I would trust almost anyone on almost anything more than I would trust Corbyn. I am really not sure what this proves other than the membership of the Labour party were seriously deluded in voting that man leader twice. Its up there with the Tory membership thinking Liz Truss, or indeed IDS, were an answer to anything useful.
A lot to be said for returning the selection of the Leader to MPs. For both main parties.
Good morning everyone; a greeting, as opposed to a comment on the weather!
I wonder whether there’s a case for the members producing the ‘long list’ and the MP’s deciding from there?
Sounds even worse. Say Corbyn beats Starmer 45-25 others 30 and then the MPs choose Starmer. His authority is massively dented from the start and the party inevitably divided.
The real long term answer is one that never gets mentioned. Get "normal" people more involved in the Conservative and Labour parties rather than just fanatics.
Normal people have way better things to do with their time.
Kind of. The time I spend on here would/could be more productive within a party set up. But you lot are far more interesting and pleasant than I expect any set of partisan party members to be.
Yes, it is the variety of views and the differing viewpoints that make the debate and the threads worth reading. Meetings of the 4 feet good 2 feet bad variety would be deeply boring by comparison.
I don't know what your local parties are like, but mine has agreeable discussions akin to PB, usually with a guest speaker and a variety of views expressed. Lockdown helped as it got potential speakers used to doing remote sessions, so we've had people like Reeves and Lammy who wouldn't want to trek down to deepest Surrey. I chair the meeting lightly, mainly enforcing the rule that nobody gets to speak twice before everyone who wants to has spoken once. We vote on the issues at the end and I tease the members for being too North Korean if we get too much unanimity. The "losers" generally take it in good part if they've had a decent hearing.
People find it satisfying and we get a lot of normal-looking participants. But we're all clear that having a discussion isn't actually going to change anything - again, much like PB. We occasionally send a resolution to the NEC, who I'm sure find it very interesting . By and large, members are realistic about not changing national policy and simply enjoying the chance to discuss issues with Shadow Cabinet people who do, as well as with local people of broadly similar outlook but perhaps quite different views on a specific issue.
I gather that some constituency parties have a more strident atmosphere, and it perhaps does depend partly on local leadership style. I don't try to force any particular views, and consequently get along with all the different types of member. The price for that is that I'm not especially influential in the local party decisions, but so what?
Stockton South mostly had a similar atmosphere, as did Thornaby Joint Branch. I've been chair and treasurer and secretary. It only got ansty after the crank invasion where absolutism and finger pointing became endemic. I remember one gloriously factional emergency meeting over Europe where there were unofficial meetings happening outside before outrageous motions were submitted and then shouted about.
But that was only for a little while. I believe that after the crank exodus (and I'm not around to know any better) that it settled down into calm before its abolition last month.
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
The swing voters in hyper-marginals like Bury North talk of little else except AI. They don't give a shit about access to GPs or #cozzielivs, they want to discuss mixed scenario model free deep reinforcement learning using quantile regression soft critic.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
It is quite an interesting poll. The public (or Labour voters) trust Starmer and Corbyn more or less equally, despite their positions being very far apart. Corbyn is more mistrusted though.
I wonder what the Venn diagram of that support and mistrust is.
Though the clearest thing from that poll is that the majority of people do not trust any of Corbyn, Starmer or Sunak on the issue, with trust in them varying from only 18 to 27%.
Just as there is no right answer to the troubles in Israel/Palestine, there is no popular approach to it either. It is a subject that all wise politicians and commentators should avoid.
Very true. PB is beginning to resemble CiF of old in this regard. Endless back and forth about the issue.
There's too much middle class mincing around and not enough vitriol.
Israel/Palestine is El Clasico of Internet discussions. If you've got a chance to get on the pitch then you lace your boots up.
Too many tired old donkeys seeing out the fag ends of their careers and whose moves everyone has seen before.
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
According to the best polling available the vast majority of Gazans want to stay in Gaza and West Bank.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.
"Gaza and the West Bank". Not Gaza. The people in Gaza have largely not settled in Gaza - that's why they claim to be refugees and congregate in camps. And similar in the West Bank but less extreme.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
The swing voters in hyper-marginals like Bury North talk of little else except AI. They don't give a shit about access to GPs or #cozzielivs, they want to discuss mixed scenario model free deep reinforcement learning using quantile regression soft critic.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
Rishi can surely retort that they said that about the Internet back in the day.
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
Yes, it is. And bravo to him
It’s actually annoying Remoaners on TwiX. “Before Brexit, Sunak would have got the US President to attend etc etc “
Yeah right. I can imagine Dave Cameron hosting a conference about social media and Barack Obama jumping straight on the plane
Meanwhile the Guardian has managed to make the whole summit somehow ABOUT Brexit
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
The swing voters in hyper-marginals like Bury North talk of little else except AI. They don't give a shit about access to GPs or #cozzielivs, they want to discuss mixed scenario model free deep reinforcement learning using quantile regression soft critic.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
An utterly fatuous take. AI is easily as important and dangerous as climate change. Do people complain when we have conferences about that?
This is just the ill-informed whining of people who don’t grasp the significance of this tech. They will when they start losing their jobs
AI could replicate an entire Dan Hodges article in the time it take Hodges to tweet
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
The swing voters in hyper-marginals like Bury North talk of little else except AI. They don't give a shit about access to GPs or #cozzielivs, they want to discuss mixed scenario model free deep reinforcement learning using quantile regression soft critic.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
Rishi can surely retort that they said that about the Internet back in the day.
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
Yes, it is. And bravo to him
It’s actually annoying Remoaners on TwiX. “Before Brexit, Sunak would have got the US President to attend etc etc “
Yeah right. I can imagine Dave Cameron hosting a conference about social media and Barack Obama jumping straight on the plane
Meanwhile the Guardian has managed to make the whole summit somehow ABOUT Brexit
I think it’s the daily challenge in the Guardian newsroom as to who can take the most unrelated topic and push it through the lens of Brexit or the social justice issue du jour .
Bonus points if you can get in how evil Boris and/or Trump are.
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
The swing voters in hyper-marginals like Bury North talk of little else except AI. They don't give a shit about access to GPs or #cozzielivs, they want to discuss mixed scenario model free deep reinforcement learning using quantile regression soft critic.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
Rishi can surely retort that they said that about the Internet back in the day.
AI is coming. To what extent we don't know - but we might as well try and have a Union jack on at least some of it.
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
According to the best polling available the vast majority of Gazans want to stay in Gaza and West Bank.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.
"Gaza and the West Bank". Not Gaza. The people in Gaza have largely not settled in Gaza - that's why they claim to be refugees and congregate in camps. And similar in the West Bank but less extreme.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
They dream of returning to a mythical olive grove in central Israel that their great-grandfather sold for a few pennies in 1948 and is now a small city worth billions. It's not a viable proposition. The 'restoration' of populations and boundaries is a dangerous illusion. They need a route to a better future, not a better past.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
The swing voters in hyper-marginals like Bury North talk of little else except AI. They don't give a shit about access to GPs or #cozzielivs, they want to discuss mixed scenario model free deep reinforcement learning using quantile regression soft critic.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
He needs a job after the next GE, doesn’t he?
Bingo. Doesn’t care about the next election, he's banning smoking, that's his 'legacy' taken care of, now it's off to be a 'tech bro'.
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
According to the best polling available the vast majority of Gazans want to stay in Gaza and West Bank.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.
"Gaza and the West Bank". Not Gaza. The people in Gaza have largely not settled in Gaza - that's why they claim to be refugees and congregate in camps. And similar in the West Bank but less extreme.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
Also the wording of the poll as reported in Foreign Affairs is a bit odd. They could have never "considered" leaving their homeland not because they don't want to, but because they are extremely poor and their passports aren't worth anything
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
The swing voters in hyper-marginals like Bury North talk of little else except AI. They don't give a shit about access to GPs or #cozzielivs, they want to discuss mixed scenario model free deep reinforcement learning using quantile regression soft critic.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
Rishi can surely retort that they said that about the Internet back in the day.
The better comparison is climate change
The trouble is nobody seriously believes Rishi convened this because he is deeply concerned about the future of AI and wants to get global consensus on it. Even if he were, everything he does is now interpreted as the latest effort to recover the Tory position in the polls.
Hodges’ take is an example of this. Nothing the government does or initiates now is taken in good faith. It’s all through the prism of the next election.
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
Yes, it is. And bravo to him
It’s actually annoying Remoaners on TwiX. “Before Brexit, Sunak would have got the US President to attend etc etc “
Yeah right. I can imagine Dave Cameron hosting a conference about social media and Barack Obama jumping straight on the plane
Meanwhile the Guardian has managed to make the whole summit somehow ABOUT Brexit
They've invited Musk; I wonder if they're going to invite any AI experts as well?
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
The swing voters in hyper-marginals like Bury North talk of little else except AI. They don't give a shit about access to GPs or #cozzielivs, they want to discuss mixed scenario model free deep reinforcement learning using quantile regression soft critic.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
Rishi can surely retort that they said that about the Internet back in the day.
