The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
I agree with that.
From a small group of "nutters", there is definitely an attempt to portray anything that doesn't fit in with their agenda as somehow fascistic. (Weirdly, it hasn't occurred to them that silencing the voices of those they disagree with is also... well.. you get it.)
My point, in that there is one, is that neither Labour nor the Conservatives are likely to move the needle very far from the current consensus, which is choose your own pronouns, not your own changing area.
(For what it's worth, I think the Olympic pool in Stratford has the right idea. Completely unisex changing areas, but everyone is in their own little cubicles. Everyone gets privacy. No space is wasted.)
Sure, that works. I also think that for existing facilities, or for those organisations that prefer seperate spaces for seperate genders, it is acceptable to permit those in transition to use WCs provided for the disabled - which are used by many who don't have obvious physical impairments.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
Remember: J k Rowling used several anti-Semitic tropes and racist stereotypes in her Harry Potter series and now she does her best to grovel to the Israeli fascist regime and Zionists by being an anti-Palestinian bigot and a raving racist spewing hate and vicious lies.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes, I think that a very astute observation. I suspect Powell was never that bothered about white migrants. Did he ever criticise Irish immigration? Or the East European refugees settled post WW2? Or the Italians that came over in the 1950s and Sixties?
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes I was talking about FOM in the EU when I mentioned cheap Labour.
Opinion polls at the time showed the majority of the public agreed with Powell, so it wasn’t a particularly extreme view.
The anecdotes you mention are from extremists rather than Centre ground then?
Hard to say. I think a lot Red Wall voters are centre-left when it comes to public spending, but are centre-right/socially conservative when it comes to immigration, law and order, benefits, culture etc. Hence why the got duped by Boris because they believed he was offering that in 2019.
It’s what Sir Keir is offering in 2024 isn’t it?
If he does, then I hope you vote for it!
Some may remember "Blue Labour" from a few years back. That's where we should be, as a party. Just with an extra slice of environmentalism in order to address the fundamental issues impacting the planet.
I want an authoritarian Home Secretary, an eco-authoritarian Environment Secretary, a pro-rail Transport Secretary, and a passionate advocate for social justice as Chancellor. Is that too much to ask?
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes I was talking about FOM in the EU when I mentioned cheap Labour.
Opinion polls at the time showed the majority of the public agreed with Powell, so it wasn’t a particularly extreme view.
The anecdotes you mention are from extremists rather than Centre ground then?
Hard to say. I think a lot Red Wall voters are centre-left when it comes to public spending, but are centre-right/socially conservative when it comes to immigration, law and order, benefits, culture etc. Hence why the got duped by Boris because they believed he was offering that in 2019.
It’s what Sir Keir is offering in 2024 isn’t it?
I think Sir Keir will offer exactly what Sunak is offering, but without the relentless infighting and general incompetence that has been the hallmark of the last three or four years.
Personally, I think the Conservatives could be just 5 or 10 point behind, if they focused on what had worked. They should - for example - be trumpeting the progress is reducing small boat numbers, and warning voters not to risk a reversal. Instead senior figures are jumping up and down about what a failure it has been.
Yes. But it is difficult to change leader twice in such a short space of time and appear united. It’s quite a radical thing to do and the factions are there for all to see.
Now you have Sunak, who may have been perfectly competent and engaging as a leader under different circumstances, flapping about doing lame impressions of Boris and not convincing anyone.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes I was talking about FOM in the EU when I mentioned cheap Labour.
Opinion polls at the time showed the majority of the public agreed with Powell, so it wasn’t a particularly extreme view.
The anecdotes you mention are from extremists rather than Centre ground then?
Hard to say. I think a lot Red Wall voters are centre-left when it comes to public spending, but are centre-right/socially conservative when it comes to immigration, law and order, benefits, culture etc. Hence why the got duped by Boris because they believed he was offering that in 2019.
It’s what Sir Keir is offering in 2024 isn’t it?
If he does, then I hope you vote for it!
Some may remember "Blue Labour" from a few years back. That's where we should be, as a party. Just with an extra slice of environmentalism in order to address the fundamental issues impacting the planet.
I want an authoritarian Home Secretary, an eco-authoritarian Environment Secretary, a pro-rail Transport Secretary, and a passionate advocate for social justice as Chancellor. Is that too much to ask?
Well yes, Blue Labour was something I was pretty excited about, politically. Maurice Glasman is an interesting fellow, who makes a good left wing case for Brexit. Unfortunately, Ed Miliband chose not to go down that road, opening the way for UKIP to nab lots of Labour voters
I could never vote for Sir Keir after his constant u-turns on ‘matters of principle’ regarding Brexit. But if he does as you say all the better
Dementia is certainly not very nice, which is why I thought he should be aware.
By his own report, he drinks a lot. He lives alone by all accounts and comes across as rather lonely. Ergo, he might want to be aware of this research.
He's also cut down a lot - and has a pretty active social and even family life. So not really.
The more interesting recent strong correlation discovered is that between suffering from constipation, and risk of Alzheimer's.
Are both relating to neurological degeneration, so a common causal factor?
I don't know, hence 'correlation'.
It might be very interesting if shown to be a risk factor - and pretty low risk to conduct long term intervention trials.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes I was talking about FOM in the EU when I mentioned cheap Labour.
Opinion polls at the time showed the majority of the public agreed with Powell, so it wasn’t a particularly extreme view.
The anecdotes you mention are from extremists rather than Centre ground then?
Hard to say. I think a lot Red Wall voters are centre-left when it comes to public spending, but are centre-right/socially conservative when it comes to immigration, law and order, benefits, culture etc. Hence why the got duped by Boris because they believed he was offering that in 2019.
It’s what Sir Keir is offering in 2024 isn’t it?
If he does, then I hope you vote for it!
Some may remember "Blue Labour" from a few years back. That's where we should be, as a party. Just with an extra slice of environmentalism in order to address the fundamental issues impacting the planet.
I want an authoritarian Home Secretary, an eco-authoritarian Environment Secretary, a pro-rail Transport Secretary, and a passionate advocate for social justice as Chancellor. Is that too much to ask?
Or perhaps we could have occupiers of those offices who were optimists about the capacity of humans to make good decisions if given the freedom to do so.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes, I think that a very astute observation. I suspect Powell was never that bothered about white migrants. Did he ever criticise Irish immigration? Or the East European refugees settled post WW2? Or the Italians that came over in the 1950s and Sixties?
Has there been lots of trouble with terrorism and a transformation of huge parts of the country because of the immigration of Eastern European refugees post WW2, or the Italians that came over in the Sixties? I don’t believe so. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t criticise it, nor predict it may cause big problems in years to come
On the subject of dementia, my business has a 98 year old investor.
He's as smart as a tack, and still goes to work every day. (To which he drives himself, in his Tesla.)
Indeed, his only real problem is his hearing. Basically, if you go out to lunch with him - and he loves good lunches and dinners - you need to go somewhere quiet because he struggles to hear if there's lots of background noise.
From him, I have come to a number of conclusions:
(1) Keep working (2) Keep skiing until your doctor is absolutely insistent that you really need to stop* (3) Go out and socialise (4) Drink, but only in moderation (5) Stay with your wife
* "Meyer, you're 86 years old. If you take a fall, you won't be getting up."
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes I was talking about FOM in the EU when I mentioned cheap Labour.
Opinion polls at the time showed the majority of the public agreed with Powell, so it wasn’t a particularly extreme view.
The anecdotes you mention are from extremists rather than Centre ground then?
Hard to say. I think a lot Red Wall voters are centre-left when it comes to public spending, but are centre-right/socially conservative when it comes to immigration, law and order, benefits, culture etc. Hence why the got duped by Boris because they believed he was offering that in 2019.
It’s what Sir Keir is offering in 2024 isn’t it?
If he does, then I hope you vote for it!
Some may remember "Blue Labour" from a few years back. That's where we should be, as a party. Just with an extra slice of environmentalism in order to address the fundamental issues impacting the planet.
I want an authoritarian Home Secretary, an eco-authoritarian Environment Secretary, a pro-rail Transport Secretary, and a passionate advocate for social justice as Chancellor. Is that too much to ask?
Or perhaps we could have occupiers of those offices who were optimists about the capacity of humans to make good decisions if given the freedom to do so.
The evidence suggests that such an optimistic viewpoint is sadly misguided.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes, I think that a very astute observation. I suspect Powell was never that bothered about white migrants. Did he ever criticise Irish immigration? Or the East European refugees settled post WW2? Or the Italians that came over in the 1950s and Sixties?
Has there been lots of trouble with terrorism and a transformation of huge parts of the country because of the immigration of Eastern European refugees post WW2, or the Italians that came over in the Sixties? I don’t believe so. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t criticise it, nor predict it may cause big problems in years to come
No, I don't think he did. His criticism was of non-white immigration. Did he make any arguments for its effects on economic grounds, or was it purely social and cultural?
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes I was talking about FOM in the EU when I mentioned cheap Labour.
Opinion polls at the time showed the majority of the public agreed with Powell, so it wasn’t a particularly extreme view.
The anecdotes you mention are from extremists rather than Centre ground then?
Hard to say. I think a lot Red Wall voters are centre-left when it comes to public spending, but are centre-right/socially conservative when it comes to immigration, law and order, benefits, culture etc. Hence why the got duped by Boris because they believed he was offering that in 2019.
It’s what Sir Keir is offering in 2024 isn’t it?
If he does, then I hope you vote for it!
Some may remember "Blue Labour" from a few years back. That's where we should be, as a party. Just with an extra slice of environmentalism in order to address the fundamental issues impacting the planet.
