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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
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.
Starmer knows, as Blair did, the need to reassure is paramount. He needs to continue to reassure former Conservative voters the Labour Party he leads is a) far removed from that led by Jeremy Corbyn and b) is a social democratic party of the centre left who will basically do a lot of what is already being done but better.
The radicalism (if there is any) will be slowly drip-fed into legislation in the second term - the first term will be undoing the excesses of the Conservative years - it's not about turning the clock back to 2010 but dealing with those areas of "low hanging fruit" whose repeal will be popular.
I'll be interested to see if Starmer returns to Parliament the respionsibilities and powers which Johnson took to Whitehall and the Cabinet Office - I'm not hopeful as Labour are every bit as centralising as the Conservatives.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
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.)
So long as you don’t feed them after midnight you should be ok
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
I don’t believe that mass immigration of Irish people to England was the cause of IRA terrorism, I don’t think many people claim that. You are conflating an ongoing situation between British and Ireland with mass immigration from Islamic countries when they’re not the same
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
I absolutely think we should tackle inter-ethnic grievances. Enoch Powell, it seems to me, was someone who encouraged inter-ethnic grievances. Those who insist there is a great threat from Islamist terrorism in this country, but ignore the remainder of the history of terrorism in this country, seem to me to be encouraging inter-ethnic grievances.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
The spectre of Irish Republican terrorism has greatly receded (in England at least) over the last 20 years. Arguably the biggest distinction between the IRA and Islamist inspired terrorism is the desired outcomes. The IRA want a unified Ireland. Islamic terrorists seem to hate the West and it’s way of life, despite often being second or third generation of immigrants.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
Slightly selective reporting - waht about the sixth, seventh and eighth?
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - “That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.” - is self evidently still nonsense.
If Brexit was about sovereignty, (which I don’t think it was, it was about immigration) it wasn’t about the public voting for it so MPs could then vote against it, which would be absolutely ludicrous.
Brexit was 17m different things to 17m voters. It's main benefit of course was it paved the way for a long Boris Johnson premiership, only he fluffed his lines.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - “That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.” - is self evidently still nonsense.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. - is self evidently still nonsense.
With every year that goes by, American-style racial politics play a bigger and bigger role in our society. The mythologisation of "the Windrush generation" is actively fostering a growing sense of grievance among people who believe that they "built this country".
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
125.
How many of the IRA terrorists lived in England?
Nearly all of them lived in the UK, which is our country, certainly Powell thought so.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes, I think that a very astute observation. I suspect Powell was never that bothered about white migrants. Did he ever criticise Irish immigration? Or the East European refugees settled post WW2? Or the Italians that came over in the 1950s and Sixties?
Has there been lots of trouble with terrorism and a transformation of huge parts of the country because of the immigration of Eastern European refugees post WW2, or the Italians that came over in the Sixties? I don’t believe so. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t criticise it, nor predict it may cause big problems in years to come
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
Slightly selective reporting - waht about the sixth, seventh and eighth?
So, that 5 far right incidents, 2 Islamist, 2 unclear, and 1 Irish republican. You can check other lists or go further back.
To put this into perspective, there are about 240 deaths per year from drunk driving in the UK. There are about 0.5 deaths per year from terrorism in the UK.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
Slightly selective reporting - waht about the sixth, seventh and eighth?
Well, the 7th was: Three men, including two serving British soldiers, were arrested and later charged with several offences relating to membership of the neo-Nazi National Action terrorist organisation and preparing for acts of terrorism
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
That should be *some types* of political violence.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - “That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.” - is self evidently still nonsense.
So it is
If this man is a BLM terrorist threat, Jimmy Cleverly should prescribe him and. his party!
P S. I wasn't aware of how many Powellites we had on this board.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - “That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.” - is self evidently still nonsense.
So it is
If this man is a BLM terrorist threat, Jimmy Cleverly should prescribe him and his party!
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. - is self evidently still nonsense.
With every year that goes by, American-style racial politics play a bigger and bigger role in our society. The mythologisation of "the Windrush generation" is actively fostering a growing sense of grievance among people who believe that they "built this country".
Quite the opposite. With every year that passes race becomes less of an issue in this country. Which leaves the minority who have big hang-ups in this area nursing a sense of grievance. But that minority is becoming smaller each year imo.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
125.
How many of the IRA terrorists lived in England?
Nearly all of them lived in the UK, which is our country, certainly Powell thought so.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes, I think that a very astute observation. I suspect Powell was never that bothered about white migrants. Did he ever criticise Irish immigration? Or the East European refugees settled post WW2? Or the Italians that came over in the 1950s and Sixties?
Has there been lots of trouble with terrorism and a transformation of huge parts of the country because of the immigration of Eastern European refugees post WW2, or the Italians that came over in the Sixties? I don’t believe so. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t criticise it, nor predict it may cause big problems in years to come
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - “That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.” - is self evidently still nonsense.
So it is
Yes, as a Powell expert, you’ll be aware he wasn’t referring to performative behaviour, but intractable social prejudices. I’m glad to see that on this at least, we can agree.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
This is seriously delusional. Tell the teacher from Batley who is still in hiding that our society hasn't been changed because of the threat of Islamist violence.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
Slightly selective reporting - waht about the sixth, seventh and eighth?
So, that 5 far right incidents, 2 Islamist, 2 unclear, and 1 Irish republican. You can check other lists or go further back.
To put this into perspective, there are about 240 deaths per year from drunk driving in the UK. There are about 0.5 deaths per year from terrorism in the UK.
Whereas in the list of prevented, foiled, & aborted attacks, eight of the last ten were Islamist
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
125.
How many of the IRA terrorists lived in England?
Nearly all of them lived in the UK, which is our country, certainly Powell thought so.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
That is such an achingly boring and tired way of putting things, I hope you don’t think it sounded clever or was funny
Its like the people who come onto my YouTube channel, partly watch a video about something they don't like so that they post an insulting or moronic comment. They don't seem to get that in doing so they are promoting and funding the thing they claim to hate.
You can just ignore comments you dislike from political persuasions you disagree with. But we can all see the polls and smell the decay of political death in the air...
I don’t mind if the Tories lose, I wouldn’t get yourself too excited about me being upset
Valid question was asked of you - which of the hard right nutter parties tickles your fancy? SDP? ReFUK? ReFox? I'm sure you do want the Tories to lose - millions of similar voters out where you are wanting to punish them for not being nasty enough.
If we had a fair voting system you would be able to actually get represented. That 4m people voted for Faragism in 2015 and got not a single MP elected is simply undemocratic. A genuine example of our democracy not working, as opposed to your preferred outrage when people voted for MPs to be sovereign.
Honestly don’t bother mate. I know you’re trying to be really clever but it leaves me cold
Me standing up for you democratic right to representation leaves you cold? Rightho.
No it’s more your boring smart arse attempts to frame me as this, that or the other that do it.
I honestly don't care what your politics are. Or whether they have changed - most voters change their minds so why can't we?
I think you piled in because I referenced your comment about MPs not being allowed a vote on Brexit in the 2017 parliament. Whether you are ex left, ex right, floating - whatever - its a bit anti-democratic. Which in the context of what was a democratic revolution to bring about parliamentary sovereignty is a bemusing.
You referenced me so I replied. I had thought to say how painful your earlier post was when I read it, but couldn’t be bothered until I saw you banging on about the MP vote again
If you don’t care what my politics are then don’t bother with the forced choices that are effectively trying to get me to say ‘the Tories weren’t nasty enough for me because I’m a far right nutter’. It’s so pathetic I feel bad for you
If I've got you wrong then I am genuinely sorry and apologise for mislabling you.
You post some passionate and deeply reactionary stuff. That is *usually* of the right end of the Tory spectrum. If that isn't you, my apologies.
