The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I'm unsure quite what that's got to do with my post. I'm not talking about 'British pride'; but neither am I interested in 'British shame'. We're far from perfect, and I doubt I've ever suggested otherwise. We can improve a great deal - and hopefully the next (Labour) government will make progress.
But to listen to some people, you'd think we all lived in hovels with outside toilets, no running water and electricity powered by methane piped in from the local urchin farm. That there was mass unemployment and a gunman on every street corner.
That isn't a reason to vote Conservative, or indeed for anyone; just that people who are constantly utterly negative have probably lost all perspective.
Let me put it this way; one of the reasons the Post Office scandal has eventually struck the public's consciousness so strongly is that it seems so utterly against the way we think things should work in this country. And rightly so. But in many, many countries, what happened - and worse - would be accepted with a shrug and be seen as utterly unnoteworthy - "it's the way things are done."
We should not try to change that.
I suspect we are mostly on PB in the luxurious position of living in expensive, and comfortable homes. We are fortunate.
I have seen for myself (my wife was involved in parent and child foster caring for a number of years) and I saw poverty of an order I had no idea existed. We have ex-servicemen living in tents that Suella Braverman wanted to remove from them. We have families dispossessed of their homes and sent to local authority emergency accomodation. We live in a society that it more inequitable than it was a decade ago. To drive such inequality further is immoral. Maybe Labour can't do anything about it. The Conservatives on the other hand won't even try.
One nation feudal Tories in this iteration of the Conservative Party are a thing of the past.
I agree there is poverty. We need to change that. What I disagree with is this idea that ye olden days were any less shit. From everything I've heard, they were far worse. People are far too keen to wear rose-coloured spectacles about the past.
Again, that does not mean that we do not need to improve things.
When I was at school we had the working poor. They were my school friends. They lived in good quality local authority housing, they had free health care, the school dentist, local authority swimming pools, libraries, school libraries, an equitable education system, free school meals, playgrounds, playing fields, subsidised works canteens, affordable public transport and public utilities that did their best not to cut off late payers. Bosses who's salary was a few notches up from the workers as opposed to now when Captains of Industry have earned the average salary by the 10th of January.
Yes at the time we were the sick man of Europe, but we were also a fairer, happier society. The right of centre argument is all this "free" stuff is unsustainable. I would warrant the average FTSE CEO earning 30 pr 40 times the average salary is even more unsustainable. And I repeat, people like Robert Jenrick and Braverman couldn't give two hoots for the welfare of British citizens, they are too busy feathering their own meaningless ambitions. What kind of moral vacuum paints over Disney characters at a children's asylum centre, or removes tents from destitute PTSD suffering ex-soldiers?
When were you at school, for I think the "fairer, happier society" might well be wrong, particularly depending on the definitions of 'fair' and 'happy'.
I'll tackle one of your examples: "an equitable education system". It wasn't. I've given this anecdote before, and I'll give it again: I used to know two men who grew up in the late seventies. Both worked in a mining area. Both were told by teachers that there was little point in getting an education, as they would just end up working down the mine. They were thrown on the education scrapheap by teachers. Then there's access to higher education, which is far more accessible than it was. That is a great social leveller.
In fact, I think what you're suffering from has been common throughout time: older people looking back on their youth and saying :" thing were better then. The youth of today..." etc, etc. when you were at school, many adults would have been saying exactly what you're saying now. Yet times have not objectively got worse. I and other have given examples of exactly how things have got better, and you ignore them.
I'm not saying this as some form of advert for the Conservatives - I want this lot gone, or as some form of we-need-to-do-nothing - we can always do better, and must. I'm saying that your style of unending misery and "everything's terrible" doesn't do a jot of good.
Sorry but as a student you used to get a grant for your living costs and while it wasn’t much it was enough to rent a room and buy food.
Now students get a loan which doesn’t even cover the rent required. Worse payments are expected at times that don’t match the loan payments so unless your family has £1000 or so available to lend to your son / daughter for a week you have a big problem.
And how many 'students' were there? And what social backgrounds did they predominantly come from? Is the massive increase in higher education students, and the increasing diversity of their backgrounds, a bad thing in your eyes? Or just because you were 'lucky' to go into higher education, do you want to go back to those days?
If you were a higher education student back then, then you were lucky. Not because of student grants, but because you were a student. It was a route closed off to far too many, often because of background, not lack of talent.
But yet again, people look at the top end. What about the bottom end? How about school leaving ages? Raised to 16 in 1972.
Are you still sure they were better days?
The argument isn't "were things better in the 70s?" Of course in the grand scheme society is more equitable, so no they weren't. But we also had some elements which were better. The school dentist for one, prevention being cheaper than cure (or multiple tooth extraction on the NHS). We had things which were worse too, like the police fitting up suspects. It isn't binary.
I would nonetheless argue society was more at ease with itself than it is now. Does that make the 1970s better than today? Except for that metric, no!
I was born in 73, so I missed some of the 70s, and was young through the rest of it. But I'd argue that the massive amount of strikes, the three-day week, blackouts, football violence, endemic racism, homophobia and sexism, does not show a country that was 'more at ease with itself'.
The UK back then was generally far more violent than it is now. Growing up in London in the late 70s and early 80s was fantastic and exciting, with so much going on, but it was not peaceful - large scale fighting at most football matches and many gigs, rioting, racist and homophobic attacks, punks v skins v mods v casuals etc, all with the odd IRA bombing campaign thrown in on top. But we were young and it was how things were. It's the being young bit that people looking back miss most of all. That will never change.
Yes, exactly. I was thinking just that whilst reading the argument as it went on; things were better back then, whenever ‘then’ was, because we were young. I’d rather be young now than old then
When I was at school we had rampant homophobia in society. Football violence was not just an occasional thing; it was ever-present. Racism was endemic. Going just before my schooldays, we had blackouts and the three-day week. You were lucky if your school had a well-stocked library; now we have much of the world's information at our fingertips. The air was unhealthy (especially as I was born a couple of miles away from a power station...), etc, etc.
Times have got worse? In many ways they've got much, much better.
People aren't going back 40 years or more, they're going back 20 years. On practically every measure you look at things have gone backwards in the last 20 years. A few exceptions, but the NHS is a mess, you can't get a dentist, the trains are broken, money is worth less than it was, job insecurity and poor wages etc etc etc etc.
I have no problem with a glass half full approach. I do that. Mostly. But the strident denials of how bad things are is why the Tories are heading for oblivion. You can't tell people black is white and retain political credibility.
Some things have improved. There has been a great shift to renewable energy, for example. Online services on gov.uk are genuinely well designed (even if the back end of things like passport renewal are still subject to delay).
But on the whole - public services have got worse. I hold Cam and The Quad most responsible for this. For all his bluster, vanity and moral incontinence, I don't think Boris came close to being as damaging to the fibre of the country as Cameron was - DC is second only to Thatcher on this measure, and may actually be worse. Growing up in South Yorkshire coal country as I did, I saw the undiluted negative effects of Thatcherism, but swathes of the rest of the nation perhaps did not. We are nearly all impacted by Cameron and Osbourne's austerity one way or another.
Not that this matters. For all that Sunak weirdly positions himself as fighting from opposition, the nation's political memory is much longer and less nuanced, and they are not fooled into thinking that we've had anything other than Conservatives in power for 14 years - and things have just got worse.
Also note the post-industrial changes which followed Thatcher shutting down primary industry. We may have had closure of the pits and steelworks and other major industry, but we then had a major effort at regeneration to both redevelop the land and bring in new employment opportunities. Not remotely the same in terms of job quality or community cohesion, but better than the nothing which followed.
The industrial decline pre-dated and post-dated Thatcher. She did not 'shut down' primary industry alone; in fact, she encouraged companies like Nissan in. Corby steelworks, as an example, closed in February 1979 - four months before Thatcher.
Like Beeching, Thatcher gets blamed for things that were nothing to do with her.
Or lack of grammar schools, which were one of the engines of social mobility.
Does anyone have a link showing which Education Secretary closed the most grammar schools?
Hold my milk whilst I check that out.
More Free milk to schoolkids was removed by labour govts than Tory govts.
My post was a joke. I am assuming yours was too. Very good!
If not, citation needed.
Why would my comment be a joke.
Milk was removed in 3 stages
1 - by Ted Short for secondary schools 2 - by Fatcha for Junior Schools 3 - by Shirley Williams for Primary schools
Mrs T got labelled with the Milk Snatcher monicker, primarily I believe, as it rhymed.
In 1968 Edward Short, the Labour Secretary of State for Education and Science, withdrew free milk from secondary schools. His successor, Conservative Margaret Thatcher withdrew free school milk from children over seven in 1971. She is still denounced as a 'milk snatcher'. I am uncertain of the position now for the youngest and poorest of school children.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
Yes, I’m pretty libertarian when it comes to drugs. Trying to ban stuff simply doesn’t work, it would be better to sell these things in pharmacies and use the tax revenue to fund treatment for those who become addicted. It would also free significant police resources, and likely reduce violent crime overall.
If you want to actually ban drugs successfully, you need to police them like they do in Singapore or Bangkok, which means a massive increase in the prison population, thanks to life sentences for small-time teenage dealers.
Rather fun. The crux is “‘nous’ is too formal - use ‘on’ instead”.
Imagine that in English. “It’s too formal to say ‘We are going to the shops.’ Instead, for a more relaxed spoken vibe, say ‘One is going to the shops.’”
What do they say in the 'Received Pronunciation' areas of the Isle de France?
That's the one not to use if you want to be credible .
Prejudiced - Moi?
