it was a year apart and very different regulations in force.
Which is why Johnson got a police caution, why he lied to the Commons and why he resigned in disgrace, while Starmer was cleared by the police.
It's obvious that you don't like Starmer and think the sun shines out of Johnsons fundament, but facts actually matter.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
Hamas has, in part, been propped up by the Israeli state - Netanyahu admits this.
The ways people fail to understand the British amaze me. British plugs are great.
I can see a deal forming here. We get mixer taps, they get safe plugs.
Hard no to German “shelf loos”
But we should adopt their practise of a tiny little biscuit or chocolate with a coffee. Civilised
Where do you go, and where have you been for the last few years, where they don’t give you a tiny biscuit or chocolate with your coffee unless it’s a takeout?
American toilet bowls are very large and deep. Don’t know what’s going on with them, really.
And as for the plugs, I am constantly fretting that someone might electrocute themselves.
British plugs on the other hand are such clunky, ungainly things. (A lot of British design is like that, the best British design somehow makes a virtue of its ungainliness).
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
Is there any suggestion that Palestinians outside Gaza oppose Hamas?
Because we have had an awful lot of demos here and elsewhere supporting what Hamas did.
Judging the opinion of a whole population based on the demos by a tiny minority is a fools game.
Why is it "disgraceful" not to do something? Hyperbolic, odd, choice of word.
Do we light up the arch in every country's flag everywhere in the world that is under attack or has had atrocities committed against it?
We tend to. And this example is why we shouldn’t. Eventually sports gets dragged into having to opine on who is a goodie and who is a baddie, and has given up its free pass to say “not my job, I’m just here for the football”.
It’s hard not to LOL at the virtue-signalling w*****s of the FA, tying themselves up in knots about this.
They now come across as giving the impression that, of 200 countries in the world, they’d change the lights at the stadium on in support of a nation suffering from a terrorist attack for 199 of them.
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
Representative democracy is a hill I am prepared to die on (almost literally).
But I have toyed with the thought experiment of replacing the Lords with online public voting, and then retaining the Parliament Act or even supercharging it. The public gains the right to ask the elected chamber to “think again” but we don’t get a “people’s assembly” imposing the death penalty.
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
Is there any suggestion that Palestinians outside Gaza oppose Hamas?
Because we have had an awful lot of demos here and elsewhere supporting what Hamas did.
I don't think that observation is allowed on PB. According to our fearless warriors, it is Ismail, Zakaria*, Jawad*, and some guy who works in the vape shop who actually support Hamas in Gaza. The rest of the population have time and again been forced against their will to, er, turn out on the streets in their hundreds of thousands to show support.
*sadly deceased.
As for outside Gaza the parades of happiness at the Hamas action are quite numerous.
Defections to the Conservatives from any party are very unusual. The only previous examples since 1945 seem to be Reg Prentice (1977), Alan Brown (1962), Ivor Thomas (1948), Alfred Edwards (1948).
Baroness Altmann in 2015 in the Lords. Baron Robens of Woldingham in 1979. Both from Labour.
Emma Nicholson (Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne) and Zahida Manzoor (Baroness Manzoor) in 2016 from LibDems to Con.
Still in the Lords, David Trimble from the Ulster Unionists in 2007, and Craig Mackinlay from UKIP in 2005. Edward Haughey also did UUP->Con earlier.
In the Commons, Stratton Mills in 1972 joined the Conservatives when the rest of the UUP withdrew from the Tory whip.
Various National Liberal MPs became absorbed into the Tories.
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
Is there any suggestion that Palestinians outside Gaza oppose Hamas?
Because we have had an awful lot of demos here and elsewhere supporting what Hamas did.
No we did not. We had a lot of demos here and elsewhere supporting Palestine and Palestinians having the right to exist. Did some individuals say shitty things, yes. But the vast majority of these demos take the position that Hamas' actions are morally indefensible, but are also the inevitable act after decades of oppression and refusal for an equitable solution to the issue.
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
Representative democracy is a hill I am prepared to die on (almost literally).
But I have toyed with the thought experiment of replacing the Lords with online public voting, and then retaining the Parliament Act or even supercharging it. The public gains the right to ask the elected chamber to “think again” but we don’t get a “people’s assembly” imposing the death penalty.
Again I like the Swiss system. Though I do agree with your concerns about things like the Death Penalty.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
So send the military in to liberate the populace and destroy Hamas.
