This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Henry Olsen @henryolsenEPPC And remember- Trump doesn’t need to win the popular vote to win. He wins the EC if he loses by 3% or less, and likely wins it if he loses by 3.7% or less.
I find definitive statements like that about how national vote share will be reflected in electoral college votes incredibly irritating.
It would certainly not be the case of Trump puts on a load of wasted votes in New York and California.
The 2021 Census had 46% Christian, 37% No Religion and 6.5% Muslim yet it's apparently the end of democracy. That's like saying the latest opinion poll shows the Liberal Democrats are going to win the next election with just 7% of the vote.
It's my experience many younger Muslims pay, at most, lip service to the conservative social and religious attitudes of parents and grandparents. As with the younger Hindus, they are more interested in nice clothes, nice cars and chasing after boys or girls (delete as appropriate). The capitalist virtues or vices seem to hold plenty of appeal as well.
That's not to say the preservation of democracy doesn't require eternal vigilance but I'm more concerned by successive Conservative and Labour Governments centralising power to either Westminster or Whitehall. This Government has done more to weaken the powers of Parliament than any other but I see no sign of Starmer wanting to relinquish this new-found Executive power - why am I not surprised?
The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings
Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens
It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey
Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.
(Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
We agree entirely
What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
You summoned me, so "cars are going nowhere".
Your vision of an app that summons a vehicle for you to take you somewhere then disappear already exists, its called a taxi. Its not futuristic, and its not replacing private transportation.
Meanwhile in the real world people still have, need and most importantly want their own transportation.
You freaks who want rid of private transport may be vocal, but you're still absurd and its not happening.
Henry Olsen @henryolsenEPPC And remember- Trump doesn’t need to win the popular vote to win. He wins the EC if he loses by 3% or less, and likely wins it if he loses by 3.7% or less.
This guy hasn't been reading PB where a reasonable number of people have called it symmetrically. Trump wins pop vote, Biden wins EC.
This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Indeed. Dump the processed carbs and vegan crap with 25 processed ingredients and go for clean cuts of whole meat.
It is of course desperately sad to see Mike Freer being apparently forced out by death threats and we don't want another Jo Cox or David Amess let alone what happened to Stephen Timms and Nigel Jones.
There's a wider question around the rise of intolerance and the tension within the wider argument of free speech. The right to offend (or is it the right to be offensive) seems now to be the starting point of argument or debate. Perhaps the belief is the louder you shout the more likely people will listen - the truth is the louder you shout the more likely people will hear but the less likely it is they will listen.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
I think I have a proposal that will suit Donald Trump and the Democrats, and which would result in a much more interesting competition in November:
Time to repeal the 22nd Amendment.
This could be sold to Trump as allowing him to rule forever. And it would mean he could face off against his arch nemesis: Barack Obama.
If Trump and the Democratic leadership were both in favour, surely this could be rushed through: It would require just a two thirds majority in both the Senate and the House. (Which could happen this week). And then it would need 38 legislatures to ratify it: which could certainly be done by end the of March.
And then we have the fight we really all wanted: Barack vs the Donald.
I have a similar, but different counter-proposal.
Delete “natural born” from the citizenship requirements. Time for President Arnie to win 50 States.
The 2021 Census had 46% Christian, 37% No Religion and 6.5% Muslim yet it's apparently the end of democracy. That's like saying the latest opinion poll shows the Liberal Democrats are going to win the next election with just 7% of the vote.
It's my experience many younger Muslims pay, at most, lip service to the conservative social and religious attitudes of parents and grandparents. As with the younger Hindus, they are more interested in nice clothes, nice cars and chasing after boys or girls (delete as appropriate). The capitalist virtues or vices seem to hold plenty of appeal as well.
That's not to say the preservation of democracy doesn't require eternal vigilance but I'm more concerned by successive Conservative and Labour Governments centralising power to either Westminster or Whitehall. This Government has done more to weaken the powers of Parliament than any other but I see no sign of Starmer wanting to relinquish this new-found Executive power - why am I not surprised?
Speech codes always remind me of the Southern US Slave Owners.
To them, mentioning their Peculiar Institution on the wrong way *demanded* a violent response. Demanded the censorship of newspapers. Demanded that candidates be stricken from the ballot. Demanded a Gag Rule in the Senate & Congress
Because they knew their cause was weak. And growing weaker.
I've had around 8 Afghan Uber drivers over the last year in London. All the previous ones opposed the Taliban, whereas last Saturday's said things had been getting better and more stable since they took over.
A common problem for politicians, and even more so actors, is that part of their job is to persuade people of things, and that entirely legitimately will mean being conscious of how they present themselves and their points in order to elicit the reaction they want.
Accordingly they might feel something completely sincerely, but their reaction expressing that sincere emotion is still to some degree manufactured.
And then of course some will just be totally making it all up anyway.
This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Indeed. Dump the processed carbs and vegan crap with 25 processed ingredients and go for clean cuts of whole meat.
Much healthier.
As an aside and respecting your dietary choices, do you eat a range of meats, including poultry? I think a balanced meat diet is as important as balance in everything - I wouldn't just want to eat beef, lamb, pork or chicken the whole time. Do you eat turkey, veal or duck or other meats? Venison for example is a very lean meat but with good preparation is excellent.
I'm a big fan of liver which gets a bad rep but if cooked properly is wonderful.
The 2021 Census had 46% Christian, 37% No Religion and 6.5% Muslim yet it's apparently the end of democracy. That's like saying the latest opinion poll shows the Liberal Democrats are going to win the next election with just 7% of the vote.
It's my experience many younger Muslims pay, at most, lip service to the conservative social and religious attitudes of parents and grandparents. As with the younger Hindus, they are more interested in nice clothes, nice cars and chasing after boys or girls (delete as appropriate). The capitalist virtues or vices seem to hold plenty of appeal as well.
An interesting dynamic is the rise of 'no religion'. Since the 2011 census:
Muslim: + 1.6% No religion: +12.0%
So the fastest growing change is towards secularism, with a smaller growth in Islam as well.
My prediction is that many people from Muslim households will join the secular trend over time, just as people have been doing from previously Christian families.
I'm not the best ways to encourage this but that should be the policy goal.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
So the main problem here is not that an MP and minister has been terrorised into resigning because of multiple Islamist death threats and an arson attack, the main problem is that he might have offended Muslims by mentioning this in the first place?
Is that it? Is that your take?
I would have thought someone with your exceptional IQ could have read that and realised that I had not discussed at all what the main problem is, merely commented on the language being discussed. Maybe the aging is catching up with you quicker than you realise.
No, your main focus was not on the horrible implications of a minister resigning because of Islamist death threats, it was on the “words missing from jenrick’s statement” that meant he might have offended Muslims
The implications of his resignation are direful. Who will ever be brave enough to be an MP, especially a gay or Jewish MP? An MP speaking about Israel, an MP willing to be pro Israel? An MP willing to challenge anything about Islam or islamism?
We are fast approaching a terrible point where either our democracy capitulates to these menaces, or we all stand up together and say Enough
The Batley teacher is still in hiding. Three years later
Pathetic non sequitur but will give one clarification. It is not because of offence to Muslims that I think Jenricks comments unwise, it is because his comments are counter productive in reducing Islamic extremism and could have been on the productive side of the balance sheet with a simple and obvious addition.
What in your opinion would be productive in reducing Islamic extremism.
Start with education, so get rid of any religious schooling.
Please expand. What do you mean religious schooling.
Would you like a society with no religion or do you see some (all?) religious schooling as contributing to Islamic extremism.
The French have no religion in schools, at all, or any other public body.
Does not mean they don't have religion in their country.
It's rather baffling why the state should interfere with peoples relationships with their imaginary friends when it is such a personal matter.
But the Islamist menace in France is probably even worse than it is in Britain. It is also dire in Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands - basically, anywhere in Europe with a significant Muslim population
That is the uncomfortable truth. The painful fact is that sizeable minorities of Muslim migrant populations in Europe hold opinions incompatible with modern liberal democracy as we know it - from free speech to gay rights. And smaller elements within those populations are willing to use violence to enforce or illuminate these extreme opinions
And it is now so bad it is threatening the foundation of democracy itself - people willing to stand as MPs and serve in Parliament
I suspect that conversion to Islam will become an increasingly appealing option for native Europeans from deprived areas. People need meaning, and it's not being provided by consumerism.
Maybe. Tho many Europeans would struggle with teetotalism
I do believe we are heading for some kind of showdown. European voters are increasingly willing to elect hard/far right leaders to tackle this. Meloni, Wilders, maybe Le Pen
I've had around 8 Afghan Uber drivers over the last year in London. All the previous ones opposed the Taliban, whereas last Saturday's said things had been getting better and more stable since they took over.
Could be just a sign of general changing attitudes - could you ask 8 non-muslim Uber drivers if their view on the question has changed in the last year?
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
Indeed. A good analogy is Germany during the Nazi era
Most Germans weren’t evil Nazis. Germany was a great nation with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar and unfortunate sequence of events allowed a small group of evil men to deceive a wider group of Germans into supporting them and they then bullied the rest of the nation into submission. And Nazi Germany was born
Most Muslims do not support islamism. Islam is a great religion with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar sequence of events has allowed a relatively small cabal of fundamentalist freaks to pervert Islam to violent ends - and a lot of Muslims are bullied into silence by them, and thus entire nations have been captured - Iran is the classic example
As both Mao and Mussolini observed, you don’t need vast armies to seize power over many millions of people, you just need a reasonable number of extreme, disciplined and aggressive fighters - the complacent majority will acquiesce in favour of a quiet life
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
Sure, that is all fine with the nuance given. If society wants the future kids of Muslims to be less susceptible to extremists then for me it comes back to being very careful with language, along with tearing down the structures that unnecessarily divide us, like religious schools.
Careful does not mean don't offend here, as things like saying blasphemy is not and should not be illegal here is going to offend. It means precise.
This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Indeed. Dump the processed carbs and vegan crap with 25 processed ingredients and go for clean cuts of whole meat.