I've been told that the word 'nous' is very rarely used in spoken French; it has been supplanted by 'on'.
Research on the topic is however thin on the ground.
Spoken French has six distinct registers. Most conversation takes place in registre normal/registre populaire/registre familier. On/nous substitution is very common in registre populaire and registre familier.
Watch some episodes of Plus Belle La Vie to see this in action.
Will it get past my pornfilter?
Yeah, it's a soap set in Marseille. I always get my students to watch it with French subs on. It's excellent practice at listening comprehension because they speak really fucking fast and use a lot of vernacular.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
My experience suggests that a few will vote Labour and the rest will be too sozzled to care.
Someone should do some polling. I’m not convinced it’ll be as bad for the Tories as made out. Brits abroad are disproportionately old, especially those who’ve been out for over 15 years.
I wonder if we’ll get to see the expat results after the election. That’s one of the fun bits of some foreign elections, particularly the French presidential.
Would love to see it,Tim. My guess would be:
Labour 20% Tories 10% Libdems 5% Gaga 65%
I reckon the LibDems will do better than that. Most ex-pats won't be paying attention to the domestic detail of the campaign and many won't know the position on the ground in their seats. And the LibDems are clearly still the anti-Brexit party.
Think "Gibraltar" and it's easy to conjure up an image of a tabloid-reading all-day-breakfast Brit. Yet in Euro-elections the LibDems got 18% of the Gibraltar vote in 2009, 67% in 2014 and 77% in 2019.
The ex-pats in Europe will be heavily LibDem, is my prediction. Those in Australia, NZ and Canada, not so much!
Not a chance. Most will continue to vote Conservative - obviously I speak anecdotally bit in my corner of 'expatia: in SE Spain the vast majority detest most politicians while leaning heavily to the right. Of course the Provencal cohort in France Al la Roger view things differently...all five of them!
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
Don't have a problem with that, Nick, but I think the lady was virtue signalling and trying to hitch her own views on Gaza inappropriately to a very different cause.
Or lack of grammar schools, which were one of the engines of social mobility.
Does anyone have a link showing which Education Secretary closed the most grammar schools?
Hold my milk whilst I check that out.
More Free milk to schoolkids was removed by labour govts than Tory govts.
My post was a joke. I am assuming yours was too. Very good!
If not, citation needed.
Hadn't Labour previously axed milk for secondary schools? Mrs Thatcher removed it from younger children.
Correct. Ted Short removed it from secondary schools during the 66-70 govt.
Shirley Williams removed it from infants schools during the 74-79 govt too.
I remember my free school milk when I was in infant schools at the time.
Mrs T only removed it from Junior school kids. 7-11.
Yes, school milk was a warm white micro bacterial soup, but I suspect the added calcium benefit outweighed the listeria.
Third of a pint bottles that sat in the sun for several hours, enough to turn it into a rancid cream cheese. Why it had to sit in the sun for hours was a mystery - but it made it vile.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
My experience suggests that a few will vote Labour and the rest will be too sozzled to care.
Someone should do some polling. I’m not convinced it’ll be as bad for the Tories as made out. Brits abroad are disproportionately old, especially those who’ve been out for over 15 years.
I wonder if we’ll get to see the expat results after the election. That’s one of the fun bits of some foreign elections, particularly the French presidential.
Would love to see it,Tim. My guess would be:
Labour 20% Tories 10% Libdems 5% Gaga 65%
I reckon the LibDems will do better than that. Most ex-pats won't be paying attention to the domestic detail of the campaign and many won't know the position on the ground in their seats. And the LibDems are clearly still the anti-Brexit party.
Think "Gibraltar" and it's easy to conjure up an image of a tabloid-reading all-day-breakfast Brit. Yet in Euro-elections the LibDems got 18% of the Gibraltar vote in 2009, 67% in 2014 and 77% in 2019.
The ex-pats in Europe will be heavily LibDem, is my prediction. Those in Australia, NZ and Canada, not so much!
Not a chance. Most will continue to vote Conservative - obviously I speak anecdotally bit in my corner of 'expatia: in SE Spain the vast majority detest most politicians while leaning heavily to the right. Of course the Provencal cohort in France Al la Roger view things differently...all five of them!
Fairy nuff, but what about Labour's Dordogne Battalion? Must be at least twelve strong.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
When I was at school we had rampant homophobia in society. Football violence was not just an occasional thing; it was ever-present. Racism was endemic. Going just before my schooldays, we had blackouts and the three-day week. You were lucky if your school had a well-stocked library; now we have much of the world's information at our fingertips. The air was unhealthy (especially as I was born a couple of miles away from a power station...), etc, etc.
Times have got worse? In many ways they've got much, much better.
People aren't going back 40 years or more, they're going back 20 years. On practically every measure you look at things have gone backwards in the last 20 years. A few exceptions, but the NHS is a mess, you can't get a dentist, the trains are broken, money is worth less than it was, job insecurity and poor wages etc etc etc etc.
I have no problem with a glass half full approach. I do that. Mostly. But the strident denials of how bad things are is why the Tories are heading for oblivion. You can't tell people black is white and retain political credibility.
Some things have improved. There has been a great shift to renewable energy, for example. Online services on gov.uk are genuinely well designed (even if the back end of things like passport renewal are still subject to delay).
But on the whole - public services have got worse. I hold Cam and The Quad most responsible for this. For all his bluster, vanity and moral incontinence, I don't think Boris came close to being as damaging to the fibre of the country as Cameron was - DC is second only to Thatcher on this measure, and may actually be worse. Growing up in South Yorkshire coal country as I did, I saw the undiluted negative effects of Thatcherism, but swathes of the rest of the nation perhaps did not. We are nearly all impacted by Cameron and Osbourne's austerity one way or another.
Not that this matters. For all that Sunak weirdly positions himself as fighting from opposition, the nation's political memory is much longer and less nuanced, and they are not fooled into thinking that we've had anything other than Conservatives in power for 14 years - and things have just got worse.
Also note the post-industrial changes which followed Thatcher shutting down primary industry. We may have had closure of the pits and steelworks and other major industry, but we then had a major effort at regeneration to both redevelop the land and bring in new employment opportunities. Not remotely the same in terms of job quality or community cohesion, but better than the nothing which followed.
The industrial decline pre-dated and post-dated Thatcher. She did not 'shut down' primary industry alone; in fact, she encouraged companies like Nissan in. Corby steelworks, as an example, closed in February 1979 - four months before Thatcher.
Like Beeching, Thatcher gets blamed for things that were nothing to do with her.
Or lack of grammar schools, which were one of the engines of social mobility.
Does anyone have a link showing which Education Secretary closed the most grammar schools?
Hold my milk whilst I check that out.
More Free milk to schoolkids was removed by labour govts than Tory govts.
My post was a joke. I am assuming yours was too. Very good!
If not, citation needed.
Why would my comment be a joke.
Milk was removed in 3 stages
1 - by Ted Short for secondary schools 2 - by Fatcha for Junior Schools 3 - by Shirley Williams for Primary schools
Mrs T got labelled with the Milk Snatcher monicker, primarily I believe, as it rhymed.
In 1968 Edward Short, the Labour Secretary of State for Education and Science, withdrew free milk from secondary schools. His successor, Conservative Margaret Thatcher withdrew free school milk from children over seven in 1971. She is still denounced as a 'milk snatcher'. I am uncertain of the position now for the youngest and poorest of school children.
We were offered free school milk up to 5th birthday. For my eldest, that's about 4 weeks into school. We paid for a term or so as we didn't want him to feel left out as the only person (possibly) being snubbed by the milk monitor, but it quickly became apparent that several were not getting milk (you had to register for it anyway, even if free) so we dropped it.
One of those things that's really bizarre to do by age rather than school year. And, I would suggest, really quite pointless overall anyway. Free school meals in the first few years - and longer for those eligible, if of decent quality, do much more in getting needed nutrients into children.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
There's an important pragmatic difference- prohibition of alcohol has been tried and it doesn't work. In part, because it's trivially easy to sidestep at home.
(Chateau Romford, from whatever the grapes growing on our garden fence are, is merrily bubbling away as we speak.)
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
Jewish people are a monolith when it comes to using the Shoah to defend Zionism; when it comes to discussing the various views of anti-Zionist Jewish people it becomes a "don't you lecture me" argument.
And guess what - the Holocaust is political. Zionism is political. Genocide is political. All these things are political and, of course, it is the realm of politics that politicians work in.
it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
It would be like ditching Starmer before the kids have got their free tooth-brushing lessons....
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
6.4 million smokers in the UK, enough of whom are trying to quit that companies with products that claim to help will pay to advertise them.
71.2% of UK adults drink alcohol at least once a week.
The case for banning smoking and not drinking is that it is possible to ban smoking and not possible to ban drinking. There are practical limits to what is achievable, even if it might not be logically consistent.
Not that I would ban tobacco, myself. I'm mystified by those who are apparently in favour of banning tobacco and legalising cannabis. What a mess that would be.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
I stopped smoking at the beginning of January and switched to vaping. I use my vape in the same way I used to smoke cigarettes and the same times and occasions and I have found the switch seamless. I use a low nicotine fluid so just enough to avoid getting withdrawal anger but now my lungs aren’t full of tar and Carbon Monoxide.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
It would be like ditching Starmer before the kids have got their free tooth-brushing lessons....
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
I thought the toothbrushing lark was laughable until I researched childhood tooth decay and milk and adult set teeth extractions which are off the scale. Bring back the school dentist!
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
Jewish people are a monolith when it comes to using the Shoah to defend Zionism; when it comes to discussing the various views of anti-Zionist Jewish people it becomes a "don't you lecture me" argument.