2 birds, one stone.
I don't think the people of Gaza see Israel as liberators, not given past Israeli actions towards Gaza.
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
American toilet bowls are very large and deep. Don’t know what’s going on with them, really.
And as for the plugs, I am constantly fretting that someone might electrocute themselves.
British plugs on the other hand are such clunky, ungainly things. (A lot of British design is like that, the best British design somehow makes a virtue of its ungainliness).
NZ plugs are good.
British plugs are beautiful. A masterpiece of design. They are the most reliable, robust plugs in the world - and what’s more, the design expresses that. Pure functionality, at its best, evinces loveliness
The Mies van der Rohe of plug designs. Fie on you, you Antipodean heathen
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
Representative democracy is a hill I am prepared to die on (almost literally).
But I have toyed with the thought experiment of replacing the Lords with online public voting, and then retaining the Parliament Act or even supercharging it. The public gains the right to ask the elected chamber to “think again” but we don’t get a “people’s assembly” imposing the death penalty.
I certainly don’t want to replace representative democracy. And I don’t want to replace the Lords either, although it could obviously do with reform.
For me, deliberative democracy panels are an interesting way of adding to the process of policy formation. For example, what if we established one for every white paper?
American toilet bowls are very large and deep. Don’t know what’s going on with them, really.
And as for the plugs, I am constantly fretting that someone might electrocute themselves.
British plugs on the other hand are such clunky, ungainly things. (A lot of British design is like that, the best British design somehow makes a virtue of its ungainliness).
NZ plugs are good.
British plugs are beautiful. A masterpiece of design. They are the most reliable, robust plugs in the world - and what’s more, the design expresses that. Pure functionality, at its best, evinces loveliness
The Mies van der Rohe of plug designs. Fie on you, you Antipodean heathen
Sorry, are you talking up your flint napping skills again?
American toilet bowls are very large and deep. Don’t know what’s going on with them, really.
And as for the plugs, I am constantly fretting that someone might electrocute themselves.
British plugs on the other hand are such clunky, ungainly things. (A lot of British design is like that, the best British design somehow makes a virtue of its ungainliness).
NZ plugs are good.
British plugs are beautiful. A masterpiece of design. They are the most reliable, robust plugs in the world - and what’s more, the design expresses that. Pure functionality, at its best, evinces loveliness
The Mies van der Rohe of plug designs. Fie on you, you Antipodean heathen
Allegedly at least one variety of Brazilian (electric) plug shares the virtues of the British version.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
Hamas has, in part, been propped up by the Israeli state - Netanyahu admits this.
Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections not by a hardline on Israel, but on a classical campaign against corruption in the Palestinian Authority.
One reason that Islamists get support in so much of the world is their social programmes for the poor and against corruption in government. Their supporters buy into the harsh Islamism as a result, particularly when the alternative seems to be corrupt western puppets. In many ways they have taken over the place vacated by the Communists.
If we want to stamp out Islamist terror then we need to drain the swamp that breeds such ideology.
American toilet bowls are very large and deep. Don’t know what’s going on with them, really.
And as for the plugs, I am constantly fretting that someone might electrocute themselves.
British plugs on the other hand are such clunky, ungainly things. (A lot of British design is like that, the best British design somehow makes a virtue of its ungainliness).
NZ plugs are good.
British plugs are beautiful. A masterpiece of design. They are the most reliable, robust plugs in the world - and what’s more, the design expresses that. Pure functionality, at its best, evinces loveliness
The Mies van der Rohe of plug designs. Fie on you, you Antipodean heathen
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
Representative democracy is a hill I am prepared to die on (almost literally).
But I have toyed with the thought experiment of replacing the Lords with online public voting, and then retaining the Parliament Act or even supercharging it. The public gains the right to ask the elected chamber to “think again” but we don’t get a “people’s assembly” imposing the death penalty.
I certainly don’t want to replace representative democracy. And I don’t want to replace the Lords either, although it could obviously do with reform.
For me, deliberative democracy panels are an interesting way of adding to the process of policy formation. For example, what if we established one for every white paper?
It’s an interesting idea. What about “lay members” shadowing select committees and given a secretariat to produce reports.
I think it is a difficult position to be in as leader of the opposition during a national emergency like the pandemic. However, you hope the opposition will see issue with proposals and be able to nudge government towards a better solution.