Much healthier.
As an aside and respecting your dietary choices, do you eat a range of meats, including poultry? I think a balanced meat diet is as important as balance in everything - I wouldn't just want to eat beef, lamb, pork or chicken the whole time. Do you eat turkey, veal or duck or other meats? Venison for example is a very lean meat but with good preparation is excellent.
I'm a big fan of liver which gets a bad rep but if cooked properly is wonderful.
I love chicken yes, especially with a peri peri sauce. I love Nando's and miss their spicy rice on my current diet.
I'm eating a range of meats across the week but obviously limited amounts on a particular day.
Today I was more limited in what I ate as I was too busy with the kids this morning before going to work that I didn't have time to prepare lunch or breakfast, so I bought a chorizo from Tesco's and ripped it in two, having half for breakfast and half for lunch. For dinner tonight I just had some pork belly slices.
There's loads of meats out there to try. I've never particularly liked turkey, finding it rather dry, I prefer chicken - we won't have turkey at Christmas, we have chicken and gammon instead. Venison I've never been too fussed by. But most meats I'll have with the exception of rabbit since we had a pet rabbit, that to me now would be like eating dog.
This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Indeed. Dump the processed carbs and vegan crap with 25 processed ingredients and go for clean cuts of whole meat.
Reeves is getting on my nerves and just dropping the 28 billion green pledge looks insane . Fair enough lower it but to just ditch the whole thing is going to piss of a lot of Labour voters .
This obsession with avoiding Tory attacks is looking spineless . And really wtf is the point of voting Labour for just Tory policies with a less annoying cabinet .
There’s also an arrogance that Labour to Green switchers are just going to come back at the GE .
This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Indeed. Dump the processed carbs and vegan crap with 25 processed ingredients and go for clean cuts of whole meat.
Much healthier.
As an aside and respecting your dietary choices, do you eat a range of meats, including poultry? I think a balanced meat diet is as important as balance in everything - I wouldn't just want to eat beef, lamb, pork or chicken the whole time. Do you eat turkey, veal or duck or other meats? Venison for example is a very lean meat but with good preparation is excellent.
I'm a big fan of liver which gets a bad rep but if cooked properly is wonderful.
I love chicken yes, especially with a peri peri sauce. I love Nando's and miss their spicy rice on my current diet.
I'm eating a range of meats across the week but obviously limited amounts on a particular day.
Today I was more limited in what I ate as I was too busy with the kids this morning before going to work that I didn't have time to prepare lunch or breakfast, so I bought a chorizo from Tesco's and ripped it in two, having half for breakfast and half for lunch. For dinner tonight I just had some pork belly slices.
There's loads of meats out there to try. I've never particularly liked turkey, finding it rather dry, I prefer chicken - we won't have turkey at Christmas, we have chicken and gammon instead. Venison I've never been too fussed by. But most meats I'll have with the exception of rabbit since we had a pet rabbit, that to me now would be like eating dog.
It is of course desperately sad to see Mike Freer being apparently forced out by death threats and we don't want another Jo Cox or David Amess let alone what happened to Stephen Timms and Nigel Jones.
There's a wider question around the rise of intolerance and the tension within the wider argument of free speech. The right to offend (or is it the right to be offensive) seems now to be the starting point of argument or debate. Perhaps the belief is the louder you shout the more likely people will listen - the truth is the louder you shout the more likely people will hear but the less likely it is they will listen.
No one ever changed anyone's mind by yelling at them. Minds are only ever changed by empathy.
I always feel that trans... enthusiasts... would do well to spend some time understanding why someone might not agree with them.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
Indeed. A good analogy is Germany during the Nazi era
Most Germans weren’t evil Nazis. Germany was a great nation with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar and unfortunate sequence of events allowed a small group of evil men to deceive a wider group of Germans into supporting them and they then bullied the rest of the nation into submission. And Nazi Germany was born
Most Muslims do not support islamism. Islam is a great religion with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar sequence of events has allowed a relatively small cabal of fundamentalist freaks to pervert Islam to violent ends - and a lot of Muslims are bullied into silence by them, and thus entire nations have been captured - Iran is the classic example
As both Mao and Mussolini observed, you don’t need vast armies to seize power over many millions of people, you just need a reasonable number of extreme, disciplined and aggressive fighters - the complacent majority will acquiesce in favour of a quiet life
Sorry but I disagree with you. The problem is not that the cabal of freaks have perverted Islam to be violent. The problem is that Islam (like Christianity and other organised religions) is violent.
The quran, like the Bible, is full of rotten, evil, horrid stuff that is appalling to modern, secular tastes. Thankfully most enlightened people disregard those elements, or even laugh at them.
The problem is they are there, and the extremists are taking their instructions literally.
Islamic extremists are beheading people not because they've twisted an angelic faith, but because the quran says to behead your enemies. Its there in black and white.
The West Wing portrayed this excellently with Christianity, responding to those who latch on to some passages for eg homophobic reasons by going for even more extreme Biblical passages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-ip47WYWc
The same that has been done with the Bible can be with the Quran - the zealots are those taking what does exist within the religion seriously, rather than with the appropriate and modern grains of salt.
The modern way is to pervert religion to being something more secular and enlightened by disregarding the horrible passages. Lets not pretend they're not there, because they are, and being dishonest just isn't helpful.
It is of course desperately sad to see Mike Freer being apparently forced out by death threats and we don't want another Jo Cox or David Amess let alone what happened to Stephen Timms and Nigel Jones.
There's a wider question around the rise of intolerance and the tension within the wider argument of free speech. The right to offend (or is it the right to be offensive) seems now to be the starting point of argument or debate. Perhaps the belief is the louder you shout the more likely people will listen - the truth is the louder you shout the more likely people will hear but the less likely it is they will listen.
No one ever changed anyone's mind by yelling at them. Minds are only ever changed by empathy.
I always feel that trans... enthusiasts... would do well to spend some time understanding why someone might not agree with them.
That sounds sweet but I’m really not sure it’s true
“Minds are only changed by empathy”
Hmm. The Japanese mind was changed vis a vis the continuance of the war by seeing 100,000 of their compatriots vaporised in a second. That wasn’t particularly empathetic
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
What we think of as secular values are themselves essentially religious and rooted in Christianity, and are therefore much less transmissible than you would like to think. Your attitude exactly parallels the Christian missionaries of the 19th century who wanted to spread their set of universal truths to the less enlightened.
It is of course desperately sad to see Mike Freer being apparently forced out by death threats and we don't want another Jo Cox or David Amess let alone what happened to Stephen Timms and Nigel Jones.
There's a wider question around the rise of intolerance and the tension within the wider argument of free speech. The right to offend (or is it the right to be offensive) seems now to be the starting point of argument or debate. Perhaps the belief is the louder you shout the more likely people will listen - the truth is the louder you shout the more likely people will hear but the less likely it is they will listen.
No one ever changed anyone's mind by yelling at them. Minds are only ever changed by empathy.
That is true, but you can change people's behaviour by yelling at them. If people are yelled at and threatened most of the time they will adjust how they act, especially if they are not supported.
It's why the yellers on many issues succeed at driving the course of debate and acceptable conduct. Without resistance, they get what they want even if people grumble privately as their minds are unchanged.
I disagree with religious based state schools on principle, but they are so ubiquitous in primary schools in some areas it is hard to avoid. And ultimately you choose the best school for your child.
I think in practice CofE ones are fairly modest in their religious aims, reflecting the diverse and secular families that go there (there are far more Christian school places than Christian parents). My suspicion is that Muslim schools are less diverse (unlikely to be many areas where that's the only choice) and therefore not a good thing for community integration.
So I agree that banning religious state education would be a good step, of many.
If my children were to go to a religious school, which I haven't ruled out, I'd make sure theu are fully versed in agnostic atheism beforehand.
It is of course desperately sad to see Mike Freer being apparently forced out by death threats and we don't want another Jo Cox or David Amess let alone what happened to Stephen Timms and Nigel Jones.
There's a wider question around the rise of intolerance and the tension within the wider argument of free speech. The right to offend (or is it the right to be offensive) seems now to be the starting point of argument or debate. Perhaps the belief is the louder you shout the more likely people will listen - the truth is the louder you shout the more likely people will hear but the less likely it is they will listen.
No one ever changed anyone's mind by yelling at them. Minds are only ever changed by empathy.
I always feel that trans... enthusiasts... would do well to spend some time understanding why someone might not agree with them.
Or alternatively, why those who ae anti-trans may do well to spend some time understanding why someone might not agree with them.
Reeves is getting on my nerves and just dropping the 28 billion green pledge looks insane . Fair enough lower it but to just ditch the whole thing is going to piss of a lot of Labour voters .
This obsession with avoiding Tory attacks is looking spineless . And really wtf is the point of voting Labour for just Tory policies with a less annoying cabinet .
There’s also an arrogance that Labour to Green switchers are just going to come back at the GE .
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
What we think of as secular values are themselves essentially religious and rooted in Christianity, and are therefore much less transmissible than you would like to think. Your attitude exactly parallels the Christian missionaries of the 19th century who wanted to spread their set of universal truths to the less enlightened.
That betrays a gross ignorance of the subject matter.
No our secular values are not remotely rooted in Christianity. They're rooted in thousands of years of philosophy and evolution from Greco-Roman times onwards.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
Indeed. A good analogy is Germany during the Nazi era
Most Germans weren’t evil Nazis. Germany was a great nation with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar and unfortunate sequence of events allowed a small group of evil men to deceive a wider group of Germans into supporting them and they then bullied the rest of the nation into submission. And Nazi Germany was born
Most Muslims do not support islamism. Islam is a great religion with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar sequence of events has allowed a relatively small cabal of fundamentalist freaks to pervert Islam to violent ends - and a lot of Muslims are bullied into silence by them, and thus entire nations have been captured - Iran is the classic example
As both Mao and Mussolini observed, you don’t need vast armies to seize power over many millions of people, you just need a reasonable number of extreme, disciplined and aggressive fighters - the complacent majority will acquiesce in favour of a quiet life
Sorry but I disagree with you. The problem is not that the cabal of freaks have perverted Islam to be violent. The problem is that Islam (like Christianity and other organised religions) is violent.