And guess what - the Holocaust is political. Zionism is political. Genocide is political. All these things are political and, of course, it is the realm of politics that politicians work in.
And I'm going to walk the dogs, which is also a political action, and infinitely more appealing than your juvenilia.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
For those saying the 70's were better fuck were they. I grew up in the 70's I never got new clothes neither did anyone I knew they were picked up in jumble sales and constantly patched. The house had no central heating nor double glazing and we all huddled round the fire in the living room. A couple of slices of spam or luncheon meat with some mash was our evening meal. Yeah take us back to the 70's because we would all love that. For a treat we would get taken to the local swimming pool which was outside and unheated and that wasnt even a monthly treat.
Later generations would have a fit
Lucky to have a swimming pool. Many are closing.
Lucky for us - our local swimming pool was closed down in the 80s after continual untreated cockroach infestations.
When I moved to Glasgow the nearby Victorian baths were shut down by the council leading to near civil unrest. I can still remember watching the police horses charging people down for wanting somewhere to swim.
Probably commies. Not even lodge members. Imagine.
The horses were ludge members? Wouldn't be commies, no sir.
I think it's easy to look at the past with rose-tinted spectacles.
I have nostalgia for the 80s and I also remember cigarettes being utterly endemic, so much so that I hid behind my mother's dress when going shopping with her in a vain attempt to avoid breathing it in on the streets, and that bullying in schools was far more common and not considered anything more than boisterous behaviour and even character building. I was encouraged by a teacher to man-up and punch back to make it stop. Groups of young men/ teenagers were in general bad news and to be avoided, so I stayed at home and only went out with parents/schoolteachers.
The range and quality of food for eating out was also very limited, and basically non-existant in pubs, which is why our eyes lit up at any American fast food/diner place (like TGI Fridays) that I now find disgusting. And the range of consumer products available was improving but far off the quality it reached in the 1990s.
I think if any of us actually time-travelled we'd quickly be shocked and rapidly beat a path back to the present day.
it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
It would be like ditching Starmer before the kids have got their free tooth-brushing lessons....
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
The NHS was hardly produced fully-formed from a vaccum. There had been plenty of work looking at how to create some form of national health care before the war. Here is a report prepared by Lord Dawson in 1920 - Report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services - that was very influential in the way the NHS was finally put together after the war.
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
My experience suggests that a few will vote Labour and the rest will be too sozzled to care.
Someone should do some polling. I’m not convinced it’ll be as bad for the Tories as made out. Brits abroad are disproportionately old, especially those who’ve been out for over 15 years.
I wonder if we’ll get to see the expat results after the election. That’s one of the fun bits of some foreign elections, particularly the French presidential.
No they're just piled in with the other votes. But OPCS show, or used to, in their constituency data how many overseas electors a seat has.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
I stopped smoking at the beginning of January and switched to vaping. I use my vape in the same way I used to smoke cigarettes and the same times and occasions and I have found the switch seamless. I use a low nicotine fluid so just enough to avoid getting withdrawal anger but now my lungs aren’t full of tar and Carbon Monoxide.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
Well done!
I stopped 24 years ago, and can’t believe I ever started. Couldn’t pay me to smoke now.
Despite being a relatively heavy smoker, 20 a day I’d say, I didn’t find it that difficult to give up; I just did the AA style “I won’t have my first cigarette of the day” and kept putting it off. If I fancied one I’d try to eat a fruit pastille without chewing
it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
It would be like ditching Starmer before the kids have got their free tooth-brushing lessons....
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
The NHS was hardly produced fully-formed from a vaccum. There had been plenty of work looking at how to create some form of national health care before the war. Here is a report prepared by Lord Dawson in 1920 - Report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services - that was very influential in the way the NHS was finally put together after the war.
The labour (and left in general) myth is that there was no health provision before the NHS, and certainly any that there was was ruinessly expensive. Like so much myth, while there is a grain of truth in there somewhere, there was widespread access to healthcare and many charitable foundations existed before 1948. The NHS brought these existing services into one, national, organisation and set up a way to pay for it so that no-one paid when they needed care, but we all paid through tax.
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
My experience suggests that a few will vote Labour and the rest will be too sozzled to care.
Amazingly there were reports of expats who supported brexit..although their characteristics were much more akin to the Leave demographic.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
I stopped smoking at the beginning of January and switched to vaping. I use my vape in the same way I used to smoke cigarettes and the same times and occasions and I have found the switch seamless. I use a low nicotine fluid so just enough to avoid getting withdrawal anger but now my lungs aren’t full of tar and Carbon Monoxide.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
Well done!
I stopped 24 years ago, and can’t believe I ever started. Couldn’t pay me to smoke now.
Despite being a relatively heavy smoker, 20 a day I’d say, I didn’t find it that difficult to give up; I just did the AA style “I won’t have my first cigarette of the day” and kept putting it off. If I fancied one I’d try to eat a fruit pastille without chewing
I recently started going to AA groups for alcohol, and ticked over a month of not drinking at the weekend - probably the longest I've gone without a drink since I was sixteen. AA is a fascinating place with a real gamut of society. For what it's worth I don't think I had an alcohol dependence, but definitely a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with booze, and was on a bad trajectory with it.
Not sure I feel 'better' per se, but I've definitely saved a lot of money and lost a little weight. Still figuring out how to replace alcohol as a defining element of my socialising though.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
I mean, genocide is a legal term and (unfortunately) typically only gets designated as such after the fact. I am happy based on South Africa's evidence to call it a genocide, but I know people here like being pedantic so I didn't want to get pulled up on that.
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
My experience suggests that a few will vote Labour and the rest will be too sozzled to care.
Amazingly there were reports of expats who supported brexit..although their characteristics were much more akin to the Leave demographic.
Oh more than a few and people with 2nd homes or travelling Europe in mobile homes who (when you have a conversation with them) seemed to think it didn't apply to them or would affect them. Astonishing really.
On the topic of things being better or worse than the old days, I’ve noticed a big uptick in stones in my shoes in recent years, necessitating removing them mid-walk and shaking out.
Not sure if this is a universal trend but it’s definitely worse in my lived experience.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
Not really as many think the former is happening whereas I think everyone is convinced that the latter isn't going to happen.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
It would be like ditching Starmer before the kids have got their free tooth-brushing lessons....
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
The NHS was hardly produced fully-formed from a vaccum. There had been plenty of work looking at how to create some form of national health care before the war. Here is a report prepared by Lord Dawson in 1920 - Report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services - that was very influential in the way the NHS was finally put together after the war.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
I mean, genocide is a legal term and (unfortunately) typically only gets designated as such after the fact. I am happy based on South Africa's evidence to call it a genocide, but I know people here like being pedantic so I didn't want to get pulled up on that.
Using the word "Genocide" is quite a well-used rhetorical device and often falls into the same bucket as "woke", "political correctness gone mad", et al.
You are happy for South Africa to have used it and I would say whoop-de-doo. The ICJ said Israel shouldn't engage in genocide which is sort of the thing that you would expect and hope the ICJ to say.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the war rages. Wars are shit and shit things happen in the name of a war aim. Inadvertent, or even intentional bombing of civilian populations is quite common. Usually the victors tend to have dibs on categorisation and nomination. In this case, as @RochdalePioneers notes, a victor will be very hard to identify which means we must come to our own conclusions.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
"UNRWA aid workers"
LOL
Why LOL? What aspect of that statistic are you finding funny?
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
When is the next general election in Gaza? Will Hamas be seeking approval for their manisfesto of slaughtering Jews?
it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
It would be like ditching Starmer before the kids have got their free tooth-brushing lessons....
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
The NHS was hardly produced fully-formed from a vaccum. There had been plenty of work looking at how to create some form of national health care before the war. Here is a report prepared by Lord Dawson in 1920 - Report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services - that was very influential in the way the NHS was finally put together after the war.
it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
It would be like ditching Starmer before the kids have got their free tooth-brushing lessons....
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
The NHS was hardly produced fully-formed from a vaccum. There had been plenty of work looking at how to create some form of national health care before the war. Here is a report prepared by Lord Dawson in 1920 - Report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services - that was very influential in the way the NHS was finally put together after the war.
And part of the grand Tory tradition of regicide, allegedly perpetuated by Agent Truss.
But seriously, a reminder that Conservatism was not always Friedmanite Classical Liberalism, or indeed 30p Lee mean-spirited populism.
Queen Mary wanted to get the news of the King's death out before the papers went to press. It was said.
And yes, the lack of vision - in any party now - is all about getting through to the next election, rather than having a legacy that will take time and money to bed in for future generations.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
I mean, genocide is a legal term and (unfortunately) typically only gets designated as such after the fact. I am happy based on South Africa's evidence to call it a genocide, but I know people here like being pedantic so I didn't want to get pulled up on that.
Using the word "Genocide" is quite a well-used rhetorical device and often falls into the same bucket as "woke", "political correctness gone mad", et al.
You are happy for South Africa to have used it and I would say whoop-de-doo. The ICJ said Israel shouldn't engage in genocide which is sort of the thing that you would expect and hope the ICJ to say.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the war rages. Wars are shit and shit things happen in the name of a war aim. Inadvertent, or even intentional bombing of civilian populations is quite common. Usually the victors tend to have dibs on categorisation and nomination. In this case, as @RochdalePioneers notes, a victor will be very hard to identify which means we must come to our own conclusions.