Well that’s good of you, and look I have banged on about Enoch Powell a lot so I leave myself open to being called far right I suppose. When I see other people quoting him, I think they’re nasty racists too. But most people agree with lots of points of view from all over the political spectrum, and it’s only partisanship that prevents them acknowledging it
All your posts are making points in support of, if not far-right, well to the right of centre positions.
You may not think you're particularly right-wing but your posts come across that way.
Some people think enabling mass immigration of cheap Labour which make corporations richer and pits poor people against each other is left wing. I see it as right wing and am against it. That’s the strange thing about the centrist position; they are all for things that Trade Unions would have had campaigned against with all their might, yet call anyone who disagrees a right winger as a term of abuse
It should be noted that many of Powell's criticisms of mass immigration were centred around culture and integration as opposed to migrants undermining the wages of working class people. Those are definitely 'well to the right' of the centre ground criticisms of immigration. Anecdotally, I've heard the complaint of the big cities being unrecognisable due to immigration more often than alleged wage suppression from WWC Brexiteers.
Yes, I think that a very astute observation. I suspect Powell was never that bothered about white migrants. Did he ever criticise Irish immigration? Or the East European refugees settled post WW2? Or the Italians that came over in the 1950s and Sixties?
Has there been lots of trouble with terrorism and a transformation of huge parts of the country because of the immigration of Eastern European refugees post WW2, or the Italians that came over in the Sixties? I don’t believe so. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t criticise it, nor predict it may cause big problems in years to come
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
Slightly selective reporting - waht about the sixth, seventh and eighth?
Well, the 7th was: Three men, including two serving British soldiers, were arrested and later charged with several offences relating to membership of the neo-Nazi National Action terrorist organisation and preparing for acts of terrorism
My point was rather obvious stopping at five, like the way the media will say a specific number (up to 73) so you know damn well the 74th doesn’t fit the trend.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
If you dont think Islamic terrorism has changed society you are not paying attention. The farago around fluids on planes is an obvious, if minor, irritation. But every city and town centre now has anti terror attack bollards around its main shopping areas, and there is little doubt that fear of Islamic terrorism (which is probably vastly overstated) dominates the public perception.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
125.
How many of the IRA terrorists lived in England?
Sean McNulty is one example, born on Tyneside. Going back further, Seán Mac Stíofáin, the IRA chief of staff, was born and raised, and joined the IRA, in London. But I'm not going to research every IRA member for you. You can go and research every terrorist attack in Great Britain if you want. There are a lot of IRA/INLA ones to go through.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. - is self evidently still nonsense.
With every year that goes by, American-style racial politics play a bigger and bigger role in our society. The mythologisation of "the Windrush generation" is actively fostering a growing sense of grievance among people who believe that they "built this country".
Quite the opposite. With every year that passes race becomes less of an issue in this country. Which leaves the minority who have big hang-ups in this area nursing a sense of grievance. But that minority is becoming smaller each year imo.
Immigration generally only becomes an issue when politicians and their media shills make it an issue. The people who have the strongest views on people from overseas with darker skin tones normally live in Herefordshire or Forest of Dean market towns and have never met any.
I will concede that immigration became a live issue in aforementioned Herefordshire or Forest of Dean market towns when oldsters had to queue at the doctor's for their daily consultation behind two or three Polish children during the accession years.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. - is self evidently still nonsense.
With every year that goes by, American-style racial politics play a bigger and bigger role in our society. The mythologisation of "the Windrush generation" is actively fostering a growing sense of grievance among people who believe that they "built this country".
Quite the opposite. With every year that passes race becomes less of an issue in this country. Which leaves the minority who have big hang-ups in this area nursing a sense of grievance. But that minority is becoming smaller each year imo.
Immigration generally only becomes an issue when politicians and their media shills make it an issue. The people who have the strongest views on people from overseas with darker skin tones normally live in Herefordshire or Forest of Dean market towns and have never met any.
I will concede that immigration became a live issue in aforementioned Herefordshire or Forest of Dean market towns when oldsters had to queue at the doctor's for their daily consultation behind two or three Polish children during the accession years.
With such a patronising view of the electorate, how can you support the idea of democracy? Do you want to be dictated to by these easily manipulated masses?
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - “That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.” - is self evidently still nonsense.
So it is
The carpet is shocking, but not American. As far as I know.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
This is seriously delusional. Tell the teacher from Batley who is still in hiding that our society hasn't been changed because of the threat of Islamist violence.
It is terrible that someone should have to remain in hiding. It is terrible what happened to Salman Rushdie as well. These are fortunately isolated cases. They do not demonstrate that society as a whole has been changed. I would suggest that if anyone is being delusional, it is the person suggesting that.
Other people have to live in hiding because of the legacy of the Troubles, because of domestic violence, because of organised crime, because of transphobic violence. These are all tragedies too.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
Slightly selective reporting - waht about the sixth, seventh and eighth?
So, that 5 far right incidents, 2 Islamist, 2 unclear, and 1 Irish republican. You can check other lists or go further back.
To put this into perspective, there are about 240 deaths per year from drunk driving in the UK. There are about 0.5 deaths per year from terrorism in the UK.
Whereas in the list of prevented, foiled, & aborted attacks, eight of the last ten were Islamist
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
Slightly selective reporting - waht about the sixth, seventh and eighth?
Well, the 7th was: Three men, including two serving British soldiers, were arrested and later charged with several offences relating to membership of the neo-Nazi National Action terrorist organisation and preparing for acts of terrorism
My point was rather obvious stopping at five, like the way the media will say a specific number (up to 73) so you know damn well the 74th doesn’t fit the trend.
Which is more often used as a round number, 5 or 73?
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
125.
How many of the IRA terrorists lived in England?
Sean McNulty is one example, born on Tyneside. Going back further, Seán Mac Stíofáin, the IRA chief of staff, was born and raised, and joined the IRA, in London. But I'm not going to research every IRA member for you. You can go and research every terrorist attack in Great Britain if you want. There are a lot of IRA/INLA ones to go through.
The point remains - IRA terror attacks in the UK weren’t the result of mass immigration of Irish people
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. - is self evidently still nonsense.
With every year that goes by, American-style racial politics play a bigger and bigger role in our society. The mythologisation of "the Windrush generation" is actively fostering a growing sense of grievance among people who believe that they "built this country".
Quite the opposite. With every year that passes race becomes less of an issue in this country. Which leaves the minority who have big hang-ups in this area nursing a sense of grievance. But that minority is becoming smaller each year imo.
Immigration generally only becomes an issue when politicians and their media shills make it an issue. The people who have the strongest views on people from overseas with darker skin tones normally live in Herefordshire or Forest of Dean market towns and have never met any.
I will concede that immigration became a live issue in aforementioned Herefordshire or Forest of Dean market towns when oldsters had to queue at the doctor's for their daily consultation behind two or three Polish children during the accession years.
With such a patronising view of the electorate, how can you support the idea of democracy? Do you want to be dictated to by these easily manipulated masses?
I am quite a fan of democracy when the electorate have the information they need to make their informed decisions. When they are lied to by politicians and the client media, that is an abuse of the democratic process. That is why when it appeared that the voter had rumbled the lies on the side of a bus, I was content for the voter to be given a second referendum.
As it turned out they were told a second pack of lies during Campaign 2019 by a Prime Minister who convinced the electorate that he had an "oven ready deal" to get Brexit done. It turned out he didn't.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
This is seriously delusional. Tell the teacher from Batley who is still in hiding that our society hasn't been changed because of the threat of Islamist violence.
It is terrible that someone should have to remain in hiding. It is terrible what happened to Salman Rushdie as well. These are fortunately isolated cases. They do not demonstrate that society as a whole has been changed. I would suggest that if anyone is being delusional, it is the person suggesting that.