The quran, like the Bible, is full of rotten, evil, horrid stuff that is appalling to modern, secular tastes. Thankfully most enlightened people disregard those elements, or even laugh at them.
The problem is they are there, and the extremists are taking their instructions literally.
Islamic extremists are beheading people not because they've twisted an angelic faith, but because the quran says to behead your enemies. Its there in black and white.
The West Wing portrayed this excellently with Christianity, responding to those who latch on to some passages for eg homophobic reasons by going for even more extreme Biblical passages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-ip47WYWc
The same that has been done with the Bible can be with the Quran - the zealots are those taking what does exist within the religion seriously, rather than with the appropriate and modern grains of salt.
The modern way is to pervert religion to being something more secular and enlightened by disregarding the horrible passages. Lets not pretend they're not there, because they are, and being dishonest just isn't helpful.
Some fair points, however Islam has not always been like this - literal, brutal, primitivist. That’s why the movement that is islamism was BORN in the 20th century - to take Islam back to some half-imagined purist past, severe and dogmatic, the religion of the baking desert
There have been other Islams - much more tolerant and urbane. The Islam of Omar Khayyam and his jug of wine. The Islam of Al Andalus and the great Muslim scholars. The Islam of the Sufi mystics
Islamism is ONE interpretation of Islam, barbaric and pugnacious. Unfortunately it is ascendant
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
What we think of as secular values are themselves essentially religious and rooted in Christianity, and are therefore much less transmissible than you would like to think. Your attitude exactly parallels the Christian missionaries of the 19th century who wanted to spread their set of universal truths to the less enlightened.
That betrays a gross ignorance of the subject matter.
No our secular values are not remotely rooted in Christianity. They're rooted in thousands of years of philosophy and evolution from Greco-Roman times onwards.
This is quite complex, because there's quite a common argument that the concepts of the dignity and rights of man also take their cue from Christian ideas.
The Greek and later, more outspokenly anti-clerical Enlightenment inheritance is also strong, obviously, so there's a bit of everything, in there.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
What we think of as secular values are themselves essentially religious and rooted in Christianity, and are therefore much less transmissible than you would like to think. Your attitude exactly parallels the Christian missionaries of the 19th century who wanted to spread their set of universal truths to the less enlightened.
That betrays a gross ignorance of the subject matter.
No our secular values are not remotely rooted in Christianity. They're rooted in thousands of years of philosophy and evolution from Greco-Roman times onwards.
I can certainly buy that the prevalence of christian society and thought in Europe over a very long period has had a profound effect on the development of agnostic secular values of the modern day, influencing its shape and features even if simply in reaction to it.
But that can be taken too far. When I read Tom Holland's Dominion he seemed to argue that every non-religious philosophy of the West is essentially still Christian, cherry picking individuals who may have even been totally ignored in their day whose views are now seen as more secular, and therefore claiming the secular view is inherently Christian. I don't know if he is Christian or not, but I think he overstated the case regardless. Having roots in something is important, but can be overplayed.
This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Indeed. Dump the processed carbs and vegan crap with 25 processed ingredients and go for clean cuts of whole meat.
Much healthier.
As an aside and respecting your dietary choices, do you eat a range of meats, including poultry? I think a balanced meat diet is as important as balance in everything - I wouldn't just want to eat beef, lamb, pork or chicken the whole time. Do you eat turkey, veal or duck or other meats? Venison for example is a very lean meat but with good preparation is excellent.
I'm a big fan of liver which gets a bad rep but if cooked properly is wonderful.
I love chicken yes, especially with a peri peri sauce. I love Nando's and miss their spicy rice on my current diet.
I'm eating a range of meats across the week but obviously limited amounts on a particular day.
Today I was more limited in what I ate as I was too busy with the kids this morning before going to work that I didn't have time to prepare lunch or breakfast, so I bought a chorizo from Tesco's and ripped it in two, having half for breakfast and half for lunch. For dinner tonight I just had some pork belly slices.
There's loads of meats out there to try. I've never particularly liked turkey, finding it rather dry, I prefer chicken - we won't have turkey at Christmas, we have chicken and gammon instead. Venison I've never been too fussed by. But most meats I'll have with the exception of rabbit since we had a pet rabbit, that to me now would be like eating dog.
Mrs Stodge and I also enjoy Nando's.
We had roast beef at Christmas - not our usual choice but we found a lovely cut at a butcher in Epping (which @HYUFD might have frequented in his time). Mrs Stodge's brother cooks the best venison I've ever had - the fact he kills it, hangs it and cooks it himself may not be unrelated.
Duck is another meat which if properly prepared doesn't disappoint.
This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Indeed. Dump the processed carbs and vegan crap with 25 processed ingredients and go for clean cuts of whole meat.
Much healthier.
As an aside and respecting your dietary choices, do you eat a range of meats, including poultry? I think a balanced meat diet is as important as balance in everything - I wouldn't just want to eat beef, lamb, pork or chicken the whole time. Do you eat turkey, veal or duck or other meats? Venison for example is a very lean meat but with good preparation is excellent.
I'm a big fan of liver which gets a bad rep but if cooked properly is wonderful.
I love chicken yes, especially with a peri peri sauce. I love Nando's and miss their spicy rice on my current diet.
I'm eating a range of meats across the week but obviously limited amounts on a particular day.
Today I was more limited in what I ate as I was too busy with the kids this morning before going to work that I didn't have time to prepare lunch or breakfast, so I bought a chorizo from Tesco's and ripped it in two, having half for breakfast and half for lunch. For dinner tonight I just had some pork belly slices.
There's loads of meats out there to try. I've never particularly liked turkey, finding it rather dry, I prefer chicken - we won't have turkey at Christmas, we have chicken and gammon instead. Venison I've never been too fussed by. But most meats I'll have with the exception of rabbit since we had a pet rabbit, that to me now would be like eating dog.
You can brine your Turkey in salt water, makes it amazingly moist.
It is of course desperately sad to see Mike Freer being apparently forced out by death threats and we don't want another Jo Cox or David Amess let alone what happened to Stephen Timms and Nigel Jones.
There's a wider question around the rise of intolerance and the tension within the wider argument of free speech. The right to offend (or is it the right to be offensive) seems now to be the starting point of argument or debate. Perhaps the belief is the louder you shout the more likely people will listen - the truth is the louder you shout the more likely people will hear but the less likely it is they will listen.
No one ever changed anyone's mind by yelling at them. Minds are only ever changed by empathy.
I always feel that trans... enthusiasts... would do well to spend some time understanding why someone might not agree with them.
That sounds sweet but I’m really not sure it’s true
“Minds are only changed by empathy”
Hmm. The Japanese mind was changed vis a vis the continuance of the war by seeing 100,000 of their compatriots vaporised in a second. That wasn’t particularly empathetic
See also North Korea.
Mrs P. watched the Beyond Utopia: Escape from North Korea last night (iPlayer) I hadn't intended to watch it but got drawn in. The level of state 'yelling' at its population is frightening.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
What we think of as secular values are themselves essentially religious and rooted in Christianity, and are therefore much less transmissible than you would like to think. Your attitude exactly parallels the Christian missionaries of the 19th century who wanted to spread their set of universal truths to the less enlightened.
That betrays a gross ignorance of the subject matter.
No our secular values are not remotely rooted in Christianity. They're rooted in thousands of years of philosophy and evolution from Greco-Roman times onwards.
No, it’s a mix. Many of the Enlightenment thinkers were profoundly Christian - they saw no contradiction. After all Christianity teaches tolerance
You need the Greco-Roman tradition AND the Judaeo-Christian tradition to get to the Enlightenment
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
Indeed. A good analogy is Germany during the Nazi era
Most Germans weren’t evil Nazis. Germany was a great nation with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar and unfortunate sequence of events allowed a small group of evil men to deceive a wider group of Germans into supporting them and they then bullied the rest of the nation into submission. And Nazi Germany was born
Most Muslims do not support islamism. Islam is a great religion with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar sequence of events has allowed a relatively small cabal of fundamentalist freaks to pervert Islam to violent ends - and a lot of Muslims are bullied into silence by them, and thus entire nations have been captured - Iran is the classic example
As both Mao and Mussolini observed, you don’t need vast armies to seize power over many millions of people, you just need a reasonable number of extreme, disciplined and aggressive fighters - the complacent majority will acquiesce in favour of a quiet life
Sorry but I disagree with you. The problem is not that the cabal of freaks have perverted Islam to be violent. The problem is that Islam (like Christianity and other organised religions) is violent.
The quran, like the Bible, is full of rotten, evil, horrid stuff that is appalling to modern, secular tastes. Thankfully most enlightened people disregard those elements, or even laugh at them.
The problem is they are there, and the extremists are taking their instructions literally.
Islamic extremists are beheading people not because they've twisted an angelic faith, but because the quran says to behead your enemies. Its there in black and white.
The West Wing portrayed this excellently with Christianity, responding to those who latch on to some passages for eg homophobic reasons by going for even more extreme Biblical passages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-ip47WYWc
The same that has been done with the Bible can be with the Quran - the zealots are those taking what does exist within the religion seriously, rather than with the appropriate and modern grains of salt.
The modern way is to pervert religion to being something more secular and enlightened by disregarding the horrible passages. Lets not pretend they're not there, because they are, and being dishonest just isn't helpful.
Some fair points, however Islam has not always been like this - literal, brutal, primitivist. That’s why the movement that is islamism was BORN in the 20th century - to take Islam back to some half-imagined purist past, severe and dogmatic, the religion of the baking desert
There have been other Islams - much more tolerant and urbane. The Islam of Omar Khayyam and his jug of wine. The Islam of Al Andalus and the great Muslim scholars. The Islam of the Sufi mystics
Islamism is ONE interpretation of Islam, barbaric and pugnacious. Unfortunately it is ascendant
Yes, for periods of human history Islamic societies were more enlightened than Christian ones, so the Quran was treated with the appropriate pinches of salt in those societies more.