Jeremy Hunt was actually very good at this e.g. government - shut all schools, Hunt, I think that might have an issue, where do key workers kids go? How about running classes for those.
Overwhelmingly Starmer was always harder, faster, further. His "ideas" were normally even worse e.g. everybody needs to test every time they leave the house to meet anybody. It just isn't practical.
Or the we need to fast track PPE providers, here is a dossier of potential providers we think you need to talk to (who turned out to be even more dodgy than the ones the government used).
Or close the border now, 18 months into the pandemic....because at the outset that would have been racist.
I didn't agree with Starmer for much of the pandemic, we would have had an approach similar to Scotland or Wales, or much of Europe too. It would have been better at some stuff and worse at others, but the overall outcomes for the country would be marginally rather than significantly different. Some individuals of course would have preferred and or fared better under different approaches.
And we get a major pandemic on average approximately every 100 years, so voting based on the pandemic is a very bad way to choose a PM.
It depends what you mean by a "major pandemic". If we mean deaths >10 million, then we've had COVID-19 this century, and HIV, Spanish flu and the third plague pandemic last century. If we mean deaths >1 million, we can add the 1968 flu, the 1957 flu and maybe the big typhus epidemic in the '20s.
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
Representative democracy is a hill I am prepared to die on (almost literally).
But I have toyed with the thought experiment of replacing the Lords with online public voting, and then retaining the Parliament Act or even supercharging it. The public gains the right to ask the elected chamber to “think again” but we don’t get a “people’s assembly” imposing the death penalty.
I'm not the biggest fan of representative democracy - if you're going to have states and parliaments and such, I kinda like the idea of treating it like jury duty; have a lottery, everyone can be in it, pick a name out of the hat and go. It makes career politics impossible, and I think would make politics head towards a form that is based more on the philosophical notion of a veil of ignorance: because whilst the people in government at any time will be in positions of power, they later won't be and therefore know that the decisions they make have to still be beneficial to them when they lose that powerful position. I understand that is logistically difficult in the modern era with geopolitics and it would also rely on a highly technocratic civil service (although that's not much different to now), but I think outcomes would be clearer. Give each "jury government" around 5-6 years, with the expectation that the first 6 months may require them to figure out exactly how they are gonna govern - will factions of similarly minded people emerge and form "parties" and "governments" or will everything have to be a policy brought to them for an up down vote of the entire jury, will they have a committee system where different people with different specialisations will go away and create policy which will get voted on. It could be very interesting. Laborious, yes, but interesting.
American toilet bowls are very large and deep. Don’t know what’s going on with them, really.
And as for the plugs, I am constantly fretting that someone might electrocute themselves.
British plugs on the other hand are such clunky, ungainly things. (A lot of British design is like that, the best British design somehow makes a virtue of its ungainliness).
NZ plugs are good.
US toilets are large but with a small bore and therefore easily blocked. No to those.
Our plug design is the way it is because we have ring circuits and not radial circuits (saving copper after the war) but even on a radial circuit it is still useful to have an off switch and an individual fuse.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
Hamas has, in part, been propped up by the Israeli state - Netanyahu admits this.
Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections not by a hardline on Israel, but on a classical campaign against corruption in the Palestinian Authority.
One reason that Islamists get support in so much of the world is their social programmes for the poor and against corruption in government. Their supporters buy into the harsh Islamism as a result, particularly when the alternative seems to be corrupt western puppets. In many ways they have taken over the place vacated by the Communists.
If we want to stamp out Islamist terror then we need to drain the swamp that breeds such ideology.
Yet by all accounts the Hamas leadership are not only breathtakingly corrupt but quite openly so.
I’m not sure “we” are in a position to drain these swamps. Yes Western countries and charities are donors, but we know the limits of influence in these situations. It’s up to the leaders and people of Palestine to root it out.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
Is there any suggestion that Palestinians outside Gaza oppose Hamas?
Because we have had an awful lot of demos here and elsewhere supporting what Hamas did.
I posted polling (from before recent events) the other day showing about 1/4 of Palestinians (in Palestine) support Hamas.
The ways people fail to understand the British amaze me. British plugs are great.
I can see a deal forming here. We get mixer taps, they get safe plugs.