Other people have to live in hiding because of the legacy of the Troubles, because of domestic violence, because of organised crime, because of transphobic violence. These are all tragedies too.
They're neither isolated cases, nor do they only affect the people directly in the firing line. In many areas of society we now have a de facto blasphemy law, which operates on fear.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
If you dont think Islamic terrorism has changed society you are not paying attention. The farago around fluids on planes is an obvious, if minor, irritation. But every city and town centre now has anti terror attack bollards around its main shopping areas, and there is little doubt that fear of Islamic terrorism (which is probably vastly overstated) dominates the public perception.
As you say, that more speaks to an overreaction to terrorism than the terrorism itself. Perhaps if the likes of isam and williamglenn stopped exaggerating the threat, there would be less of an overreaction!
Those anti-terror bollards, of course, are not specific to Islamist terrorism. They began with Irish republican terrorism. Security measures in aviation pre-date Islamist terrorism too. And, annoying though they are, all of those security measures are hardly what I consider "a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society [I] would like to live in".
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. - is self evidently still nonsense.
With every year that goes by, American-style racial politics play a bigger and bigger role in our society. The mythologisation of "the Windrush generation" is actively fostering a growing sense of grievance among people who believe that they "built this country".
Quite the opposite. With every year that passes race becomes less of an issue in this country. Which leaves the minority who have big hang-ups in this area nursing a sense of grievance. But that minority is becoming smaller each year imo.
Immigration generally only becomes an issue when politicians and their media shills make it an issue. The people who have the strongest views on people from overseas with darker skin tones normally live in Herefordshire or Forest of Dean market towns and have never met any.
I will concede that immigration became a live issue in aforementioned Herefordshire or Forest of Dean market towns when oldsters had to queue at the doctor's for their daily consultation behind two or three Polish children during the accession years.
With such a patronising view of the electorate, how can you support the idea of democracy? Do you want to be dictated to by these easily manipulated masses?
I am quite a fan of democracy when the electorate have the information they need to make their informed decisions. When they are lied to by politicians and the client media, that is an abuse of the democratic process. That is why when it appeared that the voter had rumbled the lies on the side of a bus, I was content for the voter to be given a second referendum.
As it turned out they were told a second pack of lies during Campaign 2019 by a Prime Minister who convinced the electorate that he had an "oven ready deal" to get Brexit done. It turned out he didn't.
"I'm a fan of democracy when the people agree with me, but when they don't, I become angry and look for someone to blame for putting the wrong ideas into their heads."
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
125.
How many of the IRA terrorists lived in England?
Sean McNulty is one example, born on Tyneside. Going back further, Seán Mac Stíofáin, the IRA chief of staff, was born and raised, and joined the IRA, in London. But I'm not going to research every IRA member for you. You can go and research every terrorist attack in Great Britain if you want. There are a lot of IRA/INLA ones to go through.
The point remains - IRA terror attacks in the UK weren’t the result of mass immigration of Irish people
As nor was 7/7 the result of the mass immigration of Pakistani or Jamaican people. Some first or second generation immigrants, Irish, Pakistani, Jamaican and others, have committed acts of terrorism. But Enoch Powell's predictions were wrong.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
If you dont think Islamic terrorism has changed society you are not paying attention. The farago around fluids on planes is an obvious, if minor, irritation. But every city and town centre now has anti terror attack bollards around its main shopping areas, and there is little doubt that fear of Islamic terrorism (which is probably vastly overstated) dominates the public perception.
As you say, that more speaks to an overreaction to terrorism than the terrorism itself. Perhaps if the likes of isam and williamglenn stopped exaggerating the threat, there would be less of an overreaction!
Those anti-terror bollards, of course, are not specific to Islamist terrorism. They began with Irish republican terrorism. Security measures in aviation pre-date Islamist terrorism too. And, annoying though they are, all of those security measures are hardly what I consider "a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society [I] would like to live in".
Well they were only installed after the London Bridge Islamist terror attack jn 2017
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
If you dont think Islamic terrorism has changed society you are not paying attention. The farago around fluids on planes is an obvious, if minor, irritation. But every city and town centre now has anti terror attack bollards around its main shopping areas, and there is little doubt that fear of Islamic terrorism (which is probably vastly overstated) dominates the public perception.
As you say, that more speaks to an overreaction to terrorism than the terrorism itself. Perhaps if the likes of isam and williamglenn stopped exaggerating the threat, there would be less of an overreaction!
Those anti-terror bollards, of course, are not specific to Islamist terrorism. They began with Irish republican terrorism. Security measures in aviation pre-date Islamist terrorism too. And, annoying though they are, all of those security measures are hardly what I consider "a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society [I] would like to live in".
Anti terror bollards were not required in every pedestrianised city centre because of the PIRA. Because the PIRA didn’t consider driving over people out shopping as a method of attack.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
This is seriously delusional. Tell the teacher from Batley who is still in hiding that our society hasn't been changed because of the threat of Islamist violence.
It is terrible that someone should have to remain in hiding. It is terrible what happened to Salman Rushdie as well. These are fortunately isolated cases. They do not demonstrate that society as a whole has been changed. I would suggest that if anyone is being delusional, it is the person suggesting that.
Other people have to live in hiding because of the legacy of the Troubles, because of domestic violence, because of organised crime, because of transphobic violence. These are all tragedies too.
They're neither isolated cases, nor do they only affect the people directly in the firing line. In many areas of society we now have a de facto blasphemy law, which operates on fear.
Allah doesn't exist (and, if he did, he wouldn't want people to not eat bacon). I type this blasphemy without fear.
Jesus didn't die for our sins. Yahweh didn't give the land of Israel to the Jewish people. Bahá'u'lláh did not receive a divine revelation. I could go on.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
If you dont think Islamic terrorism has changed society you are not paying attention. The farago around fluids on planes is an obvious, if minor, irritation. But every city and town centre now has anti terror attack bollards around its main shopping areas, and there is little doubt that fear of Islamic terrorism (which is probably vastly overstated) dominates the public perception.
As you say, that more speaks to an overreaction to terrorism than the terrorism itself. Perhaps if the likes of isam and williamglenn stopped exaggerating the threat, there would be less of an overreaction!
Those anti-terror bollards, of course, are not specific to Islamist terrorism. They began with Irish republican terrorism. Security measures in aviation pre-date Islamist terrorism too. And, annoying though they are, all of those security measures are hardly what I consider "a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society [I] would like to live in".
Well they were only installed after the London Bridge Islamist terror attack jn 2017
Imagine, for a moment if you will, there is a world outside of London where things happen in reaction (and hold onto your hat) to things also not happening in London.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
125.
How many of the IRA terrorists lived in England?
Sean McNulty is one example, born on Tyneside. Going back further, Seán Mac Stíofáin, the IRA chief of staff, was born and raised, and joined the IRA, in London. But I'm not going to research every IRA member for you. You can go and research every terrorist attack in Great Britain if you want. There are a lot of IRA/INLA ones to go through.
The point remains - IRA terror attacks in the UK weren’t the result of mass immigration of Irish people
As nor was 7/7 the result of the mass immigration of Pakistani or Jamaican people. Some first or second generation immigrants, Irish, Pakistani, Jamaican and others, have committed acts of terrorism. But Enoch Powell's predictions were wrong.
The breeding grounds for Islamic terrorism in the UK are the ghettoised parts of major cities that only exist thanks to the mass immigration Enoch Powell warned against
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
If you dont think Islamic terrorism has changed society you are not paying attention. The farago around fluids on planes is an obvious, if minor, irritation. But every city and town centre now has anti terror attack bollards around its main shopping areas, and there is little doubt that fear of Islamic terrorism (which is probably vastly overstated) dominates the public perception.