I want an authoritarian Home Secretary, an eco-authoritarian Environment Secretary, a pro-rail Transport Secretary, and a passionate advocate for social justice as Chancellor. Is that too much to ask?
Or perhaps we could have occupiers of those offices who were optimists about the capacity of humans to make good decisions if given the freedom to do so.
The evidence suggests that such an optimistic viewpoint is sadly misguided.
On the contrary, I tend to think most of the big blunders in recent years have been made by states imposing policies in opposition to the views and perhaps the interests of 'the little people'.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
I grew up under Wilson and Heath. Neither inspired any great confidence in their parties' ability to manage the country.
Nor, to be honest, did Thatcher. (Even though I voted for her on occasion.)
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
It's only 'well to the right' in the current political climate, but it's not so long ago that Labour Prime Ministers blamed violent crime on 'black culture'.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
I was on the side of every left wing cause like a blinkered football fan supports their team, and got most of my politics via Ben Elton on Friday/Saturday Live!
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes, I think that a very astute observation. I suspect Powell was never that bothered about white migrants. Did he ever criticise Irish immigration? Or the East European refugees settled post WW2? Or the Italians that came over in the 1950s and Sixties?
Has there been lots of trouble with terrorism and a transformation of huge parts of the country because of the immigration of Eastern European refugees post WW2, or the Italians that came over in the Sixties? I don’t believe so. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t criticise it, nor predict it may cause big problems in years to come
No, I don't think he did. His criticism was of non-white immigration. Did he make any arguments for its effects on economic grounds, or was it purely social and cultural?
Purely social and cultural. He was in favour of Caribbean immigration to fill vacancies in the NHS for instance, but didn’t think it was good for social cohesion to have ghettoised cities. In fact he was a fan of mixed relationships that produced children and bemoaned the decrease of those between Pakistani immigrants and the White British population in the 60s. You should watch his interview with David Frost if you’re genuinely interested, and another with William Buckley on Firing Line, which are both on YouTube. Although Buckley was quite a right winger himself, he had some fascinating guests on inc Thatcher, Ian Smith, & Christopher Hitchens
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes I was talking about FOM in the EU when I mentioned cheap Labour.
Opinion polls at the time showed the majority of the public agreed with Powell, so it wasn’t a particularly extreme view.
The anecdotes you mention are from extremists rather than Centre ground then?
Hard to say. I think a lot Red Wall voters are centre-left when it comes to public spending, but are centre-right/socially conservative when it comes to immigration, law and order, benefits, culture etc. Hence why the got duped by Boris because they believed he was offering that in 2019.
It’s what Sir Keir is offering in 2024 isn’t it?
If he does, then I hope you vote for it!
Some may remember "Blue Labour" from a few years back. That's where we should be, as a party. Just with an extra slice of environmentalism in order to address the fundamental issues impacting the planet.
I want an authoritarian Home Secretary, an eco-authoritarian Environment Secretary, a pro-rail Transport Secretary, and a passionate advocate for social justice as Chancellor. Is that too much to ask?
“ I want an authoritarian Home Secretary”
Absolutely - the sentence for voting Green should be transportation to Rwanda. With your family.
A rough guess of the numbers says that this would solve the housing crisis.
And reduce the burden on the Eco system back to about 2000 population levels.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Yes, me too. Even the sign in those days - red and yellow - was angry. Not many people looking to sell you a brand go with a red and yellow colour scheme. Red and white would have been much less threatening.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes I was talking about FOM in the EU when I mentioned cheap Labour.
Opinion polls at the time showed the majority of the public agreed with Powell, so it wasn’t a particularly extreme view.
The anecdotes you mention are from extremists rather than Centre ground then?
Hard to say. I think a lot Red Wall voters are centre-left when it comes to public spending, but are centre-right/socially conservative when it comes to immigration, law and order, benefits, culture etc. Hence why the got duped by Boris because they believed he was offering that in 2019.
It’s what Sir Keir is offering in 2024 isn’t it?
If he does, then I hope you vote for it!
Some may remember "Blue Labour" from a few years back. That's where we should be, as a party. Just with an extra slice of environmentalism in order to address the fundamental issues impacting the planet.
I want an authoritarian Home Secretary, an eco-authoritarian Environment Secretary, a pro-rail Transport Secretary, and a passionate advocate for social justice as Chancellor. Is that too much to ask?
“ I want an authoritarian Home Secretary”
Absolutely - the sentence for voting Green should be transportation to Rwanda. With your family.
A rough guess of the numbers says that this would solve the housing crisis.
And reduce the burden on the Eco system back to about 2000 population levels.
Speaking of authoritarian, Rory Gribbell has been sent from the DfE to OFSTED.
A friend of Cummings, he has been at the heart of a great many policy disasters in the last decade, including exam reform, academy chains and the new teacher training framework.
He was 'teacher in residence' at the DfE despite his only experience of teaching being two years on the notorious Teach First programme after leaving Durham.
His appointment suggests that Keegan is trying to further OFSTED's development not as a schools inspectorate but as the enforcement arm of the DfE's dumbarse policies.
Which, to be fair, is what it has been since the time of Ed Balls when it was made a non-ministerial department.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
I suspect something similar but in reverse to the association of Labour with union militancy and economic stagnation from those who grew up in the 70s/80s, is now happening in reverse to those generations below 40.
The Tories being associated with economic decline, much needed housing or infrastructure not being built, and a crumbling state that only serves the old. Brexit chaos and its contribution to a lost decade they didn't want or vote for. The 'Nasty Party' culture war stuff that misses the point that even lots of those sceptical of 'wokery' or immigration, view politicians who are performatively stupid and cruel about these things dimly.
Which is not to say the left doesn't have its own issues to sort out - antisemitism, some of the dafter identity stuff that takes its inherent goodness as read even if it's incoherent or damaging. How it deals with the economic challenges caused by capital's accruing of power due to technology, and demographic issues.
But it has had the advantage of not being in charge and presiding over the first generation to generation decline in living standards, having a defining project that's widely seen as a failure (and even more so by those under 50), and being there at the point where the stresses and strains on state provision have begun to be unignorable.
Politics is never entirely fair, but just as Labour's long-term struggle to prove its economic competency after 79 was harsh, so I suspect the right's reputation as that of reactionary pensioners who stole a future and smashed up the economy, will be just as hard to shake off.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Yes, me too. Even the sign in those days - red and yellow - was angry. Not many people looking to sell you a brand go with a red and yellow colour scheme. Red and white would have been much less threatening.
That was Kinnock's red rose/Times Roman relaunch, wasn't it?
Whereas now, the visibly angry people in politics are on the GB News end of things.
"Starmer’s Arsenal are in great position this Boxing Day, vying for their first league win since the glory days."
From the Premier League website:
"In fact, Arsenal have failed to win the title on all five occasions when they have topped the top-flight table at Christmas, finishing fourth in 1986/87 and 1989/90, third in 2007/08, and second in 2002/03 and 2022/23. "
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
I suspect something similar but in reverse to the association of Labour with union militancy and economic stagnation from those who grew up in the 70s/80s, is now happening in reverse to those generations below 40.
The Tories being associated with economic decline, much needed housing or infrastructure not being built, and a crumbling state that only serves the old. Brexit chaos and its contribution to a lost decade they didn't want or vote for. The 'Nasty Party' culture war stuff that misses the point that even lots of those sceptical of 'wokery' or immigration, view politicians who are performatively stupid and cruel about these things dimly.
Which is not to say the left doesn't have its own issues to sort out - antisemitism, some of the dafter identity stuff that takes its inherent goodness as read even if it's incoherent or damaging. How it deals with the economic challenges caused by capital's accruing of power due to technology, and demographic issues.
But it has had the advantage of not being in charge and presiding over the first generation to generation decline in living standards, having a defining project that's widely seen as a failure (and even more so by those under 50), and being there at the point where the stresses and strains on state provision have begun to be unignorable.
Politics is never entirely fair, but just as Labour's long-term struggle to prove its economic competency after 79 was harsh, so I suspect the right's reputation as that of reactionary pensioners who stole a future and smashed up the economy, will be just as hard to shake off.
Such simplistic judgments are - as we saw with the downsides of Thatcherism - inimical to the formulation of good long term policy.
Even though the right is (correctly) completely discredited thanks to the last decade of abysmal government, that's not a good reason to completely ignore critiques of their likely replacement from the right of politics.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes, I think that a very astute observation. I suspect Powell was never that bothered about white migrants. Did he ever criticise Irish immigration? Or the East European refugees settled post WW2? Or the Italians that came over in the 1950s and Sixties?
Has there been lots of trouble with terrorism and a transformation of huge parts of the country because of the immigration of Eastern European refugees post WW2, or the Italians that came over in the Sixties? I don’t believe so. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t criticise it, nor predict it may cause big problems in years to come
No, I don't think he did. His criticism was of non-white immigration. Did he make any arguments for its effects on economic grounds, or was it purely social and cultural?
Purely social and cultural. He was in favour of Caribbean immigration to fill vacancies in the NHS for instance, but didn’t think it was good for social cohesion to have ghettoised cities. In fact he was a fan of mixed relationships that produced children and bemoaned the decrease of those between Pakistani immigrants and the White British population in the 60s. You should watch his interview with David Frost if you’re genuinely interested, and another with William Buckley on Firing Line, which are both on YouTube. Although Buckley was quite a right winger himself, he had some fascinating guests on inc Thatcher, Ian Smith, & Christopher Hitchens
Powell addresses the point you make in the first 14 mins or so of this interview @foxy
Never understood argument (and still don't) that because someone opposed/opposes a particular law, regulation, policy, whatever, this means that they may NEVER change their mind, let alone go with the follow enough to recognize that, despite their protestations, what they fought is now fact.