On a more sensible level - i would say, at the moment, it is at the level of having international discussions about nuclear research controls.
While this isn't a world ending problem at the moment, it is a good idea for there to be consensus on stuff that is and isn't done.
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
According to the best polling available the vast majority of Gazans want to stay in Gaza and West Bank.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.
"Gaza and the West Bank". Not Gaza. The people in Gaza have largely not settled in Gaza - that's why they claim to be refugees and congregate in camps. And similar in the West Bank but less extreme.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
Also the wording of the poll as reported in Foreign Affairs is a bit odd. They could have never "considered" leaving their homeland not because they don't want to, but because they are extremely poor and their passports aren't worth anything
From the River to the Sea. The homeland in question being Mandate Palestine which was created in 1920 out of the Ottoman Empire. Of course they don't want to leave - they want it back. But the idea that we would be removing people from refugee camps like Rafa against their will is laughable. They want to leave. They DEMAND to leave. And armies of protestors worldwide - including the UK - demand that they be released from their "prison".
Resettlement is what everyone wants. The only debate is to where? Which line drawn on a map has supremacy over which other line drawn on a map?
Or we can have CEASEFIRE NOW. Ok. Forget what happened and who won or lost this spat. Gaza remains. Israel will I anticipate refuse to supply it resources it needs. Egypt will continue to supply it with resources it needs. Iran will continue to supply Hamas with resources it needs to kill Jews.
Gaza does not work. No food or water or power capabilities to sustain the millions. No economy able to let it function independently. It will need to be directly supported. By whom? Neither neighbour will. None of the supposed allies of Free Palestine will. And yet when I suggest that relocating the population - as everyone demands - from this place which cannot sustain the population, I am accused of supporting ethnic cleansing?
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
According to the best polling available the vast majority of Gazans want to stay in Gaza and West Bank.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.
"Gaza and the West Bank". Not Gaza. The people in Gaza have largely not settled in Gaza - that's why they claim to be refugees and congregate in camps. And similar in the West Bank but less extreme.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
They dream of returning to a mythical olive grove in central Israel that their great-grandfather sold for a few pennies in 1948 and is now a small city worth billions. It's not a viable proposition. The 'restoration' of populations and boundaries is a dangerous illusion. They need a route to a better future, not a better past.
Labour would have to completely jump the shark (to the hard Left) for the Tories to win the next election now.
But SKS knows that, and that his support is wide but soft, which is why he's being so careful.
As I said, Lammy was v sensible and super measured this morning on Today.
I rather like the 538 basic analysis - that as an election approaches, the "turn" required to change the result from the current polling becomes harder. And historically rarer.
Then again, we have the May example of a collapse in support overnight as a counter example. My excuse for this was that her polling level was extremely soft.
You say that Starmers support is soft. But he (and the Labour party) have hit a number of headwinds recently. Not vast, but noticeable. Israel/Palestine is the latest. They have weathered each one, reasonably quickly, and without a noticeable long term effect.
I wouldn't say May's support was particularly soft. I think the way I would look at that event is that election campaigns do matter much more than we think. There are more floating voters open to changing their minds at every election than it looks like, because in most election campaigns the two sides are either roughly equally competent, or they are at least not much more or less competent than they were in the months/years before the election campaign.
But in the 2017GE campaign, May and the Tories were really awful in a way that was new to the voters, and Corbyn seemed a long way from the caricature of him that had been created. There was a lot of new information to change the minds of the voters. You couldn't say the same of the 2015GE campaign.
2024GE is much more likely to be a 2015-style snoozefest, but I guess we were all surprised by May's implosion, so you never can be sure.
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
The swing voters in hyper-marginals like Bury North talk of little else except AI. They don't give a shit about access to GPs or #cozzielivs, they want to discuss mixed scenario model free deep reinforcement learning using quantile regression soft critic.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
He needs a job after the next GE, doesn’t he?
Bingo. Doesn’t care about the next election, he's banning smoking, that's his 'legacy' taken care of, now it's off to be a 'tech bro'.
It is quite an interesting poll. The public (or Labour voters) trust Starmer and Corbyn more or less equally, despite their positions being very far apart. Corbyn is more mistrusted though.
I wonder what the Venn diagram of that support and mistrust is.
Though the clearest thing from that poll is that the majority of people do not trust any of Corbyn, Starmer or Sunak on the issue, with trust in them varying from only 18 to 27%.
Just as there is no right answer to the troubles in Israel/Palestine, there is no popular approach to it either. It is a subject that all wise politicians and commentators should avoid.
Very true. PB is beginning to resemble CiF of old in this regard. Endless back and forth about the issue.
There's too much middle class mincing around and not enough vitriol.
Israel/Palestine is El Clasico of Internet discussions. If you've got a chance to get on the pitch then you lace your boots up.
Too many tired old donkeys seeing out the fag ends of their careers and whose moves everyone has seen before.
I would trust almost anyone on almost anything more than I would trust Corbyn. I am really not sure what this proves other than the membership of the Labour party were seriously deluded in voting that man leader twice. Its up there with the Tory membership thinking Liz Truss, or indeed IDS, were an answer to anything useful.
A lot to be said for returning the selection of the Leader to MPs. For both main parties.
Good morning everyone; a greeting, as opposed to a comment on the weather!
I wonder whether there’s a case for the members producing the ‘long list’ and the MP’s deciding from there?
Sounds even worse. Say Corbyn beats Starmer 45-25 others 30 and then the MPs choose Starmer. His authority is massively dented from the start and the party inevitably divided.
The real long term answer is one that never gets mentioned. Get "normal" people more involved in the Conservative and Labour parties rather than just fanatics.
Normal people have way better things to do with their time.
Kind of. The time I spend on here would/could be more productive within a party set up. But you lot are far more interesting and pleasant than I expect any set of partisan party members to be.
Yes, it is the variety of views and the differing viewpoints that make the debate and the threads worth reading. Meetings of the 4 feet good 2 feet bad variety would be deeply boring by comparison.
I don't know what your local parties are like, but mine has agreeable discussions akin to PB, usually with a guest speaker and a variety of views expressed. Lockdown helped as it got potential speakers used to doing remote sessions, so we've had people like Reeves and Lammy who wouldn't want to trek down to deepest Surrey. I chair the meeting lightly, mainly enforcing the rule that nobody gets to speak twice before everyone who wants to has spoken once. We vote on the issues at the end and I tease the members for being too North Korean if we get too much unanimity. The "losers" generally take it in good part if they've had a decent hearing.
People find it satisfying and we get a lot of normal-looking participants. But we're all clear that having a discussion isn't actually going to change anything - again, much like PB. We occasionally send a resolution to the NEC, who I'm sure find it very interesting . By and large, members are realistic about not changing national policy and simply enjoying the chance to discuss issues with Shadow Cabinet people who do, as well as with local people of broadly similar outlook but perhaps quite different views on a specific issue.
I gather that some constituency parties have a more strident atmosphere, and it perhaps does depend partly on local leadership style. I don't try to force any particular views, and consequently get along with all the different types of member. The price for that is that I'm not especially influential in the local party decisions, but so what?
I've not been to a local party meeting for decades, since the days of the SDP. But then I like to think that I am relatively normal (for a lawyer, a Scot etc). When I did go I found them tedious and a great alternative to actually doing any campaigning for the vast majority there.
Dominic Cummings @Dominic2306 · 6m Helen right that CABOFF has failed to follow the orders given in 2020 to keep records of everything - I asked for this to happen - so did Helen - yet the Cabinet Office has destroyed a lot of documents - e.g some that I have accidental copies of do not show up in official records
I would trust almost anyone on almost anything more than I would trust Corbyn. I am really not sure what this proves other than the membership of the Labour party were seriously deluded in voting that man leader twice. Its up there with the Tory membership thinking Liz Truss, or indeed IDS, were an answer to anything useful.
A lot to be said for returning the selection of the Leader to MPs. For both main parties.
Good morning everyone; a greeting, as opposed to a comment on the weather!
I wonder whether there’s a case for the members producing the ‘long list’ and the MP’s deciding from there?
Sounds even worse. Say Corbyn beats Starmer 45-25 others 30 and then the MPs choose Starmer. His authority is massively dented from the start and the party inevitably divided.
The real long term answer is one that never gets mentioned. Get "normal" people more involved in the Conservative and Labour parties rather than just fanatics.
Normal people have way better things to do with their time.
Kind of. The time I spend on here would/could be more productive within a party set up. But you lot are far more interesting and pleasant than I expect any set of partisan party members to be.
Yes, it is the variety of views and the differing viewpoints that make the debate and the threads worth reading. Meetings of the 4 feet good 2 feet bad variety would be deeply boring by comparison.