As you say, that more speaks to an overreaction to terrorism than the terrorism itself. Perhaps if the likes of isam and williamglenn stopped exaggerating the threat, there would be less of an overreaction!
Those anti-terror bollards, of course, are not specific to Islamist terrorism. They began with Irish republican terrorism. Security measures in aviation pre-date Islamist terrorism too. And, annoying though they are, all of those security measures are hardly what I consider "a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society [I] would like to live in".
Well they were only installed after the London Bridge Islamist terror attack jn 2017
Imagine, for a moment if you will, there is a world outside of London where things happen in reaction (and hold onto your hat) to things also not happening in London.
If you go to the pedestrianised “street market” areas of big towns in the U.K., the bollards are ubiquitous.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
This is seriously delusional. Tell the teacher from Batley who is still in hiding that our society hasn't been changed because of the threat of Islamist violence.
It is terrible that someone should have to remain in hiding. It is terrible what happened to Salman Rushdie as well. These are fortunately isolated cases. They do not demonstrate that society as a whole has been changed. I would suggest that if anyone is being delusional, it is the person suggesting that.
Other people have to live in hiding because of the legacy of the Troubles, because of domestic violence, because of organised crime, because of transphobic violence. These are all tragedies too.
They're neither isolated cases, nor do they only affect the people directly in the firing line. In many areas of society we now have a de facto blasphemy law, which operates on fear.
Allah doesn't exist (and, if he did, he wouldn't want people to not eat bacon). I type this blasphemy without fear.
Jesus didn't die for our sins. Yahweh didn't give the land of Israel to the Jewish people. Bahá'u'lláh did not receive a divine revelation. I could go on.
You may type that without fear in the saftety of anonymity here, but you would be reticent about telling it to a classroom of children in many parts of the country.
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?
Hitchens was critical of Catholicism, as well as of Islam. He was critical of all religion. Of course, Protestant/Catholic feuding has killed far more people in the UK than Islamist terrorism.
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
He was specifically critical of Islam because it poses a practical threat in the present day in a way that the other religions don't. Whataboutism about the past is just a way to avoid the issue and seek refuge in phony universalism.
Take a look at the last 5 entries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain They are neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi, unidentified, white supremacist and white supremacist. It looks to me that the greatest practical terrorism threat today is from far right ideology. Across my lifetime, the greatest practical terrorism threat, by a huge margin, was Irish republican terrorism.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
To use your own argument, you need to put numbers into perspective and think of the threat in qualitative terms.
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
Some types of political violence do pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society I would like to live in, yes. In the UK, Islamist terrorism clearly does not. Very little terrorism in the UK has posed such a threat. I think Irish republican terrorism and suffragette terrorism are the only terrorist campaigns that have actually changed society in modern history in the UK.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
If you dont think Islamic terrorism has changed society you are not paying attention. The farago around fluids on planes is an obvious, if minor, irritation. But every city and town centre now has anti terror attack bollards around its main shopping areas, and there is little doubt that fear of Islamic terrorism (which is probably vastly overstated) dominates the public perception.
As you say, that more speaks to an overreaction to terrorism than the terrorism itself. Perhaps if the likes of isam and williamglenn stopped exaggerating the threat, there would be less of an overreaction!
Those anti-terror bollards, of course, are not specific to Islamist terrorism. They began with Irish republican terrorism. Security measures in aviation pre-date Islamist terrorism too. And, annoying though they are, all of those security measures are hardly what I consider "a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society [I] would like to live in".
Well they were only installed after the London Bridge Islamist terror attack jn 2017
I meant bollards more generally, not the specific ones on London Bridge.
The first permanent gates at the end of Downing Street were installed in 1920 in response to the threat of Irish republican terrorism. The modern gates were installed in 1989 in response to the threat of the IRA. Major restrictions to visitors to Westminster Hall were introduced following the 1885 Fenian bombing. There's a long history of security measures.
NEW VIDEO: ND State Rep. Nico Rios (R) unleased a racist and homophobic rant at police during his DUI arrest, calling an officer a "f--king f--got," ranting about migrants destroying England, and threatening to call the Attorney General. https://twitter.com/HeartlandSignal/status/1738665613071892700
I've got to go to sleep. I'm not entirely certain how we got onto anti-terror street architecture, but I remain of the view that Enoch Powell was wrong. We don't have rivers of blood; we do have a Conservative Party British Prime Minister whose parents were immigrants... who is terrible as Prime Minister, but that's not because his parents were immigrants.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. - is self evidently still nonsense.
With every year that goes by, American-style racial politics play a bigger and bigger role in our society. The mythologisation of "the Windrush generation" is actively fostering a growing sense of grievance among people who believe that they "built this country".
Quite the opposite. With every year that passes race becomes less of an issue in this country. Which leaves the minority who have big hang-ups in this area nursing a sense of grievance. But that minority is becoming smaller each year imo.
Immigration generally only becomes an issue when politicians and their media shills make it an issue. The people who have the strongest views on people from overseas with darker skin tones normally live in Herefordshire or Forest of Dean market towns and have never met any.
I will concede that immigration became a live issue in aforementioned Herefordshire or Forest of Dean market towns when oldsters had to queue at the doctor's for their daily consultation behind two or three Polish children during the accession years.
With such a patronising view of the electorate, how can you support the idea of democracy? Do you want to be dictated to by these easily manipulated masses?
I am quite a fan of democracy when the electorate have the information they need to make their informed decisions. When they are lied to by politicians and the client media, that is an abuse of the democratic process. That is why when it appeared that the voter had rumbled the lies on the side of a bus, I was content for the voter to be given a second referendum.
As it turned out they were told a second pack of lies during Campaign 2019 by a Prime Minister who convinced the electorate that he had an "oven ready deal" to get Brexit done. It turned out he didn't.
"I'm a fan of democracy when the people agree with me, but when they don't, I become angry and look for someone to blame for putting the wrong ideas into their heads."
That's not the case at all. When the wrong ideas are falsehoods that diminishes democracy.
However the two politicians you fly the flags for, Johnson and Trump seem to be the most adept at campaign lying.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
"Inter-ethnic grievances can happen anywhere, therefore we should be relaxed about importing new ones."
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
It was nearly four decades between Powell’s speech, for which Heath rightly canned him, and 7/7. To say Powell ‘predicted’ it was balls.
His other prediction - “That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.” - is self evidently still nonsense.
So it is
If this man is a BLM terrorist threat, Jimmy Cleverly should prescribe him and. his party!
P S. I wasn't aware of how many Powellites we had on this board.
Not sure what the current Labour Party would be prescribed for; perhaps they'd make a good cure for insomnia.
Meh, well I defer to Malmesbury and Nigelb's knowledge of things, even if I don't remember the plane being big enough...
Wait until you get onto the submarine controversy in Raiders.
Forget the Submarine controversy. My favourite Big Bang Theory episode is the one where Amy points out to Sheldon that the whole of ROTLA is pointless in terms of story.
If Indiana Jones had not been there, the outcome of the film would still have been exactly as it turned out. The Nazis would still have ended up with the Ark. The Ark would still have been opened on the island and all the Nazis would still have felt the wrath of god. All Indy did was delay proceedings a little.
Even the fact that the Nazis were digging in the wrong place at Tanis was only bacause Indy prevented them getting the staff top at the bar in the Himalayas. If he hadn't then they would have been digging in the right place from the start and so would have gained possession of the Ark even sooner.
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.
Hopefully Harrison did too.
This is the funniest ever remark on PB not to get squillions of likes.
Meh, well I defer to Malmesbury and Nigelb's knowledge of things, even if I don't remember the plane being big enough...
Wait until you get onto the submarine controversy in Raiders.