Great for political point scoring but NOT for getting on with life and looking forward not backward.
Still, such criticism of a public figure, especially one as public & critical as Scargill back in the day IS fair comment.
And persuasive for some folks at least some of the time. Including even me, from time to time.
"Apple is banned from selling the Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 in the United States after President Joe Biden’s administration refused to grant a reprieve from a trade tribunal’s decision that it had infringed another company’s patents."
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
Some of those angry men were my uncles-ish (fictive kinship), and their lives in the years after showed why they were so afeared. Interestingly some of their sons ended up in various flavours of the Army and served in wars initiated by those who had held their fathers in such contempt. Life's never simple, is it...
My relative, in the building line, is round for lunch. 6 hours in…
He wonders what the cost per square foot was.
Given that he nearly bid on a contract to build a school near me. The “suggested” rate was higher than the cost per square foot for luxury basements.
In fact, he commented he could do the job and throw in a swimming pool in a basement.
It's a good job we've got all those noble, selfless, highly intelligent civil servants in the DfE determined to get value for money and improve the education system.
Imagine how things would be if we were run by a bunch of drunken arrogant fucktards out solely for themselves.
Never understood argument (and still don't) that because someone opposed/opposes a particular law, regulation, policy, whatever, this means that they may NEVER change their mind, let alone go with the follow enough to recognize that, despite their protestations, what they fought is now fact.
Great for political point scoring but NOT for getting on with life and looking forward not backward.
Still, such criticism of a public figure, especially one as public & critical as Scargill back in the day IS fair comment.
And persuasive for some folks at least some of the time. Including even me, from time to time.
However not this time.
Indeed. I think it's wrong that pension income attracts no NI, meaning that my total tax rate is less than those working for a living but, hypocrite that I am, I am not paying the NI to HMRC voluntarily.
If you would like a break from posting and watch a film, I very much recommend Asteroid City. I laughed all the way through. The set and art direction and puppetry was very good. I don’t want to SPOIL THE SURPRISES *SPOILERS* but the sparking plug 😂 and “the alien has stolen our asteroid.” 🤣
Asteroid City is a very average Wes Anderson movie (albeit better than the French Dispatch).
It’s easily my favourite Wes Anderson movie. Maybe it’s because I was wide awake when I watched it, but there’s so much visual comedy and I loved every bit.
Have you seen his version of Henry Sugar?
It's not a patch on The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is a brilliant film.
Which do you prefer, the Grand Budapest or the Tenenbaums?
If you would like a break from posting and watch a film, I very much recommend Asteroid City. I laughed all the way through. The set and art direction and puppetry was very good. I don’t want to SPOIL THE SURPRISES *SPOILERS* but the sparking plug 😂 and “the alien has stolen our asteroid.” 🤣
Asteroid City is a very average Wes Anderson movie (albeit better than the French Dispatch).
It’s easily my favourite Wes Anderson movie. Maybe it’s because I was wide awake when I watched it, but there’s so much visual comedy and I loved every bit.
Have you seen his version of Henry Sugar?
It's not a patch on The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is a brilliant film.
Which do you prefer, the Grand Budapest or the Tenenbaums?
GBH - it's utterly perfect.
I was extremely worried for a moment.
Then I realised in this context 'GBH' stood for 'Grand Hotel Budapest.'
My relative, in the building line, is round for lunch. 6 hours in…
He wonders what the cost per square foot was.
Given that he nearly bid on a contract to build a school near me. The “suggested” rate was higher than the cost per square foot for luxury basements.
In fact, he commented he could do the job and throw in a swimming pool in a basement.
It's a good job we've got all those noble, selfless, highly intelligent civil servants in the DfE determined to get value for money and improve the education system.
Imagine how things would be if we were run by a bunch of drunken arrogant fucktards out solely for themselves.
The thing is that they don’t have a fucking clue.
As a Romanian builder friend puts it, every time he builds a school, he builds a couple of houses for people In The Thing. To the same standards….
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes I was talking about FOM in the EU when I mentioned cheap Labour.
Opinion polls at the time showed the majority of the public agreed with Powell, so it wasn’t a particularly extreme view.
The anecdotes you mention are from extremists rather than Centre ground then?
Hard to say. I think a lot Red Wall voters are centre-left when it comes to public spending, but are centre-right/socially conservative when it comes to immigration, law and order, benefits, culture etc. Hence why the got duped by Boris because they believed he was offering that in 2019.
It’s what Sir Keir is offering in 2024 isn’t it?
If he does, then I hope you vote for it!
Some may remember "Blue Labour" from a few years back. That's where we should be, as a party. Just with an extra slice of environmentalism in order to address the fundamental issues impacting the planet.
I want an authoritarian Home Secretary, an eco-authoritarian Environment Secretary, a pro-rail Transport Secretary, and a passionate advocate for social justice as Chancellor. Is that too much to ask?
Well yes, Blue Labour was something I was pretty excited about, politically. Maurice Glasman is an interesting fellow, who makes a good left wing case for Brexit. Unfortunately, Ed Miliband chose not to go down that road, opening the way for UKIP to nab lots of Labour voters
I could never vote for Sir Keir after his constant u-turns on ‘matters of principle’ regarding Brexit. But if he does as you say all the better
I think it was Matthew Goodwin (I know, I know) who pointed out that a socially conservative party finds it easier to go economically spendthrift than a economically spendthrift party finds it to go socially conservative.
"Starmer’s Arsenal are in great position this Boxing Day, vying for their first league win since the glory days."
From the Premier League website:
"In fact, Arsenal have failed to win the title on all five occasions when they have topped the top-flight table at Christmas, finishing fourth in 1986/87 and 1989/90, third in 2007/08, and second in 2002/03 and 2022/23. "
Albeit this time, Labour (Arsenal) has a particularly large polling lead, so this time may be different.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
I suspect something similar but in reverse to the association of Labour with union militancy and economic stagnation from those who grew up in the 70s/80s, is now happening in reverse to those generations below 40.
The Tories being associated with economic decline, much needed housing or infrastructure not being built, and a crumbling state that only serves the old. Brexit chaos and its contribution to a lost decade they didn't want or vote for. The 'Nasty Party' culture war stuff that misses the point that even lots of those sceptical of 'wokery' or immigration, view politicians who are performatively stupid and cruel about these things dimly.
Which is not to say the left doesn't have its own issues to sort out - antisemitism, some of the dafter identity stuff that takes its inherent goodness as read even if it's incoherent or damaging. How it deals with the economic challenges caused by capital's accruing of power due to technology, and demographic issues.
But it has had the advantage of not being in charge and presiding over the first generation to generation decline in living standards, having a defining project that's widely seen as a failure (and even more so by those under 50), and being there at the point where the stresses and strains on state provision have begun to be unignorable.
Politics is never entirely fair, but just as Labour's long-term struggle to prove its economic competency after 79 was harsh, so I suspect the right's reputation as that of reactionary pensioners who stole a future and smashed up the economy, will be just as hard to shake off.
Such simplistic judgments are - as we saw with the downsides of Thatcherism - inimical to the formulation of good long term policy.
Even though the right is (correctly) completely discredited thanks to the last decade of abysmal government, that's not a good reason to completely ignore critiques of their likely replacement from the right of politics.
Oh of course not - hence why one pointed out the left/liberals face their own challenges. But I do think there's an underestimation from those with right-ward leanings of the depth the right has dug for itself.
Just as some Labour people convinced themselves Thatcher would crash and burn and people would gratefully return to them to restore the post-war consensus, there's an assumption that 'Real Britain' ultimately thinks like the Tory right, but is just a bit miffed at the post-2019 chaos that's gone on.
But what perhaps had been mislaid after 1979 was that the 70s and early 80s industrial strife was that it had fundamentally changed the outlook lots of people who came of age during that era and didn't want to go back to it. And of course Labour has only won since when it's looked like a very different party that accepts that.
Similarly, if you look at how not just the youngest cohorts are voting (twas ever thus to some extent) but now most of working age, even those to whom used to be those the Tories used to make a big part of their pitch to (aspirational voters in their 30s for example), they're now as likely to believe the Moon landings are faked as say they'd vote Tory. Millennials (my own cohort) are the first generation in living memory to shift to voting for more left-wing parties as they age! Anecdotally, I have friends who should, by income and general disinterest in politics, be ideal Tory targets - who now wouldn't be seen dead voting for them.
It just may be a similar change to what we once saw harm Labour and the left - because it became associated with those failures - is now occurring to the Tories and the right in general. Albeit one that was masked for a time by the post-war demographic bulge that may well have peaked in favouring the right from around 2015 to now.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
It's odd how people who talk about learning the lessons of the 30s seem determined to recreate the conditions of Weimar Berlin.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
Such a post just shows the lunacy of much of the left today.
Yes, if you do not like the thought of underage children being able to change sex without their parents consent, that makes you far-right and obviously a Nazi.
Of course, it is worth remembering that the equivalent issue in the 1970s to the trans issue was the support for groups such as PIE who made a similar case about children being able to have rights over their bodies. If PIE was around today, I'm sure many on the left would be saying that if you didn't want the age of consent dramatically lowered, you were also being 'far-right'
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
Does there come a point though, where paying people for work which is not making much money for the government, or is more efficient were it automated, is still worthwhile because the money you’ll pay the unemployed miners, or whoever the affected trade is, in benefits coupled with the social effects of so many towns no longer having a community makes it so? Because we shouldn’t run a country as if it were a FTSE - 100 company
A lot of people favour UBI which is paying people to do nothing, so it can’t be ruled out solely on economic terms.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
It's odd how people who talk about learning the lessons of the 30s seem determined to recreate the conditions of Weimar Berlin.