That's why a lot of modern Mathematics for instance comes from the Middle East, why we use today Arabic* numerals and so on and so forth, because knowledge was being developed and spread in the enlightened Middle East more than dark ages, barbaric and pugnacious Europe at the time.
* Technically the Hindus actually invented them, but it was Arabic mathematicians who introduced them to Europeans and so we use that name.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
What we think of as secular values are themselves essentially religious and rooted in Christianity, and are therefore much less transmissible than you would like to think. Your attitude exactly parallels the Christian missionaries of the 19th century who wanted to spread their set of universal truths to the less enlightened.
It would be good if you were a bit more explicit about exactly what secular values you're talking about.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
Indeed. A good analogy is Germany during the Nazi era
Most Germans weren’t evil Nazis. Germany was a great nation with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar and unfortunate sequence of events allowed a small group of evil men to deceive a wider group of Germans into supporting them and they then bullied the rest of the nation into submission. And Nazi Germany was born
Most Muslims do not support islamism. Islam is a great religion with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar sequence of events has allowed a relatively small cabal of fundamentalist freaks to pervert Islam to violent ends - and a lot of Muslims are bullied into silence by them, and thus entire nations have been captured - Iran is the classic example
As both Mao and Mussolini observed, you don’t need vast armies to seize power over many millions of people, you just need a reasonable number of extreme, disciplined and aggressive fighters - the complacent majority will acquiesce in favour of a quiet life
Sorry but I disagree with you. The problem is not that the cabal of freaks have perverted Islam to be violent. The problem is that Islam (like Christianity and other organised religions) is violent.
The quran, like the Bible, is full of rotten, evil, horrid stuff that is appalling to modern, secular tastes. Thankfully most enlightened people disregard those elements, or even laugh at them.
The problem is they are there, and the extremists are taking their instructions literally.
Islamic extremists are beheading people not because they've twisted an angelic faith, but because the quran says to behead your enemies. Its there in black and white.
The West Wing portrayed this excellently with Christianity, responding to those who latch on to some passages for eg homophobic reasons by going for even more extreme Biblical passages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-ip47WYWc
The same that has been done with the Bible can be with the Quran - the zealots are those taking what does exist within the religion seriously, rather than with the appropriate and modern grains of salt.
The modern way is to pervert religion to being something more secular and enlightened by disregarding the horrible passages. Lets not pretend they're not there, because they are, and being dishonest just isn't helpful.
Some fair points, however Islam has not always been like this - literal, brutal, primitivist. That’s why the movement that is islamism was BORN in the 20th century - to take Islam back to some half-imagined purist past, severe and dogmatic, the religion of the baking desert
There have been other Islams - much more tolerant and urbane. The Islam of Omar Khayyam and his jug of wine. The Islam of Al Andalus and the great Muslim scholars. The Islam of the Sufi mystics
Islamism is ONE interpretation of Islam, barbaric and pugnacious. Unfortunately it is ascendant
Maybe we should set-up a 'Mosque of England' that follows its Christian equivalent by minimising the religious part of religion to the fullest extent possible...
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
Indeed. A good analogy is Germany during the Nazi era
Most Germans weren’t evil Nazis. Germany was a great nation with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar and unfortunate sequence of events allowed a small group of evil men to deceive a wider group of Germans into supporting them and they then bullied the rest of the nation into submission. And Nazi Germany was born
Most Muslims do not support islamism. Islam is a great religion with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar sequence of events has allowed a relatively small cabal of fundamentalist freaks to pervert Islam to violent ends - and a lot of Muslims are bullied into silence by them, and thus entire nations have been captured - Iran is the classic example
As both Mao and Mussolini observed, you don’t need vast armies to seize power over many millions of people, you just need a reasonable number of extreme, disciplined and aggressive fighters - the complacent majority will acquiesce in favour of a quiet life
Sorry but I disagree with you. The problem is not that the cabal of freaks have perverted Islam to be violent. The problem is that Islam (like Christianity and other organised religions) is violent.
The quran, like the Bible, is full of rotten, evil, horrid stuff that is appalling to modern, secular tastes. Thankfully most enlightened people disregard those elements, or even laugh at them.
The problem is they are there, and the extremists are taking their instructions literally.
Islamic extremists are beheading people not because they've twisted an angelic faith, but because the quran says to behead your enemies. Its there in black and white.
The West Wing portrayed this excellently with Christianity, responding to those who latch on to some passages for eg homophobic reasons by going for even more extreme Biblical passages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-ip47WYWc
The same that has been done with the Bible can be with the Quran - the zealots are those taking what does exist within the religion seriously, rather than with the appropriate and modern grains of salt.
The modern way is to pervert religion to being something more secular and enlightened by disregarding the horrible passages. Lets not pretend they're not there, because they are, and being dishonest just isn't helpful.
Some fair points, however Islam has not always been like this - literal, brutal, primitivist. That’s why the movement that is islamism was BORN in the 20th century - to take Islam back to some half-imagined purist past, severe and dogmatic, the religion of the baking desert
There have been other Islams - much more tolerant and urbane. The Islam of Omar Khayyam and his jug of wine. The Islam of Al Andalus and the great Muslim scholars. The Islam of the Sufi mystics
Islamism is ONE interpretation of Islam, barbaric and pugnacious. Unfortunately it is ascendant
Yes, for periods of human history Islamic societies were more enlightened than Christian ones, so the Quran was treated with the appropriate pinches of salt in those societies more.
That's why a lot of modern Mathematics for instance comes from the Middle East, why we use today Arabic* numerals and so on and so forth, because knowledge was being developed and spread in the enlightened Middle East more than dark ages, barbaric and pugnacious Europe at the time.
* Technically the Hindus actually invented them, but it was Arabic mathematicians who introduced them to Europeans and so we use that name.
Indeed: it may be that the West is due to enter a bit of a dark age.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
Indeed. A good analogy is Germany during the Nazi era
Most Germans weren’t evil Nazis. Germany was a great nation with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar and unfortunate sequence of events allowed a small group of evil men to deceive a wider group of Germans into supporting them and they then bullied the rest of the nation into submission. And Nazi Germany was born
Most Muslims do not support islamism. Islam is a great religion with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar sequence of events has allowed a relatively small cabal of fundamentalist freaks to pervert Islam to violent ends - and a lot of Muslims are bullied into silence by them, and thus entire nations have been captured - Iran is the classic example
As both Mao and Mussolini observed, you don’t need vast armies to seize power over many millions of people, you just need a reasonable number of extreme, disciplined and aggressive fighters - the complacent majority will acquiesce in favour of a quiet life
Sorry but I disagree with you. The problem is not that the cabal of freaks have perverted Islam to be violent. The problem is that Islam (like Christianity and other organised religions) is violent.
The quran, like the Bible, is full of rotten, evil, horrid stuff that is appalling to modern, secular tastes. Thankfully most enlightened people disregard those elements, or even laugh at them.
The problem is they are there, and the extremists are taking their instructions literally.
Islamic extremists are beheading people not because they've twisted an angelic faith, but because the quran says to behead your enemies. Its there in black and white.
The West Wing portrayed this excellently with Christianity, responding to those who latch on to some passages for eg homophobic reasons by going for even more extreme Biblical passages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-ip47WYWc
The same that has been done with the Bible can be with the Quran - the zealots are those taking what does exist within the religion seriously, rather than with the appropriate and modern grains of salt.
The modern way is to pervert religion to being something more secular and enlightened by disregarding the horrible passages. Lets not pretend they're not there, because they are, and being dishonest just isn't helpful.
Some fair points, however Islam has not always been like this - literal, brutal, primitivist. That’s why the movement that is islamism was BORN in the 20th century - to take Islam back to some half-imagined purist past, severe and dogmatic, the religion of the baking desert
There have been other Islams - much more tolerant and urbane. The Islam of Omar Khayyam and his jug of wine. The Islam of Al Andalus and the great Muslim scholars. The Islam of the Sufi mystics
Islamism is ONE interpretation of Islam, barbaric and pugnacious. Unfortunately it is ascendant
Yes, for periods of human history Islamic societies were more enlightened than Christian ones, so the Quran was treated with the appropriate pinches of salt in those societies more.
That's why a lot of modern Mathematics for instance comes from the Middle East, why we use today Arabic* numerals and so on and so forth, because knowledge was being developed and spread in the enlightened Middle East more than dark ages, barbaric and pugnacious Europe at the time.
* Technically the Hindus actually invented them, but it was Arabic mathematicians who introduced them to Europeans and so we use that name.
You're one of the people on here who tends to be least willing to take your own convictions with a pinch of salt. You preach an extreme form of blank-slate liberalism which is a religion in disguise.
It is of course desperately sad to see Mike Freer being apparently forced out by death threats and we don't want another Jo Cox or David Amess let alone what happened to Stephen Timms and Nigel Jones.
There's a wider question around the rise of intolerance and the tension within the wider argument of free speech. The right to offend (or is it the right to be offensive) seems now to be the starting point of argument or debate. Perhaps the belief is the louder you shout the more likely people will listen - the truth is the louder you shout the more likely people will hear but the less likely it is they will listen.
No one ever changed anyone's mind by yelling at them. Minds are only ever changed by empathy.
I always feel that trans... enthusiasts... would do well to spend some time understanding why someone might not agree with them.
That sounds sweet but I’m really not sure it’s true
“Minds are only changed by empathy”
Hmm. The Japanese mind was changed vis a vis the continuance of the war by seeing 100,000 of their compatriots vaporised in a second. That wasn’t particularly empathetic
It was a bomb of love?
Human beings will do an awful lot to avoid being yelled at. Especially from those holding authority over us. It might not change our minds immediately, but over time?
The quran, like the Bible, is full of rotten, evil, horrid stuff that is appalling to modern, secular tastes. Thankfully most enlightened people disregard those elements, or even laugh at them.
