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... 🤔
"I have in my hand a piece of paper. A Labour piece of paper. And we are hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out these bits of paper to its own workers before alternately outsourcing their jobs, then replacing any remaining by cheaper imported workers".
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.
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
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.
I may be wrong about this - but ISTR there was massive amounts of retraining offered by the government, which the unions put considerable pressure on individuals not to take up. Some did though. I used to work with an ex-docker fron Liverpool who had made a decent living as an assembler programmer from such a scheme. But he'd had to be pretty, er, determined to do the scheme, and ended up moving out to Ellesmere Port.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Well quite how there could be so many Nazis in pre War British controlled Egypt was a bit odd
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
In a very real sense, Ireland is not a foreign country, so it doesn't make sense to put it in the same bracket.
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.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Your nerd status is hereby withdrawn. Realised it the moment I first saw it in the cinema but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
I regret to inform you that the tank is a load of crap also.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Your nerd status is hereby withdrawn. Realised it the moment I first saw it in the cinema but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
I regret to inform you that the tank is a load of crap also.
What's more concerning is where the hell was the Ark going to go on this 'Plane'? There wasn't any room for it!
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.
Gardenwalker was talking about ‘Britain’, not ‘British firms’. The oil granted the exchequer tax revenue which allowed them to ignore, for a time, the rest of industry.
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.
It was between him and Fisher. Oil had higher calorific value per ton, didn’t require hundreds of men to shovel it into the furnaces, and best all, allowed larger boilers - far deeper than coal grate could be worked.
As a final touch, oil fired systems didn’t require stopping frequently to remove clinker and fix other issues - they could be run at full power for days.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Just don't tell me the Ark of the Covenant isn't exactly as described - complete with Nazi-killing setting.....
"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.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Your nerd status is hereby withdrawn. Realised it the moment I first saw it in the cinema but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
I regret to inform you that the tank is a load of crap also.
What's more concerning is where the hell was the Ark going to go on this 'Plane'? There wasn't any room for it!
It was a fairly thick flying wing. A 3 x 3 x 4 foot chest would fit in easily.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Well quite how there could be so many Nazis in pre War British controlled Egypt was a bit odd
I'm watching ROTLA as well. Never actually seen it before. Main reaction: Can you not lay off the incidental music for a bit Mr. Spielberg?
Also discussing it by text with a friend elsewhere who is watching it. My daughter was briefly baffled by the coincidence, having forgotten about the concept of linear TV.
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
In a very real sense, Ireland is not a foreign country, so it doesn't make sense to put it in the same bracket.
I think that point of view may also have had a lot to do with certain troubles.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Your nerd status is hereby withdrawn. Realised it the moment I first saw it in the cinema but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
I regret to inform you that the tank is a load of crap also.
What's more concerning is where the hell was the Ark going to go on this 'Plane'? There wasn't any room for it!
Raiders was inspired by prewar B-movie serials; logic was not a strong part of its structure. OTOH, the Nazi flying wing which came closest to reality was a bomber, and would have had plenty of carrying capacity.
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
"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.
Yeah, and that's another example of why Jobs was an utter sh*t. A small company spends a decade building an insanely good (*) technology, and get a load of relevant patents. A massively larger company (let's call it 'A') offers to buy their tech, but they need to see all the details in due diligence. A while later they magically use that tech without buying the minnow or paying the licensing.
Which leads to another massive company (called, say 'Q') buying the minnow for a fraction of its value, and having a very public legal battle with 'A' - which they win.
But that's of little help to the minnow, which no longer exists.
And this matters, as it really stifles innovation, and pushes it only into the hands of massive companies.
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 cumulative costs of:
- Imported coal - Benefit payments to the unemployed - Making the abandoned mines safe - Breakdown of community cohesion - Increased crime - Treating increased ill health and the impacts on alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. - And countless other negative impacts
It would have been cheaper to subsidise coal production.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Your nerd status is hereby withdrawn. Realised it the moment I first saw it in the cinema but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
I regret to inform you that the tank is a load of crap also.
What's more concerning is where the hell was the Ark going to go on this 'Plane'? There wasn't any room for it!
Raiders was inspired by prewar B-movie serials; logic was not a strong part of its structure. OTOH, the Nazi flying wing which came closest to reality was a bomber, and would have had plenty of carrying capacity.
That the Nazis were test flying (and crashing) the Horten prototypes in Feb ‘45 then putting in production orders tells you as much as anything why their enterprise was doomed.
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
Kinda, mass immigration into Ireland led to the IRA nearly killing both Margaret Thatcher and John Major and actually murdering the likes of Airey Neave and Ian Gow.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Your nerd status is hereby withdrawn. Realised it the moment I first saw it in the cinema but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
I regret to inform you that the tank is a load of crap also.