I don't know what your local parties are like, but mine has agreeable discussions akin to PB, usually with a guest speaker and a variety of views expressed. Lockdown helped as it got potential speakers used to doing remote sessions, so we've had people like Reeves and Lammy who wouldn't want to trek down to deepest Surrey. I chair the meeting lightly, mainly enforcing the rule that nobody gets to speak twice before everyone who wants to has spoken once. We vote on the issues at the end and I tease the members for being too North Korean if we get too much unanimity. The "losers" generally take it in good part if they've had a decent hearing.
People find it satisfying and we get a lot of normal-looking participants. But we're all clear that having a discussion isn't actually going to change anything - again, much like PB. We occasionally send a resolution to the NEC, who I'm sure find it very interesting . By and large, members are realistic about not changing national policy and simply enjoying the chance to discuss issues with Shadow Cabinet people who do, as well as with local people of broadly similar outlook but perhaps quite different views on a specific issue.
I gather that some constituency parties have a more strident atmosphere, and it perhaps does depend partly on local leadership style. I don't try to force any particular views, and consequently get along with all the different types of member. The price for that is that I'm not especially influential in the local party decisions, but so what?
I've not been to a local party meeting for decades, since the days of the SDP. But then I like to think that I am relatively normal (for a lawyer, a Scot etc). When I did go I found them tedious and a great alternative to actually doing any campaigning for the vast majority there.
Ditto (As always David I agree with everything you say, which is starting to worry me).
When I was a constituency chair I had a vice chair who loved all this stuff, plus all the admin around running a local party, whereas I was all about campaigning and getting people elected. We were chalk and cheese and I thought we would never get on, but it was the reverse because I let him do all that crap (which he did wonderfully) and he left me to get on with winning elections.
I would trust almost anyone on almost anything more than I would trust Corbyn. I am really not sure what this proves other than the membership of the Labour party were seriously deluded in voting that man leader twice. Its up there with the Tory membership thinking Liz Truss, or indeed IDS, were an answer to anything useful.
A lot to be said for returning the selection of the Leader to MPs. For both main parties.
Good morning everyone; a greeting, as opposed to a comment on the weather!
I wonder whether there’s a case for the members producing the ‘long list’ and the MP’s deciding from there?
Sounds even worse. Say Corbyn beats Starmer 45-25 others 30 and then the MPs choose Starmer. His authority is massively dented from the start and the party inevitably divided.
The real long term answer is one that never gets mentioned. Get "normal" people more involved in the Conservative and Labour parties rather than just fanatics.
Normal people have way better things to do with their time.
Kind of. The time I spend on here would/could be more productive within a party set up. But you lot are far more interesting and pleasant than I expect any set of partisan party members to be.
Yes, it is the variety of views and the differing viewpoints that make the debate and the threads worth reading. Meetings of the 4 feet good 2 feet bad variety would be deeply boring by comparison.
I don't know what your local parties are like, but mine has agreeable discussions akin to PB, usually with a guest speaker and a variety of views expressed. Lockdown helped as it got potential speakers used to doing remote sessions, so we've had people like Reeves and Lammy who wouldn't want to trek down to deepest Surrey. I chair the meeting lightly, mainly enforcing the rule that nobody gets to speak twice before everyone who wants to has spoken once. We vote on the issues at the end and I tease the members for being too North Korean if we get too much unanimity. The "losers" generally take it in good part if they've had a decent hearing.
People find it satisfying and we get a lot of normal-looking participants. But we're all clear that having a discussion isn't actually going to change anything - again, much like PB. We occasionally send a resolution to the NEC, who I'm sure find it very interesting . By and large, members are realistic about not changing national policy and simply enjoying the chance to discuss issues with Shadow Cabinet people who do, as well as with local people of broadly similar outlook but perhaps quite different views on a specific issue.
I gather that some constituency parties have a more strident atmosphere, and it perhaps does depend partly on local leadership style. I don't try to force any particular views, and consequently get along with all the different types of member. The price for that is that I'm not especially influential in the local party decisions, but so what?
I've not been to a local party meeting for decades, since the days of the SDP. But then I like to think that I am relatively normal (for a lawyer, a Scot etc). When I did go I found them tedious and a great alternative to actually doing any campaigning for the vast majority there.
Ditto (As always David I agree with everything you say, which is starting to worry me).
When I was a constituency chair I had a vice chair who loved all this stuff, plus all the admin around running a local party, whereas I was all about campaigning and getting people elected. We were chalk and cheese and I thought we would never get on, but it was the reverse because I let him do all that crap (which he did wonderfully) and he left me to get on with winning elections.
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
The swing voters in hyper-marginals like Bury North talk of little else except AI. They don't give a shit about access to GPs or #cozzielivs, they want to discuss mixed scenario model free deep reinforcement learning using quantile regression soft critic.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
If a quill pen and abacus are good enough for Dan Hodges, they should be good enough for anybody.
I would trust almost anyone on almost anything more than I would trust Corbyn. I am really not sure what this proves other than the membership of the Labour party were seriously deluded in voting that man leader twice. Its up there with the Tory membership thinking Liz Truss, or indeed IDS, were an answer to anything useful.
A lot to be said for returning the selection of the Leader to MPs. For both main parties.
Good morning everyone; a greeting, as opposed to a comment on the weather!
I wonder whether there’s a case for the members producing the ‘long list’ and the MP’s deciding from there?
Sounds even worse. Say Corbyn beats Starmer 45-25 others 30 and then the MPs choose Starmer. His authority is massively dented from the start and the party inevitably divided.
The real long term answer is one that never gets mentioned. Get "normal" people more involved in the Conservative and Labour parties rather than just fanatics.
Normal people have way better things to do with their time.
Kind of. The time I spend on here would/could be more productive within a party set up. But you lot are far more interesting and pleasant than I expect any set of partisan party members to be.
Yes, it is the variety of views and the differing viewpoints that make the debate and the threads worth reading. Meetings of the 4 feet good 2 feet bad variety would be deeply boring by comparison.
I don't know what your local parties are like, but mine has agreeable discussions akin to PB, usually with a guest speaker and a variety of views expressed. Lockdown helped as it got potential speakers used to doing remote sessions, so we've had people like Reeves and Lammy who wouldn't want to trek down to deepest Surrey. I chair the meeting lightly, mainly enforcing the rule that nobody gets to speak twice before everyone who wants to has spoken once. We vote on the issues at the end and I tease the members for being too North Korean if we get too much unanimity. The "losers" generally take it in good part if they've had a decent hearing.
People find it satisfying and we get a lot of normal-looking participants. But we're all clear that having a discussion isn't actually going to change anything - again, much like PB. We occasionally send a resolution to the NEC, who I'm sure find it very interesting . By and large, members are realistic about not changing national policy and simply enjoying the chance to discuss issues with Shadow Cabinet people who do, as well as with local people of broadly similar outlook but perhaps quite different views on a specific issue.
I gather that some constituency parties have a more strident atmosphere, and it perhaps does depend partly on local leadership style. I don't try to force any particular views, and consequently get along with all the different types of member. The price for that is that I'm not especially influential in the local party decisions, but so what?
I've not been to a local party meeting for decades, since the days of the SDP. But then I like to think that I am relatively normal (for a lawyer, a Scot etc). When I did go I found them tedious and a great alternative to actually doing any campaigning for the vast majority there.
Ditto (As always David I agree with everything you say, which is starting to worry me).
When I was a constituency chair I had a vice chair who loved all this stuff, plus all the admin around running a local party, whereas I was all about campaigning and getting people elected. We were chalk and cheese and I thought we would never get on, but it was the reverse because I let him do all that crap (which he did wonderfully) and he left me to get on with winning elections.
One of the arts of good management is to put people in the jobs they love doing and are good at, rather than trying to hammer round pegs etc.
If Trump ends up being jailed after securing the nomination might RFK become the Republican candidate by default ? (Extremely unlikely, but odder things have happened in the GOP.)
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
Yes, it is. And bravo to him
It’s actually annoying Remoaners on TwiX. “Before Brexit, Sunak would have got the US President to attend etc etc “
Yeah right. I can imagine Dave Cameron hosting a conference about social media and Barack Obama jumping straight on the plane
Meanwhile the Guardian has managed to make the whole summit somehow ABOUT Brexit
They've invited Musk; I wonder if they're going to invite any AI experts as well?
I still can't read anything about AI without misreading the capital I as a lower case l and thinking of that Paul Simon song, which does seem apt for Sunak, somehow:
I need a photo-opportunity I want a shot at redemption Don't want to end up a cartoon In a cartoon graveyard
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
Yes, it is. And bravo to him
It’s actually annoying Remoaners on TwiX. “Before Brexit, Sunak would have got the US President to attend etc etc “
Yeah right. I can imagine Dave Cameron hosting a conference about social media and Barack Obama jumping straight on the plane
Meanwhile the Guardian has managed to make the whole summit somehow ABOUT Brexit
They've invited Musk; I wonder if they're going to invite any AI experts as well?
Perhaps they could share some tips on managing WhatsApp back up and phone passwords before moving on to AI.
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
According to the best polling available the vast majority of Gazans want to stay in Gaza and West Bank.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.