I'm pretty sure the Nazis were not caused by drag queens in Berlin.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes I was talking about FOM in the EU when I mentioned cheap Labour.
Opinion polls at the time showed the majority of the public agreed with Powell, so it wasn’t a particularly extreme view.
The anecdotes you mention are from extremists rather than Centre ground then?
Hard to say. I think a lot Red Wall voters are centre-left when it comes to public spending, but are centre-right/socially conservative when it comes to immigration, law and order, benefits, culture etc. Hence why the got duped by Boris because they believed he was offering that in 2019.
It’s what Sir Keir is offering in 2024 isn’t it?
If he does, then I hope you vote for it!
Some may remember "Blue Labour" from a few years back. That's where we should be, as a party. Just with an extra slice of environmentalism in order to address the fundamental issues impacting the planet.
I want an authoritarian Home Secretary, an eco-authoritarian Environment Secretary, a pro-rail Transport Secretary, and a passionate advocate for social justice as Chancellor. Is that too much to ask?
Well yes, Blue Labour was something I was pretty excited about, politically. Maurice Glasman is an interesting fellow, who makes a good left wing case for Brexit. Unfortunately, Ed Miliband chose not to go down that road, opening the way for UKIP to nab lots of Labour voters
I could never vote for Sir Keir after his constant u-turns on ‘matters of principle’ regarding Brexit. But if he does as you say all the better
I think it was Matthew Goodwin (I know, I know) who pointed out that a socially conservative party finds it easier to go economically spendthrift than a economically spendthrift party finds it to go socially conservative.
It depends upon how you define socially conservative.
Blair's Labour Party were both economically spendthrift and deeply authoritarian.
ID cards, detention without trial and so on and so forth.
"Apple is banned from selling the Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 in the United States after President Joe Biden’s administration refused to grant a reprieve from a trade tribunal’s decision that it had infringed another company’s patents."
Good; it is the patent system working. Apple have a long and sad history of just nicking the patents of smaller companies, relying on their heft to get away with it, and their fanbois to excuse their behaviour.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes I was talking about FOM in the EU when I mentioned cheap Labour.
Opinion polls at the time showed the majority of the public agreed with Powell, so it wasn’t a particularly extreme view.
The anecdotes you mention are from extremists rather than Centre ground then?
Hard to say. I think a lot Red Wall voters are centre-left when it comes to public spending, but are centre-right/socially conservative when it comes to immigration, law and order, benefits, culture etc. Hence why the got duped by Boris because they believed he was offering that in 2019.
It’s what Sir Keir is offering in 2024 isn’t it?
If he does, then I hope you vote for it!
Some may remember "Blue Labour" from a few years back. That's where we should be, as a party. Just with an extra slice of environmentalism in order to address the fundamental issues impacting the planet.
I want an authoritarian Home Secretary, an eco-authoritarian Environment Secretary, a pro-rail Transport Secretary, and a passionate advocate for social justice as Chancellor. Is that too much to ask?
Well yes, Blue Labour was something I was pretty excited about, politically. Maurice Glasman is an interesting fellow, who makes a good left wing case for Brexit. Unfortunately, Ed Miliband chose not to go down that road, opening the way for UKIP to nab lots of Labour voters
I could never vote for Sir Keir after his constant u-turns on ‘matters of principle’ regarding Brexit. But if he does as you say all the better
I think it was Matthew Goodwin (I know, I know) who pointed out that a socially conservative party finds it easier to go economically spendthrift than a economically spendthrift party finds it to go socially conservative.
It depends upon how you define socially conservative.
Blair's Labour Party were both economically spendthrift and deeply authoritarian.
ID cards, detention without trial and so on and so forth.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
Such a post just shows the lunacy of much of the left today.
Yes, if you do not like the thought of underage children being able to change sex without their parents consent, that makes you far-right and obviously a Nazi.
Of course, it is worth remembering that the equivalent issue in the 1970s to the trans issue was the support for groups such as PIE who made a similar case about children being able to have rights over their bodies. If PIE was around today, I'm sure many on the left would be saying that if you didn't want the age of consent dramatically lowered, you were also being 'far-right'
Amongst the justifications the Nazis used for the destruction of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft were that they were protecting German youth from it’s corrupting influence.
So, yes: those arguments are the same ones that the Nazi’s used to discredit the Institute’s attempts to help deeply distressed individuals & to justify its total destruction.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
That is precisely one of the critiques of the Thatcher government - that it believed that market discipline absolved government from responsibility for its consequences.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
Such a post just shows the lunacy of much of the left today.
Yes, if you do not like the thought of underage children being able to change sex without their parents consent, that makes you far-right and obviously a Nazi.
Of course, it is worth remembering that the equivalent issue in the 1970s to the trans issue was the support for groups such as PIE who made a similar case about children being able to have rights over their bodies. If PIE was around today, I'm sure many on the left would be saying that if you didn't want the age of consent dramatically lowered, you were also being 'far-right'
That argument was also used in past years against homosexual equality. A more accurate analogy would be with abortion: specifically, trans occupies the same political space in UK/England as abortion does in the US/Confederacy.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
It's odd how people who talk about learning the lessons of the 30s seem determined to recreate the conditions of Weimar Berlin.
I'm pretty sure the Nazis were not caused by drag queens in Berlin.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes, I think that a very astute observation. I suspect Powell was never that bothered about white migrants. Did he ever criticise Irish immigration? Or the East European refugees settled post WW2? Or the Italians that came over in the 1950s and Sixties?
Has there been lots of trouble with terrorism and a transformation of huge parts of the country because of the immigration of Eastern European refugees post WW2, or the Italians that came over in the Sixties? I don’t believe so. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t criticise it, nor predict it may cause big problems in years to come
No, I don't think he did. His criticism was of non-white immigration. Did he make any arguments for its effects on economic grounds, or was it purely social and cultural?
Purely social and cultural. He was in favour of Caribbean immigration to fill vacancies in the NHS for instance, but didn’t think it was good for social cohesion to have ghettoised cities. In fact he was a fan of mixed relationships that produced children and bemoaned the decrease of those between Pakistani immigrants and the White British population in the 60s. You should watch his interview with David Frost if you’re genuinely interested, and another with William Buckley on Firing Line, which are both on YouTube. Although Buckley was quite a right winger himself, he had some fascinating guests on inc Thatcher, Ian Smith, & Christopher Hitchens
Used to watch "Firing Line" all the time. Wm F. frequently had British guests, being himself an Anglophiliac with a "to the manor born" manner more exaggerated than (for instance) Sir Jacob R-M.
One such I remember in early 70s was RIchard Crossman, who looked old and rather ill when he disputed with Buckley (he died a few years later).
Didn't matter - Crossman whupped Buckley's ass. At the end, WFB's famously crooked grin was even more crooked than per usual.
Perhaps worth noting, that significant part of Buckley's appeal for American audience, beyond the serious nature of his show and his obvious attraction for conservatives, was his mid-Atlantic accent (positioned not far west of Scilly in more ways than one) complete with old-school New-York upper-crust drawl such as sported by Franklin Roosevelt and George Plimpton.
Weirdest thing about "Firing Line" was gaggle of preppy geeks clustered at the feet - literally - of Buckley and his guest. Who gazed up in wonder throughout the broadcast.
Personally put me off Conservatism for the duration.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Child labour?!
Er no.
There was a brilliant BBC program where they took a former U.K. miner on a tour round the world of the mines he had been competing with.
In Canada, there was an open vast mine, where the drag lines filed a row of dump trucks. From a coal seem 20 m thick.
The dump trucks looked small in the distance. As they approached, you could see each one was the size of a house.
In the words of the former miner, each truck carried more coal than a shift on a face at his old pit.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
South Korea has little in the way of natural resources. Yet has managed to maintain globally competitive industries in (inter alia) steel and shipbuilding despite now having a similar level of economic development to us.
'Globalisation' is just an excuse for having given up on industrial policy.
'The Thatcher Model' was just as flawed back in the 20thC.
As I says upthread, the fact that dramatic economic reform was essential in the 80s in no way excuses the mistakes made by her administrations. Which were embraced by succeeding governments of both parties.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
It's odd how people who talk about learning the lessons of the 30s seem determined to recreate the conditions of Weimar Berlin.
I'm pretty sure the Nazis were not caused by drag queens in Berlin.
Well just look at JK Rowling for proof.
I assume you are using the insults levied at JK Rowling as an analogy to the rise of the Nazis. Given the large difference in magnitude I find it difficult to equate the two. Being nasty on Twitter is not the same as Kristallnacht nor Dachau.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
It's odd how people who talk about learning the lessons of the 30s seem determined to recreate the conditions of Weimar Berlin.
I'm pretty sure the Nazis were not caused by drag queens in Berlin.
So you are saying the documentary Cabaret was inaccurate?
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Child labour?!
Er no.
There was a brilliant BBC program where they took a former U.K. miner on a tour round the world of the mines he had been competing with.
In Canada, there was an open vast mine, where the drag lines filed a row of dump trucks. From a coal seem 20 m thick.
The dump trucks looked small in the distance. As they approached, you could see each one was the size of a house.
In the words of the former miner, each truck carried more coal than a shift on a face at his old pit.
Canadian coal mines are just insane, there's no way anything in Britain could compete.
Saw a train leave a Canadian coal mine. The train had that many carriages it took about 10 minutes to for the entire train go past, there are well over a hundred carriages per train.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Child labour?!
Er no.