What's more concerning is where the hell was the Ark going to go on this 'Plane'? There wasn't any room for it!
Raiders was inspired by prewar B-movie serials; logic was not a strong part of its structure. OTOH, the Nazi flying wing which came closest to reality was a bomber, and would have had plenty of carrying capacity.
Not familiar with the details myself - but the USA built something very similar for transatlantic bombing and reconnaissance (X/YB-35 and XB-49), presumably in parallel (I believe they were drawn up well before the intelligence bonanza at the end of the war).
BTW in terms of tech the tank isn't so far off the TOG. But that was British,m not your actual modern Panzer.
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 cumulative costs of:
- Imported coal - Benefit payments to the unemployed - Making the abandoned mines safe - Breakdown of community cohesion - Increased crime - Treating increased ill health and the impacts on alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. - And countless other negative impacts
It would have been cheaper to subsidise coal production.
Have you actually seen any figures for that?
For one thing, "Making the abandoned mines safe" would have to be done anyway once they were fully mined out.
Besides, it utterly ignores the fact that we (and especially the left) are supposed to be interested in the environment, and burning gas is *loads* greener than burning coal. If it was Thatcher who closed all the mines (hint: it wasn't); ten she did the environment a load of good...
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 cumulative costs of:
- Imported coal - Benefit payments to the unemployed - Making the abandoned mines safe - Breakdown of community cohesion - Increased crime - Treating increased ill health and the impacts on alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. - And countless other negative impacts
It would have been cheaper to subsidise coal production.
It would have been smarter to have done far more for the communities affected. Apart from your first item (which is in any event a diminishing factor), none if the rest were inevitable consequences.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Harrison Ford doesn't really hate snakes. Apparently. He was even quite flattered when they named a species of them after him.
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
Kinda, mass immigration into Ireland led to the IRA nearly killing both Margaret Thatcher and John Major and actually murdering the likes of Airey Neave and Ian Gow.
You could well go back further. 1880s onwards. "Fenians" and all that.
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.
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.
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
Kinda, mass immigration into Ireland led to the IRA nearly killing both Margaret Thatcher and John Major and actually murdering the likes of Airey Neave and Ian Gow.
You could well go back further. 1880s onwards. "Fenians" and all that.
Edit: 1860s, even. Manchester Martyrs, as they were called at the time.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Your nerd status is hereby withdrawn. Realised it the moment I first saw it in the cinema but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
I regret to inform you that the tank is a load of crap also.
What's more concerning is where the hell was the Ark going to go on this 'Plane'? There wasn't any room for it!
Raiders was inspired by prewar B-movie serials; logic was not a strong part of its structure. OTOH, the Nazi flying wing which came closest to reality was a bomber, and would have had plenty of carrying capacity.
Not familiar with the details myself - but the USA built something very similar for transatlantic bombing and reconnaissance (X/YB-35 and XB-49), presumably in parallel (I believe they were drawn up well before the intelligence bonanza at the end of the war).
BTW in terms of tech the tank isn't so far off the TOG. But that was British,m not your actual modern Panzer.
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 cumulative costs of:
- Imported coal - Benefit payments to the unemployed - Making the abandoned mines safe - Breakdown of community cohesion - Increased crime - Treating increased ill health and the impacts on alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. - And countless other negative impacts
It would have been cheaper to subsidise coal production.
It would have been smarter to have done far more for the communities affected. Apart from your first item (which is in any event a diminishing factor), none if the rest were inevitable consequences.
Well, yes, but, as I said earlier - if I remember correctly, which I'm not sure that I do, but I have known people who went through this - lots of pretty good retraining was offered, which unions put a lot of pressure on people not to accept (for what use is a computer programmer to the NUM?)
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.
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
Kinda, mass immigration into Ireland led to the IRA nearly killing both Margaret Thatcher and John Major and actually murdering the likes of Airey Neave and Ian Gow.
You could well go back further. 1880s onwards. "Fenians" and all that.
Indeed, that said the IRA terrorism did have some positives, it led to the regeneration of Manchester.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Your nerd status is hereby withdrawn. Realised it the moment I first saw it in the cinema but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
I regret to inform you that the tank is a load of crap also.
What's more concerning is where the hell was the Ark going to go on this 'Plane'? There wasn't any room for it!
Raiders was inspired by prewar B-movie serials; logic was not a strong part of its structure. OTOH, the Nazi flying wing which came closest to reality was a bomber, and would have had plenty of carrying capacity.