Hard no to German “shelf loos”
But we should adopt their practise of a tiny little biscuit or chocolate with a coffee. Civilised
Where do you go, and where have you been for the last few years, where they don’t give you a tiny biscuit or chocolate with your coffee unless it’s a takeout?
Everywhere? Honestly I’ve never been served an automatic tiny biscuit or choc with my coffee in the UK. Not in bijou cafes, high street chains or anywhere
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
Representative democracy is a hill I am prepared to die on (almost literally).
But I have toyed with the thought experiment of replacing the Lords with online public voting, and then retaining the Parliament Act or even supercharging it. The public gains the right to ask the elected chamber to “think again” but we don’t get a “people’s assembly” imposing the death penalty.
I'm not the biggest fan of representative democracy - if you're going to have states and parliaments and such, I kinda like the idea of treating it like jury duty; have a lottery, everyone can be in it, pick a name out of the hat and go. It makes career politics impossible, and I think would make politics head towards a form that is based more on the philosophical notion of a veil of ignorance: because whilst the people in government at any time will be in positions of power, they later won't be and therefore know that the decisions they make have to still be beneficial to them when they lose that powerful position. I understand that is logistically difficult in the modern era with geopolitics and it would also rely on a highly technocratic civil service (although that's not much different to now), but I think outcomes would be clearer. Give each "jury government" around 5-6 years, with the expectation that the first 6 months may require them to figure out exactly how they are gonna govern - will factions of similarly minded people emerge and form "parties" and "governments" or will everything have to be a policy brought to them for an up down vote of the entire jury, will they have a committee system where different people with different specialisations will go away and create policy which will get voted on. It could be very interesting. Laborious, yes, but interesting.
That would lead to government by the unelected bureaucracy of the civil service, even more than we have already.
American toilet bowls are very large and deep. Don’t know what’s going on with them, really.
And as for the plugs, I am constantly fretting that someone might electrocute themselves.
British plugs on the other hand are such clunky, ungainly things. (A lot of British design is like that, the best British design somehow makes a virtue of its ungainliness).
NZ plugs are good.
British plugs are beautiful. A masterpiece of design. They are the most reliable, robust plugs in the world - and what’s more, the design expresses that. Pure functionality, at its best, evinces loveliness
The Mies van der Rohe of plug designs. Fie on you, you Antipodean heathen
American toilet bowls are very large and deep. Don’t know what’s going on with them, really.
And as for the plugs, I am constantly fretting that someone might electrocute themselves.
British plugs on the other hand are such clunky, ungainly things. (A lot of British design is like that, the best British design somehow makes a virtue of its ungainliness).
NZ plugs are good.
British plugs are beautiful. A masterpiece of design. They are the most reliable, robust plugs in the world - and what’s more, the design expresses that. Pure functionality, at its best, evinces loveliness
The Mies van der Rohe of plug designs. Fie on you, you Antipodean heathen
Allegedly at least one variety of Brazilian (electric) plug shares the virtues of the British version.
As an aside I think Moeen Ali has made an error of judgement. Now is not the time for unexplained, simplistic shows of support for Palestine which can so easily be misinterpreted as supporting Hamas.
I suspect (I hope?) I probably agree with much of his view on the overall Palestinian situation but he leaves himself open to legitimate attack simply posting pictures of the Palestinian flag under the current circumstances.
This is the problem with all flags: do they represent innocent civilians or guilty governments? They are the original virtue signal. And, of course, highly susceptible to whichever way the wind is blowing.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
Hamas has, in part, been propped up by the Israeli state - Netanyahu admits this.
Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections not by a hardline on Israel, but on a classical campaign against corruption in the Palestinian Authority.
One reason that Islamists get support in so much of the world is their social programmes for the poor and against corruption in government. Their supporters buy into the harsh Islamism as a result, particularly when the alternative seems to be corrupt western puppets. In many ways they have taken over the place vacated by the Communists.
If we want to stamp out Islamist terror then we need to drain the swamp that breeds such ideology.
Your trouble there is that for one reason or another the international community thinks that Hamas is a terrorist organisation. You'd have to search carefully through the Hamas Covenant to understand why this might be but if you are going to elect such a group of people then you should be aware that it will bring consequences.
I find it difficult to believe that there would be a western country that wouldn't, were the Palestinians to eschew violence against Israel, be queuing up to shower billions upon billions of dollars on any Palestinian state. Gaza, for example.