There was a brilliant BBC program where they took a former U.K. miner on a tour round the world of the mines he had been competing with.
In Canada, there was an open vast mine, where the drag lines filed a row of dump trucks. From a coal seem 20 m thick.
The dump trucks looked small in the distance. As they approached, you could see each one was the size of a house.
In the words of the former miner, each truck carried more coal than a shift on a face at his old pit.
I think you missed my use of the word "and" ("... and narrower ones using child labour"). Perhaps if I had used "and/or" my meaning would have been plainer.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
South Korea has little in the way of natural resources. Yet has managed to maintain globally competitive industries in (inter alia) steel and shipbuilding despite now having a similar level of economic development to us.
'Globalisation' is just an excuse for having given up on industrial policy.
'The Thatcher Model' was just as flawed back in the 20thC.
As I says upthread, the fact that dramatic economic reform was essential in the 80s in no way excuses the mistakes made by her administrations. Which were embraced by succeeding governments of both parties.
I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end up in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative prime minister raising taxes to pay for unfunded spending cuts that meant we couldn't borrow money.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
It's odd how people who talk about learning the lessons of the 30s seem determined to recreate the conditions of Weimar Berlin.
I'm pretty sure the Nazis were not caused by drag queens in Berlin.
Well just look at JK Rowling for proof.
I assume you are using the insults levied at JK Rowling as an analogy to the rise of the Nazis. Given the large difference in magnitude I find it difficult to equate the two. Being nasty on Twitter is not the same as Kristallnacht nor Dachau.
It was of course a joke, but it is true that 'reactionary' politics, by definition, don't occur in a vacuum but depend on having something to react against.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Leaving aside the fact that I've spent a lot of time around coal mines, you need to remember knock on effects.
I mean, are you really going to force both electricity generators and steel companies to buy British first? If so, they will be paying more for their energy than is paid by - say - French or German or Korean or Japanese firms.
Or are you planning on subsidising British coal? In which case, what's the cut off? Coal production was in decline in the UK long before there were meaningful quantities of imports. And that was because the easiest deposits had long been exploited, and the distance from pit head to coalface was constantly growing.
Energy has long been a globalized market. Even back in the 1950s, South Africa and Australia's biggest exports were of coal. Could we really have cut ourselves off from the world, requiring British firms to buy ever more expensive coal?
We could not. What we could have done, though, is managed the closure of pits a lot better.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Child labour?!
Er no.
There was a brilliant BBC program where they took a former U.K. miner on a tour round the world of the mines he had been competing with.
In Canada, there was an open vast mine, where the drag lines filed a row of dump trucks. From a coal seem 20 m thick.
The dump trucks looked small in the distance. As they approached, you could see each one was the size of a house.
In the words of the former miner, each truck carried more coal than a shift on a face at his old pit.
Canadian coal mines are just insane, there's no way anything in Britain could compete.
Saw a train leave a Canadian coal mine. The train had that many carriages it took about 10 minutes to for the entire train go past, there are well over a hundred carriages per train.
It's the same in Queensland: massive open cut mines. Some of which - like the Carmichael mine - produce almost as much as the UK did in aggregate back in 1985.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Child labour?!
Er no.
There was a brilliant BBC program where they took a former U.K. miner on a tour round the world of the mines he had been competing with.
In Canada, there was an open vast mine, where the drag lines filed a row of dump trucks. From a coal seem 20 m thick.
The dump trucks looked small in the distance. As they approached, you could see each one was the size of a house.
In the words of the former miner, each truck carried more coal than a shift on a face at his old pit.
Canadian coal mines are just insane, there's no way anything in Britain could compete.
Saw a train leave a Canadian coal mine. The train had that many carriages it took about 10 minutes to for the entire train go past, there are well over a hundred carriages per train.
It's the same in Queensland: massive open cut mines. Some of which - like the Carmichael mine - produce almost as much as the UK did in aggregate back in 1985.
The increase in scale of the latest part of the Industrial Revolution is not understood, generally.
Hence you get people wondering why resurrecting 18th cent. watermills isn’t going to save the world.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
Does there come a point though, where paying people for work which is not making much money for the government, or is more efficient were it automated, is still worthwhile because the money you’ll pay the unemployed miners, or whoever the affected trade is, in benefits coupled with the social effects of so many towns no longer having a community makes it so? Because we shouldn’t run a country as if it were a FTSE - 100 company
A lot of people favour UBI which is paying people to do nothing, so it can’t be ruled out solely on economic terms.
Subsidise coal mines at a price of [x] per worker per year? The problem is that [x] would have constantly risen to make the numbers balance, as the cost of extraction continued to rise.
Should coal mines have kept hiring miners to bring out ever diminishing quantities of coal?
For what it's worth, I would point out that the UK economy dealt ok with the drip, drip of mine closures in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. People moved out of coal villages and into cities and towns and got new jobs.
What was different about the 1980s, is that the cities weren't filled with demand for manual labour like in the past. And house prices had risen at the same time, so moving from rural Durham to London was next to impossible.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Leaving aside the fact that I've spent a lot of time around coal mines, you need to remember knock on effects.
I mean, are you really going to force both electricity generators and steel companies to buy British first? If so, they will be paying more for their energy than is paid by - say - French or German or Korean or Japanese firms.
Or are you planning on subsidising British coal? In which case, what's the cut off? Coal production was in decline in the UK long before there were meaningful quantities of imports. And that was because the easiest deposits had long been exploited, and the distance from pit head to coalface was constantly growing.
Energy has long been a globalized market. Even back in the 1950s, South Africa and Australia's biggest exports were of coal. Could we really have cut ourselves off from the world, requiring British firms to buy ever more expensive coal?
We could not. What we could have done, though, is managed the closure of pits a lot better.
I think possibly the only person still arguing we should have kept pits open is @Luckyguy1983 ?
I really didn’t know why are rerunning an argument which was settled forty years ago. It’s the sort of misdirection which has plagued policy discussion ever since.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Leaving aside the fact that I've spent a lot of time around coal mines, you need to remember knock on effects.
I mean, are you really going to force both electricity generators and steel companies to buy British first? If so, they will be paying more for their energy than is paid by - say - French or German or Korean or Japanese firms.
Or are you planning on subsidising British coal? In which case, what's the cut off? Coal production was in decline in the UK long before there were meaningful quantities of imports. And that was because the easiest deposits had long been exploited, and the distance from pit head to coalface was constantly growing.
Energy has long been a globalized market. Even back in the 1950s, South Africa and Australia's biggest exports were of coal. Could we really have cut ourselves off from the world, requiring British firms to buy ever more expensive coal?
We could not. What we could have done, though, is managed the closure of pits a lot better.
British coal production had been in decline ever since WW1. The u-boat blockade throttled export markets, then two strikes in seven years destroyed confidence and led to cuts in investment, the switch to oil as a primary fuel depressed demand further, and finally the depression left people buying the cheapest product anyway, which usually wasn't British coal.
One of the grim ironies of grouping is the Great Western went to colossal lengths, several of which were probably illegal and one of which may have included actual bribery of government officials, to secure the Valleys lines because they were so anxious to control the export traffic of the mines. But by 1932, a majority of the coal they carried on those lines was sold to - the Great Western Railway.
On the subject of coal, you can buy an (American) ton of coal from the Powder River Basin for just $14.
$14.
Now, admittedly, you have to get that coal out of Wyoming (which will cost you more than the coal itself). But it really gives you a sense for just how cheap open pit mining on a massive scale is.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Child labour?!
Er no.
There was a brilliant BBC program where they took a former U.K. miner on a tour round the world of the mines he had been competing with.
In Canada, there was an open vast mine, where the drag lines filed a row of dump trucks. From a coal seem 20 m thick.
The dump trucks looked small in the distance. As they approached, you could see each one was the size of a house.
In the words of the former miner, each truck carried more coal than a shift on a face at his old pit.
Canadian coal mines are just insane, there's no way anything in Britain could compete.
Saw a train leave a Canadian coal mine. The train had that many carriages it took about 10 minutes to for the entire train go past, there are well over a hundred carriages per train.
Go to a train station near a UK port later at night. Wait. Sooner or later you will see a cargo train pulling many carriages, each holding a shipping container. They will take minutes to go past you and hold tens of containers. It is not unreasonable to imagine them as being over a hundred.
I am happy to accept your assessment of Canadian mass. But that does not mean that UK trains cannot attain similar masses. Additionally, it used to be the case that well into the 20th century much intra-country cargo was done via coastal shipping. But I digress...
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
It's odd how people who talk about learning the lessons of the 30s seem determined to recreate the conditions of Weimar Berlin.
I'm pretty sure the Nazis were not caused by drag queens in Berlin.
Well just look at JK Rowling for proof.
I assume you are using the insults levied at JK Rowling as an analogy to the rise of the Nazis. Given the large difference in magnitude I find it difficult to equate the two. Being nasty on Twitter is not the same as Kristallnacht nor Dachau.
It was of course a joke, but it is true that 'reactionary' politics, by definition, don't occur in a vacuum but depend on having something to react against.
So as long as everyone stays sensibly centre right and follows the strictures of a common sense czar, no Nazis?
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Leaving aside the fact that I've spent a lot of time around coal mines, you need to remember knock on effects.
I mean, are you really going to force both electricity generators and steel companies to buy British first? If so, they will be paying more for their energy than is paid by - say - French or German or Korean or Japanese firms.
Or are you planning on subsidising British coal? In which case, what's the cut off? Coal production was in decline in the UK long before there were meaningful quantities of imports. And that was because the easiest deposits had long been exploited, and the distance from pit head to coalface was constantly growing.