Not familiar with the details myself - but the USA built something very similar for transatlantic bombing and reconnaissance (X/YB-35 and XB-49), presumably in parallel (I believe they were drawn up well before the intelligence bonanza at the end of the war).
BTW in terms of tech the tank isn't so far off the TOG. But that was British,m not your actual modern Panzer.
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
Kinda, mass immigration into Ireland led to the IRA nearly killing both Margaret Thatcher and John Major and actually murdering the likes of Airey Neave and Ian Gow.
You could well go back further. 1880s onwards. "Fenians" and all that.
Indeed, that said the IRA terrorism did have some positives, it led to the regeneration of Manchester.
Not sure if it is safe to 'like' that, as opposed to admiring your, erm, penetration ...
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...
A little mathematics:
A train is pulling 100 containers.
Let's say the weight of the containers, including the truck, is around 40 tons on average (which is definitely the upper limit - most containers wouldn't carry that much).
That's 4000 tons.
I saw heavier trains than that in Canada over twenty years ago. And I think they're heavier now.
A train of that size would also be hauled only a short distance. I live near Rugeley and if you look at the WCML container trains most of them have about 30 trucks on (usually with not all of them loaded).
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
Kinda, mass immigration into Ireland led to the IRA nearly killing both Margaret Thatcher and John Major and actually murdering the likes of Airey Neave and Ian Gow.
You could well go back further. 1880s onwards. "Fenians" and all that.
Indeed, that said the IRA terrorism did have some positives, it led to the regeneration of Manchester.
Not sure if it is safe to 'like' that, as opposed to admiring your, erm, penetration ...
You can understand why I decided not to become an MP, I'd be perpetually apologising.
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
BTW who was it who recommended Smeaton the CE as a worthy topic? I've treated myself to the multi-paper collection edited by P. Skempton - in the middle and enjoying it very much.
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 cumulative costs of:
- Imported coal - Benefit payments to the unemployed - Making the abandoned mines safe - Breakdown of community cohesion - Increased crime - Treating increased ill health and the impacts on alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. - And countless other negative impacts
It would have been cheaper to subsidise coal production.
Hmmm.
May I gently remind you of the health impacts coal mining had on the colliers?
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
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 cumulative costs of:
- Imported coal - Benefit payments to the unemployed - Making the abandoned mines safe - Breakdown of community cohesion - Increased crime - Treating increased ill health and the impacts on alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. - And countless other negative impacts
It would have been cheaper to subsidise coal production.
Imagine the process in reverse, though.
Butterfly away the difficulty of reopening abandoned mines. Then imagine Rishi doing a New Year Speech where he announced that the mines are reopening, and residents of towns X, Y and Z should report to the pithead 6am Monday.
People would rightly think that the PM had taken leave of his senses and it would be really unpopular. Because sending people to work deep underground is a pretty lousy thing to do. And that's even when the product of their efforts is useful and creating value, which coal mining increasingly doesn't.
However, there are two enormous caveats. One is the one alluded to upthread. There are countless practicalities to sort out if you are going to upend the economy of a town. And whilst the Thatcher government didn't do nothing, it also didn't do enough.
The other is to do with the sense of self that people and places have. It's a good thing that British coal mining died as an industry, but it deserved a dignified death and a proper send off. I'm not sure that Thatcher got that; I'm confident that Sunak doesn't get it at all.
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
I don't think terrorism generally has been caused by mass immigration. If you are concerned about terrorism, the vast majority of terrorism in the UK, since any modern definition of terrorism, was associated with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Hmmm... perhaps you could advance an argument that it was, thus, distantly associated with the mass immigration of Scottish people to Ulster in the 17th century?
Most terrorism in the UK has been conducted by people born in the UK. Some has been conducted by immigrants. Among immigrants, most terrorism has been conducted by immigrants from the Republic of Ireland. No other group comes close.
So, I think anyone make an association between immigrants and terrorism in the UK without acknowledging this is being, at best, disingenuous.
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
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.
What else in the film is not real?
Your nerd status is hereby withdrawn. Realised it the moment I first saw it in the cinema but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.
I regret to inform you that the tank is a load of crap also.
What's more concerning is where the hell was the Ark going to go on this 'Plane'? There wasn't any room for it!
Raiders was inspired by prewar B-movie serials; logic was not a strong part of its structure. OTOH, the Nazi flying wing which came closest to reality was a bomber, and would have had plenty of carrying capacity.
That the Nazis were test flying (and crashing) the Horten prototypes in Feb ‘45 then putting in production orders tells you as much as anything why their enterprise was doomed.
The prototype Spitfire was crashed and written off (albeit 3 years after its first flight).
