Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
No, it was an attempt at a very British coup. Genteel and well spoken - but still an attempt to overturn a legal vote
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
There was a time when the Police swore allegience to the Queen (or King) not to the transient Government of the day. Same with the armed forces. I don't know if that is still the case but it should be. And it has always been the case that the police are held to be operationally independent of politicians. That is an important safety check on executive power.
Yet when we had the news about allegations about the Met ignoring or not punishing appropriately allegations against serving officers in the Met, nobody seemed then to be too concerned about interfering with the Police's operational independence.
Or when the police managed to get Freddy "Worlds Most Incompetent Pathologist" Patel* to do the autopsy on Ian Tomlinson. That was Police Opertaional Independence?
*Medical students had jokes about him and his ability to declare that *everything* was natural causes.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Surely the whole point of Waitrose is that there is no queue?
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Hence 2019.
Imagine if they had succeeded in overturning the Brexit vote? Without ever enacting it? It doesn’t bear thinking about
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
If it had been overturned it would have been after a vote - either an election or a referendum. The right thing to do, in hindsight (but Cameron was too short sighted to think beyond the Brexit vote) would have been to plan for 2 referendums from the outset, one on the principle and a second on the specifics of the deal. That's how the Swiss would have run it.
Perhaps. But the wrong thing to do is to have a referendum which the PM says is binding, then when you lose it (a) claim it was only advisory, then (b) agitate for another go by refusing to vote for any deal agreed with the EU
b was the big error of the remainers in parliament. Of course the ERG played the same game - both sides going for Bully's special prize of the Mini Cooper rather than settling for the hotpoint dishwasher. But common sense got lost in the process. You'd expect the ERG spartans and the DUP to go full on ideological but the remainers were supposed to be the grown ups. Rory Stewart was pretty spot on throughout: he was proposing compromises and consistently voting for May's deals because he knew the country needed to move on.
General members of the public like me were in my view perfectly entitled to express whatever opinions they wished. I was (and am) a devout Europhile but I know that the goings on in parliament in 2018 and 2019 didn't cover anyone in glory.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Well, apart from Steve Bray who's a certified loon.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
No, it was an attempt at a very British coup. Genteel and well spoken - but still an attempt to overturn a legal vote
We frequently over turn legal votes with other legal votes. They keep doing it at that big, Pugin styled building by the river Thames. And the people, themselves, keep voting for stuff (the bastards).
It's almost as if people think they have the right to change their minds, and to try and change other peoples minds. Or some sick shit like that.
And how well did the LDs with their "overturn the referendum" policy do?
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Well, apart from Steve Bray who's a certified loon.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Well, apart from Steve Bray who's a certified loon.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
No, it was an attempt at a very British coup. Genteel and well spoken - but still an attempt to overturn a legal vote
We frequently over turn legal votes with other legal votes. They keep doing it at that big, Pugin styled building by the river Thames. And the people, themselves, keep voting for stuff (the bastards).
It's almost as if people think they have the right to change their minds, and to try and change other peoples minds. Or some sick shit like that.
And how well did the LDs with their "overturn the referendum" policy do?
Well, objectively speaking they increased their vote share quite substantially coming second in a lot of constituencies, but lost vote efficiency. In a general election, which is the point: parties put up their approaches to Brexit and people voted accordingly.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
Which is why decent people, when organising their marches, exclude the scumbags. Rather carefully. See the Stop The War marches, for example.
I was at the 2003 STW march and I am pretty sure that there were a number of folk there that wouldn't get past the PB antisemitism witchfinders general. In fact the whole of the STW coalition is a SWP front if I recall correctly. Much as I loathe trots it didn't bother me in the slightest because the Iraq War was bullshit and it needed saying. The fact is that the Israelis have killed somewhere north of 10k Palestinians including 5k kids and there are people who think that that's not on and want to protest about it. Just because some other people are wrong uns doesn't invalidate their legitimate rights to peaceful protest. Watching the "free speech" massive frothing about this is fucking hilarious though so please carry on.
Iraq though is a poor analogy as that was a fairly simple situation, whereas Israel-Palestine is very much not - and it's therefore much easier to question the motives and reasoning of those who want it to be. Then, you either thought our government should be directly involved in an invasion of another country because the justifications for it were sound or you didn't. Those who didn't have largely been vindicated on that - even if they have been disastrously wrong about other things.
The march was designed to show mass opposition to a specific government decision that was theirs' to make, and which was heading to a vote. Maybe 1 million people might have led to a few resignations and Blair backing down.
Now take now.
"The fact is that the Israelis have killed somewhere north of 10k Palestinians including 5k kids and there are people who think that that's not on and want to protest about it."
Accepting the figures as broadly true (Hamas aren't reliable on specifics, but there's no doubt about the death and suffering), there's the question of responsibility. Hamas broke the previous cessation of hostilities and have openly said they'd do it again - and that they don't care how many of their own people die in their quest to wipe out Israel.
They also deliberately put those people in harm's way by using them as human shields - or even human cannon fodder - knowing that as a group who doesn't care about the violence, misery, and death they inflict, they can use that against those who do.
Finally, with the possible exception of Joe Biden, it isn't a decision to directly lobby our government against making. Not least because of the dismal Netanyahu - but the Israeli centre and left have concluded they can't live in peace without Hamas gone - however that is achieved.
In that context, who you are marching with and what you are marching for is pretty important. If you're arguing for diplomatic moves to end hostilities by disarming Hamas, releasing hostages, and then in time the resumption of a two-state solution then that's completely reasonable and moral. Even an immediate ceasefire - just to stop horrid scenes - is a legitimate emotional and moral response that may become snagged on reality.
But if large sections on the marches want Israel wiped out, including, it must be said, many of those organising them, spend lots of time shouting about Zionism as being the root of all evil, among other worse things. Then people are fairly entitled to view them not as calls for lasting peace that acknowledge complexity and wrongs done on all sides - but ones that are essentially driven by antisemitic ideas and their intersection with views about Israel.
This reflects my feelings on the undignified behaviour from several quarters in the last couple of weeks.
"There is a special place in hell reserved for people who exploit the pain of others – and it’s becoming very crowded. It’s filling up with those who look at the war between Israel and Hamas, and the grief and fear it prompts in the hearts of Jews and Muslims especially, and see not tragedy but opportunity – a chance to advance their own interests."
Neil Basu's comments about police operational independence might have more force if the police themselves were not so keen to ally themselves with one issue lobby groups in ways which create obvious conflicts of interest and the actuality or perception of bias in how they carry out their duties. On occasions this has led them to breaking the law.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Way offtopic. Take an Apple laptop charger and a pair of AirPods, and put them through a CT scanner. Then take a fake Chinese charger, and earphones, and put them through a CT scanner too. Do you think they’ll look the same, or completely different? https://youtube.com/watch?v=Db99cXMD780
"This week, the director of the U.S. government’s UFO analysis office stated that there is “evidence” of concerning unidentified flying object activity “in our backyard.” According to physicist Seán Kirkpatrick, who heads the congressionally-mandated All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, this alarming UFO activity can be attributed to one of two extraordinary sources: either a foreign power or “aliens.”
To be sure, the ramifications of either would be significant. But Kirkpatrick’s comments, which come as he is about to retire after a 27-year defense and intelligence-focused career, are more intriguing because he also says that “none” of the hundreds of military UFO reports analyzed by his office recently “have been positively attributed to foreign activities.”
At the same time, Kirkpatrick and senior defense officials have ruled out the possibility that secret U.S. programs or experimental aircraft explain the phenomena.
While suspicious UFO cases will “continue to be investigated” for foreign links, the facts at hand appear to support Kirkpatrick’s more startling explanation for the UFO activity in America’s backyard: “aliens.”"
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
No, it was an attempt at a very British coup. Genteel and well spoken - but still an attempt to overturn a legal vote
We frequently over turn legal votes with other legal votes. They keep doing it at that big, Pugin styled building by the river Thames. And the people, themselves, keep voting for stuff (the bastards).
It's almost as if people think they have the right to change their minds, and to try and change other peoples minds. Or some sick shit like that.
And how well did the LDs with their "overturn the referendum" policy do?
Well, objectively speaking they increased their vote share quite substantially coming second in a lot of constituencies, but lost vote efficiency. In a general election, which is the point: parties put up their approaches to Brexit and people voted accordingly.
There’s nothing that says that advocating a legal, democratic policy must get you lots of votes.
Neil Basu's comments about police operational independence might have more force if the police themselves were not so keen to ally themselves with one issue lobby groups in ways which create obvious conflicts of interest and the actuality or perception of bias in how they carry out their duties. On occasions this has led them to breaking the law.