"Gaza and the West Bank". Not Gaza. The people in Gaza have largely not settled in Gaza - that's why they claim to be refugees and congregate in camps. And similar in the West Bank but less extreme.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
They dream of returning to a mythical olive grove in central Israel that their great-grandfather sold for a few pennies in 1948 and is now a small city worth billions. It's not a viable proposition. The 'restoration' of populations and boundaries is a dangerous illusion. They need a route to a better future, not a better past.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
You could have said the same of the Zionists a century ago.
Hamas and RP have essentially the same policy, albeit in the mirror. Forcible redrawing of boundaries and mass expulsions/extermination of a population at gunpoint.
I would trust almost anyone on almost anything more than I would trust Corbyn. I am really not sure what this proves other than the membership of the Labour party were seriously deluded in voting that man leader twice. Its up there with the Tory membership thinking Liz Truss, or indeed IDS, were an answer to anything useful.
A lot to be said for returning the selection of the Leader to MPs. For both main parties.
Good morning everyone; a greeting, as opposed to a comment on the weather!
I wonder whether there’s a case for the members producing the ‘long list’ and the MP’s deciding from there?
Sounds even worse. Say Corbyn beats Starmer 45-25 others 30 and then the MPs choose Starmer. His authority is massively dented from the start and the party inevitably divided.
The real long term answer is one that never gets mentioned. Get "normal" people more involved in the Conservative and Labour parties rather than just fanatics.
Normal people have way better things to do with their time.
Kind of. The time I spend on here would/could be more productive within a party set up. But you lot are far more interesting and pleasant than I expect any set of partisan party members to be.
Yes, it is the variety of views and the differing viewpoints that make the debate and the threads worth reading. Meetings of the 4 feet good 2 feet bad variety would be deeply boring by comparison.
I don't know what your local parties are like, but mine has agreeable discussions akin to PB, usually with a guest speaker and a variety of views expressed. Lockdown helped as it got potential speakers used to doing remote sessions, so we've had people like Reeves and Lammy who wouldn't want to trek down to deepest Surrey. I chair the meeting lightly, mainly enforcing the rule that nobody gets to speak twice before everyone who wants to has spoken once. We vote on the issues at the end and I tease the members for being too North Korean if we get too much unanimity. The "losers" generally take it in good part if they've had a decent hearing.
People find it satisfying and we get a lot of normal-looking participants. But we're all clear that having a discussion isn't actually going to change anything - again, much like PB. We occasionally send a resolution to the NEC, who I'm sure find it very interesting . By and large, members are realistic about not changing national policy and simply enjoying the chance to discuss issues with Shadow Cabinet people who do, as well as with local people of broadly similar outlook but perhaps quite different views on a specific issue.
I gather that some constituency parties have a more strident atmosphere, and it perhaps does depend partly on local leadership style. I don't try to force any particular views, and consequently get along with all the different types of member. The price for that is that I'm not especially influential in the local party decisions, but so what?
I've not been to a local party meeting for decades, since the days of the SDP. But then I like to think that I am relatively normal (for a lawyer, a Scot etc). When I did go I found them tedious and a great alternative to actually doing any campaigning for the vast majority there.
Ditto (As always David I agree with everything you say, which is starting to worry me).
When I was a constituency chair I had a vice chair who loved all this stuff, plus all the admin around running a local party, whereas I was all about campaigning and getting people elected. We were chalk and cheese and I thought we would never get on, but it was the reverse because I let him do all that crap (which he did wonderfully) and he left me to get on with winning elections.
One of the arts of good management is to put people in the jobs they love doing and are good at, rather than trying to hammer round pegs etc.
Yes, obviously, but these posts are elected so not so easy. For me I was looking at it as a glass half empty rather than a glass half full result. I thought I had a 'jobs worth' as a vice chair and was depressed by this thought, what hadn't dawned on me was all the roles of the chair I didn't want to do I could ask him to do which he absolutely loved, so in fact rather than it being a negative it was a perfect combination and we really got on well.
It's no wonder junior cops behave so badly if this is the kind of leadership they get.
You may remember the senior officer, who when someone went stabby stabby on a policeman at Parliament, locked himself in his car?
His excuse was that he wasn't wearing his body armour.
One of his hobbies was going round the secured offices (behind security) at police stations under his command and reprimanding officers for not wearing body armour while sitting at their desks.
He was later very upset at the poor attendance at his leaving do - there was even a message sent out that there should have been a bigger and warmer crowd of officers...
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
According to the best polling available the vast majority of Gazans want to stay in Gaza and West Bank.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.
"Gaza and the West Bank". Not Gaza. The people in Gaza have largely not settled in Gaza - that's why they claim to be refugees and congregate in camps. And similar in the West Bank but less extreme.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
They dream of returning to a mythical olive grove in central Israel that their great-grandfather sold for a few pennies in 1948 and is now a small city worth billions. It's not a viable proposition. The 'restoration' of populations and boundaries is a dangerous illusion. They need a route to a better future, not a better past.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
You could have said the same of the Zionists a century ago.
Hamas and RP have essentially the same policy, albeit in the mirror. Forcible redrawing of boundaries and mass expulsions/extermination of a population at gunpoint.
The Zionists were at least fairly rational, and a part of the modern world. Hamas want to take their part of the world back to the 7th century.
On thread. I don't interpret the results of the YouGov poll the same way as TSE.
Trust in Keir Starmer to handle key issues should be and normally is way ahead of trust in the discredited Jeremy Corbyn even amongst 2019 Labour voters. For example in the same survey trust is 69% for Starmer compared to 47% for Corbyn on the economy.
So the fact that trust in Starmer on Israel/Palestine in general is only marginally ahead of Corbyn is hardly a ringing endorsement of Starmer's approach to Gaza, at least from the people who Starmer wants to keep voting Labour. I note too that the YouGov question was not specific to Gaza, on which a ceasefire is overwhelmingly backed amongst the public, but on the much wider question of "dealing with the Israel/Palestinian conflict".
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
According to the best polling available the vast majority of Gazans want to stay in Gaza and West Bank.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.
"Gaza and the West Bank". Not Gaza. The people in Gaza have largely not settled in Gaza - that's why they claim to be refugees and congregate in camps. And similar in the West Bank but less extreme.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
They dream of returning to a mythical olive grove in central Israel that their great-grandfather sold for a few pennies in 1948 and is now a small city worth billions. It's not a viable proposition. The 'restoration' of populations and boundaries is a dangerous illusion. They need a route to a better future, not a better past.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
You could have said the same of the Zionists a century ago.
Hamas and RP have essentially the same policy, albeit in the mirror. Forcible redrawing of boundaries and mass expulsions/extermination of a population at gunpoint.
The Zionists were at least fairly rational, and a part of the modern world. Hamas want to take their part of the world back to the 7th century.
Nothing screams modern world like God gave us this land 3000 years ago.
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
According to the best polling available the vast majority of Gazans want to stay in Gaza and West Bank.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.
"Gaza and the West Bank". Not Gaza. The people in Gaza have largely not settled in Gaza - that's why they claim to be refugees and congregate in camps. And similar in the West Bank but less extreme.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
They dream of returning to a mythical olive grove in central Israel that their great-grandfather sold for a few pennies in 1948 and is now a small city worth billions. It's not a viable proposition. The 'restoration' of populations and boundaries is a dangerous illusion. They need a route to a better future, not a better past.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
You could have said the same of the Zionists a century ago.
Hamas and RP have essentially the same policy, albeit in the mirror. Forcible redrawing of boundaries and mass expulsions/extermination of a population at gunpoint.
The Zionists were at least fairly rational, and a part of the modern world. Hamas want to take their part of the world back to the 7th century.
I think that a misconception. Hamas are Islamists, but not ISIS. Women and non-Muslims and aid organisations in Gaza have lives not dissimilar to other Middle East countries in terms of civil participation, dress etc. Not as free as in Europe of course, but not Taliban either.
Dominic Cummings @Dominic2306 · 6m Helen right that CABOFF has failed to follow the orders given in 2020 to keep records of everything - I asked for this to happen - so did Helen - yet the Cabinet Office has destroyed a lot of documents - e.g some that I have accidental copies of do not show up in official records
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
According to the best polling available the vast majority of Gazans want to stay in Gaza and West Bank.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.
"Gaza and the West Bank". Not Gaza. The people in Gaza have largely not settled in Gaza - that's why they claim to be refugees and congregate in camps. And similar in the West Bank but less extreme.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
They dream of returning to a mythical olive grove in central Israel that their great-grandfather sold for a few pennies in 1948 and is now a small city worth billions. It's not a viable proposition. The 'restoration' of populations and boundaries is a dangerous illusion. They need a route to a better future, not a better past.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
You could have said the same of the Zionists a century ago.
Hamas and RP have essentially the same policy, albeit in the mirror. Forcible redrawing of boundaries and mass expulsions/extermination of a population at gunpoint.
The Zionists were at least fairly rational, and a part of the modern world. Hamas want to take their part of the world back to the 7th century.