American toilet bowls are very large and deep. Don’t know what’s going on with them, really.
And as for the plugs, I am constantly fretting that someone might electrocute themselves.
British plugs on the other hand are such clunky, ungainly things. (A lot of British design is like that, the best British design somehow makes a virtue of its ungainliness).
NZ plugs are good.
US toilets are large but with a small bore and therefore easily blocked. No to those.
Our plug design is the way it is because we have ring circuits and not radial circuits (saving copper after the war) but even on a radial circuit it is still useful to have an off switch and an individual fuse.
US plugs have to be the worst. Knock the cable and the things just drop out. Followed by Swiss, because their inset sockets annoyingly non compatible with Euro plugs, then Euro, which is ok but not up to UK standards. The UK is very clearly best.
I see we're at the 'our plugs are the best' stage of the British/English agonised self examination. Who knows what bloody revolution might have occured if the EU had tried to ban them.
American toilet bowls are very large and deep. Don’t know what’s going on with them, really.
And as for the plugs, I am constantly fretting that someone might electrocute themselves.
British plugs on the other hand are such clunky, ungainly things. (A lot of British design is like that, the best British design somehow makes a virtue of its ungainliness).
NZ plugs are good.
British plugs are beautiful. A masterpiece of design. They are the most reliable, robust plugs in the world - and what’s more, the design expresses that. Pure functionality, at its best, evinces loveliness
The Mies van der Rohe of plug designs. Fie on you, you Antipodean heathen
Allegedly at least one variety of Brazilian (electric) plug shares the virtues of the British version.
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
Representative democracy is a hill I am prepared to die on (almost literally).
But I have toyed with the thought experiment of replacing the Lords with online public voting, and then retaining the Parliament Act or even supercharging it. The public gains the right to ask the elected chamber to “think again” but we don’t get a “people’s assembly” imposing the death penalty.
I'm not the biggest fan of representative democracy - if you're going to have states and parliaments and such, I kinda like the idea of treating it like jury duty; have a lottery, everyone can be in it, pick a name out of the hat and go. It makes career politics impossible, and I think would make politics head towards a form that is based more on the philosophical notion of a veil of ignorance: because whilst the people in government at any time will be in positions of power, they later won't be and therefore know that the decisions they make have to still be beneficial to them when they lose that powerful position. I understand that is logistically difficult in the modern era with geopolitics and it would also rely on a highly technocratic civil service (although that's not much different to now), but I think outcomes would be clearer. Give each "jury government" around 5-6 years, with the expectation that the first 6 months may require them to figure out exactly how they are gonna govern - will factions of similarly minded people emerge and form "parties" and "governments" or will everything have to be a policy brought to them for an up down vote of the entire jury, will they have a committee system where different people with different specialisations will go away and create policy which will get voted on. It could be very interesting. Laborious, yes, but interesting.
However you carve it up - your way or via constant referendums - direct democracy would mean the death penalty, much slower advances in things like gay rights, a highly unbalanced budget, and even less long term planning.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
Is there any suggestion that Palestinians outside Gaza oppose Hamas?
Because we have had an awful lot of demos here and elsewhere supporting what Hamas did.
Judging the opinion of a whole population based on the demos by a tiny minority is a fools game.
Agreed.
I also keep getting confused reading this exchange about demos, the plural of "demo", because my mind wants to read it as about demos, as in "democracy".
American toilet bowls are very large and deep. Don’t know what’s going on with them, really.
And as for the plugs, I am constantly fretting that someone might electrocute themselves.
British plugs on the other hand are such clunky, ungainly things. (A lot of British design is like that, the best British design somehow makes a virtue of its ungainliness).
NZ plugs are good.
US toilets are large but with a small bore and therefore easily blocked. No to those.
Our plug design is the way it is because we have ring circuits and not radial circuits (saving copper after the war) but even on a radial circuit it is still useful to have an off switch and an individual fuse.
US plugs have to be the worst. Knock the cable and the things just drop out. Followed by Swiss, because their inset sockets annoyingly non compatible with Euro plugs, then Euro, which is ok but not up to UK standards. The UK is very clearly best.
You can use a US plug in Australia if you ram it in hard enough.
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
Representative democracy is a hill I am prepared to die on (almost literally).