Beams and motes, Mr Basu. Beams and motes.
Over the last few years they have made rods for their own backs by taking the knee, decorating cars in pride flags, desperately trying to show they are “one” with certain issues. It’s removed their vital requirement to be seen as neutral and that policing must be done with no fear or favour. And this is where it leads and the powers that be in the police cannot get their heads around it.
Farage's chances of being the next Tory leader are about as good as Andy Burnham's chances of being the next Labour leader.
The difference being that Andy Burnham would be a great next Labour leader.
I think he'd be awful, and has shown himself to be repeatedly awful in that his friends don't like him. However people can improve. The best political example in recent years is Lammy - he's gone from a complete joke to really quite ok.
My hunch is that Burnham has enough of the natural toe-rag about him that he'll never be PM.
I have an unusual bias towards Andy Burnham, for his work on the Hillsborough inquiry. That day when he faced down the boos in the stadium at Anfield, as the sports minister, was the making of him as a politician.
I will likely disagree with him on almost everything, but have massive respect for him for this one issue.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Well, apart from Steve Bray who's a certified loon.
He must be independently wealthy as I cannot imagine any sensible remainers would give him a penny. He’s a total idiot.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Well, apart from Steve Bray who's a certified loon.
He must be independently wealthy as I cannot imagine any sensible remainers would give him a penny. He’s a total idiot.
No, he isn't. He is a nobody from South Wales. AFAIK I know he broke up with his partner and his life was a mess and he became obsessed with Brexit.
It is people like Mr Pimlico Plumber have given him lots of money to carry on his nonsense. He has been living in a very expensive apartment just around the corner from HoC, which apparently includes JRM as a neighbour.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Well, apart from Steve Bray who's a certified loon.
He must be independently wealthy as I cannot imagine any sensible remainers would give him a penny. He’s a total idiot.
People like Mr Pimlico Plumber have given him lots of money to carry on his nonsense.
I used to have a lot of time for the Charlie Mullins, a proper result of Tebbit conservatism, boy done well with hard work and smarts but in what world did he think supporting Bray was a good idea.
Was there a moment he thought “you know what, I can overturn Brexit by paying a gobshite to spend every day in parliament square with a megaphone disrupting life and political interviews and the country are going to just admit we need to reverse Brexit.”
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Well, apart from Steve Bray who's a certified loon.
He must be independently wealthy as I cannot imagine any sensible remainers would give him a penny. He’s a total idiot.
No, he isn't. He is a nobody from South Wales. AFAIK I know he broke up with his partner and his life was a mess and he became obsessed with Brexit.
It is people like Mr Pimlico Plumber have given him lots of money to carry on his nonsense. He has been living in a very expensive apartment just around the corner from HoC, which apparently includes JRM as a neighbour.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Well, apart from Steve Bray who's a certified loon.
He must be independently wealthy as I cannot imagine any sensible remainers would give him a penny. He’s a total idiot.
No, he isn't. He is a nobody from South Wales. AFAIK I know he broke up with his partner and his life was a mess and he became obsessed with Brexit.
It is people like Mr Pimlico Plumber have given him lots of money to carry on his nonsense. He has been living in a very expensive apartment just around the corner from HoC, which apparently includes JRM as a neighbour.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Well, apart from Steve Bray who's a certified loon.
He must be independently wealthy as I cannot imagine any sensible remainers would give him a penny. He’s a total idiot.
No, he isn't. He is a nobody from South Wales. AFAIK I know he broke up with his partner and his life was a mess and he became obsessed with Brexit.
It is people like Mr Pimlico Plumber have given him lots of money to carry on his nonsense. He has been living in a very expensive apartment just around the corner from HoC, which apparently includes JRM as a neighbour.
He’s facing a crossroads next year. His ire has been directed mainly at Tories. If Labour win does he keep fighting the Brexit fight, knowing SKS isn’t taking us back in? Or does he head back home to (now I find out thanks to PB) South Wales for a quiet retirement?
Supposedly Farridge is going to be on I’m A Celeb.
Honestly, I think if he became leader of the Conservatives, it would kill the party as a mainstream entity. I daresay the members would be all for it; as a block they’ve done little suggest that they’re anything other than unhinged loons with a political death wish.
Seventy-five minutes before I leave to catch my train. Hmm. Need a two-parter. Have already done "Black Orchid". Thinks. Baker T, Sarah-Jane, Harry Sullivan. The Sontaran Experiment.
Did think of it, but I'm putting off McCoy. I don't engage with the whole of the show and some bits are just too amateurish or silly. When I watched "The Masque of Mandragora" it was easily the equal of a BBC drama production of the time, but something like "Silver Nemesis" was bad even at the time. I have seen "The Curse of Fenric" and almost liked it: I could see where it was coming from and yes, Nicholas Parsons was good, but the direction and acting irked. Although I will give "Ghost Light" a go: maybe Season 26 is better than I remember, we'll see.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
Which is why decent people, when organising their marches, exclude the scumbags. Rather carefully. See the Stop The War marches, for example.
I was at the 2003 STW march and I am pretty sure that there were a number of folk there that wouldn't get past the PB antisemitism witchfinders general. In fact the whole of the STW coalition is a SWP front if I recall correctly. Much as I loathe trots it didn't bother me in the slightest because the Iraq War was bullshit and it needed saying. The fact is that the Israelis have killed somewhere north of 10k Palestinians including 5k kids and there are people who think that that's not on and want to protest about it. Just because some other people are wrong uns doesn't invalidate their legitimate rights to peaceful protest. Watching the "free speech" massive frothing about this is fucking hilarious though so please carry on.
Iraq though is a poor analogy as that was a fairly simple situation, whereas Israel-Palestine is very much not - and it's therefore much easier to question the motives and reasoning of those who want it to be. Then, you either thought our government should be directly involved in an invasion of another country because the justifications for it were sound or you didn't. Those who didn't have largely been vindicated on that - even if they have been disastrously wrong about other things.
The march was designed to show mass opposition to a specific government decision that was theirs' to make, and which was heading to a vote. Maybe 1 million people might have led to a few resignations and Blair backing down.
Now take now.
"The fact is that the Israelis have killed somewhere north of 10k Palestinians including 5k kids and there are people who think that that's not on and want to protest about it."
Accepting the figures as broadly true (Hamas aren't reliable on specifics, but there's no doubt about the death and suffering), there's the question of responsibility. Hamas broke the previous cessation of hostilities and have openly said they'd do it again - and that they don't care how many of their own people die in their quest to wipe out Israel.
They also deliberately put those people in harm's way by using them as human shields - or even human cannon fodder - knowing that as a group who doesn't care about the violence, misery, and death they inflict, they can use that against those who do.
Finally, with the possible exception of Joe Biden, it isn't a decision to directly lobby our government against making. Not least because of the dismal Netanyahu - but the Israeli centre and left have concluded they can't live in peace without Hamas gone - however that is achieved.
In that context, who you are marching with and what you are marching for is pretty important. If you're arguing for diplomatic moves to end hostilities by disarming Hamas, releasing hostages, and then in time the resumption of a two-state solution then that's completely reasonable and moral. Even an immediate ceasefire - just to stop horrid scenes - is a legitimate emotional and moral response that may become snagged on reality.
But if large sections on the marches want Israel wiped out, including, it must be said, many of those organising them, spend lots of time shouting about Zionism as being the root of all evil, among other worse things. Then people are fairly entitled to view them not as calls for lasting peace that acknowledge complexity and wrongs done on all sides - but ones that are essentially driven by antisemitic ideas and their intersection with views about Israel.
Yeah I'm not going, for some but not all of those reasons, but I have absolutely no problem with people going, I don't think it's antisemitic to attend and in fact I'd go as far as to say that it's arguably antisemitic to say people shouldn't attend, as it essentially equates Jews with Israel (protesting against Israel = hates Jews) and as David Baddiel says, as a Jew, Israel has nothing to do with him.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Well, apart from Steve Bray who's a certified loon.
He must be independently wealthy as I cannot imagine any sensible remainers would give him a penny. He’s a total idiot.
No, he isn't. He is a nobody from South Wales. AFAIK I know he broke up with his partner and his life was a mess and he became obsessed with Brexit.
It is people like Mr Pimlico Plumber have given him lots of money to carry on his nonsense. He has been living in a very expensive apartment just around the corner from HoC, which apparently includes JRM as a neighbour.
He’s facing a crossroads next year. His ire has been directed mainly at Tories. If Labour win does he keep fighting the Brexit fight, knowing SKS isn’t taking us back in? Or does he head back home to (now I find out thanks to PB) South Wales for a quiet retirement?