The lawyer in the Bosnian case discussed online how this is the first step to a full investigation into official designation of a genocide. That the ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction to investigate is similar to saying there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are doing a genocide. You can go back to your usual hand waving of "the powerful will do what they will" all you want - it doesn't change the importance of the situation.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
I think it is absolutely fair to say that ordinary Palestinians are the largest group of victims here. To suggest that Hamas "represent their interests" is hugely disingenuous. It is clear that Hamas abuse ordinary Palestinians, putting them in harm's way to maintain their own power, and to prosecute their war against Israel.
Equally, ordinary Israeli citizens are (and to a lesser extent) put at risk by their Government's actions in Gaza.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
When is the next general election in Gaza? Will Hamas be seeking approval for their manisfesto of slaughtering Jews?
I did say for better or worse, and our government work with other non-democratic and despicable governments (see Saudi Arabia).
it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
It would be like ditching Starmer before the kids have got their free tooth-brushing lessons....
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
The NHS was hardly produced fully-formed from a vaccum. There had been plenty of work looking at how to create some form of national health care before the war. Here is a report prepared by Lord Dawson in 1920 - Report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services - that was very influential in the way the NHS was finally put together after the war.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
The ICJ ruling last week called for all hostages held in Gaza to be released "immediately and unconditionally". Any thoughts on why that hasn't happened, and why you think it should be a matter to be "negotiate[d]"?
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
"UNRWA aid workers"
LOL
Why LOL? What aspect of that statistic are you finding funny?
What am I finding funny? The words UNRWA and aid and worker in that order put together.
it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
It would be like ditching Starmer before the kids have got their free tooth-brushing lessons....
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
The NHS was hardly produced fully-formed from a vaccum. There had been plenty of work looking at how to create some form of national health care before the war. Here is a report prepared by Lord Dawson in 1920 - Report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services - that was very influential in the way the NHS was finally put together after the war.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
When is the next general election in Gaza? Will Hamas be seeking approval for their manisfesto of slaughtering Jews?
I did say for better or worse, and our government work with other non-democratic and despicable governments (see Saudi Arabia).
Hamas only represent Hamas. If they cared for the Palestinians in the power they would stop doing what they are doing.
it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
It would be like ditching Starmer before the kids have got their free tooth-brushing lessons....
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
The NHS was hardly produced fully-formed from a vaccum. There had been plenty of work looking at how to create some form of national health care before the war. Here is a report prepared by Lord Dawson in 1920 - Report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services - that was very influential in the way the NHS was finally put together after the war.
And part of the grand Tory tradition of regicide, allegedly perpetuated by Agent Truss.
But seriously, a reminder that Conservatism was not always Friedmanite Classical Liberalism, or indeed 30p Lee mean-spirited populism.
We are the party of aspiration, low taxes, free markets, better known as One Nation Toryism.
Who is the 'We' in that sentence? Are you coming out as a Daveyite LD?
"Are" or "were"? I don't see anything remotely like the Party of which I was once a member; the world has changed around the Tory party and instead of adapting as it has almost always done before, it appears to have chosen to have a massive convulsion instead.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
I mean, genocide is a legal term and (unfortunately) typically only gets designated as such after the fact. I am happy based on South Africa's evidence to call it a genocide, but I know people here like being pedantic so I didn't want to get pulled up on that.
Using the word "Genocide" is quite a well-used rhetorical device and often falls into the same bucket as "woke", "political correctness gone mad", et al.
You are happy for South Africa to have used it and I would say whoop-de-doo. The ICJ said Israel shouldn't engage in genocide which is sort of the thing that you would expect and hope the ICJ to say.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the war rages. Wars are shit and shit things happen in the name of a war aim. Inadvertent, or even intentional bombing of civilian populations is quite common. Usually the victors tend to have dibs on categorisation and nomination. In this case, as @RochdalePioneers notes, a victor will be very hard to identify which means we must come to our own conclusions.
The lawyer in the Bosnian case discussed online how this is the first step to a full investigation into official designation of a genocide. That the ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction to investigate is similar to saying there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are doing a genocide. You can go back to your usual hand waving of "the powerful will do what they will" all you want - it doesn't change the importance of the situation.
People are dying in large numbers. How large we don't know because Hamas is controlling that narrative but certainly large. Buildings are being flattened, infrastructure is being destroyed.
All fairly war-ish. But South Africa says hold on this is genocide. And some lawyer looks at the supposed body count and says why yes it could be.
Such a sequence could apply to most any conflict of the past 100 years.
Is Israel systematically trying to kill every Palestinian? I don't think it is. Or if it is it is being pretty cack-handed about it.
it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
It would be like ditching Starmer before the kids have got their free tooth-brushing lessons....
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
The NHS was hardly produced fully-formed from a vaccum. There had been plenty of work looking at how to create some form of national health care before the war. Here is a report prepared by Lord Dawson in 1920 - Report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services - that was very influential in the way the NHS was finally put together after the war.
And part of the grand Tory tradition of regicide, allegedly perpetuated by Agent Truss.
But seriously, a reminder that Conservatism was not always Friedmanite Classical Liberalism, or indeed 30p Lee mean-spirited populism.
We are the party of aspiration, low taxes, free markets, better known as One Nation Toryism.
Baldwin, Derby, Disraeli and indeed even many Brexiteers are more protectionist than free market.
Low taxes is an aspiration but despite the recent Hunt tax cuts the rates are still relatively high.
One Nation Toryism really began under Disraeli who was quite big on state intervention to improve the lot of working class voters while also being an imperialist monarchist against the ardent free market Liberal Gladstone
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
The ICJ ruling last week called for all hostages held in Gaza to be released "immediately and unconditionally". Any thoughts on why that hasn't happened, and why you think it should be a matter to be "negotiate[d]"?
It should happen. But the politics is understandable - Hamas want political leverage. Without the hostages they don't have that (which is one of the reasons I also imagine they likely want to be seen as trustworthy to later release hostages, and generally trustworthy to keep hostages alive).
And, as I've mentioned in previous threads, my government and my tax money doesn't fund Hamas. My government and my tax money funds Israel. So I can impact the acts of Israel through my government, and therefore focussing on Israel makes more sense. I do also think that Israel, as the better resourced and politically accepted state entity, has more ability to enforce their decisions then Hamas does theirs - so the fact that the conflict is continuing suggests to me that Israel wants it to continue.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
I mean, genocide is a legal term and (unfortunately) typically only gets designated as such after the fact. I am happy based on South Africa's evidence to call it a genocide, but I know people here like being pedantic so I didn't want to get pulled up on that.
Using the word "Genocide" is quite a well-used rhetorical device and often falls into the same bucket as "woke", "political correctness gone mad", et al.
You are happy for South Africa to have used it and I would say whoop-de-doo. The ICJ said Israel shouldn't engage in genocide which is sort of the thing that you would expect and hope the ICJ to say.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the war rages. Wars are shit and shit things happen in the name of a war aim. Inadvertent, or even intentional bombing of civilian populations is quite common. Usually the victors tend to have dibs on categorisation and nomination. In this case, as @RochdalePioneers notes, a victor will be very hard to identify which means we must come to our own conclusions.
The lawyer in the Bosnian case discussed online how this is the first step to a full investigation into official designation of a genocide. That the ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction to investigate is similar to saying there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are doing a genocide. You can go back to your usual hand waving of "the powerful will do what they will" all you want - it doesn't change the importance of the situation.
People are dying in large numbers. How large we don't know because Hamas is controlling that narrative but certainly large. Buildings are being flattened, infrastructure is being destroyed.
All fairly war-ish. But South Africa says hold on this is genocide. And some lawyer looks at the supposed body count and says why yes it could be.
Such a sequence could apply to most any conflict of the past 100 years.
Is Israel systematically trying to kill every Palestinian? I don't think it is. Or if it is it is being pretty cack-handed about it.
But you see Genocide is defined in a different way to what most of us understand. A bit like poverty. Very few people in the UK are in absolute poverty, but millions are in relative poverty, and still would be if you gave everyone in the country 10,000 pounds. Because it is a measure not of poverty, but of inequality.
Genocide to most people is what happened in the Holocaust, it is not what Israel is doing. But we will get a response from the Hamas spokesperson on PB that many people think it is Genocide so it is.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
"UNRWA aid workers"
LOL
Why LOL? What aspect of that statistic are you finding funny?
What am I finding funny? The words UNRWA and aid and worker in that order put together.
LOL x2
So the idea that people who work for the UN providing aid for Gazans being killed is funny?
"And, probably my most controversial opinion- I cannot see the problem in Trans being able to have some say on which gendered prison they go to. Again, subject to the prison authorities and a medical opinion. I've been in a lot of prisons over the years with work, including women's prisons where the person would be much safer in a gender prison they felt more aligned to."
The misogyny on display here is quite something.
Let's ignore for the moment Art. 3 of the ECHR or the Mandela Principles on prisons.
The women prisoners are not even mentioned and the idea that they should have a say or, even, a veto on whether a male offender should be locked up with them simply does not even occur to him. Women prisoners must simply put up with the risk or reality of rape or violence or indecent exposure or voyeurism. Because their rights or views don't matter.
And then @kinabalu has the nerve to say that trans rights are at risk of being rolled back. No they aren't: in this country trans people have exactly the same legal rights as everyone else. There is no political party which has put forward any proposal to remove any of these legal rights. What they do not have and should not have is the right to take away the rights of others - the right of women to single sex spaces, services or associations, for instance. And yet that is the explicit campaigning position of trans activist groups. It is the explicit position of such groups to want the removal of one type of offence of rape - rape by deception. Very progressive, that: wanting to be able to deceive women into sex.
But, hey, who cares about consent!