But I have toyed with the thought experiment of replacing the Lords with online public voting, and then retaining the Parliament Act or even supercharging it. The public gains the right to ask the elected chamber to “think again” but we don’t get a “people’s assembly” imposing the death penalty.
Again I like the Swiss system. Though I do agree with your concerns about things like the Death Penalty.
I don't think the Death Penalty passes even outside of representative democracy - lots of people support it, but it seems more like that's a reactionary knee jerk. But having to talk it out with people, see the evidence, etc etc. I think fewer and fewer people would support - a la 12 Angry Men (although maybe that's the optimist in me).
Sunak seems doomed, but one thing he should try, in my opinion, is to contrast his ‘Eat out to help out’ optimism with Sir Keir’s “we better all stay in for a few more months this summer, even though the worst was way behind us” strategy,
“Johnson Variant”, Jesus Christ. He must have been secretly hoping for more cases when we opened up against his advice
"Guys, remember that time I used your money to pay people to go out for pizza and a load of them caught Cofid and died" doesn't sound like a vote winner to me, but I'm happy for the Tories to give it a go.
Obviously I am aware that it’s a risky strategy, but I think it’s worth it to show Sir Keir up as a doom monger that wanted to lock us all indoors (while he was ok with booze ups for himself & friends)
You might regret invoking the memory of Sir Beer Korma – Big-G-Wales will be bothering you every five minutes
It’s quite something that people see Boris letting people who were working together indoors all day have a drink after work as 100 on the outrage index, whilst Sir Keir having one himself is a zero, when the difference is just a technicality
More like 52-48 really, which as we know is not all or nothing
It's not a technicality when it was a year apart and very different regulations in force.
Which is why Johnson got a police caution, why he lied to the Commons and why he resigned in disgrace, while Starmer was cleared by the police.
It's obvious that you don't like Starmer and think the sun shines out of Johnsons fundament, but facts actually matter.
The fact is that Boris got a police caution along with the current Prime Minister and no one is saying it’s a reason for Sunak to resign.
Sir Keir got away with the same thing on a technicality. He was advocating knocking us down for longer, banning us from meeting friends for a drink, ostensibly because it would have risked spreading a terrible disease, but was happy to share a drink inside with friends himself. Maybe the disease knew not to spread around Party political types. Either that or he was being disingenuous all along
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
Hamas has, in part, been propped up by the Israeli state - Netanyahu admits this.
Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections not by a hardline on Israel, but on a classical campaign against corruption in the Palestinian Authority.
One reason that Islamists get support in so much of the world is their social programmes for the poor and against corruption in government. Their supporters buy into the harsh Islamism as a result, particularly when the alternative seems to be corrupt western puppets. In many ways they have taken over the place vacated by the Communists.
If we want to stamp out Islamist terror then we need to drain the swamp that breeds such ideology.
Yet by all accounts the Hamas leadership are not only breathtakingly corrupt but quite openly so.
I’m not sure “we” are in a position to drain these swamps. Yes Western countries and charities are donors, but we know the limits of influence in these situations. It’s up to the leaders and people of Palestine to root it out.
The leaders and people of Palestine are not the like the leaders and people of a normal state. They are heavily constrained by Israel, who continue to militarily occupy the West Bank and have kept Gaza effectively isolated from the world. Israel has to be part of the solution.
Deliberative democracy models - think of a v large jury - are really interesting. The pioneering theorist was James Fishkin now at Stanford. I decided not to do post-grad but if I had I likely would have studied under him.
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely. Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
Representative democracy is a hill I am prepared to die on (almost literally).
But I have toyed with the thought experiment of replacing the Lords with online public voting, and then retaining the Parliament Act or even supercharging it. The public gains the right to ask the elected chamber to “think again” but we don’t get a “people’s assembly” imposing the death penalty.
I'm not the biggest fan of representative democracy - if you're going to have states and parliaments and such, I kinda like the idea of treating it like jury duty; have a lottery, everyone can be in it, pick a name out of the hat and go. It makes career politics impossible, and I think would make politics head towards a form that is based more on the philosophical notion of a veil of ignorance: because whilst the people in government at any time will be in positions of power, they later won't be and therefore know that the decisions they make have to still be beneficial to them when they lose that powerful position. I understand that is logistically difficult in the modern era with geopolitics and it would also rely on a highly technocratic civil service (although that's not much different to now), but I think outcomes would be clearer. Give each "jury government" around 5-6 years, with the expectation that the first 6 months may require them to figure out exactly how they are gonna govern - will factions of similarly minded people emerge and form "parties" and "governments" or will everything have to be a policy brought to them for an up down vote of the entire jury, will they have a committee system where different people with different specialisations will go away and create policy which will get voted on. It could be very interesting. Laborious, yes, but interesting.