The problem is they are there, and the extremists are taking their instructions literally.
Islamic extremists are beheading people not because they've twisted an angelic faith, but because the quran says to behead your enemies. Its there in black and white.
"The proposed ban on incitement to "religious hatred" makes no sense unless it involves a ban on the Koran itself; and that would be pretty absurd, when you consider that the Bill's intention is to fight Islamophobia." - Boris writing in the Daily Telegraph, 2005
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
What we think of as secular values are themselves essentially religious and rooted in Christianity, and are therefore much less transmissible than you would like to think. Your attitude exactly parallels the Christian missionaries of the 19th century who wanted to spread their set of universal truths to the less enlightened.
It would be good if you were a bit more explicit about exactly what secular values you're talking about.
For example human rights and the belief that all men are created equal. The US declaration of independence was explicitly inspired by religious beliefs.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
Indeed. A good analogy is Germany during the Nazi era
Most Germans weren’t evil Nazis. Germany was a great nation with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar and unfortunate sequence of events allowed a small group of evil men to deceive a wider group of Germans into supporting them and they then bullied the rest of the nation into submission. And Nazi Germany was born
Most Muslims do not support islamism. Islam is a great religion with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar sequence of events has allowed a relatively small cabal of fundamentalist freaks to pervert Islam to violent ends - and a lot of Muslims are bullied into silence by them, and thus entire nations have been captured - Iran is the classic example
As both Mao and Mussolini observed, you don’t need vast armies to seize power over many millions of people, you just need a reasonable number of extreme, disciplined and aggressive fighters - the complacent majority will acquiesce in favour of a quiet life
Sorry but I disagree with you. The problem is not that the cabal of freaks have perverted Islam to be violent. The problem is that Islam (like Christianity and other organised religions) is violent.
The quran, like the Bible, is full of rotten, evil, horrid stuff that is appalling to modern, secular tastes. Thankfully most enlightened people disregard those elements, or even laugh at them.
The problem is they are there, and the extremists are taking their instructions literally.
Islamic extremists are beheading people not because they've twisted an angelic faith, but because the quran says to behead your enemies. Its there in black and white.
The West Wing portrayed this excellently with Christianity, responding to those who latch on to some passages for eg homophobic reasons by going for even more extreme Biblical passages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-ip47WYWc
The same that has been done with the Bible can be with the Quran - the zealots are those taking what does exist within the religion seriously, rather than with the appropriate and modern grains of salt.
The modern way is to pervert religion to being something more secular and enlightened by disregarding the horrible passages. Lets not pretend they're not there, because they are, and being dishonest just isn't helpful.
Some fair points, however Islam has not always been like this - literal, brutal, primitivist. That’s why the movement that is islamism was BORN in the 20th century - to take Islam back to some half-imagined purist past, severe and dogmatic, the religion of the baking desert
There have been other Islams - much more tolerant and urbane. The Islam of Omar Khayyam and his jug of wine. The Islam of Al Andalus and the great Muslim scholars. The Islam of the Sufi mystics
Islamism is ONE interpretation of Islam, barbaric and pugnacious. Unfortunately it is ascendant
Maybe we should set-up a 'Mosque of England' that follows its Christian equivalent by minimising the religious part of religion to the fullest extent possible...
We could make Charles the Caliph of the world and claim universal dominion.
It is of course desperately sad to see Mike Freer being apparently forced out by death threats and we don't want another Jo Cox or David Amess let alone what happened to Stephen Timms and Nigel Jones.
There's a wider question around the rise of intolerance and the tension within the wider argument of free speech. The right to offend (or is it the right to be offensive) seems now to be the starting point of argument or debate. Perhaps the belief is the louder you shout the more likely people will listen - the truth is the louder you shout the more likely people will hear but the less likely it is they will listen.
No one ever changed anyone's mind by yelling at them. Minds are only ever changed by empathy.
I always feel that trans... enthusiasts... would do well to spend some time understanding why someone might not agree with them.
That sounds sweet but I’m really not sure it’s true
“Minds are only changed by empathy”
Hmm. The Japanese mind was changed vis a vis the continuance of the war by seeing 100,000 of their compatriots vaporised in a second. That wasn’t particularly empathetic
The experience of war isn't something with much many if any of us are familiar.
I can only imagine to have lived in Germany and Japan from 1943-45 was purgatory but self preservation and patriotism cuts both ways and all ways.
As a patriotic German in 1945, irrespective of how we view Hitler and the Nazis now and following twelve years of unrelenting propaganda, how would you react to the invasion of your country by foreigners? Of course, in the face of overwhelming military force, what can anyone do? Defend your country and die in the attempt, try to seek refuge or accept you are now the subject of an invading power?
The Japanese also had longer cultural indoctrination - again, we quote the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but the Tokyo fire bombing raids killed more people. The expectation and belief in the West, based on Okinawa, was Japanese civilians would resist fanatically to the last - we never found out the truth of that. Perhaps, in the face of the might of the American invasion, they would have yielded - it's entirely possible there would have been a far greater instance of suicide in an invaded Japan than there was in an invaded and conquered Germany.
I go back to the point the British have never experienced what it is like to be invaded and conquered - we have never suffered that sense of national humiliation the French, Germans and others have. I suspect it's one of those characteristics which always set us about from continental Europe and influenced our relationships.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
So the main problem here is not that an MP and minister has been terrorised into resigning because of multiple Islamist death threats and an arson attack, the main problem is that he might have offended Muslims by mentioning this in the first place?
Is that it? Is that your take?
I would have thought someone with your exceptional IQ could have read that and realised that I had not discussed at all what the main problem is, merely commented on the language being discussed. Maybe the aging is catching up with you quicker than you realise.
No, your main focus was not on the horrible implications of a minister resigning because of Islamist death threats, it was on the “words missing from jenrick’s statement” that meant he might have offended Muslims
The implications of his resignation are direful. Who will ever be brave enough to be an MP, especially a gay or Jewish MP? An MP speaking about Israel, an MP willing to be pro Israel? An MP willing to challenge anything about Islam or islamism?
We are fast approaching a terrible point where either our democracy capitulates to these menaces, or we all stand up together and say Enough
The Batley teacher is still in hiding. Three years later
Pathetic non sequitur but will give one clarification. It is not because of offence to Muslims that I think Jenricks comments unwise, it is because his comments are counter productive in reducing Islamic extremism and could have been on the productive side of the balance sheet with a simple and obvious addition.
What in your opinion would be productive in reducing Islamic extremism.
Start with education, so get rid of any religious schooling.
Please expand. What do you mean religious schooling.
Would you like a society with no religion or do you see some (all?) religious schooling as contributing to Islamic extremism.
The French have no religion in schools, at all, or any other public body.
Does not mean they don't have religion in their country.
It's rather baffling why the state should interfere with peoples relationships with their imaginary friends when it is such a personal matter.
But the Islamist menace in France is probably even worse than it is in Britain. It is also dire in Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands - basically, anywhere in Europe with a significant Muslim population
That is the uncomfortable truth. The painful fact is that sizeable minorities of Muslim migrant populations in Europe hold opinions incompatible with modern liberal democracy as we know it - from free speech to gay rights. And smaller elements within those populations are willing to use violence to enforce or illuminate these extreme opinions
And it is now so bad it is threatening the foundation of democracy itself - people willing to stand as MPs and serve in Parliament
I suspect that conversion to Islam will become an increasingly appealing option for native Europeans from deprived areas. People need meaning, and it's not being provided by consumerism.
Maybe. Tho many Europeans would struggle with teetotalism
I do believe we are heading for some kind of showdown. European voters are increasingly willing to elect hard/far right leaders to tackle this. Meloni, Wilders, maybe Le Pen
Then we will see
Yes more likely we will go right wing than accept the horrendous lifestyle these crazies offer. Need to be in some deprived state to want to convert to that for sure.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
What we think of as secular values are themselves essentially religious and rooted in Christianity, and are therefore much less transmissible than you would like to think. Your attitude exactly parallels the Christian missionaries of the 19th century who wanted to spread their set of universal truths to the less enlightened.
It would be good if you were a bit more explicit about exactly what secular values you're talking about.
For example human rights and the belief that all men are created equal. The US declaration of independence was explicitly inspired by religious beliefs.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
Reeves is getting on my nerves and just dropping the 28 billion green pledge looks insane . Fair enough lower it but to just ditch the whole thing is going to piss of a lot of Labour voters .
This obsession with avoiding Tory attacks is looking spineless . And really wtf is the point of voting Labour for just Tory policies with a less annoying cabinet .
There’s also an arrogance that Labour to Green switchers are just going to come back at the GE .
Who the fxck is advising Starmer ?
..
I think that is probably unfair. Other voices have more weight at moment i suspect. Sue Gray for example.
Is there a word in chess for an overly cautious player?
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
Indeed. A good analogy is Germany during the Nazi era
Most Germans weren’t evil Nazis. Germany was a great nation with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar and unfortunate sequence of events allowed a small group of evil men to deceive a wider group of Germans into supporting them and they then bullied the rest of the nation into submission. And Nazi Germany was born
Most Muslims do not support islamism. Islam is a great religion with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar sequence of events has allowed a relatively small cabal of fundamentalist freaks to pervert Islam to violent ends - and a lot of Muslims are bullied into silence by them, and thus entire nations have been captured - Iran is the classic example
As both Mao and Mussolini observed, you don’t need vast armies to seize power over many millions of people, you just need a reasonable number of extreme, disciplined and aggressive fighters - the complacent majority will acquiesce in favour of a quiet life
Sorry but I disagree with you. The problem is not that the cabal of freaks have perverted Islam to be violent. The problem is that Islam (like Christianity and other organised religions) is violent.
The quran, like the Bible, is full of rotten, evil, horrid stuff that is appalling to modern, secular tastes. Thankfully most enlightened people disregard those elements, or even laugh at them.
The problem is they are there, and the extremists are taking their instructions literally.