Energy has long been a globalized market. Even back in the 1950s, South Africa and Australia's biggest exports were of coal. Could we really have cut ourselves off from the world, requiring British firms to buy ever more expensive coal?
We could not. What we could have done, though, is managed the closure of pits a lot better.
British coal production had been in decline ever since WW1. The u-boat blockade throttled export markets, then two strikes in seven years destroyed confidence and led to cuts in investment, the switch to oil as a primary fuel depressed demand further, and finally the depression left people buying the cheapest product anyway, which usually wasn't British coal.
One of the grim ironies of grouping is the Great Western went to colossal lengths, several of which were probably illegal and one of which may have included actual bribery of government officials, to secure the Valleys lines because they were so anxious to control the export traffic of the mines. But by 1932, a majority of the coal they carried on those lines was sold to - the Great Western Railway.
One killer was the end of the coal age for ships and trains. Welsh Best was pointless for power stations, but its higher calorific value was brilliant for transport.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Child labour?!
Er no.
There was a brilliant BBC program where they took a former U.K. miner on a tour round the world of the mines he had been competing with.
In Canada, there was an open vast mine, where the drag lines filed a row of dump trucks. From a coal seem 20 m thick.
The dump trucks looked small in the distance. As they approached, you could see each one was the size of a house.
In the words of the former miner, each truck carried more coal than a shift on a face at his old pit.
Canadian coal mines are just insane, there's no way anything in Britain could compete.
Saw a train leave a Canadian coal mine. The train had that many carriages it took about 10 minutes to for the entire train go past, there are well over a hundred carriages per train.
Go to a train station near a UK port later at night. Wait. Sooner or later you will see a cargo train pulling many carriages, each holding a shipping container. They will take minutes to go past you and hold tens of containers. It is not unreasonable to imagine them as being over a hundred.
I am happy to accept your assessment of Canadian mass. But that does not mean that UK trains cannot attain similar masses. Additionally, it used to be the case that well into the 20th century much intra-country cargo was done via coastal shipping. But I digress...
It’s about the load, not the train. Canadian and Australian mines were operating at scales that were orders of magnitude greater than U.K. mines.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
It's odd how people who talk about learning the lessons of the 30s seem determined to recreate the conditions of Weimar Berlin.
I'm pretty sure the Nazis were not caused by drag queens in Berlin.
Well just look at JK Rowling for proof.
I assume you are using the insults levied at JK Rowling as an analogy to the rise of the Nazis. Given the large difference in magnitude I find it difficult to equate the two. Being nasty on Twitter is not the same as Kristallnacht nor Dachau.
It was of course a joke, but it is true that 'reactionary' politics, by definition, don't occur in a vacuum but depend on having something to react against.
So as long as everyone stays sensibly centre right and follows the strictures of a common sense czar, no Nazis?
Precisely. This is the true definition of conservatism.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
The phrase 'far-right' has become rather a debased currency. It wouldn't have been considered 'far-right' a few years ago to opine that someone who owns and enjoys the full use of a cock and balls doesn't belong in a women's changing room, toilet, or prison. These days apparently it is.
When Scotland passed a self-ID law, Sunak's government blocked it.
Polling suggests that - while most voters support allowing people to choose their pronouns - they aren't that keen on opening up single sex spaces.
Do you expect that Starmer's government will overturn this block?
(With that said, there is clearly a problem with some overzealous councils and - historically - the prison service. But I would also note that is no longer the case for prisons, and I don't expect Starmer to change this either. Indeed, I would be staggered if the Labour manifesto contains anything other than platitudes on the subject of gender.)
As I say in my later posts, whilst I don't think everyone does this, there has been an expansion of the concept of 'far right' on the part of some, to include 'right of centre' policies that they now wish to portray as an anachronism and an affront. 'Far right' to me should be used to classify the views and tactics of neo-Nazi groups. It should be vigorously opposed as a term of invalidation aimed at Thatcherites, those who believe in the immutability of sex, Brexit supporters, etc. etc.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
It's odd how people who talk about learning the lessons of the 30s seem determined to recreate the conditions of Weimar Berlin.
I'm pretty sure the Nazis were not caused by drag queens in Berlin.
So you are saying the documentary Cabaret was inaccurate?
Historical documents are always accurate. How else could the Thermians build the NSEA Protector?
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
South Korea has little in the way of natural resources. Yet has managed to maintain globally competitive industries in (inter alia) steel and shipbuilding despite now having a similar level of economic development to us.
'Globalisation' is just an excuse for having given up on industrial policy.
'The Thatcher Model' was just as flawed back in the 20thC.
As I says upthread, the fact that dramatic economic reform was essential in the 80s in no way excuses the mistakes made by her administrations. Which were embraced by succeeding governments of both parties.
I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end up in the grotesque chaos of a Conservative prime minister raising taxes to pay for unfunded spending cuts that meant we couldn't borrow money.
With apologies to Neil Kinnock.
Say what you like about Kinnock, but forty years later we are still quoting him... 🤔
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Child labour?!
Er no.
There was a brilliant BBC program where they took a former U.K. miner on a tour round the world of the mines he had been competing with.
In Canada, there was an open vast mine, where the drag lines filed a row of dump trucks. From a coal seem 20 m thick.
The dump trucks looked small in the distance. As they approached, you could see each one was the size of a house.
In the words of the former miner, each truck carried more coal than a shift on a face at his old pit.
Canadian coal mines are just insane, there's no way anything in Britain could compete.
Saw a train leave a Canadian coal mine. The train had that many carriages it took about 10 minutes to for the entire train go past, there are well over a hundred carriages per train.
Go to a train station near a UK port later at night. Wait. Sooner or later you will see a cargo train pulling many carriages, each holding a shipping container. They will take minutes to go past you and hold tens of containers. It is not unreasonable to imagine them as being over a hundred.
I am happy to accept your assessment of Canadian mass. But that does not mean that UK trains cannot attain similar masses. Additionally, it used to be the case that well into the 20th century much intra-country cargo was done via coastal shipping. But I digress...
I'm afraid you're very wrong on this. AFAIR the heaviest ever UK freight train was a little over 4,600 tonnes in 2022 - a stone train from Somerset. The heaviest ever on the WCML was 3,600 tonnes with a length of about 2,000 feet (1).
Canada's trains are in a different league; "Up until the 1990s, the average freight train in Canada was about 5,000 feet (1.54 kilometres) long and weighed 7,000 tons. But it is now not uncommon to see these trains stretch to 12,000 feet, sometimes as much as 14,000 feet (more than four kilometres), weighing up to 18,000 tons." (2)
This is not because we're in some way stupid. Our freight trains need to run on the same lines as passenger trains for much of their journey, including expresses, meaning we prefer them to travel fast. Then there are the block/section lengths (*); kept short to allow more trains to run on the same route. Demand is also a big issue; we simply don't produce that mass of stuff.
(*) Essentially the basic length used in signalling.
I just discovered that the plane in Raiders of the lost Ark is not a genuine German plane at all, and is totally fictitious. I’m shocked. Always assumed it was based on a real world version for some reason.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Leaving aside the fact that I've spent a lot of time around coal mines, you need to remember knock on effects.
I mean, are you really going to force both electricity generators and steel companies to buy British first? If so, they will be paying more for their energy than is paid by - say - French or German or Korean or Japanese firms.
Or are you planning on subsidising British coal? In which case, what's the cut off? Coal production was in decline in the UK long before there were meaningful quantities of imports. And that was because the easiest deposits had long been exploited, and the distance from pit head to coalface was constantly growing.
Energy has long been a globalized market. Even back in the 1950s, South Africa and Australia's biggest exports were of coal. Could we really have cut ourselves off from the world, requiring British firms to buy ever more expensive coal?
We could not. What we could have done, though, is managed the closure of pits a lot better.
British coal production had been in decline ever since WW1. The u-boat blockade throttled export markets, then two strikes in seven years destroyed confidence and led to cuts in investment, the switch to oil as a primary fuel depressed demand further, and finally the depression left people buying the cheapest product anyway, which usually wasn't British coal.
One of the grim ironies of grouping is the Great Western went to colossal lengths, several of which were probably illegal and one of which may have included actual bribery of government officials, to secure the Valleys lines because they were so anxious to control the export traffic of the mines. But by 1932, a majority of the coal they carried on those lines was sold to - the Great Western Railway.
One killer was the end of the coal age for ships and trains. Welsh Best was pointless for power stations, but its higher calorific value was brilliant for transport.
Didn't Churchill mandate the move of the Royal Navy from coal to oil? It was probably a sensible thing to do, but it's had a heck of a lot of effects, both nationally and geopolitically.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Child labour?!
Er no.
There was a brilliant BBC program where they took a former U.K. miner on a tour round the world of the mines he had been competing with.
In Canada, there was an open vast mine, where the drag lines filed a row of dump trucks. From a coal seem 20 m thick.
The dump trucks looked small in the distance. As they approached, you could see each one was the size of a house.
In the words of the former miner, each truck carried more coal than a shift on a face at his old pit.
Canadian coal mines are just insane, there's no way anything in Britain could compete.
Saw a train leave a Canadian coal mine. The train had that many carriages it took about 10 minutes to for the entire train go past, there are well over a hundred carriages per train.
Rail enthusiasts can no doubt work out the advantages of a train that can self-separate into its individual carriages, which can recombine on the move.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
That's because a gordian knot of public regulations and laws have been passed over the last 50 years that now make it, procedurally, almost impossible to get anything done and endless grounds for appeal.
Intelligent politicians would apply themselves to understanding the tangled web we've weaved and whether it's still fit for purpose, but it's far easier to grandstand with new laws rather than do a lot of hard work no-one might notice and, even if they do, long after they've left office.