Well he already pivoted to the Tories are really just Russian stooges....I am sure he will find a new conspiracy theory.
Way offtopic. Take an Apple laptop charger and a pair of AirPods, and put them through a CT scanner. Then take a fake Chinese charger, and earphones, and put them through a CT scanner too. Do you think they’ll look the same, or completely different? https://youtube.com/watch?v=Db99cXMD780
I'm going for "completely" different, based on having seen the CT scans of Apple's $125 USB C cable.
Apart from anything else, what I've read about Farage suggests that he's very difficult to work with, and relationships with colleagues fall apart quickly, unless he gets his way on everything as Supreme Leader. Any idea of Cabinet Government would be anathema to him. If he led the Tories, I reckon they'd disintegrate into greater dysfunctionality than they already display.
On that basis, I strongly recommend they go for Farage as leader.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Too obvious on this occasion
Yes I didn't have to work too hard. No spooky powers of perception required. One that particularly sticks was this witch of a leaverwoman yelling 'you slaaag' at Kay Burley.
Didn't see you there btw. Good call because you'd have hated it. You'd have been really embarrassed.
Way offtopic. Take an Apple laptop charger and a pair of AirPods, and put them through a CT scanner. Then take a fake Chinese charger, and earphones, and put them through a CT scanner too. Do you think they’ll look the same, or completely different? https://youtube.com/watch?v=Db99cXMD780
I'm going for "completely" different, based on having seen the CT scans of Apple's $125 USB C cable.
Apart from anything else, what I've read about Farage suggests that he's very difficult to work with, and relationships with colleagues fall apart quickly, unless he gets his way on everything as Supreme Leader. Any idea of Cabinet Government would be anathema to him. If he led the Tories, I reckon they'd disintegrate into greater dysfunctionality than they already display.
On that basis, I strongly recommend they go for Farage as leader.
Very difficult to work with and relationships with colleagues fall apart quickly, dysfunctional?
May, Johnson, Truss. Sunak only won because there wasn't a vote, if Farage gets in front of the members its a no contest. How he gets to be an MP is the only stumbling block, and the reason he is 34 not 5.
Way offtopic. Take an Apple laptop charger and a pair of AirPods, and put them through a CT scanner. Then take a fake Chinese charger, and earphones, and put them through a CT scanner too. Do you think they’ll look the same, or completely different? https://youtube.com/watch?v=Db99cXMD780
I'm going for "completely" different, based on having seen the CT scans of Apple's $125 USB C cable.
You willingly opine re: techno-babble. Yet are clueless as to how many farthings to a crone. CORRECTION - crore.
Jon Sopel now saying other ministers threatening to resign if Rishi doesn’t get rid of Suella….
We have seen these so called ministerial threats to resign before which turn out to be just a lot of moaning and then nothing happens . I’d be astonished if we see any resignations .
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Hence 2019.
Imagine if they had succeeded in overturning the Brexit vote? Without ever enacting it? It doesn’t bear thinking about
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
If it had been overturned it would have been after a vote - either an election or a referendum. The right thing to do, in hindsight (but Cameron was too short sighted to think beyond the Brexit vote) would have been to plan for 2 referendums from the outset, one on the principle and a second on the specifics of the deal. That's how the Swiss would have run it.
Perhaps. But the wrong thing to do is to have a referendum which the PM says is binding, then when you lose it (a) claim it was only advisory, then (b) agitate for another go by refusing to vote for any deal agreed with the EU
This notion that a second referendum was undemocratic was a bollocks argument. When the uninformed became the better informed many changed their mind. Enough to reverse the result? Probably, which is why those who were most desperate to deny a second referendum did so because the expected they would lose. When Farage thought he had lost by 52 to 48 he suggested democracy would only be served, because the result was so close, by a second vote.
If the Leave campaign hadn't lied and the Remain campaign hadn't been so shite, perhaps we wouldn't have needed a second referendum, and our economy would be in better shape.
Way offtopic. Take an Apple laptop charger and a pair of AirPods, and put them through a CT scanner. Then take a fake Chinese charger, and earphones, and put them through a CT scanner too. Do you think they’ll look the same, or completely different? https://youtube.com/watch?v=Db99cXMD780
I'm going for "completely" different, based on having seen the CT scans of Apple's $125 USB C cable.
You willingly opine re: techno-babble. Yet are clueless as to how many farthings to a crone.
Is this good, or bad? Or WTF??
Mr Power made by Mr Pirate Faker equals Boom Time quite often.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Too obvious on this occasion
Yes I didn't have to work too hard. No spooky powers of perception required. One that particularly sticks was this witch of a leaverwoman yelling 'you slaaag' at Kay Burley.
Didn't see you there btw. Good call because you'd have hated it. You'd have been really embarrassed.
How’d you know??? You don’t know what I look like!
Jon Sopel now saying other ministers threatening to resign if Rishi doesn’t get rid of Suella….
We have seen these so called ministerial threats to resign before which turn out to be just a lot of moaning and then nothing happens . I’d be astonished if we see any resignations .
I would question what current minister(s) would be speaking to Jon Sopel.... doesn't seem like a Tory friendly person to hit up for internal party political power gaming.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Too obvious on this occasion
Yes I didn't have to work too hard. No spooky powers of perception required. One that particularly sticks was this witch of a leaverwoman yelling 'you slaaag' at Kay Burley.
Didn't see you there btw. Good call because you'd have hated it. You'd have been really embarrassed.
How’d you know??? You don’t know what I look like!
Jon Sopel now saying other ministers threatening to resign if Rishi doesn’t get rid of Suella….
I’m not entirely convinced the lobby journalists have got this one right. There was plenty of sound and fury yesterday - lots of people saying she’d not last the day, lots saying she’d be reshuffled out today (Friday) lots saying her position was untenable…
I think there’s a lot of briefing going on, but I do think a lot of this is ramping from both sides of the divide in the Tory Party. There’s a lot of MPs would would would like to see the back of her who are perhaps ramping up the prospect of people quitting/her sacking being inevitable. We are perhaps seeing the next leadership contest starting in earnest, behind the scenes.
I think it’s pretty inevitable he will keep her in post until the Rwanda ruling at least. Then it might be down to events.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Hence 2019.
Imagine if they had succeeded in overturning the Brexit vote? Without ever enacting it? It doesn’t bear thinking about
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
If it had been overturned it would have been after a vote - either an election or a referendum. The right thing to do, in hindsight (but Cameron was too short sighted to think beyond the Brexit vote) would have been to plan for 2 referendums from the outset, one on the principle and a second on the specifics of the deal. That's how the Swiss would have run it.
Perhaps. But the wrong thing to do is to have a referendum which the PM says is binding, then when you lose it (a) claim it was only advisory, then (b) agitate for another go by refusing to vote for any deal agreed with the EU
This notion that a second referendum was undemocratic was a bollocks argument. When the uninformed became the better informed many changed their mind. Enough to reverse the result? Probably, which is why those who were most desperate to deny a second referendum did so because the expected they would lose. When Farage thought he had lost by 52 to 48 he suggested democracy would only be served, because the result was so close, by a second vote.
If the Leave campaign hadn't lied and the Remain campaign hadn't been so shite, perhaps we wouldn't have needed a second referendum, and our economy would be in better shape.
If my Uncle cut off his bollocks he could use a ladies changing room.
It really was a pity to see the middle management types, so used to low risk, incremental wealth and the easy life, be driven so mad by losing that they ended up looking like nerdy versions of Michael Douglas in Falling Down
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
Indeed. What a fucking idiot Cameron was.
Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak - amazing to think that the best of these is Theresa May. How low have we come.
The second referendum debate (together with the IndyRef2 debate) is why referendums should be used so sparingly (if at all) and why, in this country, we should have some prescribed rules around how they are run.
I would be really supportive of a Referendum Act which prescribes that changes must be approved by a supermajority (60%?) and that a referendum cannot be brought on a matter that has previously been decided in the space of X years (20?). I know that it would only be of persuasive effect because any government could override it, but if you have some grounding principles it would be really helpful.
Way offtopic. Take an Apple laptop charger and a pair of AirPods, and put them through a CT scanner. Then take a fake Chinese charger, and earphones, and put them through a CT scanner too. Do you think they’ll look the same, or completely different? https://youtube.com/watch?v=Db99cXMD780
I'm going for "completely" different, based on having seen the CT scans of Apple's $125 USB C cable.
You willingly opine re: techno-babble. Yet are clueless as to how many farthings to a crone.