And what is also very common is those who come out with this totally ignore the court judgments which women have been winning in recent years, funded by endless crowd-funding, to preserve their existing rights. Those judgments are long but are worth reading, especially by those who opine on the law without understanding it, without understanding why ignoring what the law says causes real harm to others and without understanding the reality of what women have endured.
There is something deeply unpleasant about the way in which any woman talking about women's' rights or needs or the reality of what life is like because of their sex is almost always automatically attacked as bigoted or hateful because she does not centre or deem as the only important thing the demands of men.
I expect the usual suspects will do this to me too. But, fuck it, I don't care. Women are not support animals for men. Men's demands are not "rights". Men's feelings are not more important than anyone else's. Women's rights are human rights. Anyone seeking to limit or remove them is not, in any sense, "progressive" or "liberal".
Reforms that were a matter of broad consensus a few years ago have now become politically untouchable. This indicates a direction of travel. It shows who's been winning the debate. It isn't the 'pro' side.
We'll see where it goes from here. Will there be a tightening rather than a loosening of criteria for transition? Will the priority within health spending for this area be upped or lowered? Will there be an increase or a decrease in the level of transgender inclusion in society? What about the GRA? Will there be pressure to repeal or modify it?
I don't know, nor do you or anyone else. I'm not predicting anything. The (junked) GRR reforms might come back and be implemented. But given how the debate has been going it's imo as likely the next moves, legal and otherwise, will be in the opposite direction. That's what I said, it's a reasonable observation, and it really didn't take much nerve.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
The ICJ ruling last week called for all hostages held in Gaza to be released "immediately and unconditionally". Any thoughts on why that hasn't happened, and why you think it should be a matter to be "negotiate[d]"?
It should happen. But the politics is understandable - Hamas want political leverage. Without the hostages they don't have that (which is one of the reasons I also imagine they likely want to be seen as trustworthy to later release hostages, and generally trustworthy to keep hostages alive).
And, as I've mentioned in previous threads, my government and my tax money doesn't fund Hamas. My government and my tax money funds Israel. So I can impact the acts of Israel through my government, and therefore focussing on Israel makes more sense. I do also think that Israel, as the better resourced and politically accepted state entity, has more ability to enforce their decisions then Hamas does theirs - so the fact that the conflict is continuing suggests to me that Israel wants it to continue.
"My government and my tax money funds Israel" please explain how? UK government aid goes to Gaza as far as I understand.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
"UNRWA aid workers"
LOL
Why LOL? What aspect of that statistic are you finding funny?
What am I finding funny? The words UNRWA and aid and worker in that order put together.
LOL x2
So the idea that people who work for the UN providing aid for Gazans being killed is funny?
Whatever their state, alive or dead, "UNRWA aid workers" is a bloody funny line.
I think it's easy to look at the past with rose-tinted spectacles.
I have nostalgia for the 80s and I also remember cigarettes being utterly endemic, so much so that I hid behind my mother's dress when going shopping with her in a vain attempt to avoid breathing it in on the streets, and that bullying in schools was far more common and not considered anything more than boisterous behaviour and even character building. I was encouraged by a teacher to man-up and punch back to make it stop. Groups of young men/ teenagers were in general bad news and to be avoided, so I stayed at home and only went out with parents/schoolteachers.
The range and quality of food for eating out was also very limited, and basically non-existant in pubs, which is why our eyes lit up at any American fast food/diner place (like TGI Fridays) that I now find disgusting. And the range of consumer products available was improving but far off the quality it reached in the 1990s.
I think if any of us actually time-travelled we'd quickly be shocked and rapidly beat a path back to the present day.
Yes but that is just progress. As I've said before, Henry VIII had many palaces but would now be called poor because he had no mobile phone.
"I got student grants!" is fine to say: until you realise the person saying that was exceedingly lucky to get into uni in the first place. They were not usual; and the people who did not go to uni paid for those grants. Perhaps that was a worthwhile expenditure for the good of the nation; or perhaps not, as that generation (nearly my generation now...) appear to be the ones who fu**ed up the country, according to the smashed-glassers.
The few who went to university got a grant, now many go and get loans instead. The idea that university education was more accessible in the past is laughably ill-informed, that view would probably make a good test for filtering admission today.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
I mean, genocide is a legal term and (unfortunately) typically only gets designated as such after the fact. I am happy based on South Africa's evidence to call it a genocide, but I know people here like being pedantic so I didn't want to get pulled up on that.
Using the word "Genocide" is quite a well-used rhetorical device and often falls into the same bucket as "woke", "political correctness gone mad", et al.
You are happy for South Africa to have used it and I would say whoop-de-doo. The ICJ said Israel shouldn't engage in genocide which is sort of the thing that you would expect and hope the ICJ to say.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the war rages. Wars are shit and shit things happen in the name of a war aim. Inadvertent, or even intentional bombing of civilian populations is quite common. Usually the victors tend to have dibs on categorisation and nomination. In this case, as @RochdalePioneers notes, a victor will be very hard to identify which means we must come to our own conclusions.
The lawyer in the Bosnian case discussed online how this is the first step to a full investigation into official designation of a genocide. That the ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction to investigate is similar to saying there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are doing a genocide. You can go back to your usual hand waving of "the powerful will do what they will" all you want - it doesn't change the importance of the situation.
People are dying in large numbers. How large we don't know because Hamas is controlling that narrative but certainly large. Buildings are being flattened, infrastructure is being destroyed.
All fairly war-ish. But South Africa says hold on this is genocide. And some lawyer looks at the supposed body count and says why yes it could be.
Such a sequence could apply to most any conflict of the past 100 years.
Is Israel systematically trying to kill every Palestinian? I don't think it is. Or if it is it is being pretty cack-handed about it.
But you see Genocide is defined in a different way to what most of us understand. A bit like poverty. Very few people in the UK are in absolute poverty, but millions are in relative poverty, and still would be if you gave everyone in the country 10,000 pounds. Because it is a measure not of poverty, but of inequality.
Genocide to most people is what happened in the Holocaust, it is not what Israel is doing. But we will get a response from the Hamas spokesperson on PB that many people think it is Genocide so it is.
The ICJ defined genocide as recognised by international law. South Africa put forward the argument for why what Israel is doing falls under that definition. The ICJ will continue to investigate if that is the case. I am, personally, content with what South Africa presented and the argument they put forward - as well as recognising the lack of argument put forward by the Israeli defence. I would also say, having read many legal analyses of the arguments, that many lawyers who were willing to give Israel the benefit of the doubt were surprised at both the strength of South Africa's case and the weakness of Israel's case.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
The ICJ ruling last week called for all hostages held in Gaza to be released "immediately and unconditionally". Any thoughts on why that hasn't happened, and why you think it should be a matter to be "negotiate[d]"?
It should happen. But the politics is understandable - Hamas want political leverage. Without the hostages they don't have that (which is one of the reasons I also imagine they likely want to be seen as trustworthy to later release hostages, and generally trustworthy to keep hostages alive).
And, as I've mentioned in previous threads, my government and my tax money doesn't fund Hamas. My government and my tax money funds Israel. So I can impact the acts of Israel through my government, and therefore focussing on Israel makes more sense. I do also think that Israel, as the better resourced and politically accepted state entity, has more ability to enforce their decisions then Hamas does theirs - so the fact that the conflict is continuing suggests to me that Israel wants it to continue.
Would the "politics be understandable" if Israel refused to co-operate with one of the ICJ demands (say, for the sake of argument, the one about allowing more aid in to Gaza), or does your messed-up logic only allow for one side to commit war crimes for political gain?
Also, you're entirely wrong that your "tax money" doesn't fund Hamas, although that takes us back full circle to you refusing to acknowledge that UNRWA are up to their eyeballs in this.
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I'm unsure quite what that's got to do with my post. I'm not talking about 'British pride'; but neither am I interested in 'British shame'. We're far from perfect, and I doubt I've ever suggested otherwise. We can improve a great deal - and hopefully the next (Labour) government will make progress.
But to listen to some people, you'd think we all lived in hovels with outside toilets, no running water and electricity powered by methane piped in from the local urchin farm. That there was mass unemployment and a gunman on every street corner.
That isn't a reason to vote Conservative, or indeed for anyone; just that people who are constantly utterly negative have probably lost all perspective.
Let me put it this way; one of the reasons the Post Office scandal has eventually struck the public's consciousness so strongly is that it seems so utterly against the way we think things should work in this country. And rightly so. But in many, many countries, what happened - and worse - would be accepted with a shrug and be seen as utterly unnoteworthy - "it's the way things are done."
We should not try to change that.
I suspect we are mostly on PB in the luxurious position of living in expensive, and comfortable homes. We are fortunate.
I have seen for myself (my wife was involved in parent and child foster caring for a number of years) and I saw poverty of an order I had no idea existed. We have ex-servicemen living in tents that Suella Braverman wanted to remove from them. We have families dispossessed of their homes and sent to local authority emergency accomodation. We live in a society that it more inequitable than it was a decade ago. To drive such inequality further is immoral. Maybe Labour can't do anything about it. The Conservatives on the other hand won't even try.
One nation feudal Tories in this iteration of the Conservative Party are a thing of the past.
I agree there is poverty. We need to change that. What I disagree with is this idea that ye olden days were any less shit. From everything I've heard, they were far worse. People are far too keen to wear rose-coloured spectacles about the past.
Again, that does not mean that we do not need to improve things.
When I was at school we had the working poor. They were my school friends. They lived in good quality local authority housing, they had free health care, the school dentist, local authority swimming pools, libraries, school libraries, an equitable education system, free school meals, playgrounds, playing fields, subsidised works canteens, affordable public transport and public utilities that did their best not to cut off late payers. Bosses who's salary was a few notches up from the workers as opposed to now when Captains of Industry have earned the average salary by the 10th of January.