Nothing screams modern world like God gave us this land 3000 years ago.
The Zionists at the time tended to be pretty secular.
One can make the argument that Jews should simply have been prohibited from buying or leasing land in Palestine, from the late 19th century onwards, but we are where we are.
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
According to the best polling available the vast majority of Gazans want to stay in Gaza and West Bank.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.
"Gaza and the West Bank". Not Gaza. The people in Gaza have largely not settled in Gaza - that's why they claim to be refugees and congregate in camps. And similar in the West Bank but less extreme.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
They dream of returning to a mythical olive grove in central Israel that their great-grandfather sold for a few pennies in 1948 and is now a small city worth billions. It's not a viable proposition. The 'restoration' of populations and boundaries is a dangerous illusion. They need a route to a better future, not a better past.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
You could have said the same of the Zionists a century ago.
Hamas and RP have essentially the same policy, albeit in the mirror. Forcible redrawing of boundaries and mass expulsions/extermination of a population at gunpoint.
The Zionists were at least fairly rational, and a part of the modern world. Hamas want to take their part of the world back to the 7th century.
I think that a misconception. Hamas are Islamists, but not ISIS. Women and non-Muslims and aid organisations in Gaza have lives not dissimilar to other Middle East countries in terms of civil participation, dress etc. Not as free as in Europe of course, but not Taliban either.
The parallels between Hamas and IS seem pretty clear.
On topic, there is danger for Starmer within the Labour Party on this, and that has potential to lead to bad headlines about Labour divisions etc.
But the issue itself doesn't seem to me like a big vote mover, at least as long as the leaderships of the two main parties remain relatively united (broadly that Israel have a right to respond, aid and assistance to civilians is important, but Hamas are themselves complicating it, to put it mildly, by using their own civilians as shields and not enabling an effective humanitarian effort).
I also think that's broadly where the public are (ability of the usual groups to organise a demo notwithstanding). There is pretty wide recognition that there is a moral difference between a military operation to root out Hamas and the horrific terrorist attack that precipitated (and probably necessitated) it, but that both involve a heart-breaking number of innocent deaths and it's all rather famously complex.
On the PB weather forecast front - the latest Ciaran modelling has nudged it a little north, so more areas in the south of England may get high winds. Though probably only 60-65mph inland.
France, though. Eek! Gusts of 125mph forecast in Brittany.
On thread. I don't interpret the results of the YouGov poll the same way as TSE.
Trust in Keir Starmer to handle key issues should be and normally is way ahead of trust in the discredited Jeremy Corbyn even amongst 2019 Labour voters. For example in the same survey trust is 69% for Starmer compared to 47% for Corbyn on the economy.
So the fact that trust in Starmer on Israel/Palestine in general is only marginally ahead of Corbyn is hardly a ringing endorsement of Starmer's approach to Gaza, at least from the people who Starmer wants to keep voting Labour. I note too that the YouGov question was not specific to Gaza, on which a ceasefire is overwhelmingly backed amongst the public, but on the much wider question of "dealing with the Israel/Palestinian conflict".
Strange, as the editorial line is normally to dismiss anyone beating Corbyn/Livingstone as just taking part in some kind of walkover that is not worthy of credit
The Middle East won't upend Starmer. The economy and cost of living, along with the feeling nothing works anymore will be what wins it for him. There are a noisy handful on either side of the debate on Israel and Palestine, as we see here. Diehard Nethanyahu fanboys keen to see Gaza ethnically cleansed and Hamas apologists. But just like in real life they are noisy but few in number.
They won't affect anything.
If anything Starmer is gaining in the voter intent stakes not losing at the moment so you could argue Sunak's unswerving loyal support of Bibi could be costing him. I would't personally believe that either.
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
The swing voters in hyper-marginals like Bury North talk of little else except AI. They don't give a shit about access to GPs or #cozzielivs, they want to discuss mixed scenario model free deep reinforcement learning using quantile regression soft critic.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
He needs a job after the next GE, doesn’t he?
That's too close to the truth. My headcanon says that his recent holiday in California was to enable his wife to shop for houses, and the AI summit is him shopping around his CV in the hope of a Silicon Valley job.
Be honest. He's not going to go back to his Dad's chemist shop in Southampton, is he?
The Middle East won't upend Starmer. The economy and cost of living, along with the feeling nothing works anymore will be what wins it for him. There are a noisy handful on either side of the debate on Israel and Palestine, as we see here. Diehard Nethanyahu fanboys keen to see Gaza ethnically cleansed and Hamas apologists. But just like in real life they are noisy but few in number.
They won't affect anything.
If anything Starmer is gaining in the voter intent stakes not losing at the moment so you could argue Sunak's unswerving loyal support of Bibi could be costing him. I would't personally believe that either.
It's the sort of thing that might cause trouble for Labour down the line, in government, when they're losing by-elections, and suffering bad local council results, and have discontented backbenchers, but not now.
I hate to be that person, but the Covid enquiry is starting to make me feel sorry for people I really don’t want to feel sorry for.
I get it, Boris was a bit of a twat (who knew!!?), people used some slightly edgy language that perhaps they shouldn’t, some people felt awkward or uncomfortable (the poor dears).
I share the slight concern that we seem to be fixating on minutiae of people’s comms, rather than the actual results that were coming out of government, and how those could be bettered.
I would trust almost anyone on almost anything more than I would trust Corbyn. I am really not sure what this proves other than the membership of the Labour party were seriously deluded in voting that man leader twice. Its up there with the Tory membership thinking Liz Truss, or indeed IDS, were an answer to anything useful.
A lot to be said for returning the selection of the Leader to MPs. For both main parties.
Good morning everyone; a greeting, as opposed to a comment on the weather!
I wonder whether there’s a case for the members producing the ‘long list’ and the MP’s deciding from there?
Sounds even worse. Say Corbyn beats Starmer 45-25 others 30 and then the MPs choose Starmer. His authority is massively dented from the start and the party inevitably divided.
The real long term answer is one that never gets mentioned. Get "normal" people more involved in the Conservative and Labour parties rather than just fanatics.
Normal people have way better things to do with their time.
Kind of. The time I spend on here would/could be more productive within a party set up. But you lot are far more interesting and pleasant than I expect any set of partisan party members to be.
Yes, it is the variety of views and the differing viewpoints that make the debate and the threads worth reading. Meetings of the 4 feet good 2 feet bad variety would be deeply boring by comparison.
I don't know what your local parties are like, but mine has agreeable discussions akin to PB, usually with a guest speaker and a variety of views expressed. Lockdown helped as it got potential speakers used to doing remote sessions, so we've had people like Reeves and Lammy who wouldn't want to trek down to deepest Surrey. I chair the meeting lightly, mainly enforcing the rule that nobody gets to speak twice before everyone who wants to has spoken once. We vote on the issues at the end and I tease the members for being too North Korean if we get too much unanimity. The "losers" generally take it in good part if they've had a decent hearing.
People find it satisfying and we get a lot of normal-looking participants. But we're all clear that having a discussion isn't actually going to change anything - again, much like PB. We occasionally send a resolution to the NEC, who I'm sure find it very interesting . By and large, members are realistic about not changing national policy and simply enjoying the chance to discuss issues with Shadow Cabinet people who do, as well as with local people of broadly similar outlook but perhaps quite different views on a specific issue.
I gather that some constituency parties have a more strident atmosphere, and it perhaps does depend partly on local leadership style. I don't try to force any particular views, and consequently get along with all the different types of member. The price for that is that I'm not especially influential in the local party decisions, but so what?
I've not been to a local party meeting for decades, since the days of the SDP. But then I like to think that I am relatively normal (for a lawyer, a Scot etc). When I did go I found them tedious and a great alternative to actually doing any campaigning for the vast majority there.
Ditto (As always David I agree with everything you say, which is starting to worry me).
When I was a constituency chair I had a vice chair who loved all this stuff, plus all the admin around running a local party, whereas I was all about campaigning and getting people elected. We were chalk and cheese and I thought we would never get on, but it was the reverse because I let him do all that crap (which he did wonderfully) and he left me to get on with winning elections.
One of the arts of good management is to put people in the jobs they love doing and are good at, rather than trying to hammer round pegs etc.
Unfortunately, and sadly, sometimes the best way of fitting people to the jobs they love doing is to fire them from their existing job and escort them to the exit with a cardboard box.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
On thread. I don't interpret the results of the YouGov poll the same way as TSE.
Trust in Keir Starmer to handle key issues should be and normally is way ahead of trust in the discredited Jeremy Corbyn even amongst 2019 Labour voters. For example in the same survey trust is 69% for Starmer compared to 47% for Corbyn on the economy.
So the fact that trust in Starmer on Israel/Palestine in general is only marginally ahead of Corbyn is hardly a ringing endorsement of Starmer's approach to Gaza, at least from the people who Starmer wants to keep voting Labour. I note too that the YouGov question was not specific to Gaza, on which a ceasefire is overwhelmingly backed amongst the public, but on the much wider question of "dealing with the Israel/Palestinian conflict".