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.
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
Who uses the term "Southern Ireland"? I mean, really?
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
Pat Roach was also Bomber in Auf Wiedershen Pet.
D'oh!
Belay my earlier message! Roach played one of the big Sherpa guys in the early scene in Nepal in ROTLA, NOT the Sword Guy!
ALSO: He was in the Last Crusade as a Gestapo agent.
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 cumulative costs of:
- Imported coal - Benefit payments to the unemployed - Making the abandoned mines safe - Breakdown of community cohesion - Increased crime - Treating increased ill health and the impacts on alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. - And countless other negative impacts
It would have been cheaper to subsidise coal production.
It would have been smarter to have done far more for the communities affected. Apart from your first item (which is in any event a diminishing factor), none if the rest were inevitable consequences.
Well, yes, but, as I said earlier - if I remember correctly, which I'm not sure that I do, but I have known people who went through this - lots of pretty good retraining was offered, which unions put a lot of pressure on people not to accept (for what use is a computer programmer to the NUM?)
I didn’t say government did nothing, but what it did was inadequate. And retraining alone - even if accepted - didn’t really address either the social or economic disruption.
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
Who uses the term "Southern Ireland"? I mean, really?
The most northerly point on the island of Ireland is NOT in Northern Ireland
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
Pat Roach was also Bomber in Auf Wiedershen Pet.
Steady on! The kid was one of The Goonies!
That is no plea in mitigation in my book.
He's great in Loki and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
It's finished now. Comment from middle daughter: "so - what happened?"
Tune in same time next week, when Cookie and family are astounded when an alien makes a bicycle fly.
That is another film that my wife finds astonishing that I have not watched. (I mean, she finds it astonishing that I haven't watched it. Not that she finds tge film astonishing. Though she quite liked it, I think.)
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
Pat Roach was also Bomber in Auf Wiedershen Pet.
Steady on! The kid was one of The Goonies!
That is no plea in mitigation in my book.
He's great in Loki and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
I still say they got the OB name from Red Dwarf...
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
I don't think terrorism generally has been caused by mass immigration. If you are concerned about terrorism, the vast majority of terrorism in the UK, since any modern definition of terrorism, was associated with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Hmmm... perhaps you could advance an argument that it was, thus, distantly associated with the mass immigration of Scottish people to Ulster in the 17th century?
Most terrorism in the UK has been conducted by people born in the UK. Some has been conducted by immigrants. Among immigrants, most terrorism has been conducted by immigrants from the Republic of Ireland. No other group comes close.
So, I think anyone make an association between immigrants and terrorism in the UK without acknowledging this is being, at best, disingenuous.
The troubles weren’t caused by mass immigration of Irish people to England though.
The men who killed Lee Rigby and 3/4 of those who bombed the tube on 7/7 were born in the UK, that doesn’t excuse mass immigration as a cause though
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
Who uses the term "Southern Ireland"? I mean, really?
Is it offensive? I meant Republic, it’s been a long day
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
Pat Roach was also Bomber in Auf Wiedershen Pet.
D'oh!
Belay my earlier message! Roach played one of the big Sherpa guys in the early scene in Nepal in ROTLA, NOT the Sword Guy!
ALSO: He was in the Last Crusade as a Gestapo agent.
Another good fact is that Ronald Lacey, who plays the villain Toht in Raiders, is also the Baby Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells in Blackadder.
It's finished now. Comment from middle daughter: "so - what happened?"
Tune in same time next week, when Cookie and family are astounded when an alien makes a bicycle fly.
That is another film that my wife finds astonishing that I have not watched. (I mean, she finds it astonishing that I haven't watched it. Not that she finds tge film astonishing. Though she quite liked it, I think.)
I have never seen ET in full. It's basically a kid's film: quite well liked but no obvious hook for adults. It was widely popular at the time.
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 is a rather asinine abuse of logic to suggest that because fascists and Nazis held traditional views on gender (no shit), that means anyone departing from the implications of today's rather extreme trans ideas deserves to be lumped in with them.
With your indignation that people would 'spend their time' objecting publicly to trans policies, I take it you have no objection to being called out as a fascist yourself, given that attaching social stigma to expressing the wrong type of ideas was also a favourite fascist pastime.
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
I don't think terrorism generally has been caused by mass immigration. If you are concerned about terrorism, the vast majority of terrorism in the UK, since any modern definition of terrorism, was associated with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Hmmm... perhaps you could advance an argument that it was, thus, distantly associated with the mass immigration of Scottish people to Ulster in the 17th century?