Spot on. So that we now have the spectacle of government trying to get parliament to legislate to designate and alter unknown facts about the future (Rwanda 'is' a safe country) in order to evade its own laws. Pathetically, it may even believe it can work. To unwind it will be an effortless matter for the courts, not least because of the 800 years of laws government are trying to ignore.
My mind boggles at the mental gymnastics needed to toe the Tory line. We has to have Brexit for Sovereignty, but then have had posters say that parliament shouldn't have been sovereign after the 2017 election, and now that British laws should be disapplied.
For all that they foam on about principles, in practice there are non. They want to be free, to do what they want to do. What that is keeps changing and how dare anyone point to the basis of the British constitution - laws, conventions, the courts, international treaties etc - and say that this is what Brexit sovereignty is.
Bit like following your posts, with gems like 'largely universally popular'.
Don’t know why he’s trying to say I’m ‘toeing the Tory line” because I said MPs shouldn’t have got a vote on the Brexit deal. When I made that point repeatedly in 2016-2019 I’d never voted Tory. I did in 2019 as they were the only party keeping their word about enacting the result of the referendum, and doubt I will again
None of my business of course, but do you consider yourself politically homeless or will you be tempted down the wasted vote route with RefUK?
I don’t know really. I’d say it’s big odds on I wouldn’t vote.
I think that's what will happen to lots of natural right-of-centre voters. Turnout could be low.
I wouldn’t think of myself as right of centre really. I think voting to end FOM because of the effect it had on the poorest paid in this country is a left wing reason, and that’s the only reason I voted leave. UKIP had a lot of former ex Labour voters and councillors as members during the 2011-2016 period.
I have you down as a traditional Labour voter, pissed off by woke shite and handwringing. But ready to return if and when the party gives an indication that it's policies align with the interests of those people the party was founded to represent. A key demographic.
Apologies if I have called this wrong.
Well, traditional in the sense that my family always voted Labour because left wing people were nice and Tories were nasty. I asked my parents permission to vote Tory in 2019 and said I wouldn’t if it upset them.
I went to Uni in my 30s, in 2010, as a mature student, and the general left wing, quite spiteful, atmosphere aligned with the studying I did made me realise it wasn’t as simple as I’d always thought. It would be nice to be able to vote Labour again, but obviously I can’t whilst Sir Keir is about.
I think you’re pretty much right. I agree with most politicians on something really anyway. I agreed with Corbyn on a lot of things, I wish he had come out as a Leaver. I liked Ed Miliband more than Cameron and wish he’d won, on a personal level, even though I think that would have led to him being slaughtered by Farage.
Interesting. I grew up thinking the precise opposite.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s I had a similar viewpoint as you.
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
They had a bloody good reason to be angry.
That the Coal Board was unwilling to keep mines open long after they had ceased to be economically viable?
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
It was unviable because it was possible to buy cheaper coal from large open-cast mines and narrower ones using child labour. The globalisation wave thus unleashed incurred a dependency on outside supply that forty years later has led us giving millions to Tata steel for the privilege of having a steelworks and having an entire winter where Vladimir Bloody Putin cut our gas nuts off.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Leaving aside the fact that I've spent a lot of time around coal mines, you need to remember knock on effects.
I mean, are you really going to force both electricity generators and steel companies to buy British first? If so, they will be paying more for their energy than is paid by - say - French or German or Korean or Japanese firms.
Or are you planning on subsidising British coal? In which case, what's the cut off? Coal production was in decline in the UK long before there were meaningful quantities of imports. And that was because the easiest deposits had long been exploited, and the distance from pit head to coalface was constantly growing.
Energy has long been a globalized market. Even back in the 1950s, South Africa and Australia's biggest exports were of coal. Could we really have cut ourselves off from the world, requiring British firms to buy ever more expensive coal?
We could not. What we could have done, though, is managed the closure of pits a lot better.
British coal production had been in decline ever since WW1. The u-boat blockade throttled export markets, then two strikes in seven years destroyed confidence and led to cuts in investment, the switch to oil as a primary fuel depressed demand further, and finally the depression left people buying the cheapest product anyway, which usually wasn't British coal.
One of the grim ironies of grouping is the Great Western went to colossal lengths, several of which were probably illegal and one of which may have included actual bribery of government officials, to secure the Valleys lines because they were so anxious to control the export traffic of the mines. But by 1932, a majority of the coal they carried on those lines was sold to - the Great Western Railway.
One killer was the end of the coal age for ships and trains. Welsh Best was pointless for power stations, but its higher calorific value was brilliant for transport.
Didn't Churchill mandate the move of the Royal Navy from coal to oil? It was probably a sensible thing to do, but it's had a heck of a lot of effects, both nationally and geopolitically.
Yep.
And (coincidentally) I am currently rereading The Prize, which start with that very snippet.
British forfeiture of industrial policy has been a 40-year disaster. For a long time it “didn’t matter” as Britain was able to rely on cheap North Sea oil, and then the boost provided by globalisation to financial services.
The first went some time ago, the second was played out by 2008.
Thatcher taught us that any government intervention in markets was anathema, but this binary view of the world has held the country back for decades now.
British forfeiture of industrial policy has been a 40-year disaster. For a long time it “didn’t matter” as Britain was able to rely on cheap North Sea oil, and then the boost provided by globalisation to financial services.
The first went some time ago, the second was played out by 2008.
Thatcher taught us that any government intervention in markets was anathema, but the his binary view of the world has held the country back for decades now.
British firms paid the same for "cheap" North Sea oil as everyone else did.
Comments
Some may remember "Blue Labour" from a few years back. That's where we should be, as a party. Just with an extra slice of environmentalism in order to address the fundamental issues impacting the planet.
I want an authoritarian Home Secretary, an eco-authoritarian Environment Secretary, a pro-rail Transport Secretary, and a passionate advocate for social justice as Chancellor. Is that too much to ask?
Now you have Sunak, who may have been perfectly competent and engaging as a leader under different circumstances, flapping about doing lame impressions of Boris and not convincing anyone.
I viewed Labour as coterminous with lots of angry, striking, rioting, violent men - so felt a surge of fear whenever I saw the sign- whereas I felt safe whenever I saw the Conservatives sign, which I associated with safe leafy detached houses in nice areas selling tea and cakes, with friendly people like my mum and dad who were very nice indeed.
Funny how politics can be so visceral.
I could never vote for Sir Keir after his constant u-turns on ‘matters of principle’ regarding Brexit. But if he does as you say all the better
It might be very interesting if shown to be a risk factor - and pretty low risk to conduct long term intervention trials.
He's as smart as a tack, and still goes to work every day. (To which he drives himself, in his Tesla.)
Indeed, his only real problem is his hearing. Basically, if you go out to lunch with him - and he loves good lunches and dinners - you need to go somewhere quiet because he struggles to hear if there's lots of background noise.
From him, I have come to a number of conclusions:
(1) Keep working
(2) Keep skiing until your doctor is absolutely insistent that you really need to stop*
(3) Go out and socialise
(4) Drink, but only in moderation
(5) Stay with your wife
* "Meyer, you're 86 years old. If you take a fall, you won't be getting up."
I saw Labour/lefties as violent/angry men because of the miners' strike.
Neither inspired any great confidence in their parties' ability to manage the country.
Nor, to be honest, did Thatcher. (Even though I voted for her on occasion.)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/apr/12/ukcrime.race
Absolutely - the sentence for voting Green should be transportation to Rwanda. With your family.
A rough guess of the numbers says that this would solve the housing crisis.
And reduce the burden on the Eco system back to about 2000 population levels.
A friend of Cummings, he has been at the heart of a great many policy disasters in the last decade, including exam reform, academy chains and the new teacher training framework.
He was 'teacher in residence' at the DfE despite his only experience of teaching being two years on the notorious Teach First programme after leaving Durham.
His appointment suggests that Keegan is trying to further OFSTED's development not as a schools inspectorate but as the enforcement arm of the DfE's dumbarse policies.
Which, to be fair, is what it has been since the time of Ed Balls when it was made a non-ministerial department.
The Tories being associated with economic decline, much needed housing or infrastructure not being built, and a crumbling state that only serves the old. Brexit chaos and its contribution to a lost decade they didn't want or vote for. The 'Nasty Party' culture war stuff that misses the point that even lots of those sceptical of 'wokery' or immigration, view politicians who are performatively stupid and cruel about these things dimly.
Which is not to say the left doesn't have its own issues to sort out - antisemitism, some of the dafter identity stuff that takes its inherent goodness as read even if it's incoherent or damaging. How it deals with the economic challenges caused by capital's accruing of power due to technology, and demographic issues.
But it has had the advantage of not being in charge and presiding over the first generation to generation decline in living standards, having a defining project that's widely seen as a failure (and even more so by those under 50), and being there at the point where the stresses and strains on state provision have begun to be unignorable.
Politics is never entirely fair, but just as Labour's long-term struggle to prove its economic competency after 79 was harsh, so I suspect the right's reputation as that of reactionary pensioners who stole a future and smashed up the economy, will be just as hard to shake off.
Whereas now, the visibly angry people in politics are on the GB News end of things.
And so the wheel turns...
At least he did become a Thatcherite in later life.
Former miners' union leader Arthur Scargill tried to use laws introduced by Margaret Thatcher to buy a council flat in London, the BBC has found.
In 1993 he applied to buy the flat on the prestigious Barbican estate under the right-to-buy scheme championed by Thatcher, his political enemy.
News that he tried to exploit a flagship Conservative policy has angered current miners' union leaders.