Jeremy Corbyn is seen as caring about Palestinians in a way that most politicians don't, so the non-trivial segment of the membership (and wider population) who see that as a concern will give him credit for it in a way that they probably won't on the economy. They clearly see that Starmer takes a more detached view, which is probably where most voters are, as the polling suggests, but lots of members (not all left-wing) would like him to be more obviously concerned and calling for immediate action. It's not a resigning issue for most, just one where they don't feel he's got it quite right.
If there is a prisoner swap and basic humanitarian aid starts getting through, I think the issue will diminish in salience for most - only a small minority will be engaged with the Israel vs Hamas fighting. But in reality the living conditions for most Palestinians - displaced, ill-housed, with uncertain outlook from day to day - will remain somewhere between bad and disastrous until much more is done. So I do think it's right to press our respective leaders to be more insistent on constraining the Israeli offensive to affect civilians to the least degree possible (which is still a lot).
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Rural litter and graffiti is one of the few disheartening aspects of visiting med countries. Rampant in Iberia.
Dominic Cummings @Dominic2306 · 6m Helen right that CABOFF has failed to follow the orders given in 2020 to keep records of everything - I asked for this to happen - so did Helen - yet the Cabinet Office has destroyed a lot of documents - e.g some that I have accidental copies of do not show up in official records
Helen MacNamara looks OK
She reminds me of the Actress Charlotte Ritchie from Ghosts
I hate to be that person, but the Covid enquiry is starting to make me feel sorry for people I really don’t want to feel sorry for.
I get it, Boris was a bit of a twat (who knew!!?), people used some slightly edgy language that perhaps they shouldn’t, some people felt awkward or uncomfortable (the poor dears).
I share the slight concern that we seem to be fixating on minutiae of people’s comms, rather than the actual results that were coming out of government, and how those could be bettered.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Rural litter and graffiti is one of the few disheartening aspects of visiting med countries. Rampant in Iberia.
It’s quite bad in parts of the UK now. But in much of Sicily - especially inland - it’s as bad as Egypt. And the towns look the same as lower middle class Egypt
That’s how fucked Sicily is. What a descent from the Villa Romana del Casale
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Rural litter and graffiti is one of the few disheartening aspects of visiting med countries. Rampant in Iberia.
I get the impression the littering situation in England has slightly improved in recent years. Would be interested to know what others think about it.
I hate to be that person, but the Covid enquiry is starting to make me feel sorry for people I really don’t want to feel sorry for.
I get it, Boris was a bit of a twat (who knew!!?), people used some slightly edgy language that perhaps they shouldn’t, some people felt awkward or uncomfortable (the poor dears).
I share the slight concern that we seem to be fixating on minutiae of people’s comms, rather than the actual results that were coming out of government, and how those could be bettered.
The minutae rather than the sanitised crap we were fed show what a bunch of useless callous self interested twats they were. Jail is too good for them.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
In provincial China years ago there used to be literally hills of litter just outside the main living areas. Mind boggling that people should care so little about their environment.
Take a look at the central reservation and verges of many of our motorways also.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Rural litter and graffiti is one of the few disheartening aspects of visiting med countries. Rampant in Iberia.
On thread. I don't interpret the results of the YouGov poll the same way as TSE.
Trust in Keir Starmer to handle key issues should be and normally is way ahead of trust in the discredited Jeremy Corbyn even amongst 2019 Labour voters. For example in the same survey trust is 69% for Starmer compared to 47% for Corbyn on the economy.
So the fact that trust in Starmer on Israel/Palestine in general is only marginally ahead of Corbyn is hardly a ringing endorsement of Starmer's approach to Gaza, at least from the people who Starmer wants to keep voting Labour. I note too that the YouGov question was not specific to Gaza, on which a ceasefire is overwhelmingly backed amongst the public, but on the much wider question of "dealing with the Israel/Palestinian conflict".
Jeremy Corbyn is seen as caring about Palestinians in a way that most politicians don't, so the non-trivial segment of the membership (and wider population) who see that as a concern will give him credit for it in a way that they probably won't on the economy. They clearly see that Starmer takes a more detached view, which is probably where most voters are, as the polling suggests, but lots of members (not all left-wing) would like him to be more obviously concerned and calling for immediate action. It's not a resigning issue for most, just one where they don't feel he's got it quite right.
If there is a prisoner swap and basic humanitarian aid starts getting through, I think the issue will diminish in salience for most - only a small minority will be engaged with the Israel vs Hamas fighting. But in reality the living conditions for most Palestinians - displaced, ill-housed, with uncertain outlook from day to day - will remain somewhere between bad and disastrous until much more is done. So I do think it's right to press our respective leaders to be more insistent on constraining the Israeli offensive to affect civilians to the least degree possible (which is still a lot).
Nothing but sense there, Nick. For the third time I will say that David Lammy drew a very practical and sensible line this morning about it on the radio.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Seeing litter does make me fizz with hatred. In this country I suspect a lot of it is dirty schoolkids trying to look hard in front of their mates as they amble about at lunchtime. Seeing McDonalds packaging that has obviously been chucked out of a car window by someone driving through is another bugbear.
If Trump ends up being jailed after securing the nomination might RFK become the Republican candidate by default ? (Extremely unlikely, but odder things have happened in the GOP.)
The big question in my mind (which I will be honest, I don’t know the answer to) is what leeway (if any) does the GOP have to set aside a nomination (or reallocate delegates from a candidate before the convention) if that candidate is jailed or convicted.
It feels to me odd that there wouldn’t be some failsafe mechanism in the party constitution or rule book, but then the US is littered with examples of situations where people just didn’t write things into the rule book because they assumed this would never happen, so I am fully prepared to be told there is absolutely nothing the GOP can do.
All sorts of different permutations spring from this, at that point. If Trump has earned the nomination, would his running mate automatically get it, or be seen as the best chance of placating MAGA voters? Would the person with the second highest number of delegates (from where we stand right now, I think Haley) get it?
I feel a bit reluctant to go through the what ifs of a Trump conviction, because I simply don’t have enough knowledge as to what is likely to happen.
Also, fair play to Sunak. He’s got some serious names at his AI conference. Including Sam Altman of OpenAI, probably the most serious of all. And Elon….
Bit of a coup for Sunak this.
The swing voters in hyper-marginals like Bury North talk of little else except AI. They don't give a shit about access to GPs or #cozzielivs, they want to discuss mixed scenario model free deep reinforcement learning using quantile regression soft critic.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Again, I just cannot understand Rishi Sunak’s political strategy. For a Prime Minister who is perceived as out of touch with the day to day concerns of ordinary people, why on earth prioritise an AI summit.
He needs a job after the next GE, doesn’t he?
That's too close to the truth. My headcanon says that his recent holiday in California was to enable his wife to shop for houses, and the AI summit is him shopping around his CV in the hope of a Silicon Valley job.
Be honest. He's not going to go back to his Dad's chemist shop in Southampton, is he?
It was his Mum’s. Dad was a GP. I rather hope they weren’t looking after the same cohort of patients.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Rural litter and graffiti is one of the few disheartening aspects of visiting med countries. Rampant in Iberia.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Rural litter and graffiti is one of the few disheartening aspects of visiting med countries. Rampant in Iberia.
It’s quite bad in parts of the UK now. But in much of Sicily - especially inland - it’s as bad as Egypt. And the towns look the same as lower middle class Egypt
That’s how fucked Sicily is. What a descent from the Villa Romana del Casale
Is there a useful distinction between littering where there us already loads of litter, versus the people who can look at a pristine park and drop all their fast food waste?
The most infuriating instance I've seen is a large wedding party all releasing balloons on Calton Hill. Arseholes.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
This article is by someone who wrote a psychoanalytics MA on why people litter, so that might be a good place to start.
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
Gaza could work. Gaza does not work under current arrangements, i.e. Hamas rule and Israeli blockade.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Seeing litter does make me fizz with hatred. In this country I suspect a lot of it is dirty schoolkids trying to look hard in front of their mates as they amble about at lunchtime. Seeing McDonalds packaging that has obviously been chucked out of a car window by someone driving through is another bugbear.
In Sicily it’s far beyond school kids
Even around the magnificent temples of Agrigento - some of the most beautiful buildings on earth - there are roads strewn with bags and bags of litter for endless miles. It doesn’t stop. And it’s everywhere. On either side. In central verges. Piled up in drifts like a vile kind of snow
Lawlessness? Rank stupidity? Nihilism? Lack of garbage collection? Mafia? What?
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Rural litter and graffiti is one of the few disheartening aspects of visiting med countries. Rampant in Iberia.
It’s quite bad in parts of the UK now. But in much of Sicily - especially inland - it’s as bad as Egypt. And the towns look the same as lower middle class Egypt
That’s how fucked Sicily is. What a descent from the Villa Romana del Casale
Is there a useful distinction between littering where there us already loads of litter, versus the people who can look at a pristine park and drop all their fast food waste?