Is this good, or bad? Or WTF??
Mr Power made by Mr Pirate Faker equals Boom Time quite often.
"Who can argue with that authentic frontier gibberish?"
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Hence 2019.
Imagine if they had succeeded in overturning the Brexit vote? Without ever enacting it? It doesn’t bear thinking about
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
If it had been overturned it would have been after a vote - either an election or a referendum. The right thing to do, in hindsight (but Cameron was too short sighted to think beyond the Brexit vote) would have been to plan for 2 referendums from the outset, one on the principle and a second on the specifics of the deal. That's how the Swiss would have run it.
Perhaps. But the wrong thing to do is to have a referendum which the PM says is binding, then when you lose it (a) claim it was only advisory, then (b) agitate for another go by refusing to vote for any deal agreed with the EU
This notion that a second referendum was undemocratic was a bollocks argument. When the uninformed became the better informed many changed their mind. Enough to reverse the result? Probably, which is why those who were most desperate to deny a second referendum did so because the expected they would lose. When Farage thought he had lost by 52 to 48 he suggested democracy would only be served, because the result was so close, by a second vote.
If the Leave campaign hadn't lied and the Remain campaign hadn't been so shite, perhaps we wouldn't have needed a second referendum, and our economy would be in better shape.
If my Uncle cut off his bollocks he could use a ladies changing room.
It really was a pity to see the middle management types, so used to low risk, incremental wealth and the easy life, be driven so mad by losing that they ended up looking like nerdy versions of Michael Douglas in Falling Down
If I knew what you were writing about I could agree or disagree with your narrative. Sadly I don't.
Anyway the milk is spilt and the horse has bolted. Onwards and upwards.
I thought there were two kings and a queen "over the water" for the Conservatives. Such choice....
The polls this week show a slight worsening of the party's situation - We Think has a 24-point Labour lead, Techne stays at 21.
What happened in 2016 was quite simple - we had a vote on whether to remain or leave the European Union. Once that decision had been taken, the electorate abdicated any further involvement and effectively gave carte blanche to the Government to negotiate whatever terms it could or wanted to whether, had we stayed, to maintain the status quo or go for further integration (taking the Euro, Schengen etc) or leaving on whatever terms were negotiated under Article 50.
What those who were on the wrong side of the vote (and it would have happened had the other side won) failed to realise there was only going to be one vote - there was no mandate for a second vote on the terms under which left and equally, had we voted to stay in the EU, the Government had a mandate to join the Euro if they so wished.
That was the reality and significance of the IN/OUT vote - had it been a vote on a renegotiated membership package it wouldn't have had the same significance. Having promised to hold a vote if he won a majority in the 2015 GE, Cameron was forced into the highest of high stakes gambles by the stupidity of the EU leaders who believed the British people would never vote to leave.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Too obvious on this occasion
Yes I didn't have to work too hard. No spooky powers of perception required. One that particularly sticks was this witch of a leaverwoman yelling 'you slaaag' at Kay Burley.
Didn't see you there btw. Good call because you'd have hated it. You'd have been really embarrassed.
How’d you know??? You don’t know what I look like!
Jon Sopel now saying other ministers threatening to resign if Rishi doesn’t get rid of Suella….
I’m not entirely convinced the lobby journalists have got this one right. There was plenty of sound and fury yesterday - lots of people saying she’d not last the day, lots saying she’d be reshuffled out today (Friday) lots saying her position was untenable…
I think there’s a lot of briefing going on, but I do think a lot of this is ramping from both sides of the divide in the Tory Party. There’s a lot of MPs would would would like to see the back of her who are perhaps ramping up the prospect of people quitting/her sacking being inevitable. We are perhaps seeing the next leadership contest starting in earnest, behind the scenes.
I think it’s pretty inevitable he will keep her in post until the Rwanda ruling at least. Then it might be down to events.
Braverman seems to want desperately to be leader of the opposition. It isn't that long ago since she flounced out from her current job in a huff. All these things taken together don't make for a particularly good impression.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Too obvious on this occasion
Yes I didn't have to work too hard. No spooky powers of perception required. One that particularly sticks was this witch of a leaverwoman yelling 'you slaaag' at Kay Burley.
Didn't see you there btw. Good call because you'd have hated it. You'd have been really embarrassed.
How’d you know??? You don’t know what I look like!
Jon Sopel now saying other ministers threatening to resign if Rishi doesn’t get rid of Suella….
I’m not entirely convinced the lobby journalists have got this one right. There was plenty of sound and fury yesterday - lots of people saying she’d not last the day, lots saying she’d be reshuffled out today (Friday) lots saying her position was untenable…
I think there’s a lot of briefing going on, but I do think a lot of this is ramping from both sides of the divide in the Tory Party. There’s a lot of MPs would would would like to see the back of her who are perhaps ramping up the prospect of people quitting/her sacking being inevitable. We are perhaps seeing the next leadership contest starting in earnest, behind the scenes.
I think it’s pretty inevitable he will keep her in post until the Rwanda ruling at least. Then it might be down to events.
If you're Sunak, you'd surely wait until after the weekend at least, just in case it all kicks off at one of the Reembrabce events and Braverman claims to be vindicated?
Of course after the weekend if you're Sunak you continue to hold fire on sacking her because you're weak as shit.
Speaking as a non Tory voter, but purely on the basis of electorability, if the Tories ever elected Braverman or indeed Farage they would be highly unlikely to win an election in this country. Braverman is mostly hated for her divisive rhetoric and flouncing behaviour. Farage would be electoral poison and the Tories would end up a fringe party at best.
"Faked audio of Sadiq Khan dismissing the importance of Armistice Day events this weekend is circulating among extreme right groups, prompting a police investigation, according to the London mayor’s office.
One of the simulated audio clips circulating on TikTok begins: “I don’t give a flying shit about the Remembrance weekend,” with the anonymous poster going on to ask “is this for real or AI?” in an effort to provoke debate.
The mayor’s office believes the audio clips are generated by artificial intelligence software, and are keen to publicise them before marches due in London at the weekend so the public will be able to recognise them as fake.
The doctored Khan audio continues by describing a planned pro-Palestine march due to take place tomorrow in glowing terms, albeit with an unusual, slightly clipped grammar. “What’s important and paramount is the 1 million-man Palestinian march takes place on Saturday,” the clip continues."
Re the last thread. I watched the evidence of Elaine Cottam to the post office Inquiry and have to say that I felt very sorry for her. It was someone close to old age who was caught like a rabbit in the headlights being interviewed about the minutiae of things that happened 20 years ago. It seemed to me like she had no knowledge of the evidence she was being cross examined on. It was not clear to me in what capacity she was appearing and whether she had any legal advice beforehand, if she had then the legal advice appears to have been very poor as she was totally unprepared. It is very unfortunate that this was broadcast on the internet for journalists to do their 'gotcha' clickbait character assassinations.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Hence 2019.
Imagine if they had succeeded in overturning the Brexit vote? Without ever enacting it? It doesn’t bear thinking about
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
If it had been overturned it would have been after a vote - either an election or a referendum. The right thing to do, in hindsight (but Cameron was too short sighted to think beyond the Brexit vote) would have been to plan for 2 referendums from the outset, one on the principle and a second on the specifics of the deal. That's how the Swiss would have run it.
Perhaps. But the wrong thing to do is to have a referendum which the PM says is binding, then when you lose it (a) claim it was only advisory, then (b) agitate for another go by refusing to vote for any deal agreed with the EU
This notion that a second referendum was undemocratic was a bollocks argument. When the uninformed became the better informed many changed their mind. Enough to reverse the result? Probably, which is why those who were most desperate to deny a second referendum did so because the expected they would lose. When Farage thought he had lost by 52 to 48 he suggested democracy would only be served, because the result was so close, by a second vote.
If the Leave campaign hadn't lied and the Remain campaign hadn't been so shite, perhaps we wouldn't have needed a second referendum, and our economy would be in better shape.
If my Uncle cut off his bollocks he could use a ladies changing room.
It really was a pity to see the middle management types, so used to low risk, incremental wealth and the easy life, be driven so mad by losing that they ended up looking like nerdy versions of Michael Douglas in Falling Down
If I knew what you were writing about I could agree or disagree with your narrative. Sadly I don't.
Anyway the milk is spilt and the horse has bolted. Onwards and upwards.
Ha fair enough. I agree with the second paragraph, what’s done is done.
Both sides can feel comfortable saying “cheats prosper” - Boris lied about the NHS and became PM, Sir Keir lied about accepting the result as ‘a matter of principle’ and he is likely to be PM now
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Too obvious on this occasion
Yes I didn't have to work too hard. No spooky powers of perception required. One that particularly sticks was this witch of a leaverwoman yelling 'you slaaag' at Kay Burley.