Forget the Submarine controversy. My favourite Big Bang Theory episode is the one where Amy points out to Sheldon that the whole of ROTLA is pointless in terms of story.
If Indiana Jones had not been there, the outcome of the film would still have been exactly as it turned out. The Nazis would still have ended up with the Ark. The Ark would still have been opened on the island and all the Nazis would still have felt the wrath of god. All Indy did was delay proceedings a little.
Even the fact that the Nazis were digging in the wrong place at Tanis was only bacause Indy prevented them getting the staff top at the bar in the Himalayas. If he hadn't then they would have been digging in the right place from the start and so would have gained possession of the Ark even sooner.
But it might not have ended up in a US government storage facility.
And in any event it’s about the journey, not the destination.
"Toyota-owned carmaker Daihatsu has closed all four of its plants until the end of January, after admitting it had falsified safety tests.
Daihatsu admitted that it had been manipulating safety tests on 64 makes for three decades. Its headquarters in Osaka, Japan was the last to close, on 25 December. The scandal puts in jeopardy 9,000 workers in the country and could affect global car giant Toyota's reputation. Of the 64 models involved in the scandal, 24 are sold with Toyota branding."
Nope - standard industrial robot accident. They’ve been happening since automation was invented.
I would say something along the lines of "we don't let industrial lathes drive taxis downtown, now do we?". But it's something Warren Oates would have said in a 1980s technothriller whilst wireframe graphics spin on a CRT.
Problem is, I dunno if that makes it better or worse... ☹️
Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign has stopped spending money on television ads and does not have any TV ad reservations booked, according to his campaign.
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
125.
How many of the IRA terrorists lived in England?
Sean McNulty is one example, born on Tyneside. Going back further, Seán Mac Stíofáin, the IRA chief of staff, was born and raised, and joined the IRA, in London. But I'm not going to research every IRA member for you. You can go and research every terrorist attack in Great Britain if you want. There are a lot of IRA/INLA ones to go through.
The point remains - IRA terror attacks in the UK weren’t the result of mass immigration of Irish people
As nor was 7/7 the result of the mass immigration of Pakistani or Jamaican people. Some first or second generation immigrants, Irish, Pakistani, Jamaican and others, have committed acts of terrorism. But Enoch Powell's predictions were wrong.
The breeding grounds for Islamic terrorism in the UK are the ghettoised parts of major cities that only exist thanks to the mass immigration Enoch Powell warned against
This is just an ahistorical nonsense as an excuse for prejudice. At the time Powell was speaking there wasn't 'mass immigration' as such to the UK - net migration was negative in the 60s and 70s. It was negligible until the early 1990s.
But we needed people to fill jobs and had a post-war shortage of labour- including a large increase in doctors to staff the NHS. As a result, we drew on former parts of our Empire for labour, which included those who'd become British Asians, including a tranche of Muslims.
So what are we arguing should have been done in the 60s? Have no admission and a population decline, labour and shortages because at some point in the future, some extremists who were yet to work out their hate-filled ideology would target them? Discriminate on the grounds of religion and race?
If so, how many would British Muslims not constitute a risk to you as some have committed acts of terror? It being 75 years since the first British Nationality Act, allowing a relatively miniscule number of people of that faith to settle here each year would result in a significant population in at least the hundreds of thousands, at numbers that certainly don't constitute 'mass migration' in any real sense, the numbers get larger.
You see it's not "mass migration" that's the problem. Unless you actively closed off the country in a way no advanced economy does, and that would likely cause the UK significant reputational damage. If it were even possible, then you are going to have a significant enough number of Muslims in the UK for radical iterations of that religion to create some level of threat.
It's the emergence of deeply troublesome ideologies that can now be spread to incite people, as can the knowledge of how to kill for them. In recent years, we've seen these emerge on the far right too (look at Breivik or QAnon) - though there's little doubt that some of the darker strands of Qutb-inspired Islamism present a large threat, as they have wealthy states and groups sponsoring them.
But that isn't 'mass migration' - that's the ideas and those who've spent decades sponsoring them. Who need taking on and being called what they are - religious fascists. Rather than the inevitable process of migration flows - which you can restrict, change or utilise, but aren't going to stop.
Meh, well I defer to Malmesbury and Nigelb's knowledge of things, even if I don't remember the plane being big enough...
Wait until you get onto the submarine controversy in Raiders.
Forget the Submarine controversy. My favouriet Big Bang Theory episode is the one where Amy points out to Sheldon that the whole of ROTLA is pointless in terms of story.
If Indiana Jones had not been there, the outscome of the film would still have been exactly as it turned out. The Nazis would still have ended up with the Ark. The Ark wuld still have been opened on the island and all the Nazis would still have fealt the wrath of god. All Indy did was delay proceedings a little.
Even the fact that the Nazis were digging in the wrong place at Tanis was only bacause Indy prevented them getting the staff top at the bar in the Himalayas. If he hadn't then they would have been digging in the right place from the start and so would have gained possession of the Ark even sooner.
I disagree.
The ark wouldn’t have ended up in a storage facility in Akron, Ohio
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
125.
How many of the IRA terrorists lived in England?
Sean McNulty is one example, born on Tyneside. Going back further, Seán Mac Stíofáin, the IRA chief of staff, was born and raised, and joined the IRA, in London. But I'm not going to research every IRA member for you. You can go and research every terrorist attack in Great Britain if you want. There are a lot of IRA/INLA ones to go through.
The point remains - IRA terror attacks in the UK weren’t the result of mass immigration of Irish people
As nor was 7/7 the result of the mass immigration of Pakistani or Jamaican people. Some first or second generation immigrants, Irish, Pakistani, Jamaican and others, have committed acts of terrorism. But Enoch Powell's predictions were wrong.
The breeding grounds for Islamic terrorism in the UK are the ghettoised parts of major cities that only exist thanks to the mass immigration Enoch Powell warned against
This is just an ahistorical nonsense as an excuse for prejudice. At the time Powell was speaking there wasn't 'mass immigration' as such to the UK - net migration was negative in the 60s and 70s. It was negligible until the early 1990s.
But we needed people to fill jobs and had a post-war shortage of labour- including a large increase in doctors to staff the NHS. As a result, we drew on former parts of our Empire for labour, which included those who'd become British Asians, including a tranche of Muslims.
So what are we arguing should have been done in the 60s? Have no admission and a population decline, labour and shortages because at some point in the future, some extremists who were yet to work out their hate-filled ideology would target them? Discriminate on the grounds of religion and race?
If so, how many would British Muslims not constitute a risk to you as some have committed acts of terror? It being 75 years since the first British Nationality Act, allowing a relatively miniscule number of people of that faith to settle here each year would result in a significant population in at least the hundreds of thousands, at numbers that certainly don't constitute 'mass migration' in any real sense, the numbers get larger.
You see it's not "mass migration" that's the problem. Unless you actively closed off the country in a way no advanced economy does, and that would likely cause the UK significant reputational damage. If it were even possible, then you are going to have a significant enough number of Muslims in the UK for radical iterations of that religion to create some level of threat.
It's the emergence of deeply troublesome ideologies that can now be spread to incite people, as can the knowledge of how to kill for them. In recent years, we've seen these emerge on the far right too (look at Breivik or QAnon) - though there's little doubt that some of the darker strands of Qutb-inspired Islamism present a large threat, as they have wealthy states and groups sponsoring them.
But that isn't 'mass migration' - that's the ideas and those who've spent decades sponsoring them. Who need taking on and being called what they are - religious fascists. Rather than the inevitable process of migration flows - which you can restrict, change or utilise, but aren't going to stop.
This is revisionist myth-making. Initially the problem was overpopulation in certain colonies rather than labour shortages at home, and it was in some ways only by accident that a significant number of people ended up coming to Britain.