Yes at the time we were the sick man of Europe, but we were also a fairer, happier society. The right of centre argument is all this "free" stuff is unsustainable. I would warrant the average FTSE CEO earning 30 pr 40 times the average salary is even more unsustainable. And I repeat, people like Robert Jenrick and Braverman couldn't give two hoots for the welfare of British citizens, they are too busy feathering their own meaningless ambitions. What kind of moral vacuum paints over Disney characters at a children's asylum centre, or removes tents from destitute PTSD suffering ex-soldiers?
When were you at school, for I think the "fairer, happier society" might well be wrong, particularly depending on the definitions of 'fair' and 'happy'.
I'll tackle one of your examples: "an equitable education system". It wasn't. I've given this anecdote before, and I'll give it again: I used to know two men who grew up in the late seventies. Both worked in a mining area. Both were told by teachers that there was little point in getting an education, as they would just end up working down the mine. They were thrown on the education scrapheap by teachers. Then there's access to higher education, which is far more accessible than it was. That is a great social leveller.
In fact, I think what you're suffering from has been common throughout time: older people looking back on their youth and saying :" thing were better then. The youth of today..." etc, etc. when you were at school, many adults would have been saying exactly what you're saying now. Yet times have not objectively got worse. I and other have given examples of exactly how things have got better, and you ignore them.
I'm not saying this as some form of advert for the Conservatives - I want this lot gone, or as some form of we-need-to-do-nothing - we can always do better, and must. I'm saying that your style of unending misery and "everything's terrible" doesn't do a jot of good.
Sorry but as a student you used to get a grant for your living costs and while it wasn’t much it was enough to rent a room and buy food.
Now students get a loan which doesn’t even cover the rent required. Worse payments are expected at times that don’t match the loan payments so unless your family has £1000 or so available to lend to your son / daughter for a week you have a big problem.
And how many 'students' were there? And what social backgrounds did they predominantly come from? Is the massive increase in higher education students, and the increasing diversity of their backgrounds, a bad thing in your eyes? Or just because you were 'lucky' to go into higher education, do you want to go back to those days?
If you were a higher education student back then, then you were lucky. Not because of student grants, but because you were a student. It was a route closed off to far too many, often because of background, not lack of talent.
But yet again, people look at the top end. What about the bottom end? How about school leaving ages? Raised to 16 in 1972.
Are you still sure they were better days?
Did I say they were better days - my point was that the days of higher education being a means of social escape have now truly gone - and that’s before the cascade of university bankruptcies kicks off over the new few months
I'd argue *exactly* the opposite: the increase in numbers of people attending higher education (now, perhaps sadly, meaning uni most of the time) has massively increased 'social escape'.
As I've said before: back in the late 70s we had men being told they weren't worth educating, as they were going to work in the mines. That sort of attitude has hopefully, and thankfully, disappeared.
It's a mixed picture. Overall social mobility now is lower than it was back then. There will be pockets of "winners and losers" within that, that can be referred to anecdotally.
Is social mobility lower? Figures, please.
And if it is lower, is it because there are fewer people to move upwards?
The drop is particularly down to the increased need for inheritance in order to buy a house, and the concentration of high paying jobs in London and SE.
Or lack of grammar schools, which were one of the engines of social mobility.
I'd argue that good sixth form colleges (which would benefit from better funding) are a much stronger engine of social mobility these days.
Of the top 100 schools by Oxbridge entry which are not independent schools, 23 are grammar schools, 22 sixth form/fe colleges and just 7 comprehensives or academies
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
I think a lot of it will come down to organization though, of which Labour seem to have... not much?
In fairness I just checked and they did manage to get the fact that we can now vote into an email to paid-up members of the Labour Party, albeit 3 pages down an email entitled "LI international newsletter" sandwiched between "Conference Reports" and "Special Events".
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
I do find it funny that the Tories do things and then are criticised for being stupid because it doesn’t help them.
Clearly they must be stupid because no one would make a change to the electoral system except for partisan reasons.
Do you think it’s possible that they are making the change because they believe that it’s the *right* thing to do and don’t care about the electoral consequences?
I think it's easy to look at the past with rose-tinted spectacles.
I have nostalgia for the 80s and I also remember cigarettes being utterly endemic, so much so that I hid behind my mother's dress when going shopping with her in a vain attempt to avoid breathing it in on the streets, and that bullying in schools was far more common and not considered anything more than boisterous behaviour and even character building. I was encouraged by a teacher to man-up and punch back to make it stop. Groups of young men/ teenagers were in general bad news and to be avoided, so I stayed at home and only went out with parents/schoolteachers.
The range and quality of food for eating out was also very limited, and basically non-existant in pubs, which is why our eyes lit up at any American fast food/diner place (like TGI Fridays) that I now find disgusting. And the range of consumer products available was improving but far off the quality it reached in the 1990s.
I think if any of us actually time-travelled we'd quickly be shocked and rapidly beat a path back to the present day.
This is absolutely true. I think we do forget how far we have come in the last 30-40 years.
Even in the last 5, while there has been a lot of things that have not gone well, we have seen (as a side effect of COVID) much more flexible working practices for a large majority of people, for instance. For many, the idea of waking up at 6am every morning, 5 days a week, to put on a suit/formal work dress and commute an hour, say, to the office (and then an hour back), has changed completely. Yes there have been some downsides to that, but on the whole it is a positive change. Progress is not a straight line.
Less of us are smoking and drinking than we were 10 years ago. Fitness services are booming. The stigma around discussing mental health, whilst sadly still there, is continuing to gradually recede.
We do however have a number of problems with mismanagement of public services and the overall economy, and the government is rightly being blamed for that.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
The ICJ ruling last week called for all hostages held in Gaza to be released "immediately and unconditionally". Any thoughts on why that hasn't happened, and why you think it should be a matter to be "negotiate[d]"?
It should happen. But the politics is understandable - Hamas want political leverage. Without the hostages they don't have that (which is one of the reasons I also imagine they likely want to be seen as trustworthy to later release hostages, and generally trustworthy to keep hostages alive).
And, as I've mentioned in previous threads, my government and my tax money doesn't fund Hamas. My government and my tax money funds Israel. So I can impact the acts of Israel through my government, and therefore focussing on Israel makes more sense. I do also think that Israel, as the better resourced and politically accepted state entity, has more ability to enforce their decisions then Hamas does theirs - so the fact that the conflict is continuing suggests to me that Israel wants it to continue.
"My government and my tax money funds Israel" please explain how? UK government aid goes to Gaza as far as I understand.
We have deployed military aid to Israel since October 7th.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
"UNRWA aid workers"
LOL
Why LOL? What aspect of that statistic are you finding funny?
What am I finding funny? The words UNRWA and aid and worker in that order put together.
LOL x2
So the idea that people who work for the UN providing aid for Gazans being killed is funny?
Whatever their state, alive or dead, "UNRWA aid workers" is a bloody funny line.
So you straight up do not accept that UNRWA do aid work?
Or lack of grammar schools, which were one of the engines of social mobility.
Does anyone have a link showing which Education Secretary closed the most grammar schools?
It was Shirley Williams and Tony Crosland who as Labour Education Secretaries most pushed conversion of grammars to comprehensives.
Thatcher did not stop mainly Labour councils doing the same from 1970-74 under PM Heath's orders but by the end of the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments in 1997 more pupils were in grammar schools than had been in 1979
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
As someone from a Jewish family (I worship other, better gods) - her kind of comment comes across as “All lives matter”
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
The ICJ ruling last week called for all hostages held in Gaza to be released "immediately and unconditionally". Any thoughts on why that hasn't happened, and why you think it should be a matter to be "negotiate[d]"?
It should happen. But the politics is understandable - Hamas want political leverage. Without the hostages they don't have that (which is one of the reasons I also imagine they likely want to be seen as trustworthy to later release hostages, and generally trustworthy to keep hostages alive).
And, as I've mentioned in previous threads, my government and my tax money doesn't fund Hamas. My government and my tax money funds Israel. So I can impact the acts of Israel through my government, and therefore focussing on Israel makes more sense. I do also think that Israel, as the better resourced and politically accepted state entity, has more ability to enforce their decisions then Hamas does theirs - so the fact that the conflict is continuing suggests to me that Israel wants it to continue.
"My government and my tax money funds Israel" please explain how? UK government aid goes to Gaza as far as I understand.
We have deployed military aid to Israel since October 7th.
What aid have we given? Not clear from a quick internet search.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
The ICJ ruling last week called for all hostages held in Gaza to be released "immediately and unconditionally". Any thoughts on why that hasn't happened, and why you think it should be a matter to be "negotiate[d]"?
It should happen. But the politics is understandable - Hamas want political leverage. Without the hostages they don't have that (which is one of the reasons I also imagine they likely want to be seen as trustworthy to later release hostages, and generally trustworthy to keep hostages alive).
And, as I've mentioned in previous threads, my government and my tax money doesn't fund Hamas. My government and my tax money funds Israel. So I can impact the acts of Israel through my government, and therefore focussing on Israel makes more sense. I do also think that Israel, as the better resourced and politically accepted state entity, has more ability to enforce their decisions then Hamas does theirs - so the fact that the conflict is continuing suggests to me that Israel wants it to continue.
Of course Israel wants it to continue.
Netanyahu has always opposed a two-state solution; he basically just wants the Palestinians to piss off. That's why he has allowed and encouraged the rise of Hamas in Gaza in the expectation that, sooner or later, they would launch some form of reprisal against for the intolerable conditions imposed on the Palestinians.