The most infuriating instance I've seen is a large wedding party all releasing balloons on Calton Hill. Arseholes.
I hope you tried to get in on the wedding photos with your Lycra at half mast.
If Trump ends up being jailed after securing the nomination might RFK become the Republican candidate by default ? (Extremely unlikely, but odder things have happened in the GOP.)
Probably the closest to being a Trump clone replacement, perhaps in contest with Vivek. Of course if Trump implodes the path will be particularly unpredictable and no guarantee it would be someone similar to Trump to emerge.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Seeing litter does make me fizz with hatred. In this country I suspect a lot of it is dirty schoolkids trying to look hard in front of their mates as they amble about at lunchtime. Seeing McDonalds packaging that has obviously been chucked out of a car window by someone driving through is another bugbear.
Plenty of lowlife thick adults who just drop everything at their feet as well , even if next to a bin. They should be tazered.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Rural litter and graffiti is one of the few disheartening aspects of visiting med countries. Rampant in Iberia.
It’s quite bad in parts of the UK now. But in much of Sicily - especially inland - it’s as bad as Egypt. And the towns look the same as lower middle class Egypt
That’s how fucked Sicily is. What a descent from the Villa Romana del Casale
Is there a useful distinction between littering where there us already loads of litter, versus the people who can look at a pristine park and drop all their fast food waste?
The most infuriating instance I've seen is a large wedding party all releasing balloons on Calton Hill. Arseholes.
I hate sodding party balloons.
Why do people think releasing them is OK? Where do they think they'll end up? It is almost as bad as chinese lanterns.
I come back with a couple every time I go out on our local NNR.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Seeing litter does make me fizz with hatred. In this country I suspect a lot of it is dirty schoolkids trying to look hard in front of their mates as they amble about at lunchtime. Seeing McDonalds packaging that has obviously been chucked out of a car window by someone driving through is another bugbear.
On the positive side, it does provide opportunities for community service teams. Picking the stuff up, I mean.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
This article is by someone who wrote a psychoanalytics MA on why people litter, so that might be a good place to start.
Not quite sure what to make of that. I suppose you could substitute 'litter' for 'murder' and draw a similar conclusion - that it's all just a symptom of societal alienation.
I hate to be that person, but the Covid enquiry is starting to make me feel sorry for people I really don’t want to feel sorry for.
I get it, Boris was a bit of a twat (who knew!!?), people used some slightly edgy language that perhaps they shouldn’t, some people felt awkward or uncomfortable (the poor dears).
I share the slight concern that we seem to be fixating on minutiae of people’s comms, rather than the actual results that were coming out of government, and how those could be bettered.
It has emerged that Boris was saying what almost everyone I know was saying at the time
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Rural litter and graffiti is one of the few disheartening aspects of visiting med countries. Rampant in Iberia.
It’s quite bad in parts of the UK now. But in much of Sicily - especially inland - it’s as bad as Egypt. And the towns look the same as lower middle class Egypt
That’s how fucked Sicily is. What a descent from the Villa Romana del Casale
Is there a useful distinction between littering where there us already loads of litter, versus the people who can look at a pristine park and drop all their fast food waste?
The most infuriating instance I've seen is a large wedding party all releasing balloons on Calton Hill. Arseholes.
I hate sodding party balloons.
Why do people think releasing them is OK? Where do they think they'll end up? It is almost as bad as chinese lanterns.
I come back with a couple every time I go out on our local NNR.
At least they aren't alight, unlike those soaring lantern things.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Seeing litter does make me fizz with hatred. In this country I suspect a lot of it is dirty schoolkids trying to look hard in front of their mates as they amble about at lunchtime. Seeing McDonalds packaging that has obviously been chucked out of a car window by someone driving through is another bugbear.
On the positive side, it does provide opportunities for community service teams. Picking the stuff up, I mean.
In economics I think that's referred to as the Broken Window Fallacy. (Hat-tip to someone on PB.)
In the modern world, borders get redrawn and people get moved. For all that we have declared the forcible moving of people to be a war crime, doing so has been the way to peace in Europe.
I mentioned at the end of the last thread the absurdity that we have these so-called refugee camps in the first place. Full of third and fourth generation descendents of people who could have been classed as refugees.
We saw a massive slaughter in Europe. Lines on maps drawn and redrawn. Countries created and empires removed, borders shifted and peoples relocated. For peace.
The root cause of the continuing barbarity in the middle east is that a similar process did not happen. Instead of adjusting to the new boundaries, waves of war were unleashed to make even more displaced people and yet more redrawn borders.
The poor sods being used by Hamas are not refugees. They are political pawns, where the defeated combatants of the 48, 67 and 73 wars refuse to accept their defeat and bleat on at the international community to push the magic reset button and remove the Jew from their lands.
We do not have generational camps of displaced people from the Memeland. Or any other former place. Poland does not burn a torch for its lost territories. It needs to stop in the middle east, because regardless of what happens over the next few weeks, if we end up with an eventual ceasefire where we have all these people left as pawns by the arab world then the next round of bloodshed won't be far away.
Yes, but these are not redrawn borders. Gaza and the West Bank are ""occupied Territories" neither part of Israel, nor independent states.
The people are not to be given equal rights with others by incorporating them into Israel, nor allowed to form a state. Hence no resolution.
Or are you arguing for the forced expulsion/extermination of all 2.2 million in Gaza and the 3.5 million in the West Bank?
They are redrawn borders - none of these borders existed previously. Show me Gaza as a strip on a map of the Ottoman Empire. Or the mandates drawn on the map post WWI?
Gaza is no different to other non-contiguous regions at the end of WWII which got redrawn. The question that needs to be asked isn't do we move 2.2m Gazans but do 2.2m Gazans want to stay there? Go and ask them - so many are not Gazan and do not see Gaza as any more than a refugee camp or prison.
Gaza does not work - for the Gazans, for the Isaraelis, for the Egyptians. Nobody. I suspect that a realistic outcome of this will be Israel washing its hands of the place - but who will take on authority of keeping the peace and supplying it with power and water - Egypt? They don't want it either.
The fighting will stop. And we are left with an over-populated strip of land with minimal resources reliant on outside support. Israel won't support it, Egypt won't support it, so who will? And if nobody will do we accept that we need to resettle the people there who want to be resettled, and work on a plan to do so?
It isn't forced resettlement when the people being resettled want to be resettled. Israel bombed a refugee camp - these are people who do not want to be in Gaza.
According to the best polling available the vast majority of Gazans want to stay in Gaza and West Bank.
"The vast majority of Gazans surveyed—69 percent—said they have never considered leaving their homeland. This is a higher proportion than residents of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia who were asked the same question. (For all of these countries, the most recent available data comes from Arab Barometer’s 2021–22 survey wave.)"
So what you are proposing is ethnic cleansing against the express will of the people concerned.
You may be happy with that, but most of us are not.
"Gaza and the West Bank". Not Gaza. The people in Gaza have largely not settled in Gaza - that's why they claim to be refugees and congregate in camps. And similar in the West Bank but less extreme.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
They dream of returning to a mythical olive grove in central Israel that their great-grandfather sold for a few pennies in 1948 and is now a small city worth billions. It's not a viable proposition. The 'restoration' of populations and boundaries is a dangerous illusion. They need a route to a better future, not a better past.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
"that their great-grandfather sold for a few pennies in 1948": that's a bizarre fantasy. Some land was bought by Zionists, but generally from absentee landlords, not the families who worked the land. And land sales didn't lead to refugees. That was war, including deliberate ethnic cleansing by Israeli forces.
That said, yes, your broader point is right that a solution today has to reflect the last three quarters of a century.
People litter because (a) it's the path of least resistance for them and (b) they think it someone else will deal with it and their contribution won't be noticed.
To change it you need to change people's attitudes over their personal responsibility to the public space, and you lots of legitimate ways to manage it on top - like bins, regularly emptied.
Helen MacNamara says she questioned whether it was ever possible to understand what "the science" was, given there are so many different scientific questions and views. She was concerned it looked like the government was not making decisions itself, but simply following blindly what scientists said.
It was "unfair on the scientists involved", she added.
So what infomation should the Government have used? Imagine if the Government had gone completely against the scientific advice they had received.
Parts of inland Sicily look like Gaza. Before the bombing, admittedly, but still
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
Seeing litter does make me fizz with hatred. In this country I suspect a lot of it is dirty schoolkids trying to look hard in front of their mates as they amble about at lunchtime. Seeing McDonalds packaging that has obviously been chucked out of a car window by someone driving through is another bugbear.
On the positive side, it does provide opportunities for community service teams. Picking the stuff up, I mean.
In economics I think that's referred to as the Broken Window Fallacy. (Hat-tip to someone on PB.)
Broken Windows Fallacy came from economist Frédéric Bastiat in the 1850s.
Comments
But that was only for a little while. I believe that after the crank exodus (and I'm not around to know any better) that it settled down into calm before its abolition last month.