Most terrorism in the UK has been conducted by people born in the UK. Some has been conducted by immigrants. Among immigrants, most terrorism has been conducted by immigrants from the Republic of Ireland. No other group comes close.
So, I think anyone make an association between immigrants and terrorism in the UK without acknowledging this is being, at best, disingenuous.
The troubles weren’t caused by mass immigration of Irish people to England though.
The men who killed Lee Rigby and 3/4 of those who bombed the tube on 7/7 were born in the UK, that doesn’t excuse mass immigration as a cause though
53 people were murdered in 7/7 + the death of Lee Rigby. Each one of those deaths was a tragedy. I was in London on 7/7, working a few hundred metres from the bus bombing. (I used to work even closer, my office was on Tavistock Sq.)
However, I note 3,532 were killed in the Troubles. That's about 67 times as many people. When thinking about policy, I think we do sometimes need to take that sort of perspective and compare numbers.
I don't see any evidence that mass immigration was the cause of 7/7 and Rigby's murder. Three of the 7/7 bombers were second generation immigrants, while Germaine Lindsay was a first generation immigrant, born in Jamaica. But many of the attacks in the Troubles were by first or second generation immigrants, so I don't understand why you see one sort of terrorism as being caused by mass immigration and another as not. Is it because one sort was motivated by religion and the other was... oh, also motivated by religion. Is it because one sort was committed by people who didn't embrace British values, while the other was caused by people who didn't embrace British values... hmmm. So, what is it? What's different about the two groups of terrorists? Something that Enoch Powell would have noticed...?
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 cumulative costs of:
- Imported coal - Benefit payments to the unemployed - Making the abandoned mines safe - Breakdown of community cohesion - Increased crime - Treating increased ill health and the impacts on alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. - And countless other negative impacts
It would have been cheaper to subsidise coal production.
Hmmm.
May I gently remind you of the health impacts coal mining had on the colliers?
There was a Professor at UCH who liked to say that his specialty - black lung - was dying, and would be gone by the time he was.
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
Pat Roach was also Bomber in Auf Wiedershen Pet.
Not to mention the monstrously irritating girlfriend. I was really pissed when she wasn't dumped in the lava pool.
Only 6 per cent of voters think the Conservatives have done a good job in government, but fears about Labour are holding back Sir Keir Starmer, a poll has found.
The YouGov survey for The Times found that only 15 per cent of people think the Tories are fit for office, and half of all voters say they would never vote Conservative under any circumstances.
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 cumulative costs of:
- Imported coal - Benefit payments to the unemployed - Making the abandoned mines safe - Breakdown of community cohesion - Increased crime - Treating increased ill health and the impacts on alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. - And countless other negative impacts
It would have been cheaper to subsidise coal production.
Have you actually seen any figures for that?
For one thing, "Making the abandoned mines safe" would have to be done anyway once they were fully mined out.
Besides, it utterly ignores the fact that we (and especially the left) are supposed to be interested in the environment, and burning gas is *loads* greener than burning coal. If it was Thatcher who closed all the mines (hint: it wasn't); ten she did the environment a load of good...
The problem was that the coal was getting more expensive to mine - where it hadn’t actually run out - at a time when coal was getting cheaper and cheaper internationally.
This had been foreseen in 1948 - there were clear forecasts of the issue then. Which were buried in the civil service archives. You can read them at Kew.
To try and subsidise the pits into working would have required an open ended cheque book on the scale of percents of GDP.
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
Pat Roach was also Bomber in Auf Wiedershen Pet.
Not to mention the monstrously irritating girlfriend. I was really pissed when she wasn't dumped in the lava pool.
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
I don't think terrorism generally has been caused by mass immigration. If you are concerned about terrorism, the vast majority of terrorism in the UK, since any modern definition of terrorism, was associated with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Hmmm... perhaps you could advance an argument that it was, thus, distantly associated with the mass immigration of Scottish people to Ulster in the 17th century?
Most terrorism in the UK has been conducted by people born in the UK. Some has been conducted by immigrants. Among immigrants, most terrorism has been conducted by immigrants from the Republic of Ireland. No other group comes close.
So, I think anyone make an association between immigrants and terrorism in the UK without acknowledging this is being, at best, disingenuous.
The troubles weren’t caused by mass immigration of Irish people to England though.
The men who killed Lee Rigby and 3/4 of those who bombed the tube on 7/7 were born in the UK, that doesn’t excuse mass immigration as a cause though
53 people were murdered in 7/7 + the death of
Lee Rigby. Each one of those deaths was a tragedy. I was in London on 7/7, working a few hundred metres from the bus bombing. (I used to work even closer, my office was on Tavistock Sq.)