The October 7th attacks were probably more then he expected, but they do of course provide the perfect opportunity for Israel to implement its own final solution for the Palestinian problem, and with the blessing of all the useful idiots around the world.
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
I do find it funny that the Tories do things and then are criticised for being stupid because it doesn’t help them.
Clearly they must be stupid because no one would make a change to the electoral system except for partisan reasons.
Do you think it’s possible that they are making the change because they believe that it’s the *right* thing to do and don’t care about the electoral consequences?
Certainly possible, but unlikely given their track record of both self-interest and political stupidity (a dazzling combo).
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
"UNRWA aid workers"
LOL
Why LOL? What aspect of that statistic are you finding funny?
What am I finding funny? The words UNRWA and aid and worker in that order put together.
LOL x2
So the idea that people who work for the UN providing aid for Gazans being killed is funny?
Whatever their state, alive or dead, "UNRWA aid workers" is a bloody funny line.
So you straight up do not accept that UNRWA do aid work?
I accept that Harold Shipman gave out antibiotics prescriptions.
Rather fun. The crux is “‘nous’ is too formal - use ‘on’ instead”.
Imagine that in English. “It’s too formal to say ‘We are going to the shops.’ Instead, for a more relaxed spoken vibe, say ‘One is going to the shops.’”
What do they say in the 'Received Pronunciation' areas of the Isle de France?
That's the one not to use if you want to be credible .
Prejudiced - Moi?
I've been told that the word 'nous' is very rarely used in spoken French; it has been supplanted by 'on'.
Research on the topic is however thin on the ground.
You could have worded that better - more en pointe. Should more nous next time 😁
The Post Office scandal - on top of many others - has so severely dented my belief in the capacity or willingness of the state or its institutions, including the legal system, to avoid doing harm or put right its mistakes, that I seriously wonder whether there is any point to politics at all.
Why should I trust the state when I see how badly it behaves? Why should I bother doing the right thing when it does not even try to do likewise? When those who behave like scoundrels are rewarded and praised? And the rest of us treated like mugs?
I will not be voting for the Tories. But as of now I am disinclined to vote for anyone at all. They all seem rotten, self-serving and incompetent. They have done a great deal to break the bonds of trust which should exist in a well-ordered society. They are doing very little to earn it, to earn mine anyway. Until they do, I am not at all inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They either don't want my vote or take me for granted. So, frankly, they can fuck right off and come back when they have learnt as a bare minimum how to behave with a modicum of integrity, competence and basic decency.
I can understand why you say that, and feel that way myself at times, but I'll also counter it. The 'state' generally does reasonably well. Things certainly are not as good as they can be thanks to the current government, but we're nowhere near (say) South Africa's levels of chaos. Not that we should be aiming for comparisons that low, but there is a comparison to be made.
Employment is high. The economy is, if not good, not terrible. The bins get collected. Most of us can see a doctor in a reasonable timeframe - for free. Things generally work, albeit somewhat chaotically. The 'state' makes mistakes - but it always has. And there are an awful lot of good workers within, and without, the state; people who work hard and diligently for both themselves and others. Yet we hear about the scoundrels.
Also, I'd say most politicians are good people, albeit flawed, as are we all. Some are sometimes put into positions they do not have the capability to do well, but there are few I would count as truly venal. And some who are absolute stars (IMO George Howarth being one such). But we rarely get to hear about them, as they just get on with their jobs.
I'd also add that I think there are very few states that are doing really well at the moment, particularly of the large economies, and not a single country has zero problems or issues. Neither is it realistic to expect that.
There's no other country I'd prefer to live in, if I was rich, or if I was poor.
I used to be a real w***** when it came to British pride. I would only buy politically British consumer goods including cars, ( wearing a little union flag under the bumper of my new Cologne built Ford Capri. I worshipped the BBC (I detest them now). I hated the notion that foreign asset strippers could defile our industrial crown jewels, and here we are with Tata dismantling our last remaining virgin steel works. Yes, I was a real buyer of pups.
From 2016 I was told by self-styled patriots like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Richard Tice and Arron Banks that people like me were traitors. Some of these people even made their fortunes betting against Britain.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats may be as disastrous as the PB faithful claim, and Starmer and Davey haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, but anything that gets rid of the self-serving grifters who have hijacked my country over the last decade can't come soon enough for me. My expectation however, is through sleight of hand or good fortune they will once again prevail, and take our once great nation further down the road to ruin.
I'm unsure quite what that's got to do with my post. I'm not talking about 'British pride'; but neither am I interested in 'British shame'. We're far from perfect, and I doubt I've ever suggested otherwise. We can improve a great deal - and hopefully the next (Labour) government will make progress.
But to listen to some people, you'd think we all lived in hovels with outside toilets, no running water and electricity powered by methane piped in from the local urchin farm. That there was mass unemployment and a gunman on every street corner.
That isn't a reason to vote Conservative, or indeed for anyone; just that people who are constantly utterly negative have probably lost all perspective.
Let me put it this way; one of the reasons the Post Office scandal has eventually struck the public's consciousness so strongly is that it seems so utterly against the way we think things should work in this country. And rightly so. But in many, many countries, what happened - and worse - would be accepted with a shrug and be seen as utterly unnoteworthy - "it's the way things are done."
We should not try to change that.
I suspect we are mostly on PB in the luxurious position of living in expensive, and comfortable homes. We are fortunate.
I have seen for myself (my wife was involved in parent and child foster caring for a number of years) and I saw poverty of an order I had no idea existed. We have ex-servicemen living in tents that Suella Braverman wanted to remove from them. We have families dispossessed of their homes and sent to local authority emergency accomodation. We live in a society that it more inequitable than it was a decade ago. To drive such inequality further is immoral. Maybe Labour can't do anything about it. The Conservatives on the other hand won't even try.
One nation feudal Tories in this iteration of the Conservative Party are a thing of the past.
I agree there is poverty. We need to change that. What I disagree with is this idea that ye olden days were any less shit. From everything I've heard, they were far worse. People are far too keen to wear rose-coloured spectacles about the past.
Again, that does not mean that we do not need to improve things.
When I was at school we had the working poor. They were my school friends. They lived in good quality local authority housing, they had free health care, the school dentist, local authority swimming pools, libraries, school libraries, an equitable education system, free school meals, playgrounds, playing fields, subsidised works canteens, affordable public transport and public utilities that did their best not to cut off late payers. Bosses who's salary was a few notches up from the workers as opposed to now when Captains of Industry have earned the average salary by the 10th of January.
Yes at the time we were the sick man of Europe, but we were also a fairer, happier society. The right of centre argument is all this "free" stuff is unsustainable. I would warrant the average FTSE CEO earning 30 pr 40 times the average salary is even more unsustainable. And I repeat, people like Robert Jenrick and Braverman couldn't give two hoots for the welfare of British citizens, they are too busy feathering their own meaningless ambitions. What kind of moral vacuum paints over Disney characters at a children's asylum centre, or removes tents from destitute PTSD suffering ex-soldiers?
When were you at school, for I think the "fairer, happier society" might well be wrong, particularly depending on the definitions of 'fair' and 'happy'.
I'll tackle one of your examples: "an equitable education system". It wasn't. I've given this anecdote before, and I'll give it again: I used to know two men who grew up in the late seventies. Both worked in a mining area. Both were told by teachers that there was little point in getting an education, as they would just end up working down the mine. They were thrown on the education scrapheap by teachers. Then there's access to higher education, which is far more accessible than it was. That is a great social leveller.
In fact, I think what you're suffering from has been common throughout time: older people looking back on their youth and saying :" thing were better then. The youth of today..." etc, etc. when you were at school, many adults would have been saying exactly what you're saying now. Yet times have not objectively got worse. I and other have given examples of exactly how things have got better, and you ignore them.
I'm not saying this as some form of advert for the Conservatives - I want this lot gone, or as some form of we-need-to-do-nothing - we can always do better, and must. I'm saying that your style of unending misery and "everything's terrible" doesn't do a jot of good.
Sorry but as a student you used to get a grant for your living costs and while it wasn’t much it was enough to rent a room and buy food.
Now students get a loan which doesn’t even cover the rent required. Worse payments are expected at times that don’t match the loan payments so unless your family has £1000 or so available to lend to your son / daughter for a week you have a big problem.
And how many 'students' were there? And what social backgrounds did they predominantly come from? Is the massive increase in higher education students, and the increasing diversity of their backgrounds, a bad thing in your eyes? Or just because you were 'lucky' to go into higher education, do you want to go back to those days?
If you were a higher education student back then, then you were lucky. Not because of student grants, but because you were a student. It was a route closed off to far too many, often because of background, not lack of talent.
But yet again, people look at the top end. What about the bottom end? How about school leaving ages? Raised to 16 in 1972.
Are you still sure they were better days?
Did I say they were better days - my point was that the days of higher education being a means of social escape have now truly gone - and that’s before the cascade of university bankruptcies kicks off over the new few months
I'd argue *exactly* the opposite: the increase in numbers of people attending higher education (now, perhaps sadly, meaning uni most of the time) has massively increased 'social escape'.
As I've said before: back in the late 70s we had men being told they weren't worth educating, as they were going to work in the mines. That sort of attitude has hopefully, and thankfully, disappeared.
It's a mixed picture. Overall social mobility now is lower than it was back then. There will be pockets of "winners and losers" within that, that can be referred to anecdotally.
Is social mobility lower? Figures, please.
And if it is lower, is it because there are fewer people to move upwards?
The drop is particularly down to the increased need for inheritance in order to buy a house, and the concentration of high paying jobs in London and SE.