One former Yorkshire miner said: "It's so hypocritical it's unreal."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-25731328
From the Premier League website:
"In fact, Arsenal have failed to win the title on all five occasions when they have topped the top-flight table at Christmas, finishing fourth in 1986/87 and 1989/90, third in 2007/08, and second in 2002/03 and 2022/23. "
Even though the right is (correctly) completely discredited thanks to the last decade of abysmal government, that's not a good reason to completely ignore critiques of their likely replacement from the right of politics.
https://youtu.be/nN6sTBSAp-A?si=MZswlIaWcZBjRwx_
Great for political point scoring but NOT for getting on with life and looking forward not backward.
Still, such criticism of a public figure, especially one as public & critical as Scargill back in the day IS fair comment.
And persuasive for some folks at least some of the time. Including even me, from time to time.
However not this time.
I had not heard about this.
This is even worse than BSF.
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/failed-contractors-45-million-schools-to-be-demolished-and-rebuilt/
Paul Tierney and VAR are a fucking joke.
Just askin'
Happy Boxing Day!
He wonders what the cost per square foot was.
Given that he nearly bid on a contract to build a school near me. The “suggested” rate was higher than the cost per square foot for luxury basements.
In fact, he commented he could do the job and throw in a swimming pool in a basement.
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2023/12/26/apple-fails-to-win-reprieve-from-president-joe-bidens-administration-over-us-watch-sales-ban/
https://constructionmanagement.co.uk/eco-school-be-partly-demolished-after-7m-claim/
Imagine how things would be if we were run by a bunch of drunken arrogant fucktards out solely for themselves.
Then I realised in this context 'GBH' stood for 'Grand Hotel Budapest.'
As a Romanian builder friend puts it, every time he builds a school, he builds a couple of houses for people In The Thing. To the same standards….
https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1739713764461805946
If you want to blame the Thatcher government, blame them for failing to appreciate the societal and human impact of closing mining town's sole large employer. Blame them for failing to be proactive about support the human cost of closure.
But you do need to recognise reality. The remaining coal in those mines was increasingly unviable.
Which IIRC has been posted on PB in past festive seasons.
If you spend all your time ranting about how the trans are coming for people’s children on Twitter then you can’t complain when people draw the obvious conclusion that you’ll side with a fascist party that promises to clamp down on gender variance regardless of your other politics when the time comes.
(See also, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/ for a longer article on the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft & it’s research into trans & non-binary as well as gay sexualities & gender presentations.)
Just as some Labour people convinced themselves Thatcher would crash and burn and people would gratefully return to them to restore the post-war consensus, there's an assumption that 'Real Britain' ultimately thinks like the Tory right, but is just a bit miffed at the post-2019 chaos that's gone on.
But what perhaps had been mislaid after 1979 was that the 70s and early 80s industrial strife was that it had fundamentally changed the outlook lots of people who came of age during that era and didn't want to go back to it. And of course Labour has only won since when it's looked like a very different party that accepts that.
Similarly, if you look at how not just the youngest cohorts are voting (twas ever thus to some extent) but now most of working age, even those to whom used to be those the Tories used to make a big part of their pitch to (aspirational voters in their 30s for example), they're now as likely to believe the Moon landings are faked as say they'd vote Tory. Millennials (my own cohort) are the first generation in living memory to shift to voting for more left-wing parties as they age! Anecdotally, I have friends who should, by income and general disinterest in politics, be ideal Tory targets - who now wouldn't be seen dead voting for them.
It just may be a similar change to what we once saw harm Labour and the left - because it became associated with those failures - is now occurring to the Tories and the right in general. Albeit one that was masked for a time by the post-war demographic bulge that may well have peaked in favouring the right from around 2015 to now.
It is that reality which we now need to recognise. The Thatcher model doesn't work in the 21st century.
Yes, if you do not like the thought of underage children being able to change sex without their parents consent, that makes you far-right and obviously a Nazi.
Of course, it is worth remembering that the equivalent issue in the 1970s to the trans issue was the support for groups such as PIE who made a similar case about children being able to have rights over their bodies. If PIE was around today, I'm sure many on the left would be saying that if you didn't want the age of consent dramatically lowered, you were also being 'far-right'
people for work which is not making much money for the government, or is more efficient were it automated, is still worthwhile because the money you’ll pay the unemployed miners, or whoever the affected trade is, in benefits coupled with the social effects of so many towns no longer having a community makes it so? Because we shouldn’t run a country as if it were a FTSE - 100 company
A lot of people favour UBI which is paying people to do nothing, so it can’t be ruled out solely on economic terms.
Blair's Labour Party were both economically spendthrift and deeply authoritarian.
ID cards, detention without trial and so on and so forth.
Edit: as an example: https://www.radiofreemobile.com/apple-vs-qualcomm-pressure-cooker-pt-iii/
So, yes: those arguments are the same ones that the Nazi’s used to discredit the Institute’s attempts to help deeply distressed individuals & to justify its total destruction.
One such I remember in early 70s was RIchard Crossman, who looked old and rather ill when he disputed with Buckley (he died a few years later).
Didn't matter - Crossman whupped Buckley's ass. At the end, WFB's famously crooked grin was even more crooked than per usual.
Perhaps worth noting, that significant part of Buckley's appeal for American audience, beyond the serious nature of his show and his obvious attraction for conservatives, was his mid-Atlantic accent (positioned not far west of Scilly in more ways than one) complete with old-school New-York upper-crust drawl such as sported by Franklin Roosevelt and George Plimpton.
Weirdest thing about "Firing Line" was gaggle of preppy geeks clustered at the feet - literally - of Buckley and his guest. Who gazed up in wonder throughout the broadcast.
Personally put me off Conservatism for the duration.
Er no.
There was a brilliant BBC program where they took a former U.K. miner on a tour round the world of the mines he had been competing with.
In Canada, there was an open vast mine, where the drag lines filed a row of dump trucks. From a coal seem 20 m thick.
The dump trucks looked small in the distance. As they approached, you could see each one was the size of a house.
In the words of the former miner, each truck carried more coal than a shift on a face at his old pit.
'Globalisation' is just an excuse for having given up on industrial policy.
'The Thatcher Model' was just as flawed back in the 20thC.
As I says upthread, the fact that dramatic economic reform was essential in the 80s in no way excuses the mistakes made by her administrations. Which were embraced by succeeding governments of both parties.
Saw a train leave a Canadian coal mine. The train had that many carriages it took about 10 minutes to for the entire train go past, there are well over a hundred carriages per train.
With apologies to Neil Kinnock.
I mean, are you really going to force both electricity generators and steel companies to buy British first? If so, they will be paying more for their energy than is paid by - say - French or German or Korean or Japanese firms.
Or are you planning on subsidising British coal? In which case, what's the cut off? Coal production was in decline in the UK long before there were meaningful quantities of imports. And that was because the easiest deposits had long been exploited, and the distance from pit head to coalface was constantly growing.
Energy has long been a globalized market. Even back in the 1950s, South Africa and Australia's biggest exports were of coal. Could we really have cut ourselves off from the world, requiring British firms to buy ever more expensive coal?
We could not. What we could have done, though, is managed the closure of pits a lot better.
Hence you get people wondering why resurrecting 18th cent. watermills isn’t going to save the world.
Should coal mines have kept hiring miners to bring out ever diminishing quantities of coal?
For what it's worth, I would point out that the UK economy dealt ok with the drip, drip of mine closures in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. People moved out of coal villages and into cities and towns and got new jobs.
What was different about the 1980s, is that the cities weren't filled with demand for manual labour like in the past. And house prices had risen at the same time, so moving from rural Durham to London was next to impossible.
I really didn’t know why are rerunning an argument which was settled forty years ago. It’s the sort of misdirection which has plagued policy discussion ever since.
One of the grim ironies of grouping is the Great Western went to colossal lengths, several of which were probably illegal and one of which may have included actual bribery of government officials, to secure the Valleys lines because they were so anxious to control the export traffic of the mines. But by 1932, a majority of the coal they carried on those lines was sold to - the Great Western Railway.
$14.
Now, admittedly, you have to get that coal out of Wyoming (which will cost you more than the coal itself). But it really gives you a sense for just how cheap open pit mining on a massive scale is.
I am happy to accept your assessment of Canadian mass. But that does not mean that UK trains cannot attain similar masses. Additionally, it used to be the case that well into the 20th century much intra-country cargo was done via coastal shipping. But I digress...
Canada's trains are in a different league; "Up until the 1990s, the average freight train in Canada was about 5,000 feet (1.54 kilometres) long and weighed 7,000 tons. But it is now not uncommon to see these trains stretch to 12,000 feet, sometimes as much as 14,000 feet (more than four kilometres), weighing up to 18,000 tons." (2)
This is not because we're in some way stupid. Our freight trains need to run on the same lines as passenger trains for much of their journey, including expresses, meaning we prefer them to travel fast. Then there are the block/section lengths (*); kept short to allow more trains to run on the same route. Demand is also a big issue; we simply don't produce that mass of stuff.
(*) Essentially the basic length used in signalling.
(1): https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/jumbo-freight-train-first-for-west-coast-main-line
(2): https://nationalpost.com/news/how-long-can-trains-go
What else in the film is not real?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK1I_atG72U
Some detail here:
https://moveparallel.com/product/
Rail enthusiasts can no doubt work out the advantages of a train that can self-separate into its individual carriages, which can recombine on the move.
And (coincidentally) I am currently rereading The Prize, which start with that very snippet.
The first went some time ago, the second was played out by 2008.
Thatcher taught us that any government intervention in markets was anathema, but this binary view of the world has held the country back for decades now.