However you carve it up - your way or via constant referendums - direct democracy would mean the death penalty, much slower advances in things like gay rights, a highly unbalanced budget, and even less long term planning.
Burke was and is correct.
I disagree, I think the populace are more likely to engage with political issues more sincerely if they are the ones being asked to enact the policy. By being able to shove it to a representative you also allow yourself the ability to rest on your ideological laurels and not get challenged. Yes, polling at the time when those issues were salient would have suggest the public were on the regressive side, but that was under representative systems with parties and media mediating their political information. When the decision becomes yours, and you feel agency and responsibility for the decision, I think people can be convinced towards less reactionary positions. But, again, optimist about human nature, perhaps.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
So send the military in to liberate the populace and destroy Hamas.
2 birds, one stone.
If they were willing to do it in a way that we generally tried to in Afghanistan then I would agree all the way. But they won't. They are simply flattening the place with no regard for Palestinian casualties.
Its war, that happens. They need to flatten the places which Hamas are using.
There are no easy or peaceful solutions in warfare.
Safe refuge out of Gaza should be allowed for those who don't want to be fighting, many towns or cities have lost 95% of their population in Eastern Ukraine, no reason that won't or shouldn't happen in Gaza City too.
The civilians in Eastern Ukraine were allowed to leave. The civilians in Gaza are not.
But interesting that you are now (inadvetently) comparing the what is being done to the Palestinians with what was done to the Ukrainians.
Which countries want to take them in ?
Exactly , not one Arab state has piped up and said send to us we will look after them , any female or male under xx years etc.
Comments
"Rosie Duffield MP
@RosieDuffield1
Much love to my friend
@DrLisaCameronMP
who has had a really tough time 💜"
https://twitter.com/RosieDuffield1/status/1712388578800459912
Barclays Board must be feeling like right chumps.
I call to UK 🇬🇧 join the global - European standards for plugs 🔌
Makes sense - it is not a ideological issue - just common sense …
https://twitter.com/GunterFehlinger/status/1712235878087573561
I suspect (I hope?) I probably agree with much of his view on the overall Palestinian situation but he leaves himself open to legitimate attack simply posting pictures of the Palestinian flag under the current circumstances.
I'm not sure about your carriageway through the Woodhead tunnel.
I think a tunnel with a portal before Crowden going all the way through to Langsett is the way. Dual carriageway would suffice.
Also even within some European countries there are different outlets forms e.g. Italy.
However, I do think the Tories had fallen so low thanks to Truss that Sunak also reminding folk he’s from central casting won’t hurt.
On balance I wonder if we’re heading to a 42/32 Labour lead, which will encourage the Tories but basically still means Labour are selling the deal?
Electoral Calculus suggests the cliff edge effects start at around 40/35 to Labour on the new boundaries. Presumably the actual Tory strategy is to limp home to a 2005 Howard result, which would look a lot better on these boundaries.
There are no easy or peaceful solutions in warfare.
Safe refuge out of Gaza should be allowed for those who don't want to be fighting, many towns or cities have lost 95% of their population in Eastern Ukraine, no reason that won't or shouldn't happen in Gaza City too.
Nice to see some Israeli intelligence can do its job after the clusterfuck that was the weekend. Probably had Frank Spencer in charge the day the intel on Hamas came through.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-28742270
I’ll get my coat.
(*Which reminds me: interesting podcast from Zoe on Healthspan versus Lifespan https://zoe.com/learn/podcast-longer-and-healthier-life)
Everyone gets to see all the evidence and gets to interrogate the experts directly - not mediated through media and politics. In a logistical form the easiest way to do this would be to have local assemblies that work on a consensus model (only taking decisions which all individuals agree to) and building further consensus with other localised assemblies. It has many things in common with democratic confederalism - apart from the consensus stuff which I typically hate... Is it a logistical nightmare? Yes. Would it produce positive policy? Almost certainly not. Is it philosophically distinct from representative democracy or even a direct referenda - yes.