'The IFS said there were also striking differences between ethnic groups, including a difference of £8,000 in the earnings of young men from a black Caribbean background who grew up on free school meals compared with someone from an Indian background.
It also found that men from Pakistani, black African and black Caribbean backgrounds who grew up on free school meals end up earning less than white men who had been in the same position.'
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
What are your views on UNRWA officials lending vehicles to Hamas for the October 7 attacks? And for allowing hostages to be held at their facilities?
Comments
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
A sleight more than made up by Tories declaring her the nation's greatest Prime Minister. That was clearly Harold Wilson.
(Grabs tin hat!)
Milk was removed in 3 stages
1 - by Ted Short for secondary schools
2 - by Fatcha for Junior Schools
3 - by Shirley Williams for Primary schools
Mrs T got labelled with the Milk Snatcher monicker, primarily I believe, as it rhymed.
In 1968 Edward Short, the Labour Secretary of State for Education and Science, withdrew free milk from secondary schools. His successor, Conservative Margaret Thatcher withdrew free school milk from children over seven in 1971. She is still denounced as a 'milk snatcher'. I am uncertain of the position now for the youngest and poorest of school children.
https://www.1900s.org.uk/free-school-milk.htm
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
https://twitter.com/Israel_katz/status/1751153470617379008
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Shirley Williams removed it from infants schools during the 74-79 govt too.
I remember my free school milk when I was in infant schools at the time.
Mrs T only removed it from Junior school kids. 7-11.
If you want to actually ban drugs successfully, you need to police them like they do in Singapore or Bangkok, which means a massive increase in the prison population, thanks to life sentences for small-time teenage dealers.
I'll watch it.
Good video (38mins) on Ukraine/Russia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f95CY7gJWoI
https://twitter.com/corbyn_project/status/1751186523515458023?link_id=4&can_id=b64611f4630a0fb4878f4059d69caa69&source=email-city-default-lets-tell-barclays-to-stopbankingongenocide-7&email_referrer=email_2185522&email_subject=never-again
Is Rishi Sunk going to start the ban before the next Election?
of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
Parliamentary selection is the toughest bit of our political system. But it was a privilege to try.
My piece in @theipaper today
https://x.com/paulwaugh/status/1751883038886150517?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
One of those things that's really bizarre to do by age rather than school year. And, I would suggest, really quite pointless overall anyway. Free school meals in the first few years - and longer for those eligible, if of decent quality, do much more in getting needed nutrients into children.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
(Chateau Romford, from whatever the grapes growing on our garden fence are, is merrily bubbling away as we speak.)
Tobacco and vapes... rather less so.
Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
And guess what - the Holocaust is political. Zionism is political. Genocide is political. All these things are political and, of course, it is the realm of politics that politicians work in.
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
71.2% of UK adults drink alcohol at least once a week.
The case for banning smoking and not drinking is that it is possible to ban smoking and not possible to ban drinking. There are practical limits to what is achievable, even if it might not be logically consistent.
Not that I would ban tobacco, myself. I'm mystified by those who are apparently in favour of banning tobacco and legalising cannabis. What a mess that would be.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
I have nostalgia for the 80s and I also remember cigarettes being utterly endemic, so much so that I hid behind my mother's dress when going shopping with her in a vain attempt to avoid breathing it in on the streets, and that bullying in schools was far more common and not considered anything more than boisterous behaviour and even character building. I was encouraged by a teacher to man-up and punch back to make it stop. Groups of young men/ teenagers were in general bad news and to be avoided, so I stayed at home and only went out with parents/schoolteachers.
The range and quality of food for eating out was also very limited, and basically non-existant in pubs, which is why our eyes lit up at any American fast food/diner place (like TGI Fridays) that I now find disgusting. And the range of consumer products available was improving but far off the quality it reached in the 1990s.
I think if any of us actually time-travelled we'd quickly be shocked and rapidly beat a path back to the present day.
https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/2019-11/nhs-history-book/48-57/dawson-report.html
Lord Dawson was a Conservative.
I stopped 24 years ago, and can’t believe I ever started. Couldn’t pay me to smoke now.
Despite being a relatively heavy smoker, 20 a day I’d say, I didn’t find it that difficult to give up; I just did the AA style “I won’t have my first cigarette of the day” and kept putting it off. If I fancied one I’d try to eat a fruit pastille without chewing
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Not sure I feel 'better' per se, but I've definitely saved a lot of money and lost a little weight. Still figuring out how to replace alcohol as a defining element of my socialising though.
Not sure if this is a universal trend but it’s definitely worse in my lived experience.
But seriously, a reminder that Conservatism was not always Friedmanite Classical Liberalism, or indeed 30p Lee mean-spirited populism.
You are happy for South Africa to have used it and I would say whoop-de-doo. The ICJ said Israel shouldn't engage in genocide which is sort of the thing that you would expect and hope the ICJ to say.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the war rages. Wars are shit and shit things happen in the name of a war aim. Inadvertent, or even intentional bombing of civilian populations is quite common. Usually the victors tend to have dibs on categorisation and nomination. In this case, as @RochdalePioneers notes, a victor will be very hard to identify which means we must come to our own conclusions.
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
LOL
And yes, the lack of vision - in any party now - is all about getting through to the next election, rather than having a legacy that will take time and money to bed in for future generations.
Equally, ordinary Israeli citizens are (and to a lesser extent) put at risk by their Government's actions in Gaza.
LOL x2
All fairly war-ish. But South Africa says hold on this is genocide. And some lawyer looks at the supposed body count and says why yes it could be.
Such a sequence could apply to most any conflict of the past 100 years.
Is Israel systematically trying to kill every Palestinian? I don't think it is. Or if it is it is being pretty cack-handed about it.
Low taxes is an aspiration but despite the recent Hunt tax cuts the rates are still relatively high.
One Nation Toryism really began under Disraeli who was quite big on state intervention to improve the lot of working class voters while also being an imperialist monarchist against the ardent free market Liberal Gladstone
And, as I've mentioned in previous threads, my government and my tax money doesn't fund Hamas. My government and my tax money funds Israel. So I can impact the acts of Israel through my government, and therefore focussing on Israel makes more sense. I do also think that Israel, as the better resourced and politically accepted state entity, has more ability to enforce their decisions then Hamas does theirs - so the fact that the conflict is continuing suggests to me that Israel wants it to continue.
Genocide to most people is what happened in the Holocaust, it is not what Israel is doing. But we will get a response from the Hamas spokesperson on PB that many people think it is Genocide so it is.
We'll see where it goes from here. Will there be a tightening rather than a loosening of criteria for transition? Will the priority within health spending for this area be upped or lowered? Will there be an increase or a decrease in the level of transgender inclusion in society? What about the GRA? Will there be pressure to repeal or modify it?
I don't know, nor do you or anyone else. I'm not predicting anything. The (junked) GRR reforms might come back and be implemented. But given how the debate has been going it's imo as likely the next moves, legal and otherwise, will be in the opposite direction. That's what I said, it's a reasonable observation, and it really didn't take much nerve.
UK higher education participation
1950 - 3%
1970 - 8%
1990 - 19%
2000 - 33%
2020 - 38%
Another stat worth considering, in 1950 only about a third of 15 year olds were even in full-time education.
Also, you're entirely wrong that your "tax money" doesn't fund Hamas, although that takes us back full circle to you refusing to acknowledge that UNRWA are up to their eyeballs in this.
https://www.locrating.com/Blog/oxfordandcambridgeoffers.aspx
In fairness I just checked and they did manage to get the fact that we can now vote into an email to paid-up members of the Labour Party, albeit 3 pages down an email entitled "LI international newsletter" sandwiched between "Conference Reports" and "Special Events".
Clearly they must be stupid because no one would make a change to the electoral system except for partisan reasons.
Do you think it’s possible that they are making the change because they believe that it’s the *right* thing to do and don’t care about the electoral consequences?
Even in the last 5, while there has been a lot of things that have not gone well, we have seen (as a side effect of COVID) much more flexible working practices for a large majority of people, for instance. For many, the idea of waking up at 6am every morning, 5 days a week, to put on a suit/formal work dress and commute an hour, say, to the office (and then an hour back), has changed completely. Yes there have been some downsides to that, but on the whole it is a positive change. Progress is not a straight line.
Less of us are smoking and drinking than we were 10 years ago. Fitness services are booming. The stigma around discussing mental health, whilst sadly still there, is continuing to gradually recede.
We do however have a number of problems with mismanagement of public services and the overall economy, and the government is rightly being blamed for that.
Thatcher did not stop mainly Labour councils doing the same from 1970-74 under PM Heath's orders but by the end of the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments in 1997 more pupils were in grammar schools than had been in 1979
Which can then map onto a number of positions…
I did find this:
https://gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-deploys-uk-military-to-eastern-mediterranean-to-support-israel
Netanyahu has always opposed a two-state solution; he basically just wants the Palestinians to piss off. That's why he has allowed and encouraged the rise of Hamas in Gaza in the expectation that, sooner or later, they would launch some form of reprisal against for the intolerable conditions imposed on the Palestinians.
The October 7th attacks were probably more then he expected, but they do of course provide the perfect opportunity for Israel to implement its own final solution for the Palestinian problem, and with the blessing of all the useful idiots around the world.
📝 Peers are eyeing up significant revisions to the controversial Rwanda Bill, which is due before the House of Lords this afternoon
https://t.co/vgGe8Ecv1U
It also found that men from Pakistani, black African and black Caribbean backgrounds who grew up on free school meals end up earning less than white men who had been in the same position.'