Didn't see you there btw. Good call because you'd have hated it. You'd have been really embarrassed.
How’d you know??? You don’t know what I look like!
I know what you look like
Yes, a bloke out of Saving Private Ryan wasn’t it? I’ll take it , a film star
I thought maybe Kinabalu could have been at a PB drink actually, so he would know.
"Faked audio of Sadiq Khan dismissing the importance of Armistice Day events this weekend is circulating among extreme right groups, prompting a police investigation, according to the London mayor’s office.
One of the simulated audio clips circulating on TikTok begins: “I don’t give a flying shit about the Remembrance weekend,” with the anonymous poster going on to ask “is this for real or AI?” in an effort to provoke debate.
The mayor’s office believes the audio clips are generated by artificial intelligence software, and are keen to publicise them before marches due in London at the weekend so the public will be able to recognise them as fake.
The doctored Khan audio continues by describing a planned pro-Palestine march due to take place tomorrow in glowing terms, albeit with an unusual, slightly clipped grammar. “What’s important and paramount is the 1 million-man Palestinian march takes place on Saturday,” the clip continues."
The Starmer clip was fake; iirc the Conservatives published a warning about it.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Hence 2019.
Imagine if they had succeeded in overturning the Brexit vote? Without ever enacting it? It doesn’t bear thinking about
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
If it had been overturned it would have been after a vote - either an election or a referendum. The right thing to do, in hindsight (but Cameron was too short sighted to think beyond the Brexit vote) would have been to plan for 2 referendums from the outset, one on the principle and a second on the specifics of the deal. That's how the Swiss would have run it.
Perhaps. But the wrong thing to do is to have a referendum which the PM says is binding, then when you lose it (a) claim it was only advisory, then (b) agitate for another go by refusing to vote for any deal agreed with the EU
This notion that a second referendum was undemocratic was a bollocks argument. When the uninformed became the better informed many changed their mind. Enough to reverse the result? Probably, which is why those who were most desperate to deny a second referendum did so because the expected they would lose. When Farage thought he had lost by 52 to 48 he suggested democracy would only be served, because the result was so close, by a second vote.
If the Leave campaign hadn't lied and the Remain campaign hadn't been so shite, perhaps we wouldn't have needed a second referendum, and our economy would be in better shape.
If my Uncle cut off his bollocks he could use a ladies changing room.
It really was a pity to see the middle management types, so used to low risk, incremental wealth and the easy life, be driven so mad by losing that they ended up looking like nerdy versions of Michael Douglas in Falling Down
But revenge comes served cold.
The Brexit albatross around the neck of this government is a large part of why the Tories are out of power for a generation.
Those middle management types that you despise will be running the country.
"Faked audio of Sadiq Khan dismissing the importance of Armistice Day events this weekend is circulating among extreme right groups, prompting a police investigation, according to the London mayor’s office.
One of the simulated audio clips circulating on TikTok begins: “I don’t give a flying shit about the Remembrance weekend,” with the anonymous poster going on to ask “is this for real or AI?” in an effort to provoke debate.
The mayor’s office believes the audio clips are generated by artificial intelligence software, and are keen to publicise them before marches due in London at the weekend so the public will be able to recognise them as fake.
The doctored Khan audio continues by describing a planned pro-Palestine march due to take place tomorrow in glowing terms, albeit with an unusual, slightly clipped grammar. “What’s important and paramount is the 1 million-man Palestinian march takes place on Saturday,” the clip continues."
The US presidential election next year, can’t possibly be a total sh!tshow of fake audio and video clips going around online.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Hence 2019.
Imagine if they had succeeded in overturning the Brexit vote? Without ever enacting it? It doesn’t bear thinking about
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
If it had been overturned it would have been after a vote - either an election or a referendum. The right thing to do, in hindsight (but Cameron was too short sighted to think beyond the Brexit vote) would have been to plan for 2 referendums from the outset, one on the principle and a second on the specifics of the deal. That's how the Swiss would have run it.
Perhaps. But the wrong thing to do is to have a referendum which the PM says is binding, then when you lose it (a) claim it was only advisory, then (b) agitate for another go by refusing to vote for any deal agreed with the EU
This notion that a second referendum was undemocratic was a bollocks argument. When the uninformed became the better informed many changed their mind. Enough to reverse the result? Probably, which is why those who were most desperate to deny a second referendum did so because the expected they would lose. When Farage thought he had lost by 52 to 48 he suggested democracy would only be served, because the result was so close, by a second vote.
If the Leave campaign hadn't lied and the Remain campaign hadn't been so shite, perhaps we wouldn't have needed a second referendum, and our economy would be in better shape.
If my Uncle cut off his bollocks he could use a ladies changing room.
It really was a pity to see the middle management types, so used to low risk, incremental wealth and the easy life, be driven so mad by losing that they ended up looking like nerdy versions of Michael Douglas in Falling Down
But revenge comes served cold.
The Brexit albatross around the neck of this government is a large part of why the Tories are out of power for a generation.
Those middle management types that you despise will be running the country.
Slow down, I can see you drooling!
I don’t despise them, it was just disappointing/embarrassing to see the mask slip
As for ‘revenge’, wasn’t it the remain tribe that kept banging on about it being so close that the winners should try to bring the losers on board? More flannel obviously
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
That is utter rubbish. I thought almost everything in the 2019 Conservative manifesto was wrong. I didn’t vote for its implementation and I would be happy for there to be another general election where I can vote them out. I don’t feel morally obliged to wait until everything in their 2019 referendum is implemented. Why should I not feel the same about the Brexit referendum? Politics doesn’t stop because something is badged as a referendum instead of a general election.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Yep. I went to College Green at the height of the Brexit Wars, spent quite a bit of time there, and I observed at length and leisure both sets of protestors, the Leave crowd and the Remain crowd. Boy what a difference. The Remainers were normal type people, some of them rather intense but, you know, all nice and jolly on the whole and well behaved, but the Leavers, oh my god what a low rent mob, not all of them but quite a lot of them, I'd say a majority, were nasty nasty people. Very thick too, that was palpable. But most of all, nasty. You really wanted a shower afterwards when you got home. I've never forgotten that. Made a big impression on me.
Too obvious on this occasion
Yes I didn't have to work too hard. No spooky powers of perception required. One that particularly sticks was this witch of a leaverwoman yelling 'you slaaag' at Kay Burley.
Didn't see you there btw. Good call because you'd have hated it. You'd have been really embarrassed.
How’d you know??? You don’t know what I look like!
I know what you look like
Yes, a bloke out of Saving Private Ryan wasn’t it? I’ll take it , a film star
I thought maybe Kinabalu could have been at a PB drink actually, so he would know.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
That is utter rubbish. I thought almost everything in the 2019 Conservative manifesto was wrong. I didn’t vote for its implementation and I would be happy for there to be another general election where I can vote them out. I don’t feel morally obliged to wait until everything in their 2019 referendum is implemented. Why should I not feel the same about the Brexit referendum? Politics doesn’t stop because something is badged as a referendum instead of a general election.
Because there are elections every 4/5 years, and the referendum was sold as a once in a generation vote
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
That is utter rubbish. I thought almost everything in the 2019 Conservative manifesto was wrong. I didn’t vote for its implementation and I would be happy for there to be another general election where I can vote them out. I don’t feel morally obliged to wait until everything in their 2019 referendum is implemented. Why should I not feel the same about the Brexit referendum? Politics doesn’t stop because something is badged as a referendum instead of a general election.
Because there are elections every 4/5 years, and the referendum was sold as a once in a generation vote
So how do you explain the 2017 and 2019 elections?
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
Which is why decent people, when organising their marches, exclude the scumbags. Rather carefully. See the Stop The War marches, for example.
I was at the 2003 STW march and I am pretty sure that there were a number of folk there that wouldn't get past the PB antisemitism witchfinders general. In fact the whole of the STW coalition is a SWP front if I recall correctly. Much as I loathe trots it didn't bother me in the slightest because the Iraq War was bullshit and it needed saying. The fact is that the Israelis have killed somewhere north of 10k Palestinians including 5k kids and there are people who think that that's not on and want to protest about it. Just because some other people are wrong uns doesn't invalidate their legitimate rights to peaceful protest. Watching the "free speech" massive frothing about this is fucking hilarious though so please carry on.