Islamic extremists are beheading people not because they've twisted an angelic faith, but because the quran says to behead your enemies. Its there in black and white.
The West Wing portrayed this excellently with Christianity, responding to those who latch on to some passages for eg homophobic reasons by going for even more extreme Biblical passages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-ip47WYWc
The same that has been done with the Bible can be with the Quran - the zealots are those taking what does exist within the religion seriously, rather than with the appropriate and modern grains of salt.
The modern way is to pervert religion to being something more secular and enlightened by disregarding the horrible passages. Lets not pretend they're not there, because they are, and being dishonest just isn't helpful.
Some fair points, however Islam has not always been like this - literal, brutal, primitivist. That’s why the movement that is islamism was BORN in the 20th century - to take Islam back to some half-imagined purist past, severe and dogmatic, the religion of the baking desert
There have been other Islams - much more tolerant and urbane. The Islam of Omar Khayyam and his jug of wine. The Islam of Al Andalus and the great Muslim scholars. The Islam of the Sufi mystics
Islamism is ONE interpretation of Islam, barbaric and pugnacious. Unfortunately it is ascendant
Yes, for periods of human history Islamic societies were more enlightened than Christian ones, so the Quran was treated with the appropriate pinches of salt in those societies more.
That's why a lot of modern Mathematics for instance comes from the Middle East, why we use today Arabic* numerals and so on and so forth, because knowledge was being developed and spread in the enlightened Middle East more than dark ages, barbaric and pugnacious Europe at the time.
* Technically the Hindus actually invented them, but it was Arabic mathematicians who introduced them to Europeans and so we use that name.
You're one of the people on here who tends to be least willing to take your own convictions with a pinch of salt. You preach an extreme form of blank-slate liberalism which is a religion in disguise.
Don't talk rot, I fully welcome and engage with opinions that differ massively from my own.
Indeed that's a part of my liberal belief in free speech, so it'd be weird if I didn't.
Where appropriate I am willing to take my own convictions with a pinch of salt, hence why I've often said I'm a liberal and not an anarchist.
With nuclear weapons of course patriotism doesn't enter into it.
A one megaton warhead doesn't care how patriotic or otherwise you are and a post-nuclear world make Stunde Null look like paradise.
It's my fervent hope too many are too invested in the trappings of the good life to want to throw it all away. Biden, Trump, Putin, Xi even Kim Jong Un all seem to enjoy nice food, nice drink, nice clothes and travelling in style and comfort, All that ends with the first missile.
With nuclear weapons of course patriotism doesn't enter into it.
A one megaton warhead doesn't care how patriotic or otherwise you are and a post-nuclear world make Stunde Null look like paradise.
It's my fervent hope too many are too invested in the trappings of the good life to want to throw it all away. Biden, Trump, Putin, Xi even Kim Jong Un all seem to enjoy nice food, nice drink, nice clothes and travelling in style and comfort, All that ends with the first missile.
That assumes rationality. :Leaders might start rational - or at least appearing rational - and lose that rationality as time goes on. I'd argue Putin, Trump and Chavez are examples of this. As was Hitler, increasingly post-1943.
God bless leaders like Brown, May, Johnson and Truss, who realise that their time is up and just go.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
Is this the same Penny Mordaunt whose party keeps creating new lords after each round of muscial PM chairs to make it the largest upper house in the world? Surely not?
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
An extra 36 snouts in the trough, in Scotland teh grifters have awarded tehmselves a big pay rise and Useless gets paid more than the PM now. If paid on performance those clowns would be on negative salaries. Grifters galore.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
What we think of as secular values are themselves essentially religious and rooted in Christianity, and are therefore much less transmissible than you would like to think. Your attitude exactly parallels the Christian missionaries of the 19th century who wanted to spread their set of universal truths to the less enlightened.
It would be good if you were a bit more explicit about exactly what secular values you're talking about.
For example human rights and the belief that all men are created equal. The US declaration of independence was explicitly inspired by religious beliefs.
That will be the declaration of independence of a country with systemic slavery, many of whose authors held slaves?
That belief that everyone was equal you're claiming as religious?
Well the Bible does endorse slavery, as quoted in that West Wing video I linked to before, so if you want to claim that one, then perhaps you're right?
Or perhaps, it was written based on the philosophy of its time, philosophy which has evolved over thousands of years and which viewed "all men" being equal as wealthy, educated, white land owning males - and others didn't count.
Reeves is getting on my nerves and just dropping the 28 billion green pledge looks insane . Fair enough lower it but to just ditch the whole thing is going to piss of a lot of Labour voters .
This obsession with avoiding Tory attacks is looking spineless . And really wtf is the point of voting Labour for just Tory policies with a less annoying cabinet .
There’s also an arrogance that Labour to Green switchers are just going to come back at the GE .
Who the fxck is advising Starmer ?
..
I think that is probably unfair. Other voices have more weight at moment i suspect. Sue Gray for example.
Is there a word in chess for an overly cautious player?
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
There must be examples when an elected (or unelected...) representative has proposed changes against their, or their parties, advantage?
It is of course desperately sad to see Mike Freer being apparently forced out by death threats and we don't want another Jo Cox or David Amess let alone what happened to Stephen Timms and Nigel Jones.
There's a wider question around the rise of intolerance and the tension within the wider argument of free speech. The right to offend (or is it the right to be offensive) seems now to be the starting point of argument or debate. Perhaps the belief is the louder you shout the more likely people will listen - the truth is the louder you shout the more likely people will hear but the less likely it is they will listen.
No one ever changed anyone's mind by yelling at them. Minds are only ever changed by empathy.
I always feel that trans... enthusiasts... would do well to spend some time understanding why someone might not agree with them.
I think that's silly. Rational people's minds are changed by rational debate, but only after a long period of time. If you want to change people's minds the fastest, use the law of the land or the law of the community. Arrests, fines, derision, stigmatisation and the billy-club initially change the behaviour of the individual, and after a while the person does so voluntarily ("the policeman in the head"). It is nice to think that minds are changed by empathy, but they are not.
This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Indeed. Dump the processed carbs and vegan crap with 25 processed ingredients and go for clean cuts of whole meat.
Much healthier.
(With a baked potato on the side.)
and occasionally some chips instead, with lashings of salt and vinegar.
1/ It is shameful that an MP has been intimidated out of office.
Our political discourse should improve. But the far bigger problem for our liberal democracy is virulently anti-British Islamist extremism which is both deeply homophobic and antisemitic, and in this case violent
2/ The ideology has to be confronted and comprehensively defeated.
We cannot possibly hope to tackle extremism if we keep failing to diagnose it or, worse still, if when we do recognise it we pretend it is something else and reach for warm words.
3/ Two years ago I wrote about how politicians failed to call out Islamist extremism behind Sir David Amess’s murder.
Today the same thing is happening as again society turns a blind eye.
Whereas you and Jenrick are correct that MPs shouldn't be intimidated by political opponents and in David Ames's case summarily executed by a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim.
My question however is why has Jenrick couched this in terms of potentially Islamophobic rhetoric? It's a dog whistle isn't it?
It's not Islamophobic if backed by evidence and if not applying generalities (whether accurate or not) against individuals.
Amess wasn't killed by "a psychopath who happened to be a Muslim"; the murderer's muslim identity was central to his actions and motivations.
Aren't we heading into Corbyn territory here?The conflation of a creed to an action is unhelpful. There is nothing in the Koran that demanded Mr Ames was assassinated.
Is Jenrick calling out the acts of terror or focusing on Islam? Perhaps the Mike Freer issue was initiated by some Labour scrote who has an issue with Gaza rather than an Islamic terrorist. I am uncomfortable with the rhetoric used, but I know why Jenrick is happy so to do.
I suggest it is sometimes necessary to be quite blunt about Islamic extremism being a real problem that needs tackling. I would also suggest that is best achieved by politcians being very careful to make it clear that it is the extremist part that is the problem, not Islam or most Muslims. And it is that, that is missing from Jenrick's statement.
Can we split the difference?
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
What we think of as secular values are themselves essentially religious and rooted in Christianity, and are therefore much less transmissible than you would like to think. Your attitude exactly parallels the Christian missionaries of the 19th century who wanted to spread their set of universal truths to the less enlightened.
It would be good if you were a bit more explicit about exactly what secular values you're talking about.
For example human rights and the belief that all men are created equal. The US declaration of independence was explicitly inspired by religious beliefs.
OK.
You've finally lost it.
Let's start off with the obvious fact that literally everyone on planet earth agrees that there are human rights. It's just that they don't all agree with what those rights are. Go to - say - Christian America. They'll be big on the human right to go to church. But not so big on the human right to have an abortion.
Go to Thailand, and they'll be big on the human right to be transexual and do sex work. But not so big on the human right of criticizing the King.
And your last point - unless you are saying the secular values include slavery - is utterly absurd.
This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Indeed. Dump the processed carbs and vegan crap with 25 processed ingredients and go for clean cuts of whole meat.
Much healthier.
As an aside and respecting your dietary choices, do you eat a range of meats, including poultry? I think a balanced meat diet is as important as balance in everything - I wouldn't just want to eat beef, lamb, pork or chicken the whole time. Do you eat turkey, veal or duck or other meats? Venison for example is a very lean meat but with good preparation is excellent.
I'm a big fan of liver which gets a bad rep but if cooked properly is wonderful.
liver and onions is the business if cooked properly.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
There must be examples when an elected (or unelected...) representative has proposed changes against their, or their parties, advantage?
It is of course desperately sad to see Mike Freer being apparently forced out by death threats and we don't want another Jo Cox or David Amess let alone what happened to Stephen Timms and Nigel Jones.
There's a wider question around the rise of intolerance and the tension within the wider argument of free speech. The right to offend (or is it the right to be offensive) seems now to be the starting point of argument or debate. Perhaps the belief is the louder you shout the more likely people will listen - the truth is the louder you shout the more likely people will hear but the less likely it is they will listen.
No one ever changed anyone's mind by yelling at them. Minds are only ever changed by empathy.