It also seems to have been memory-holed that we had a major problem with unemployment following that period. The idea that 'the economy' is this creature that needs to be fed with an ever expanding supply of labour is just the latest dogma. You wrote earlier about the Tories 'stealing a future and smashing up the economy' but they have presided over record rates of employment and record immigration. Is that not essentially the kind of economy you advocate?
Denmark has a policy goal of zero net migration. Has it suffered some appalling reputational damage because of it? In front of whom are you worried about our reputation?
Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign has stopped spending money on television ads and does not have any TV ad reservations booked, according to his campaign.
Meh, well I defer to Malmesbury and Nigelb's knowledge of things, even if I don't remember the plane being big enough...
Wait until you get onto the submarine controversy in Raiders.
Forget the Submarine controversy. My favouriet Big Bang Theory episode is the one where Amy points out to Sheldon that the whole of ROTLA is pointless in terms of story.
If Indiana Jones had not been there, the outscome of the film would still have been exactly as it turned out. The Nazis would still have ended up with the Ark. The Ark wuld still have been opened on the island and all the Nazis would still have fealt the wrath of god. All Indy did was delay proceedings a little.
Even the fact that the Nazis were digging in the wrong place at Tanis was only bacause Indy prevented them getting the staff top at the bar in the Himalayas. If he hadn't then they would have been digging in the right place from the start and so would have gained possession of the Ark even sooner.
I disagree.
The ark wouldn’t have ended up in a storage facility in Akron, Ohio
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
125.
How many of the IRA terrorists lived in England?
Sean McNulty is one example, born on Tyneside. Going back further, Seán Mac Stíofáin, the IRA chief of staff, was born and raised, and joined the IRA, in London. But I'm not going to research every IRA member for you. You can go and research every terrorist attack in Great Britain if you want. There are a lot of IRA/INLA ones to go through.
The point remains - IRA terror attacks in the UK weren’t the result of mass immigration of Irish people
As nor was 7/7 the result of the mass immigration of Pakistani or Jamaican people. Some first or second generation immigrants, Irish, Pakistani, Jamaican and others, have committed acts of terrorism. But Enoch Powell's predictions were wrong.
The breeding grounds for Islamic terrorism in the UK are the ghettoised parts of major cities that only exist thanks to the mass immigration Enoch Powell warned against
This is just an ahistorical nonsense as an excuse for prejudice. At the time Powell was speaking there wasn't 'mass immigration' as such to the UK - net migration was negative in the 60s and 70s. It was negligible until the early 1990s.
But we needed people to fill jobs and had a post-war shortage of labour- including a large increase in doctors to staff the NHS. As a result, we drew on former parts of our Empire for labour, which included those who'd become British Asians, including a tranche of Muslims.
So what are we arguing should have been done in the 60s? Have no admission and a population decline, labour and shortages because at some point in the future, some extremists who were yet to work out their hate-filled ideology would target them? Discriminate on the grounds of religion and race?
If so, how many would British Muslims not constitute a risk to you as some have committed acts of terror? It being 75 years since the first British Nationality Act, allowing a relatively miniscule number of people of that faith to settle here each year would result in a significant population in at least the hundreds of thousands, at numbers that certainly don't constitute 'mass migration' in any real sense, the numbers get larger.
You see it's not "mass migration" that's the problem. Unless you actively closed off the country in a way no advanced economy does, and that would likely cause the UK significant reputational damage. If it were even possible, then you are going to have a significant enough number of Muslims in the UK for radical iterations of that religion to create some level of threat.
It's the emergence of deeply troublesome ideologies that can now be spread to incite people, as can the knowledge of how to kill for them. In recent years, we've seen these emerge on the far right too (look at Breivik or QAnon) - though there's little doubt that some of the darker strands of Qutb-inspired Islamism present a large threat, as they have wealthy states and groups sponsoring them.
But that isn't 'mass migration' - that's the ideas and those who've spent decades sponsoring them. Who need taking on and being called what they are - religious fascists. Rather than the inevitable process of migration flows - which you can restrict, change or utilise, but aren't going to stop.
This is revisionist myth-making. Initially the problem was overpopulation in certain colonies rather than labour shortages at home, and it was in some ways only by accident that a significant number of people ended up coming to Britain.
It also seems to have been memory-holed that we had a major problem with unemployment following that period. The idea that 'the economy' is this creature that needs to be fed with an ever expanding supply of labour is just the latest dogma. You wrote earlier about the Tories 'stealing a future and smashing up the economy' but they have presided over record rates of employment and record immigration. Is that not essentially the kind of economy you advocate?
Denmark has a policy goal of zero net migration. Has it suffered some appalling reputational damage because of it? In front of whom are you worried about our reputation?
The issue is the explicit policy of multiculturalism- or “separate but equal” as it was called in another place and time.
That lack of integration has fairly to encourage the development of a single culture
Meh, well I defer to Malmesbury and Nigelb's knowledge of things, even if I don't remember the plane being big enough...
Wait until you get onto the submarine controversy in Raiders.
Forget the Submarine controversy. My favouriet Big Bang Theory episode is the one where Amy points out to Sheldon that the whole of ROTLA is pointless in terms of story.
If Indiana Jones had not been there, the outscome of the film would still have been exactly as it turned out. The Nazis would still have ended up with the Ark. The Ark wuld still have been opened on the island and all the Nazis would still have fealt the wrath of god. All Indy did was delay proceedings a little.
Even the fact that the Nazis were digging in the wrong place at Tanis was only bacause Indy prevented them getting the staff top at the bar in the Himalayas. If he hadn't then they would have been digging in the right place from the start and so would have gained possession of the Ark even sooner.
I disagree.
The ark wouldn’t have ended up in a storage facility in Akron, Ohio
(Area 51 is Groom Lake, Nevada)
Warehouse 13, which some hypothesise is The Warehouse at the end of ROTLA, is in South Dakota
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.
How many of the two killers of Lee Rigby and the four 7/7 bombers would have lived in England had it not been for the mass immigration that Enoch Powell said would have dire consequences?
How many of the Irish Republican terrorists who lived in England would have lived in England had they or their parents/grandparents not immigrated to England? Far more terrorism was committed by people who have been in the UK for generations or by Irish immigrants. So, why was Enoch Powell, and why are you, concerned about one sort of immigration and not another sort of immigration?
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
Did many of them live in England? You said 3500 people died in the troubles; how many of those deaths were in England
125.
How many of the IRA terrorists lived in England?
Sean McNulty is one example, born on Tyneside. Going back further, Seán Mac Stíofáin, the IRA chief of staff, was born and raised, and joined the IRA, in London. But I'm not going to research every IRA member for you. You can go and research every terrorist attack in Great Britain if you want. There are a lot of IRA/INLA ones to go through.
The point remains - IRA terror attacks in the UK weren’t the result of mass immigration of Irish people
As nor was 7/7 the result of the mass immigration of Pakistani or Jamaican people. Some first or second generation immigrants, Irish, Pakistani, Jamaican and others, have committed acts of terrorism. But Enoch Powell's predictions were wrong.
The breeding grounds for Islamic terrorism in the UK are the ghettoised parts of major cities that only exist thanks to the mass immigration Enoch Powell warned against
This is just an ahistorical nonsense as an excuse for prejudice. At the time Powell was speaking there wasn't 'mass immigration' as such to the UK - net migration was negative in the 60s and 70s. It was negligible until the early 1990s.
But we needed people to fill jobs and had a post-war shortage of labour- including a large increase in doctors to staff the NHS. As a result, we drew on former parts of our Empire for labour, which included those who'd become British Asians, including a tranche of Muslims.
So what are we arguing should have been done in the 60s? Have no admission and a population decline, labour and shortages because at some point in the future, some extremists who were yet to work out their hate-filled ideology would target them? Discriminate on the grounds of religion and race?