Iraq though is a poor analogy as that was a fairly simple situation, whereas Israel-Palestine is very much not - and it's therefore much easier to question the motives and reasoning of those who want it to be. Then, you either thought our government should be directly involved in an invasion of another country because the justifications for it were sound or you didn't. Those who didn't have largely been vindicated on that - even if they have been disastrously wrong about other things.
The march was designed to show mass opposition to a specific government decision that was theirs' to make, and which was heading to a vote. Maybe 1 million people might have led to a few resignations and Blair backing down.
Now take now.
"The fact is that the Israelis have killed somewhere north of 10k Palestinians including 5k kids and there are people who think that that's not on and want to protest about it."
Accepting the figures as broadly true (Hamas aren't reliable on specifics, but there's no doubt about the death and suffering), there's the question of responsibility. Hamas broke the previous cessation of hostilities and have openly said they'd do it again - and that they don't care how many of their own people die in their quest to wipe out Israel.
They also deliberately put those people in harm's way by using them as human shields - or even human cannon fodder - knowing that as a group who doesn't care about the violence, misery, and death they inflict, they can use that against those who do.
Finally, with the possible exception of Joe Biden, it isn't a decision to directly lobby our government against making. Not least because of the dismal Netanyahu - but the Israeli centre and left have concluded they can't live in peace without Hamas gone - however that is achieved.
In that context, who you are marching with and what you are marching for is pretty important. If you're arguing for diplomatic moves to end hostilities by disarming Hamas, releasing hostages, and then in time the resumption of a two-state solution then that's completely reasonable and moral. Even an immediate ceasefire - just to stop horrid scenes - is a legitimate emotional and moral response that may become snagged on reality.
But if large sections on the marches want Israel wiped out, including, it must be said, many of those organising them, spend lots of time shouting about Zionism as being the root of all evil, among other worse things. Then people are fairly entitled to view them not as calls for lasting peace that acknowledge complexity and wrongs done on all sides - but ones that are essentially driven by antisemitic ideas and their intersection with views about Israel.
Yeah I'm not going, for some but not all of those reasons, but I have absolutely no problem with people going, I don't think it's antisemitic to attend and in fact I'd go as far as to say that it's arguably antisemitic to say people shouldn't attend, as it essentially equates Jews with Israel (protesting against Israel = hates Jews) and as David Baddiel says, as a Jew, Israel has nothing to do with him.
Yeah. I don't think one can say definitively one shouldn't attend - but I do think there is a problem (and it long predates October 7th) of those who are critical of Israel/pro-Palestine but on reasonable grounds, ignoring the fact there's a significant part of that movement that really isn't - and is driven by motivations that are the opposite of those who want to bring about peace. Those people too have been absolutely woeful about separating the two - which is part of the reason for recent awful scenes.
As for the point about equating Jews with Israel, that's obviously true that equating the two are wrong. That said, that fact is too often used as a get out clause by people who believe or say deeply antisemitic things but 'justify' them by saying they are only about Israel. And if someone believes Israel is an irredeemably evil enterprise, as opposed to governed awfully etc..they will invariably believe antisemitic things because it's impossible to square the former with history, others' views, and reality without stepping into wider antisemitic beliefs about the world.
As I think Baddiel himself has acknowledged more recently when confronted with the fact that certain 'anti-Zionists' constantly attack him despite his original stated desire to not talk about Israel. As they see even his relatively mild positions and explanations of Jewishness and criticisms of antisemitism as enabling their great bête noire.
And therein lies the problem. Of course it's not antisemitic to be even a very strong critic of Israel. Even to say it shouldn't exist in certain contexts. But all too often it's a fairly reliable indicator someone either shares views that are horrific, or thinks they're acceptable - even when they justify violence against Jews in the name of opposition to Israel.
That's the problem I mainly have with the marches - though thinking they should go ahead - when certain behaviour and attitudes are coming to the fore, it's a demonstration of that issue. And it would be far better for everyone if those who don't think that distanced themselves from it - either while protesting or by not seeing those who do these things as allies.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
That is utter rubbish. I thought almost everything in the 2019 Conservative manifesto was wrong. I didn’t vote for its implementation and I would be happy for there to be another general election where I can vote them out. I don’t feel morally obliged to wait until everything in their 2019 referendum is implemented. Why should I not feel the same about the Brexit referendum? Politics doesn’t stop because something is badged as a referendum instead of a general election.
Because there are elections every 4/5 years, and the referendum was sold as a once in a generation vote
There were 3 elections in 4 years between 2015 and 2019. People thought they were electing David Cameron for a term of 5 years but that turned out not to be the case. As I said politics doesn’t stop regardless of what people think or are told. I don’t understand why we are supposed to accept that the Brexit referendum should uniquely be preserved in amber for a generation.
Cat litter for pupils rumour denied by school in letter
"A school has been forced to deny online rumours that it was providing litter trays for pupils who identify as cats.
West Monmouth School in Pontypool, Torfaen, wrote to parents this week saying there would be no special treatment for "pupils who might identify as an animal of any kind".
The rumour followed a hoax in the United States about students who "identify as cats" or "furries".
Torfaen council confirmed the school's letter was genuine."
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Hence 2019.
Imagine if they had succeeded in overturning the Brexit vote? Without ever enacting it? It doesn’t bear thinking about
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
If it had been overturned it would have been after a vote - either an election or a referendum. The right thing to do, in hindsight (but Cameron was too short sighted to think beyond the Brexit vote) would have been to plan for 2 referendums from the outset, one on the principle and a second on the specifics of the deal. That's how the Swiss would have run it.
Perhaps. But the wrong thing to do is to have a referendum which the PM says is binding, then when you lose it (a) claim it was only advisory, then (b) agitate for another go by refusing to vote for any deal agreed with the EU
This notion that a second referendum was undemocratic was a bollocks argument. When the uninformed became the better informed many changed their mind. Enough to reverse the result? Probably, which is why those who were most desperate to deny a second referendum did so because the expected they would lose. When Farage thought he had lost by 52 to 48 he suggested democracy would only be served, because the result was so close, by a second vote.
If the Leave campaign hadn't lied and the Remain campaign hadn't been so shite, perhaps we wouldn't have needed a second referendum, and our economy would be in better shape.
If my Uncle cut off his bollocks he could use a ladies changing room.
It really was a pity to see the middle management types, so used to low risk, incremental wealth and the easy life, be driven so mad by losing that they ended up looking like nerdy versions of Michael Douglas in Falling Down
But revenge comes served cold.
The Brexit albatross around the neck of this government is a large part of why the Tories are out of power for a generation.
Those middle management types that you despise will be running the country.
Fifteen years is a pretty long run. Absent brexit, how much further would it have run, and how much shorter in opposition? Who knows.
🔺 NEW: Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, has had a significant falling out with Michael Gove after he had an affair with an acquaintance of hers
I thought things like that weren't allowed to be reported on anymore, as is breaches privacy laws*?
*Hancock having an affair for example was only allowed to be reported because it was a breach of Covid rules, not the actual affair
Compare to all the pearl clutching over naming a newsreader up to no good.....i doubt think we will be getting any outrage here., despite Gove at least being unattached.
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
There was a time when the Police swore allegience to the Queen (or King) not to the transient Government of the day. Same with the armed forces. I don't know if that is still the case but it should be. And it has always been the case that the police are held to be operationally independent of politicians. That is an important safety check on executive power.
Yet when we had the news about allegations about the Met ignoring or not punishing appropriately allegations against serving officers in the Met, nobody seemed then to be too concerned about interfering with the Police's operational independence.
That is so clearly a different matter that in hardly deserves an answer. Dealing with internal corruption which is not being addressed appropriately is obvously a matter for external authorities. Interfering with the normal daily operational decisions of the police is not.
Our police are there to serve the public by upholding the law, passed by the elected Parliament, not to answer the whims and wishes of a transient political figure. If the democratically elected authority (by which I mean Parliament not the Government) wish to see the Police act in a different way then they need to change the law. After all, they are the ones who introduced the relevant law in the first place.
I’ve been pondering something. In 2015 UKIP were riding high in the polls but failed to win a single seat at the GE.
This time, Refuk are not as high but the country is I think more geographically divided. Are there one or two constituencies where they could just possibly win?
I’m thinking places in the East Midlands / North East that were safely Tory and strongly Brexit in 2019 but previously Labour, and have had a shit time in the last 4 years. Not the Thames estuary, that’s Tory for reasons beyond Brexit and has been for decades.
🔺 NEW: Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, has had a significant falling out with Michael Gove after he had an affair with an acquaintance of hers
Govey certainly gets about....
According to Nadine the cabal of (12?) people who run the Conservative party that includes Gove are trying to anoint Kemi as the next leader. Enemies may well be trying to break the alliance.