However, I note 3,532 were killed in the Troubles. That's about 67 times as many people. When thinking about policy, I think we do sometimes need to take that sort of perspective and compare numbers.
I don't see any evidence that mass immigration was the cause of 7/7 and Rigby's murder. Three of the 7/7 bombers were second generation immigrants, while Germaine Lindsay was a first generation immigrant, born in Jamaica. But many of the attacks in the Troubles were by first or second generation immigrants, so I don't understand why you see one sort of terrorism as being caused by mass immigration and another as not. Is it because one sort was motivated by religion and the other was... oh, also motivated by religion. Is it because one sort was committed by people who didn't embrace British values, while the other was caused by people who didn't embrace British values... hmmm. So, what is it? What's different about the two groups of terrorists? Something that Enoch Powell would have noticed...?
“ I don't see any evidence that mass immigration was the cause of 7/7 and Rigby's murder”
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
Pat Roach was also Bomber in Auf Wiedershen Pet.
Not to mention the monstrously irritating girlfriend. I was really pissed when she wasn't dumped in the lava pool.
A shame, as Capshaw was actually a pretty good actress. I blame the director, who quite effectively sabotaged her career. And then married her.
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
I don't think terrorism generally has been caused by mass immigration. If you are concerned about terrorism, the vast majority of terrorism in the UK, since any modern definition of terrorism, was associated with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Hmmm... perhaps you could advance an argument that it was, thus, distantly associated with the mass immigration of Scottish people to Ulster in the 17th century?
Most terrorism in the UK has been conducted by people born in the UK. Some has been conducted by immigrants. Among immigrants, most terrorism has been conducted by immigrants from the Republic of Ireland. No other group comes close.
So, I think anyone make an association between immigrants and terrorism in the UK without acknowledging this is being, at best, disingenuous.
The troubles weren’t caused by mass immigration of Irish people to England though.
The men who killed Lee Rigby and 3/4 of those who bombed the tube on 7/7 were born in the UK, that doesn’t excuse mass immigration as a cause though
53 people were murdered in 7/7 + the death of
Lee Rigby. Each one of those deaths was a tragedy. I was in London on 7/7, working a few hundred metres from the bus bombing. (I used to work even closer, my office was on Tavistock Sq.)
However, I note 3,532 were killed in the Troubles. That's about 67 times as many people. When thinking about policy, I think we do sometimes need to take that sort of perspective and compare numbers.
I don't see any evidence that mass immigration was the cause of 7/7 and Rigby's murder. Three of the 7/7 bombers were second generation immigrants, while Germaine Lindsay was a first generation immigrant, born in Jamaica. But many of the attacks in the Troubles were by first or second generation immigrants, so I don't understand why you see one sort of terrorism as being caused by mass immigration and another as not. Is it because one sort was motivated by religion and the other was... oh, also motivated by religion. Is it because one sort was committed by people who didn't embrace British values, while the other was caused by people who didn't embrace British values... hmmm. So, what is it? What's different about the two groups of terrorists? Something that Enoch Powell would have noticed...?
“ I don't see any evidence that mass immigration was the cause of 7/7 and Rigby's murder”
Then you’ve no idea what you’re taking about
If it's so obvious, it shouldn't take you long to explain it.
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
Foxy mentioned three sources of immigration: Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy. You responded to the latter two. Is there a reason you didn't respond to the first?
Do you think terrorism in England was caused by mass immigration of people from Southern Ireland then?
I don't think terrorism generally has been caused by mass immigration. If you are concerned about terrorism, the vast majority of terrorism in the UK, since any modern definition of terrorism, was associated with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Hmmm... perhaps you could advance an argument that it was, thus, distantly associated with the mass immigration of Scottish people to Ulster in the 17th century?
Most terrorism in the UK has been conducted by people born in the UK. Some has been conducted by immigrants. Among immigrants, most terrorism has been conducted by immigrants from the Republic of Ireland. No other group comes close.
So, I think anyone make an association between immigrants and terrorism in the UK without acknowledging this is being, at best, disingenuous.
The troubles weren’t caused by mass immigration of Irish people to England though.
The men who killed Lee Rigby and 3/4 of those who bombed the tube on 7/7 were born in the UK, that doesn’t excuse mass immigration as a cause though
53 people were murdered in 7/7 + the death of Lee Rigby. Each one of those deaths was a tragedy. I was in London on 7/7, working a few hundred metres from the bus bombing. (I used to work even closer, my office was on Tavistock Sq.)
However, I note 3,532 were killed in the Troubles. That's about 67 times as many people. When thinking about policy, I think we do sometimes need to take that sort of perspective and compare numbers.