If so, how many would British Muslims not constitute a risk to you as some have committed acts of terror? It being 75 years since the first British Nationality Act, allowing a relatively miniscule number of people of that faith to settle here each year would result in a significant population in at least the hundreds of thousands, at numbers that certainly don't constitute 'mass migration' in any real sense, the numbers get larger.
You see it's not "mass migration" that's the problem. Unless you actively closed off the country in a way no advanced economy does, and that would likely cause the UK significant reputational damage. If it were even possible, then you are going to have a significant enough number of Muslims in the UK for radical iterations of that religion to create some level of threat.
It's the emergence of deeply troublesome ideologies that can now be spread to incite people, as can the knowledge of how to kill for them. In recent years, we've seen these emerge on the far right too (look at Breivik or QAnon) - though there's little doubt that some of the darker strands of Qutb-inspired Islamism present a large threat, as they have wealthy states and groups sponsoring them.
But that isn't 'mass migration' - that's the ideas and those who've spent decades sponsoring them. Who need taking on and being called what they are - religious fascists. Rather than the inevitable process of migration flows - which you can restrict, change or utilise, but aren't going to stop.
This is revisionist myth-making. Initially the problem was overpopulation in certain colonies rather than labour shortages at home, and it was in some ways only by accident that a significant number of people ended up coming to Britain.
It also seems to have been memory-holed that we had a major problem with unemployment following that period. The idea that 'the economy' is this creature that needs to be fed with an ever expanding supply of labour is just the latest dogma. You wrote earlier about the Tories 'stealing a future and smashing up the economy' but they have presided over record rates of employment and record immigration. Is that not essentially the kind of economy you advocate?
Denmark has a policy goal of zero net migration. Has it suffered some appalling reputational damage because of it? In front of whom are you worried about our reputation?
That's zero net migration, not zero inward migration at all - which is what you'd have to do to ensure no one of a different faith was arriving (or discriminate). As I earlier pointed out, in the 1960s and 70s, when Powell was stirring things up - we had negative net migration. More people were leaving the UK than were arriving.
Here, if we had no (or a miniscule) amount of inward migration at all, we could expect to lose our reputation as an educational and business hub. For a start, it would collapse the universities. Banning migration from Muslim nations of course did cause reputational damage when Trump tried it.
That was the point. If you're saying 'mass immigration is bad because of Islamic terrorism' then given we had negative or comparatively very low net migration in the period the poster was talking about, you'd need either a policy that was incredibly restrictive to the point of barely allowing anyone in at all, or openly discriminatory. Neither is entirely plausible.
On the latter point. The economy doesn't need an 'ever expanding supply of labour' but employers often need to plug gaps in supply where there's a shortage of skills or individuals willing to do so at the price offered.
In the former case, it takes time to train people. If the NHS needs more doctors, you can't produce them immediately even if you put a rocket booster under the incentives to train. In the latter case it's good to increase wages and/or conditions - but there are some jobs this is difficult in for different reasons. Take seasonal agricultural work. Which naturally is much more attractive to those who don't care about putting down roots - otherwise you'll have to pay people a premium. Another case is care work - where the wages and hours are very unattractive, but councils are skint, and facing growing bills - so no one's going to sign off the kind of payrise that will push load more people into the sector.
Longer term, of course you can solve these with technology, training, or more government or consumer spending. But right now. You're going to need migration - which is one reason why the Tories have found they can't meet promises to cut it (while having been terrible economically for numerous other reasons).
Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign has stopped spending money on television ads and does not have any TV ad reservations booked, according to his campaign.
Going back to an earlier comment: The US was involved in WW II in the Atlantic in a low-level way, before Pearl Harbor, because we were escorting convoys. We even lost a destroyer, the Reuben James. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Reuben_James_(DD-245) "At dawn on 31 October, she was torpedoed near Iceland[3] by German submarine U-552 commanded by Kapitänleutnant Erich Topp. Reuben James had positioned herself between an ammunition ship in the convoy and the known position of a German "wolfpack," a group of submarines poised to attack the convoy. The destroyer was not flying the ensign of the United States and was in the process of dropping depth charges on another U-boat when she was engaged.[4] Reuben James was hit forward by a torpedo meant for a merchant ship and her entire bow was blown off when a magazine exploded. The bow sank immediately. The aft section floated for five minutes before going down. Of a crew of seven officers and 136 enlisted men, plus one enlisted passenger, 100 were killed. That left only 44 enlisted men and no officers who survived the attack."
The Japanese ambassador visited Hitler days before the Pearl Harbor attack, and asked if their agreement was still in effect: Would Germany join Japan, if Japan became involved in a a war with the US?
Hitler assured him that Germany would, and on December 11th, declared war on the US. (Some in Roosevelt's circle wanted him to go ahead and request a declaration of war on Germany immediately after Pearl Harbor, but he wisely waited.)
Comments
It's been a good day for Sunak's Southampton as Leeds lost and Ipswich drew Leicester in a gripping game.
Not even @isam seemed it worthy of comment that I mentioned Osama Bin Laden as an Arsenal fan...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/arsenal/3016918/Osama-bin-Ladens-Highbury-days.html
Terrorism has been committed in the UK by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and atheists, and probably others. Hugh Franklin was Jewish, if he counts.
https://www.liquidadventuring.com/2015/05/07/romes-tiber-river-is-it-safe/
There are bad people in the world who become radicalised by extreme ideologies. Some of them are native-born, some are immigrants. The UK has suffered hugely from homegrown terrorism. The solution to terrorism is not to enact Powellite immigration laws.
The radicalism (if there is any) will be slowly drip-fed into legislation in the second term - the first term will be undoing the excesses of the Conservative years - it's not about turning the clock back to 2010 but dealing with those areas of "low hanging fruit" whose repeal will be popular.
I'll be interested to see if Starmer returns to Parliament the respionsibilities and powers which Johnson took to Whitehall and the Cabinet Office - I'm not hopeful as Labour are every bit as centralising as the Conservatives.
Ironically it is you who appears to be in the grip of a religous belief, which is all the more fervent for being superficially secular.
To be honest, the terrorism that has most frightened me personally is Christian, but that's because my dad works in the abortion field in the US.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2023/12/new-poll-puts-geert-wilders-pvv-on-30-as-voters-desert-vvd/
I don’t believe that mass immigration of Irish people to England was the cause of IRA terrorism, I don’t think many people claim that. You are conflating an ongoing situation between British and Ireland with mass immigration from Islamic countries when they’re not the same
https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/sutton/crosstabs.html
As an individual, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack from any source are smaller than your chances of being killed in a car accident, but some times of political violence pose a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society you would like to live in and others don't.
His other prediction - “That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.” - is self evidently still nonsense.
So, that 5 far right incidents, 2 Islamist, 2 unclear, and 1 Irish republican. You can check other lists or go further back.
To put this into perspective, there are about 240 deaths per year from drunk driving in the UK. There are about 0.5 deaths per year from terrorism in the UK.
Three men, including two serving British soldiers, were arrested and later charged with several offences relating to membership of the neo-Nazi National Action terrorist organisation and preparing for acts of terrorism
his party!
P S. I wasn't aware of how many Powellites we had on this board.
Far-right political violence in the US on 6 Jan, although far less fatal than 7/7, was scarier to me precisely because it represents a political violence that poses a long-term threat to our democratic society.
I’m glad to see that on this at least, we can agree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12869629/Tesla-robot-ATTACKS-engineer-companys-Texas-factory-violent-malfunction-leaving-trail-blood-forcing-workers-hit-emergency-shutdown-button.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12901191/Brazilian-woman-34-cuts-husbands-penis-flushes-toilet-39-year-old-bedded-15-year-old-niece.html#comments
I will concede that immigration became a live issue in aforementioned Herefordshire or Forest of Dean market towns when oldsters had to queue at the doctor's for their daily consultation behind two or three Polish children during the accession years.