You say they have never considered leaving their homeland. No, they claim to have been expelled from their homeland. Someone in the Rafa camp doesn't think they want to stay in a refugee camp in Rafa. They want to reclaim Israel.
Like I said, it isn't forced cleansing when the people consider themselves refugees and demand their repatriation.
It’s actually annoying Remoaners on TwiX. “Before Brexit, Sunak would have got the US President to attend etc etc “
Yeah right. I can imagine Dave Cameron hosting a conference about social media and Barack Obama jumping straight on the plane
Meanwhile the Guardian has managed to make the whole summit somehow ABOUT Brexit
https://web.archive.org/web/20140123210326/http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/03/black_slave_owners_did_they_exist.4.html
This is just the ill-informed whining of people who don’t grasp the significance of this tech. They will when they start losing their jobs
AI could replicate an entire Dan Hodges article in the time it take Hodges to tweet
Bonus points if you can get in how evil Boris and/or Trump are.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Hodges’ take is an example of this. Nothing the government does or initiates now is taken in good faith. It’s all through the prism of the next election.
While this isn't a world ending problem at the moment, it is a good idea for there to be consensus on stuff that is and isn't done.
Resettlement is what everyone wants. The only debate is to where? Which line drawn on a map has supremacy over which other line drawn on a map?
Or we can have CEASEFIRE NOW. Ok. Forget what happened and who won or lost this spat. Gaza remains. Israel will I anticipate refuse to supply it resources it needs. Egypt will continue to supply it with resources it needs. Iran will continue to supply Hamas with resources it needs to kill Jews.
Gaza does not work. No food or water or power capabilities to sustain the millions. No economy able to let it function independently. It will need to be directly supported. By whom? Neither neighbour will. None of the supposed allies of Free Palestine will. And yet when I suggest that relocating the population - as everyone demands - from this place which cannot sustain the population, I am accused of supporting ethnic cleansing?
But in the 2017GE campaign, May and the Tories were really awful in a way that was new to the voters, and Corbyn seemed a long way from the caricature of him that had been created. There was a lot of new information to change the minds of the voters. You couldn't say the same of the 2015GE campaign.
2024GE is much more likely to be a 2015-style snoozefest, but I guess we were all surprised by May's implosion, so you never can be sure.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67277752
It's no wonder junior cops behave so badly if this is the kind of leadership they get.
@Dominic2306
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6m
Helen right that CABOFF has failed to follow the orders given in 2020 to keep records of everything - I asked for this to happen - so did Helen - yet the Cabinet Office has destroyed a lot of documents - e.g some that I have accidental copies of do not show up in official records
When I was a constituency chair I had a vice chair who loved all this stuff, plus all the admin around running a local party, whereas I was all about campaigning and getting people elected. We were chalk and cheese and I thought we would never get on, but it was the reverse because I let him do all that crap (which he did wonderfully) and he left me to get on with winning elections.
(Extremely unlikely, but odder things have happened in the GOP.)
RFK Jr.'s 2024 bid is a threat to Republicans — and donor data shows it
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/01/rfk-jr-2024-campaign-donors-00124621
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
This Islamophobia Awareness Month comes at a deeply troubling time for Britain's Muslim communities. The recent surge in Islamophobia is devastating.
My Labour government will tackle religious discrimination.
A government for everyone, one that unites, not divides.
https://x.com/keir_starmer/status/1719643963605373328?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Hamas and RP have essentially the same policy, albeit in the mirror. Forcible redrawing of boundaries and mass expulsions/extermination of a population at gunpoint.
His excuse was that he wasn't wearing his body armour.
One of his hobbies was going round the secured offices (behind security) at police stations under his command and reprimanding officers for not wearing body armour while sitting at their desks.
He was later very upset at the poor attendance at his leaving do - there was even a message sent out that there should have been a bigger and warmer crowd of officers...
Trust in Keir Starmer to handle key issues should be and normally is way ahead of trust in the discredited Jeremy Corbyn even amongst 2019 Labour voters. For example in the same survey trust is 69% for Starmer compared to 47% for Corbyn on the economy.
So the fact that trust in Starmer on Israel/Palestine in general is only marginally ahead of Corbyn is hardly a ringing endorsement of Starmer's approach to Gaza, at least from the people who Starmer wants to keep voting Labour. I note too that the YouGov question was not specific to Gaza, on which a ceasefire is overwhelmingly backed amongst the public, but on the much wider question of "dealing with the Israel/Palestinian conflict".
etc. Not as free as in Europe of course, but not Taliban either.
One can make the argument that Jews should simply have been prohibited from buying or leasing land in Palestine, from the late 19th century onwards, but we are where we are.
But the issue itself doesn't seem to me like a big vote mover, at least as long as the leaderships of the two main parties remain relatively united (broadly that Israel have a right to respond, aid and assistance to civilians is important, but Hamas are themselves complicating it, to put it mildly, by using their own civilians as shields and not enabling an effective humanitarian effort).
I also think that's broadly where the public are (ability of the usual groups to organise a demo notwithstanding). There is pretty wide recognition that there is a moral difference between a military operation to root out Hamas and the horrific terrorist attack that precipitated (and probably necessitated) it, but that both involve a heart-breaking number of innocent deaths and it's all rather famously complex.
France, though. Eek! Gusts of 125mph forecast in Brittany.
They won't affect anything.
If anything Starmer is gaining in the voter intent stakes not losing at the moment so you could argue Sunak's unswerving loyal support of Bibi could be costing him. I would't personally believe that either.
Be honest. He's not going to go back to his Dad's chemist shop in Southampton, is he?
I get it, Boris was a bit of a twat (who knew!!?), people used some slightly edgy language that perhaps they shouldn’t, some people felt awkward or uncomfortable (the poor dears).
I share the slight concern that we seem to be fixating on minutiae of people’s comms, rather than the actual results that were coming out of government, and how those could be bettered.
That is no exaggeration. The urban decay, ugliness and squalor is off the dial. And what’s with the litter EVERYWHERE. Mile after mile of graffiti and litter
Has anyone ever written a thesis on the psychology of littering? They should. It’s interesting. Why make your own home look a tiny bit worse. I wonder if it’s a basic IQ test? Or something else? A fundamental detachment from where you live? A sense that no one cares so why should you?
If there is a prisoner swap and basic humanitarian aid starts getting through, I think the issue will diminish in salience for most - only a small minority will be engaged with the Israel vs Hamas fighting. But in reality the living conditions for most Palestinians - displaced, ill-housed, with uncertain outlook from day to day - will remain somewhere between bad and disastrous until much more is done. So I do think it's right to press our respective leaders to be more insistent on constraining the Israeli offensive to affect civilians to the least degree possible (which is still a lot).
That’s how fucked Sicily is. What a descent from the Villa Romana del Casale
Off topic, this pair of Saffas look like they’re going to make at least 300, if not close to 350. As always, they need to get de Kock out.
Take a look at the central reservation and verges of many of our motorways also.
It feels to me odd that there wouldn’t be some failsafe mechanism in the party constitution or rule book, but then the US is littered with examples of situations where people just didn’t write things into the rule book because they assumed this would never happen, so I am fully prepared to be told there is absolutely nothing the GOP can do.
All sorts of different permutations spring from this, at that point. If Trump has earned the nomination, would his running mate automatically get it, or be seen as the best chance of placating MAGA voters? Would the person with the second highest number of delegates (from where we stand right now, I think Haley) get it?
I feel a bit reluctant to go through the what ifs of a Trump conviction, because I simply don’t have enough knowledge as to what is likely to happen.
I rather hope they weren’t looking after the same cohort of patients.
The most infuriating instance I've seen is a large wedding party all releasing balloons on Calton Hill. Arseholes.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/03/lead-litter-picking-group-defend-litterers
SKS posts that bollocks whilst siding with Islamophobes?
When is SKS self awareness day?
Even around the magnificent temples of Agrigento - some of the most beautiful buildings on earth - there are roads strewn with bags and bags of litter for endless miles. It doesn’t stop. And it’s everywhere. On either side. In central verges. Piled up in drifts like a vile kind of snow
Lawlessness? Rank stupidity? Nihilism? Lack of garbage collection? Mafia? What?
Why do people think releasing them is OK? Where do they think they'll end up? It is almost as bad as chinese lanterns.
I come back with a couple every time I go out on our local NNR.
America is relatively free of litter, I’ve noticed - despite its many other urban problems
There must be some underlying explanation for all this, simple or complex, but I can’t quite grasp it
Democracy in US in very real danger.
That said, yes, your broader point is right that a solution today has to reflect the last three quarters of a century.
To change it you need to change people's attitudes over their personal responsibility to the public space, and you lots of legitimate ways to manage it on top - like bins, regularly emptied.
Helen MacNamara says she questioned whether it was ever possible to understand what "the science" was, given there are so many different scientific questions and views.
She was concerned it looked like the government was not making decisions itself, but simply following blindly what scientists said.
It was "unfair on the scientists involved", she added.
So what infomation should the Government have used? Imagine if the Government had gone completely against the scientific advice they had received.