I don't see any evidence that mass immigration was the cause of 7/7 and Rigby's murder. Three of the 7/7 bombers were second generation immigrants, while Germaine Lindsay was a first generation immigrant, born in Jamaica. But many of the attacks in the Troubles were by first or second generation immigrants, so I don't understand why you see one sort of terrorism as being caused by mass immigration and another as not. Is it because one sort was motivated by religion and the other was... oh, also motivated by religion. Is it because one sort was committed by people who didn't embrace British values, while the other was caused by people who didn't embrace British values... hmmm. So, what is it? What's different about the two groups of terrorists? Something that Enoch Powell would have noticed...?
Something that Christopher Hitchens would have noticed too, if he has better credentials than Enoch Powell?
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
Pat Roach was also Bomber in Auf Wiedershen Pet.
Not to mention the monstrously irritating girlfriend. I was really pissed when she wasn't dumped in the lava pool.
Kate Capshaw. Later Mrs Spielberg. Hollywood is littered with talented actresses whose careers were made or destroyed by relationships with the director. For examples good and bad, see Nicholas Roeg/Theresa Russell, Brian DePalma/Nancy Allen, Warren Beatty/Annette Bening, Spielberg/Amy Irving/Kate Capshaw. James Cameron's list of ex-wives is amazing, as is (for different reasons) Tom Cruise's.
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
Pat Roach was also Bomber in Auf Wiedershen Pet.
Not to mention the monstrously irritating girlfriend. I was really pissed when she wasn't dumped in the lava pool.
I'm sure you all know the story in ROTLA, in the scene where the giant guy with the massive scimitar appears swirling it around his body. He was supposed to engage Indy in a massive fight. But Harrison Ford was suffering from a bout of the shits, and reluctant to do the scene, he just pulled out his pistol and shot the guy.
They loved it and kept it in.
The same guy (Pat Roach) played the big bald guy brawling with Indy under the Flying Wing, and also played the big guy with the turban in the second Indy film (Temple of Doom).
Never seen Temple of Doom a second time. The monkey brains scene was gross, but what has kept me away was the monstrously irritating kid.
Pat Roach was also Bomber in Auf Wiedershen Pet.
Not to mention the monstrously irritating girlfriend. I was really pissed when she wasn't dumped in the lava pool.
Kate Capshaw, who soon after became Mrs Steven Spielberg.
Comments
I may have misquoted Blair there...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Weapons_of_the_Luftwaffe
Some did though. I used to work with an ex-docker fron Liverpool who had made a decent living as an assembler programmer from such a scheme. But he'd had to be pretty, er, determined to do the scheme, and ended up moving out to Ellesmere Port.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_H.VII
(There was also a turbojet bomber which was constructed in prototype.)
I regret to inform you that the tank is a load of crap also.
The oil granted the exchequer tax revenue which allowed them to ignore, for a time, the rest of industry.
As a final touch, oil fired systems didn’t require stopping frequently to remove clinker and fix other issues - they could be run at full power for days.
Oil was inevitable.
Main reaction: Can you not lay off the incidental music for a bit Mr. Spielberg?
Also discussing it by text with a friend elsewhere who is watching it. My daughter was briefly baffled by the coincidence, having forgotten about the concept of linear TV.
OTOH, the Nazi flying wing which came closest to reality was a bomber, and would have had plenty of carrying capacity.
Andre Onana is off to the Africa Cup of Nations next week.
Ireland then?
Which leads to another massive company (called, say 'Q') buying the minnow for a fraction of its value, and having a very public legal battle with 'A' - which they win.
But that's of little help to the minnow, which no longer exists.
And this matters, as it really stifles innovation, and pushes it only into the hands of massive companies.
Apple is a really, really shit company.
(*) To borrow another phrase of his.
- Imported coal
- Benefit payments to the unemployed
- Making the abandoned mines safe
- Breakdown of community cohesion
- Increased crime
- Treating increased ill health and the impacts on alcoholism, drug abuse, etc.
- And countless other negative impacts
It would have been cheaper to subsidise coal production.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY2IuLpPuN8
Not familiar with the details myself - but the USA built something very similar for transatlantic bombing and reconnaissance (X/YB-35 and XB-49), presumably in parallel (I believe they were drawn up well before the intelligence bonanza at the end of the war).
BTW in terms of tech the tank isn't so far off the TOG. But that was British,m not your actual modern Panzer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU0o29llhkI
For one thing, "Making the abandoned mines safe" would have to be done anyway once they were fully mined out.