Cat litter for pupils rumour denied by school in letter
"A school has been forced to deny online rumours that it was providing litter trays for pupils who identify as cats.
West Monmouth School in Pontypool, Torfaen, wrote to parents this week saying there would be no special treatment for "pupils who might identify as an animal of any kind".
The rumour followed a hoax in the United States about students who "identify as cats" or "furries".
Torfaen council confirmed the school's letter was genuine."
What about pupils who identity as attack helicopters?
🔺 NEW: Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, has had a significant falling out with Michael Gove after he had an affair with an acquaintance of hers
I thought things like that weren't allowed to be reported on anymore, as is breaches privacy laws*?
*Hancock having an affair for example was only allowed to be reported because it was a breach of Covid rules, not the actual affair
Compare to all the pearl clutching over naming a newsreader up to no good.....i doubt think we will be getting any outrage here., despite Gove at least being unattached.
"Acquaintance" is, I suspect, doing some heavy lifting. Why would such a thing lead to a "heavy falling out"?
I’ve been pondering something. In 2015 UKIP were riding high in the polls but failed to win a single seat at the GE.
This time, Refuk are not as high but the country is I think more geographically divided. Are there one or two constituencies where they could just possibly win?
I’m thinking places in the East Midlands / North East that were safely Tory and strongly Brexit in 2019 but previously Labour, and have had a shit time in the last 4 years. Not the Thames estuary, that’s Tory for reasons beyond Brexit and has been for decades.
🔺 NEW: Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, has had a significant falling out with Michael Gove after he had an affair with an acquaintance of hers
I thought things like that weren't allowed to be reported on anymore, as is breaches privacy laws*?
*Hancock having an affair for example was only allowed to be reported because it was a breach of Covid rules, not the actual affair
Compare to all the pearl clutching over naming a newsreader up to no good.....i doubt think we will be getting any outrage here., despite Gove at least being unattached.
"Acquaintance" is, I suspect, doing some heavy lifting. Why would such a thing lead to a "heavy falling out"?
The lady in question was married, had an affair with Gove, left her husband for Gove then split up with Gove.
Given the current opinion polls I wonder if Rishi Sunak and Owen Jones might consider forming some sort of support group for their mutual backers.
Both are going to be just fine....Sunak will be a Nick Clegg and Owen Jones is mining the seam of Corbynistas and doing very nicely out of it.
That's the cynical view. I doubt Rishi wants to lead the Conservative party to an historic defeat and I bet Jones is furious that all these protests are having no impact on Labour's poll rating.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
That is utter rubbish. I thought almost everything in the 2019 Conservative manifesto was wrong. I didn’t vote for its implementation and I would be happy for there to be another general election where I can vote them out. I don’t feel morally obliged to wait until everything in their 2019 referendum is implemented. Why should I not feel the same about the Brexit referendum? Politics doesn’t stop because something is badged as a referendum instead of a general election.
Because there are elections every 4/5 years, and the referendum was sold as a once in a generation vote
There were 3 elections in 4 years between 2015 and 2019. People thought they were electing David Cameron for a term of 5 years but that turned out not to be the case. As I said politics doesn’t stop regardless of what people think or are told. I don’t understand why we are supposed to accept that the Brexit referendum should uniquely be preserved in amber for a generation.
Everyone’s different; I’d see the failure to implement the result of a referendum that the establishment had promised was once in a generation as an outrageous deceit, but losing does funny things to people
Trump refusing to leave the White House seems to be generally accepted as beyond the pale, I don’t see much difference in Remain refusing to implement the referendum result
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
That is utter rubbish. I thought almost everything in the 2019 Conservative manifesto was wrong. I didn’t vote for its implementation and I would be happy for there to be another general election where I can vote them out. I don’t feel morally obliged to wait until everything in their 2019 referendum is implemented. Why should I not feel the same about the Brexit referendum? Politics doesn’t stop because something is badged as a referendum instead of a general election.
Because there are elections every 4/5 years, and the referendum was sold as a once in a generation vote
There were 3 elections in 4 years between 2015 and 2019. People thought they were electing David Cameron for a term of 5 years but that turned out not to be the case. As I said politics doesn’t stop regardless of what people think or are told. I don’t understand why we are supposed to accept that the Brexit referendum should uniquely be preserved in amber for a generation.
Now that Brexit has been enacted I see no democratic argument against another referendum if that is what people want. What was important was that it was enacted before it was put to the question again.
Obviously I would vote against rejoining and personally I think another campaign would, be bloody stupid given the uncertainty it would generate going forward. It would set the precedent for new votes every few years as the population's view changed which would mean the EU would never be sure of our position. But if that was what peolpe wanted then that would be the way it wold be.
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Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
General members of the public like me were in my view perfectly entitled to express whatever opinions they wished. I was (and am) a devout Europhile but I know that the goings on in parliament in 2018 and 2019 didn't cover anyone in glory.
The march was designed to show mass opposition to a specific government decision that was theirs' to make, and which was heading to a vote. Maybe 1 million people might have led to a few resignations and Blair backing down.
Now take now.
"The fact is that the Israelis have killed somewhere north of 10k Palestinians including 5k kids and there are people who think that that's not on and want to protest about it."
Accepting the figures as broadly true (Hamas aren't reliable on specifics, but there's no doubt about the death and suffering), there's the question of responsibility. Hamas broke the previous cessation of hostilities and have openly said they'd do it again - and that they don't care how many of their own people die in their quest to wipe out Israel.
They also deliberately put those people in harm's way by using them as human shields - or even human cannon fodder - knowing that as a group who doesn't care about the violence, misery, and death they inflict, they can use that against those who do.
Finally, with the possible exception of Joe Biden, it isn't a decision to directly lobby our government against making. Not least because of the dismal Netanyahu - but the Israeli centre and left have concluded they can't live in peace without Hamas gone - however that is achieved.
In that context, who you are marching with and what you are marching for is pretty important. If you're arguing for diplomatic moves to end hostilities by disarming Hamas, releasing hostages, and then in time the resumption of a two-state solution then that's completely reasonable and moral. Even an immediate ceasefire - just to stop horrid scenes - is a legitimate emotional and moral response that may become snagged on reality.
But if large sections on the marches want Israel wiped out, including, it must be said, many of those organising them, spend lots of time shouting about Zionism as being the root of all evil, among other worse things. Then people are fairly entitled to view them not as calls for lasting peace that acknowledge complexity and wrongs done on all sides - but ones that are essentially driven by antisemitic ideas and their intersection with views about Israel.
"There is a special place in hell reserved for people who exploit the pain of others – and it’s becoming very crowded. It’s filling up with those who look at the war between Israel and Hamas, and the grief and fear it prompts in the hearts of Jews and Muslims especially, and see not tragedy but opportunity – a chance to advance their own interests."
https://x.com/Freedland/status/1723035361671000410?s=20
Starts on Braverman but keep reading - it's a refreshing plague on all your houses rant.
Beams and motes, Mr Basu. Beams and motes.
Take an Apple laptop charger and a pair of AirPods, and put them through a CT scanner.
Then take a fake Chinese charger, and earphones, and put them through a CT scanner too.
Do you think they’ll look the same, or completely different?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Db99cXMD780
"This week, the director of the U.S. government’s UFO analysis office stated that there is “evidence” of concerning unidentified flying object activity “in our backyard.” According to physicist Seán Kirkpatrick, who heads the congressionally-mandated All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, this alarming UFO activity can be attributed to one of two extraordinary sources: either a foreign power or “aliens.”
To be sure, the ramifications of either would be significant. But Kirkpatrick’s comments, which come as he is about to retire after a 27-year defense and intelligence-focused career, are more intriguing because he also says that “none” of the hundreds of military UFO reports analyzed by his office recently “have been positively attributed to foreign activities.”
At the same time, Kirkpatrick and senior defense officials have ruled out the possibility that secret U.S. programs or experimental aircraft explain the phenomena.
While suspicious UFO cases will “continue to be investigated” for foreign links, the facts at hand appear to support Kirkpatrick’s more startling explanation for the UFO activity in America’s backyard: “aliens.”"
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4301944-aliens-or-a-foreign-power-pentagon-ufo-chief-says-someone-is-in-our-backyard/
The people have spoken. The bastards.
Etc.
They are there to police. That is it.
I will likely disagree with him on almost everything, but have massive respect for him for this one issue.
It is people like Mr Pimlico Plumber have given him lots of money to carry on his nonsense. He has been living in a very expensive apartment just around the corner from HoC, which apparently includes JRM as a neighbour.