Other people have to live in hiding because of the legacy of the Troubles, because of domestic violence, because of organised crime, because of transphobic violence. These are all tragedies too.
As it turned out they were told a second pack of lies during Campaign 2019 by a Prime Minister who convinced the electorate that he had an "oven ready deal" to get Brexit done. It turned out he didn't.
There were never any mishaps with good old fire, were there? Eh? Eh? Or blackshirts? Eh?
Oh no! What a giveaway!
Those anti-terror bollards, of course, are not specific to Islamist terrorism. They began with Irish republican terrorism. Security measures in aviation pre-date Islamist terrorism too. And, annoying though they are, all of those security measures are hardly what I consider "a long-term threat to the viability of the kind of society [I] would like to live in".
https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/safety-and-security/protecting-london-s-bridges
He's a cringe-magnet. Embarrassing.
Jesus didn't die for our sins. Yahweh didn't give the land of Israel to the Jewish people. Bahá'u'lláh did not receive a divine revelation. I could go on.
The first permanent gates at the end of Downing Street were installed in 1920 in response to the threat of Irish republican terrorism. The modern gates were installed in 1989 in response to the threat of the IRA. Major restrictions to visitors to Westminster Hall were introduced following the 1885 Fenian bombing. There's a long history of security measures.
https://twitter.com/HeartlandSignal/status/1738665613071892700
However the two politicians you fly the flags for, Johnson and Trump seem to be the most adept at campaign lying.
Probably my least favourite movie in a decade. Awful.
If Indiana Jones had not been there, the outcome of the film would still have been exactly as it turned out. The Nazis would still have ended up with the Ark. The Ark would still have been opened on the island and all the Nazis would still have felt the wrath of god. All Indy did was delay proceedings a little.
Even the fact that the Nazis were digging in the wrong place at Tanis was only bacause Indy prevented them getting the staff top at the bar in the Himalayas. If he hadn't then they would have been digging in the right place from the start and so would have gained possession of the Ark even sooner.
And in any event it’s about the journey, not the destination.
Daihatsu admitted that it had been manipulating safety tests on 64 makes for three decades. Its headquarters in Osaka, Japan was the last to close, on 25 December. The scandal puts in jeopardy 9,000 workers in the country and could affect global car giant Toyota's reputation. Of the 64 models involved in the scandal, 24 are sold with Toyota branding."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67822887
Problem is, I dunno if that makes it better or worse... ☹️
https://x.com/nbcnews/status/1739753065387876747
But we needed people to fill jobs and had a post-war shortage of labour- including a large increase in doctors to staff the NHS. As a result, we drew on former parts of our Empire for labour, which included those who'd become British Asians, including a tranche of Muslims.
So what are we arguing should have been done in the 60s? Have no admission and a population decline, labour and shortages because at some point in the future, some extremists who were yet to work out their hate-filled ideology would target them? Discriminate on the grounds of religion and race?
If so, how many would British Muslims not constitute a risk to you as some have committed acts of terror? It being 75 years since the first British Nationality Act, allowing a relatively miniscule number of people of that faith to settle here each year would result in a significant population in at least the hundreds of thousands, at numbers that certainly don't constitute 'mass migration' in any real sense, the numbers get larger.
You see it's not "mass migration" that's the problem. Unless you actively closed off the country in a way no advanced economy does, and that would likely cause the UK significant reputational damage. If it were even possible, then you are going to have a significant enough number of Muslims in the UK for radical iterations of that religion to create some level of threat.
It's the emergence of deeply troublesome ideologies that can now be spread to incite people, as can the knowledge of how to kill for them. In recent years, we've seen these emerge on the far right too (look at Breivik or QAnon) - though there's little doubt that some of the darker strands of Qutb-inspired Islamism present a large threat, as they have wealthy states and groups sponsoring them.
But that isn't 'mass migration' - that's the ideas and those who've spent decades sponsoring them. Who need taking on and being called what they are - religious fascists. Rather than the inevitable process of migration flows - which you can restrict, change or utilise, but aren't going to stop.
The ark wouldn’t have ended up in a storage facility in Akron, Ohio
It also seems to have been memory-holed that we had a major problem with unemployment following that period. The idea that 'the economy' is this creature that needs to be fed with an ever expanding supply of labour is just the latest dogma. You wrote earlier about the Tories 'stealing a future and smashing up the economy' but they have presided over record rates of employment and record immigration. Is that not essentially the kind of economy you advocate?
Denmark has a policy goal of zero net migration. Has it suffered some appalling reputational damage because of it? In front of whom are you worried about our reputation?
One down.
That lack of integration has fairly to encourage the development of a single culture
That's zero net migration, not zero inward migration at all - which is what you'd have to do to ensure no one of a different faith was arriving (or discriminate). As I earlier pointed out, in the 1960s and 70s, when Powell was stirring things up - we had negative net migration. More people were leaving the UK than were arriving.
Here, if we had no (or a miniscule) amount of inward migration at all, we could expect to lose our reputation as an educational and business hub. For a start, it would collapse the universities. Banning migration from Muslim nations of course did cause reputational damage when Trump tried it.
That was the point. If you're saying 'mass immigration is bad because of Islamic terrorism' then given we had negative or comparatively very low net migration in the period the poster was talking about, you'd need either a policy that was incredibly restrictive to the point of barely allowing anyone in at all, or openly discriminatory. Neither is entirely plausible.
On the latter point. The economy doesn't need an 'ever expanding supply of labour' but employers often need to plug gaps in supply where there's a shortage of skills or individuals willing to do so at the price offered.
In the former case, it takes time to train people. If the NHS needs more doctors, you can't produce them immediately even if you put a rocket booster under the incentives to train. In the latter case it's good to increase wages and/or conditions - but there are some jobs this is difficult in for different reasons. Take seasonal agricultural work. Which naturally is much more attractive to those who don't care about putting down roots - otherwise you'll have to pay people a premium. Another case is care work - where the wages and hours are very unattractive, but councils are skint, and facing growing bills - so no one's going to sign off the kind of payrise that will push load more people into the sector.
Longer term, of course you can solve these with technology, training, or more government or consumer spending. But right now. You're going to need migration - which is one reason why the Tories have found they can't meet promises to cut it (while having been terrible economically for numerous other reasons).
No doubt he will advise his supporters to back Trump - in his VP bid.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/zombie-deer-disease-humans-cases-b2469275.html
"At dawn on 31 October, she was torpedoed near Iceland[3] by German submarine U-552 commanded by Kapitänleutnant Erich Topp. Reuben James had positioned herself between an ammunition ship in the convoy and the known position of a German "wolfpack," a group of submarines poised to attack the convoy. The destroyer was not flying the ensign of the United States and was in the process of dropping depth charges on another U-boat when she was engaged.[4] Reuben James was hit forward by a torpedo meant for a merchant ship and her entire bow was blown off when a magazine exploded. The bow sank immediately. The aft section floated for five minutes before going down. Of a crew of seven officers and 136 enlisted men, plus one enlisted passenger, 100 were killed. That left only 44 enlisted men and no officers who survived the attack."
(US Communists and sympathizers, who had been campaigning for us to stay out of the war before Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, soon were singing this song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sinking_of_the_Reuben_James )
The Japanese ambassador visited Hitler days before the Pearl Harbor attack, and asked if their agreement was still in effect: Would Germany join Japan, if Japan became involved in a a war with the US?
Hitler assured him that Germany would, and on December 11th, declared war on the US. (Some in Roosevelt's circle wanted him to go ahead and request a declaration of war on Germany immediately after Pearl Harbor, but he wisely waited.)
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