I always feel that trans... enthusiasts... would do well to spend some time understanding why someone might not agree with them.
I think that's silly. Rational people's minds are changed by rational debate, but only after a long period of time. If you want to change people's minds the fastest, use the law of the land or the law of the community. Arrests, fines, derision, stigmatisation and the billy-club initially change the behaviour of the individual, and after a while the person does so voluntarily ("the policeman in the head"). It is nice to think that minds are changed by empathy, but they are not.
FUCKING IDIOT.
New PB law. No disagreeing with @rcs1000, otherwise I wield the ban hammer.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
Incidentally, my back-of-the-envelope calcs make me think that for the UK Parliament should have approx 3000 seats to provide the same representation England had in the 19th century. 650 MPs is nowhere near enough for 67million people.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
There must be examples when an elected (or unelected...) representative has proposed changes against their, or their parties, advantage?
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
Incidentally, my back-of-the-envelope calcs make me think that for the UK Parliament should have approx 3000 seats to provide the same representation England had in the 19th century. 650 MPs is nowhere near enough for 67million people.
More like 300K, if you go by electorate? Maybe even a gross of gross.
It is of course desperately sad to see Mike Freer being apparently forced out by death threats and we don't want another Jo Cox or David Amess let alone what happened to Stephen Timms and Nigel Jones.
There's a wider question around the rise of intolerance and the tension within the wider argument of free speech. The right to offend (or is it the right to be offensive) seems now to be the starting point of argument or debate. Perhaps the belief is the louder you shout the more likely people will listen - the truth is the louder you shout the more likely people will hear but the less likely it is they will listen.
No one ever changed anyone's mind by yelling at them. Minds are only ever changed by empathy.
I always feel that trans... enthusiasts... would do well to spend some time understanding why someone might not agree with them.
I think that's silly. Rational people's minds are changed by rational debate, but only after a long period of time. If you want to change people's minds the fastest, use the law of the land or the law of the community. Arrests, fines, derision, stigmatisation and the billy-club initially change the behaviour of the individual, and after a while the person does so voluntarily ("the policeman in the head"). It is nice to think that minds are changed by empathy, but they are not.
FUCKING IDIOT.
New PB law. No disagreeing with @rcs1000, otherwise I wield the ban hammer.
The thought had not expressed the merest ambition to cross my mind, m'lud 😃
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
Is this the same Penny Mordaunt whose party keeps creating new lords after each round of muscial PM chairs to make it the largest upper house in the world? Surely not?
They could solve many of the issues with the Lords (short of just abolishing it) just by listening to me. A reminder (slightly amended):
The number of Lords not to exceed the number of MPs - this would encourage those who are not really interested or able to contibute anymore to resign, so new Lords can be appointed. And means you cannot just flood new Lords in to get your way.
Maximum 20 years service - it's not a job for life, and since they are not elected why should people serve decade after decade?
Failure to participate in a percentage of votes in a year without an absence authorised by the Chamber to see someone void their place - because it's a job, albeit part time, not just a fancy title.
Just stop replacing the Hereditaries already - because really, it's getting silly.
No MPs to be elevated until 8 years or 2 parliamentary terms passes, whichever is longer - because it's not a retirement home
No one who has donated more than £1000 to a party (or a body they control/lead donated £10000) may be elevated until 8 years or 2 parliamentary terms passes, whichever is longer - to avoid any appearance of buying a place.
The charges of timidity laid against Starmer and Reeves are exactly the same ones levelled at Blair and Brown in the mid-90s.
Mandelson was fairly influential then as well and the analogy used by Roy Jenkins at the time was that of Blair trying to walk down a corridor holding an expensive vase. He didn't dare look left or right - just had to make sure he got the vase to the end of the corridor safely. Even at his destination, he resisted a celebratory pirouette (a nod to Kinnock and Sheffield perhaps?).
Irrespective of the siren calls on here and elsewhere to be more radical and more daring, Starmer and Mandelson will know he hasn't won a single vote and the votes he needs are from those who want to be reassured the country will be run properly and effectively. They aren't interested in radical solutions just competence and an absence of grift and sleaze.
That group of ex-Conservative voters who are already in the Labour camp are one thing but the key objective now is the targeting of the 2019 Conservatives who are Don't Knows in polls. Getting them either to come to Labour or stay at home is the objective and the way to frighten the horses would be for Labour to start sounding radical and different.
This is about winning the election - getting 326 or more Labour MPs on the Commons benches. Once that has been achieved, the way can be prepared for the more radical proposals.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
Incidentally, my back-of-the-envelope calcs make me think that for the UK Parliament should have approx 3000 seats to provide the same representation England had in the 19th century. 650 MPs is nowhere near enough for 67million people.
It would be if we had more powerful local government perhaps. But despite what every party's manifesto claims every election, no one really wants that.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
Yes. And the top up system worse.
The most pertinent question is perhaps why Wales, with 60% of Scotland's population and a population around 50% greater than that of Northern Ireland, has hitherto had by far the smallest elected chamber of anywhere except London (which is also absurdly small but has very few actual powers compared to Wales).
It's ludicrous.
As for the impact, they're still using the genuinely mad D'Hondt system which has entrenched the disastrous one-party rule of Labour (which is of course why they're using it). Changing to STV would be more democratic but won't happen while Welsh Labour breath air.
However, abolishing the constituencies which give Labour a lock on around 45% of the seats in any scenario might help make it more democratic simply by giving other parties a proper look-in in the Valleys.
The charges of timidity laid against Starmer and Reeves are exactly the same ones levelled at Blair and Brown in the mid-90s.
Mandelson was fairly influential then as well and the analogy used by Roy Jenkins at the time was that of Blair trying to walk down a corridor holding an expensive vase. He didn't dare look left or right - just had to make sure he got the vase to the end of the corridor safely. Even at his destination, he resisted a celebratory pirouette (a nod to Kinnock and Sheffield perhaps?).
Irrespective of the siren calls on here and elsewhere to be more radical and more daring, Starmer and Mandelson will know he hasn't won a single vote and the votes he needs are from those who want to be reassured the country will be run properly and effectively. They aren't interested in radical solutions just competence and an absence of grift and sleaze.
That group of ex-Conservative voters who are already in the Labour camp are one thing but the key objective now is the targeting of the 2019 Conservatives who are Don't Knows in polls. Getting them either to come to Labour or stay at home is the objective and the way to frighten the horses would be for Labour to start sounding radical and different.
This is about winning the election - getting 326 or more Labour MPs on the Commons benches. Once that has been achieved, the way can be prepared for the more radical proposals.
And just saying that frightens the horses. which is why it's not said: and why it may not happen once they're in power (witness Blair post-1997). Democratic politicians are always aware that another election is only another few years away.
This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Indeed. Dump the processed carbs and vegan crap with 25 processed ingredients and go for clean cuts of whole meat.
Much healthier.
As an aside and respecting your dietary choices, do you eat a range of meats, including poultry? I think a balanced meat diet is as important as balance in everything - I wouldn't just want to eat beef, lamb, pork or chicken the whole time. Do you eat turkey, veal or duck or other meats? Venison for example is a very lean meat but with good preparation is excellent.
I'm a big fan of liver which gets a bad rep but if cooked properly is wonderful.
liver and onions is the business if cooked properly.
I may not agree with you often but anyone who likes liver and onions is okay by me.
This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Indeed. Dump the processed carbs and vegan crap with 25 processed ingredients and go for clean cuts of whole meat.
Much healthier.
As an aside and respecting your dietary choices, do you eat a range of meats, including poultry? I think a balanced meat diet is as important as balance in everything - I wouldn't just want to eat beef, lamb, pork or chicken the whole time. Do you eat turkey, veal or duck or other meats? Venison for example is a very lean meat but with good preparation is excellent.
I'm a big fan of liver which gets a bad rep but if cooked properly is wonderful.
liver and onions is the business if cooked properly.
I may not agree with you often but anyone who likes liver and onions is okay by me.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
Incidentally, my back-of-the-envelope calcs make me think that for the UK Parliament should have approx 3000 seats to provide the same representation England had in the 19th century. 650 MPs is nowhere near enough for 67million people.
It would be if we had more powerful local government perhaps. But despite what every party's manifesto claims every election, no one really wants that.
Personally I quite like the idea of more MPs. Less of the parliamentary majority on the govt payroll, you're more likely to know your MP if they represent a smaller area.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
There must be examples when an elected (or unelected...) representative has proposed changes against their, or their parties, advantage?
Gladstone in 1884 conceded boundary changes to the Conservatives if he could keep control of the franchise. However, that probably was just idiocy instead of generosity.
In 1928 the Conservatives brought in votes for women despite claims it would hurt them electorally. It is worth noting this was not the view of their own campaigning staff.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
Is this the same Penny Mordaunt whose party keeps creating new lords after each round of muscial PM chairs to make it the largest upper house in the world? Surely not?
They could solve many of the issues with the Lords (short of just abolishing it) just by listening to me. A reminder (slightly amended):
The number of Lords not to exceed the number of MPs - this would encourage those who are not really interested or able to contibute anymore to resign, so new Lords can be appointed. And means you cannot just flood new Lords in to get your way.
Maximum 20 years service - it's not a job for life, and since they are not elected why should people serve decade after decade?
Failure to participate in a percentage of votes in a year without an absence authorised by the Chamber to see someone void their place - because it's a job, albeit part time, not just a fancy title.
Just stop replacing the Hereditaries already - because really, it's getting silly.
No MPs to be elevated until 8 years or 2 parliamentary terms passes, whichever is longer - because it's not a retirement home
No one who has donated more than £1000 to a party (or a body they control/lead donated £10000) may be elevated until 8 years or 2 parliamentary terms passes, whichever is longer - to avoid any appearance of buying a place.
And so on.
I disagree.
What is the point of the HoL? If you think there's no point, just abolish it. If you think it serves a purpose, what form will best serve that purpose?
Personally, I'm of the view that elected politicians get things wrong, and a second house is vital. Therefore make it unelected and experts.