Was there a moment he thought “you know what, I can overturn Brexit by paying a gobshite to spend every day in parliament square with a megaphone disrupting life and political interviews and the country are going to just admit we need to reverse Brexit.”
Honestly, I think if he became leader of the Conservatives, it would kill the party as a mainstream entity. I daresay the members would be all for it; as a block they’ve done little suggest that they’re anything other than unhinged loons with a political death wish.
On that basis, I strongly recommend they go for Farage as leader.
Didn't see you there btw. Good call because you'd have hated it. You'd have been really embarrassed.
Here’s the video of the USB-C cable, from the same series. https://youtube.com/watch?v=AD5aAd8Oy84
May, Johnson, Truss. Sunak only won because there wasn't a vote, if Farage gets in front of the members its a no contest. How he gets to be an MP is the only stumbling block, and the reason he is 34 not 5.
Is this good, or bad? Or WTF??
If the Leave campaign hadn't lied and the Remain campaign hadn't been so shite, perhaps we wouldn't have needed a second referendum, and our economy would be in better shape.
I think there’s a lot of briefing going on, but I do think a lot of this is ramping from both sides of the divide in the Tory Party. There’s a lot of MPs would would would like to see the back of her who are perhaps ramping up the prospect of people quitting/her sacking being inevitable. We are perhaps seeing the next leadership contest starting in earnest, behind the scenes.
I think it’s pretty inevitable he will keep her in post until the Rwanda ruling at least. Then it might be down to events.
It really was a pity to see the middle management types, so used to low risk, incremental wealth and the easy life, be driven so mad by losing that they ended up looking like nerdy versions of Michael Douglas in Falling Down
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Pemberton_Billing
SSI - NPB's victory in famous libel case vs Maud Allan example of British Justice at its best - NOT.
Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak - amazing to think that the best of these is Theresa May. How low have we come.
I would be really supportive of a Referendum Act which prescribes that changes must be approved by a supermajority (60%?) and that a referendum cannot be brought on a matter that has previously been decided in the space of X years (20?). I know that it would only be of persuasive effect because any government could override it, but if you have some grounding principles it would be really helpful.
Anyway the milk is spilt and the horse has bolted. Onwards and upwards.
I thought there were two kings and a queen "over the water" for the Conservatives. Such choice....
The polls this week show a slight worsening of the party's situation - We Think has a 24-point Labour lead, Techne stays at 21.
What happened in 2016 was quite simple - we had a vote on whether to remain or leave the European Union. Once that decision had been taken, the electorate abdicated any further involvement and effectively gave carte blanche to the Government to negotiate whatever terms it could or wanted to whether, had we stayed, to maintain the status quo or go for further integration (taking the Euro, Schengen etc) or leaving on whatever terms were negotiated under Article 50.
What those who were on the wrong side of the vote (and it would have happened had the other side won) failed to realise there was only going to be one vote - there was no mandate for a second vote on the terms under which left and equally, had we voted to stay in the EU, the Government had a mandate to join the Euro if they so wished.
That was the reality and significance of the IN/OUT vote - had it been a vote on a renegotiated membership package it wouldn't have had the same significance. Having promised to hold a vote if he won a majority in the 2015 GE, Cameron was forced into the highest of high stakes gambles by the stupidity of the EU leaders who believed the British people would never vote to leave.
Of course after the weekend if you're Sunak you continue to hold fire on sacking her because you're weak as shit.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/10/faked-audio-sadiq-khan-armistice-day-shared-among-far-right
"Faked audio of Sadiq Khan dismissing the importance of Armistice Day events this weekend is circulating among extreme right groups, prompting a police investigation, according to the London mayor’s office.
One of the simulated audio clips circulating on TikTok begins: “I don’t give a flying shit about the Remembrance weekend,” with the anonymous poster going on to ask “is this for real or AI?” in an effort to provoke debate.
The mayor’s office believes the audio clips are generated by artificial intelligence software, and are keen to publicise them before marches due in London at the weekend so the public will be able to recognise them as fake.
The doctored Khan audio continues by describing a planned pro-Palestine march due to take place tomorrow in glowing terms, albeit with an unusual, slightly clipped grammar. “What’s important and paramount is the 1 million-man Palestinian march takes place on Saturday,” the clip continues."
Both sides can feel comfortable saying “cheats prosper” - Boris lied about the NHS and became PM, Sir Keir lied about accepting the result as ‘a matter of principle’ and he is likely to be PM now
More like King over the second bottle of wine.
I thought maybe Kinabalu could have been at a PB drink actually, so he would know.
The Brexit albatross around the neck of this government is a large part of why the Tories are out of power for a generation.
Those middle management types that you despise will be running the country.
🚨 NEW: Senior Tory MPs threaten Rishi Sunak with no confidence letters and government resignations if he sacks Suella Braverman
“Don’t fu*k with the Suella. If you come for the Queen, the rooks, the knights, the pawns and the bishops will all stand in the way”
🔺 NEW: Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, has had a significant falling out with Michael Gove after he had an affair with an acquaintance of hers
I don’t despise them, it was just disappointing/embarrassing to see the mask slip
As for ‘revenge’, wasn’t it the remain tribe that kept banging on about it being so close that the winners should try to bring the losers on board? More flannel obviously
*Hancock having an affair for example was only allowed to be reported because it was a breach of Covid rules, not the actual affair
There's going to be a fistfight in Cabinet over who ate someone's yoghurt out of the fridge next.
As for the point about equating Jews with Israel, that's obviously true that equating the two are wrong. That said, that fact is too often used as a get out clause by people who believe or say deeply antisemitic things but 'justify' them by saying they are only about Israel. And if someone believes Israel is an irredeemably evil enterprise, as opposed to governed awfully etc..they will invariably believe antisemitic things because it's impossible to square the former with history, others' views, and reality without stepping into wider antisemitic beliefs about the world.
As I think Baddiel himself has acknowledged more recently when confronted with the fact that certain 'anti-Zionists' constantly attack him despite his original stated desire to not talk about Israel. As they see even his relatively mild positions and explanations of Jewishness and criticisms of antisemitism as enabling their great bête noire.
And therein lies the problem. Of course it's not antisemitic to be even a very strong critic of Israel. Even to say it shouldn't exist in certain contexts. But all too often it's a fairly reliable indicator someone either shares views that are horrific, or thinks they're acceptable - even when they justify violence against Jews in the name of opposition to Israel.
That's the problem I mainly have with the marches - though thinking they should go ahead - when certain behaviour and attitudes are coming to the fore, it's a demonstration of that issue. And it would be far better for everyone if those who don't think that distanced themselves from it - either while protesting or by not seeing those who do these things as allies.
I’ve called MI5 about this breach of National Security.
Is it 2*single = not affair, but if either are attached it becomes one? Or is any romantic relationship fair game to be an ‘affair’?
There were 3 elections in 4 years between 2015 and 2019. People thought they were electing David Cameron for a term of 5 years but that turned out not to be the case. As I said politics doesn’t stop regardless of what people think or are told. I don’t understand why we are supposed to accept that the Brexit referendum should uniquely be preserved in amber for a generation.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67377626
Cat litter for pupils rumour denied by school in letter
"A school has been forced to deny online rumours that it was providing litter trays for pupils who identify as cats.
West Monmouth School in Pontypool, Torfaen, wrote to parents this week saying there would be no special treatment for "pupils who might identify as an animal of any kind".
The rumour followed a hoax in the United States about students who "identify as cats" or "furries".
Torfaen council confirmed the school's letter was genuine."
Our police are there to serve the public by upholding the law, passed by the elected Parliament, not to answer the whims and wishes of a transient political figure. If the democratically elected authority (by which I mean Parliament not the Government) wish to see the Police act in a different way then they need to change the law. After all, they are the ones who introduced the relevant law in the first place.
This time, Refuk are not as high but the country is I think more geographically divided. Are there one or two constituencies where they could just possibly win?
I’m thinking places in the East Midlands / North East that were safely Tory and strongly Brexit in 2019 but previously Labour, and have had a shit time in the last 4 years. Not the Thames estuary, that’s Tory for reasons beyond Brexit and has been for decades.
That upsets sisters from another mister.
Trump refusing to leave the White House seems to be generally accepted as beyond the pale, I don’t see much difference in Remain refusing to implement the referendum result
Obviously I would vote against rejoining and personally I think another campaign would, be bloody stupid given the uncertainty it would generate going forward. It would set the precedent for new votes every few years as the population's view changed which would mean the EU would never be sure of our position. But if that was what peolpe wanted then that would be the way it wold be.