Besides, it utterly ignores the fact that we (and especially the left) are supposed to be interested in the environment, and burning gas is *loads* greener than burning coal. If it was Thatcher who closed all the mines (hint: it wasn't); ten she did the environment a load of good...
Apart from your first item (which is in any event a diminishing factor), none if the rest were inevitable consequences.
(full with stovies, pickled beetroot, and cold pheasant leftover from yesterday, plus plenty of Rhone red)
A train is pulling 100 containers.
Let's say the weight of the containers, including the truck, is around 40 tons on average (which is definitely the upper limit - most containers wouldn't carry that much).
That's 4000 tons.
I saw heavier trains than that in Canada over twenty years ago. And I think they're heavier now.
A train of that size would also be hauled only a short distance. I live near Rugeley and if you look at the WCML container trains most of them have about 30 trucks on (usually with not all of them loaded).
That's 1200 tons.
They loved it and kept it in.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/John-Smeaton-Frs-W-Skempton/dp/072770088X
https://www.slashfilm.com/1251746/raiders-of-the-lost-ark-iconic-moment-improvised-gross-reason/
May I gently remind you of the health impacts coal mining had on the colliers?
Butterfly away the difficulty of reopening abandoned mines. Then imagine Rishi doing a New Year Speech where he announced that the mines are reopening, and residents of towns X, Y and Z should report to the pithead 6am Monday.
People would rightly think that the PM had taken leave of his senses and it would be really unpopular. Because sending people to work deep underground is a pretty lousy thing to do. And that's even when the product of their efforts is useful and creating value, which coal mining increasingly doesn't.
However, there are two enormous caveats. One is the one alluded to upthread. There are countless practicalities to sort out if you are going to upend the economy of a town. And whilst the Thatcher government didn't do nothing, it also didn't do enough.
The other is to do with the sense of self that people and places have. It's a good thing that British coal mining died as an industry, but it deserved a dignified death and a proper send off. I'm not sure that Thatcher got that; I'm confident that Sunak doesn't get it at all.
Pat Roach was also Bomber in Auf Wiedershen Pet.
Most terrorism in the UK has been conducted by people born in the UK. Some has been conducted by immigrants. Among immigrants, most terrorism has been conducted by immigrants from the Republic of Ireland. No other group comes close.
So, I think anyone make an association between immigrants and terrorism in the UK without acknowledging this is being, at best, disingenuous.
Belay my earlier message! Roach played one of the big Sherpa guys in the early scene in Nepal in ROTLA, NOT the Sword Guy!
ALSO: He was in the Last Crusade as a Gestapo agent.
And retraining alone - even if accepted - didn’t really address either the social or economic disruption.
The only thing that suggests it travelled submerged (and consequently, drowned Indy) was when the Captain looks through the periscope.
(I mean, she finds it astonishing that I haven't watched it. Not that she finds tge film astonishing. Though she quite liked it, I think.)
The men who killed Lee Rigby and 3/4 of those who bombed the tube on 7/7 were born in the UK, that doesn’t excuse mass immigration as a cause though
The argument is that if Indiana Jones had not interfered at all, the Germans would have found the Ark without him and opened it anyway
With your indignation that people would 'spend their time' objecting publicly to trans policies, I take it you have no objection to being called out as a fascist yourself, given that attaching social stigma to expressing the wrong type of ideas was also a favourite fascist pastime.
However, I note 3,532 were killed in the Troubles. That's about 67 times as many people. When thinking about policy, I think we do sometimes need to take that sort of perspective and compare numbers.
I don't see any evidence that mass immigration was the cause of 7/7 and Rigby's murder. Three of the 7/7 bombers were second generation immigrants, while Germaine Lindsay was a first generation immigrant, born in Jamaica. But many of the attacks in the Troubles were by first or second generation immigrants, so I don't understand why you see one sort of terrorism as being caused by mass immigration and another as not. Is it because one sort was motivated by religion and the other was... oh, also motivated by religion. Is it because one sort was committed by people who didn't embrace British values, while the other was caused by people who didn't embrace British values... hmmm. So, what is it? What's different about the two groups of terrorists? Something that Enoch Powell would have noticed...?
The YouGov survey for The Times found that only 15 per cent of people think the Tories are fit for office, and half of all voters say they would never vote Conservative under any circumstances.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/only-6-percent-of-voters-think-tories-have-done-a-good-job-wp8wmq2wl
This had been foreseen in 1948 - there were clear forecasts of the issue then. Which were buried in the civil service archives. You can read them at Kew.
To try and subsidise the pits into working would have required an open ended cheque book on the scale of percents of GDP.
Then you’ve no idea what you’re taking about
I blame the director, who quite effectively sabotaged her career. And then married her.