(Whether that will still be true in a couple of years' time is another matter.)
But we should adopt their practise of a tiny little biscuit or chocolate with a coffee. Civilised
Didn’t such a jury recommend a soft Brexit (staying in the single market), perhaps as part of NAFTA?
We should be looking at in these kinds of models very closely.
Democracy in the social media world needs rejuvenation.
But interesting that you are now (inadvetently) comparing the what is being done to the Palestinians with what was done to the Ukrainians.
Because we have had an awful lot of demos here and elsewhere supporting what Hamas did.
The Foreign Office has announced it will "facilitate" commercial flights to the UK for those wanting to leave the country.
The first flight is due to depart from Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv today.
A "rapid deployment team'" has also been sent to Israel to assist British citizens on the ground.
In return they can send us folding clothes drying racks
These daft europlugs don't even have an off switch.
Which is why Johnson got a police caution, why he lied to the Commons and why he resigned in disgrace, while Starmer was cleared by the police.
It's obvious that you don't like Starmer and think the sun shines out of Johnsons fundament, but facts actually matter.
Don’t know what’s going on with them, really.
And as for the plugs, I am constantly fretting that someone might electrocute themselves.
British plugs on the other hand are such clunky, ungainly things. (A lot of British design is like that, the best British design somehow makes a virtue of its ungainliness).
NZ plugs are good.
They now come across as giving the impression that, of 200 countries in the world, they’d change the lights at the stadium on in support of a nation suffering from a terrorist attack for 199 of them.
But I have toyed with the thought experiment of replacing the Lords with online public voting, and then retaining the Parliament Act or even supercharging it. The public gains the right to ask the elected chamber to “think again” but we don’t get a “people’s assembly” imposing the death penalty.
*sadly deceased.
As for outside Gaza the parades of happiness at the Hamas action are quite numerous.
Emma Nicholson (Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne) and Zahida Manzoor (Baroness Manzoor) in 2016 from LibDems to Con.
Still in the Lords, David Trimble from the Ulster Unionists in 2007, and Craig Mackinlay from UKIP in 2005. Edward Haughey also did UUP->Con earlier.
In the Commons, Stratton Mills in 1972 joined the Conservatives when the rest of the UUP withdrew from the Tory whip.
Various National Liberal MPs became absorbed into the Tories.
The Guardian will call this an Israeli war crime against a defenceless civilian
https://twitter.com/LeoKearse/status/1712401645013766615
Have to admit, I was not expecting the number of Tory MPs to increase this week!
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
The Mies van der Rohe of plug designs. Fie on you, you Antipodean heathen
For me, deliberative democracy panels are an interesting way of adding to the process of policy formation. For example, what if we established one for every white paper?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67087840.amp
@malcolmg next?
One reason that Islamists get support in so much of the world is their social programmes for the poor and against corruption in government. Their supporters buy into the harsh Islamism as a result, particularly when the alternative seems to be corrupt western puppets. In many ways they have taken over the place vacated by the Communists.
If we want to stamp out Islamist terror then we need to drain the swamp that breeds such ideology.
Sprinkling it on top is very definitely not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q
Our plug design is the way it is because we have ring circuits and not radial circuits (saving copper after the war) but even on a radial circuit it is still useful to have an off switch and an individual fuse.
I’m not sure “we” are in a position to drain these swamps. Yes Western countries and charities are donors, but we know the limits of influence in these situations. It’s up to the leaders and people of Palestine to root it out.
WHERE CAN I GET THIS
I find it difficult to believe that there would be a western country that wouldn't, were the Palestinians to eschew violence against Israel, be queuing up to shower billions upon billions of dollars on any Palestinian state. Gaza, for example.
This burns and melts at the sane time. When the burning, melted plastic sticks to you….
Don’t burn flags, children. It’s bad for the environment and it’s *not* ok for you.
Burke was and is correct.
I also keep getting confused reading this exchange about demos, the plural of "demo", because my mind wants to read it as about demos, as in "democracy".
Sir Keir got away with the same thing on a technicality. He was advocating knocking us down for longer, banning us from meeting friends for a drink, ostensibly because it would have risked spreading a terrible disease, but was happy to share a drink inside with friends himself. Maybe the disease knew not to spread around Party political types. Either that or he was being disingenuous all along
Wouldn’t a more natural fit be Labour .