The charges of timidity laid against Starmer and Reeves are exactly the same ones levelled at Blair and Brown in the mid-90s.
Mandelson was fairly influential then as well and the analogy used by Roy Jenkins at the time was that of Blair trying to walk down a corridor holding an expensive vase. He didn't dare look left or right - just had to make sure he got the vase to the end of the corridor safely. Even at his destination, he resisted a celebratory pirouette (a nod to Kinnock and Sheffield perhaps?).
Irrespective of the siren calls on here and elsewhere to be more radical and more daring, Starmer and Mandelson will know he hasn't won a single vote and the votes he needs are from those who want to be reassured the country will be run properly and effectively. They aren't interested in radical solutions just competence and an absence of grift and sleaze.
That group of ex-Conservative voters who are already in the Labour camp are one thing but the key objective now is the targeting of the 2019 Conservatives who are Don't Knows in polls. Getting them either to come to Labour or stay at home is the objective and the way to frighten the horses would be for Labour to start sounding radical and different.
This is about winning the election - getting 326 or more Labour MPs on the Commons benches. Once that has been achieved, the way can be prepared for the more radical proposals.
The way to lure Red Wall voters is to offer them levelling up, and to mean it. But they won't.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
Incidentally, my back-of-the-envelope calcs make me think that for the UK Parliament should have approx 3000 seats to provide the same representation England had in the 19th century. 650 MPs is nowhere near enough for 67million people.
More like 300K, if you go by electorate? Maybe even a gross of gross.
Fair point. I think I was aiming for around 20,000 people per constituency. In practice I think you could only go to around 900 MPs, on the grounds that that's the most you can get in the bigger hall in the Westminster building (you'd have to abandon the existing HOC chamber which is too small), and that would come in at about 70,000 people per constituency
This was mostly not junk food. The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
Indeed. Dump the processed carbs and vegan crap with 25 processed ingredients and go for clean cuts of whole meat.
Much healthier.
As an aside and respecting your dietary choices, do you eat a range of meats, including poultry? I think a balanced meat diet is as important as balance in everything - I wouldn't just want to eat beef, lamb, pork or chicken the whole time. Do you eat turkey, veal or duck or other meats? Venison for example is a very lean meat but with good preparation is excellent.
I'm a big fan of liver which gets a bad rep but if cooked properly is wonderful.
liver and onions is the business if cooked properly.
I may not agree with you often but anyone who likes liver and onions is okay by me.
*hungry*
Strangely enough, I had liver, onions and bacon for tea. Never forget the bacon otherwise it is just offal.
Reeves is getting on my nerves and just dropping the 28 billion green pledge looks insane . Fair enough lower it but to just ditch the whole thing is going to piss of a lot of Labour voters .
This obsession with avoiding Tory attacks is looking spineless . And really wtf is the point of voting Labour for just Tory policies with a less annoying cabinet .
There’s also an arrogance that Labour to Green switchers are just going to come back at the GE .
Who the fxck is advising Starmer ?
..
I think that is probably unfair. Other voices have more weight at moment i suspect. Sue Gray for example.
Is there a word in chess for an overly cautious player?
Seems to me Reeves is that person.
I think Reeves could be the sensible person taking away the punch bowl when the party threatens to get out of hand.
...but one of the reasons why we are so badly governed is lack of representation. How do we expect our MPs to represent their constituents if there are over 100,000 of them? We need to stop doing things that are obviously stupid, and this is an example.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
Is this the same Penny Mordaunt whose party keeps creating new lords after each round of muscial PM chairs to make it the largest upper house in the world? Surely not?
They could solve many of the issues with the Lords (short of just abolishing it) just by listening to me. A reminder (slightly amended):
The number of Lords not to exceed the number of MPs - this would encourage those who are not really interested or able to contibute anymore to resign, so new Lords can be appointed. And means you cannot just flood new Lords in to get your way.
Maximum 20 years service - it's not a job for life, and since they are not elected why should people serve decade after decade?
Failure to participate in a percentage of votes in a year without an absence authorised by the Chamber to see someone void their place - because it's a job, albeit part time, not just a fancy title.
Just stop replacing the Hereditaries already - because really, it's getting silly.
No MPs to be elevated until 8 years or 2 parliamentary terms passes, whichever is longer - because it's not a retirement home
No one who has donated more than £1000 to a party (or a body they control/lead donated £10000) may be elevated until 8 years or 2 parliamentary terms passes, whichever is longer - to avoid any appearance of buying a place.
And so on.
I disagree.
What is the point of the HoL? If you think there's no point, just abolish it. If you think it serves a purpose, what form will best serve that purpose?
Personally, I'm of the view that elected politicians get things wrong, and a second house is vital. Therefore make it unelected and experts.
Others differ.
Not sure where you disagree with any of my points from that though - I think it serves a useful purpose and that keeping out past their prime MPs and people who have lost their seats benefits that purposes, as does encouraging a steady (but not rapid) turnover which is less impacted by base political considerations and rewarding cronies who give cash to a party, whilst also ensuring those who are part of it actively contribute even as it recognises it is not a full time position.
Encouraging a broader inclusion of experts I am less sure of how to accomplish which is why I did not mention it, but support.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
There must be examples when an elected (or unelected...) representative has proposed changes against their, or their parties, advantage?
Gladstone in 1884 conceded boundary changes to the Conservatives if he could keep control of the franchise. However, that probably was just idiocy instead of generosity.
In 1928 the Conservatives brought in votes for women despite claims it would hurt them electorally. It is worth noting this was not the view of their own campaigning staff.
I confess not to know what to think about this stated plan - there's no definitive answer on what ratio of electors to representatives you should have. I mean, there are local councils with well north of 100 councillors. The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 for 1.4m people whilst Utah has 75 for 3.2m
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
There must be examples when an elected (or unelected...) representative has proposed changes against their, or their parties, advantage?
Gladstone in 1884 conceded boundary changes to the Conservatives if he could keep control of the franchise. However, that probably was just idiocy instead of generosity.
In 1928 the Conservatives brought in votes for women despite claims it would hurt them electorally. It is worth noting this was not the view of their own campaigning staff.
After that I'm struggling.
Many a positive change has come about because one side thought it would benefit them, and may well have been correct. It's why we cannot always dismiss out of hand proposals merely because it is felt one side will benefit from it - it might, but is it still the right move despite that?
Voter ID seems like it may have been an attempt to make a change to benefit one side, but actually it may hurt them.
Comments
Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake
https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(19)30248-7
This was mostly not junk food.
The effect appears to be that highly processed foods are essentially pre-digested, which means the body takes up more calories.
https://x.com/lbcnews/status/1753055897054519505?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
It would certainly not be the case of Trump puts on a load of wasted votes in New York and California.
The 2021 Census had 46% Christian, 37% No Religion and 6.5% Muslim yet it's apparently the end of democracy. That's like saying the latest opinion poll shows the Liberal Democrats are going to win the next election with just 7% of the vote.
It's my experience many younger Muslims pay, at most, lip service to the conservative social and religious attitudes of parents and grandparents. As with the younger Hindus, they are more interested in nice clothes, nice cars and chasing after boys or girls (delete as appropriate). The capitalist virtues or vices seem to hold plenty of appeal as well.
That's not to say the preservation of democracy doesn't require eternal vigilance but I'm more concerned by successive Conservative and Labour Governments centralising power to either Westminster or Whitehall. This Government has done more to weaken the powers of Parliament than any other but I see no sign of Starmer wanting to relinquish this new-found Executive power - why am I not surprised?
Your vision of an app that summons a vehicle for you to take you somewhere then disappear already exists, its called a taxi. Its not futuristic, and its not replacing private transportation.
Meanwhile in the real world people still have, need and most importantly want their own transportation.
You freaks who want rid of private transport may be vocal, but you're still absurd and its not happening.
Much healthier.
There's a wider question around the rise of intolerance and the tension within the wider argument of free speech. The right to offend (or is it the right to be offensive) seems now to be the starting point of argument or debate. Perhaps the belief is the louder you shout the more likely people will listen - the truth is the louder you shout the more likely people will hear but the less likely it is they will listen.
Most Muslims absolutely are not the problem. Secular Muslims are not a problem.
The problem behind Islamic extremism though is Islam, just as the problem behind Christian extremism in the past (and still for many today) is Christianity.
Thankfully Christian countries went through the Enlightenment and thankfully today most Christians in Europe at the least are more secular in their views and disregard the extremist elements of Christianity.
We need Islam to undergo the same Enlightenment. Many Muslims are indeed enlightened and take their faith with appropriate grains of salt - that is not encouraged by people pretending that there is no problem in the religion itself - any more than it helps if people pretend there's no problems in the Bible itself.
To them, mentioning their Peculiar Institution on the wrong way *demanded* a violent response. Demanded the censorship of newspapers. Demanded that candidates be stricken from the ballot. Demanded a Gag Rule in the Senate & Congress
Because they knew their cause was weak. And growing weaker.
I've had around 8 Afghan Uber drivers over the last year in London. All the previous ones opposed the Taliban, whereas last Saturday's said things had been getting better and more stable since they took over.
Accordingly they might feel something completely sincerely, but their reaction expressing that sincere emotion is still to some degree manufactured.
And then of course some will just be totally making it all up anyway.
I'm a big fan of liver which gets a bad rep but if cooked properly is wonderful.
Muslim: + 1.6%
No religion: +12.0%
So the fastest growing change is towards secularism, with a smaller growth in Islam as well.
My prediction is that many people from Muslim households will join the secular trend over time, just as people have been doing from previously Christian families.
I'm not the best ways to encourage this but that should be the policy goal.
Teetotalism, no.
Islamic State = Teetotalitarianism
Most Germans weren’t evil Nazis. Germany was a great nation with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar and unfortunate sequence of events allowed a small group of evil men to deceive a wider group of Germans into supporting them and they then bullied the rest of the nation into submission. And Nazi Germany was born
Most Muslims do not support islamism. Islam is a great religion with a magnificent cultural heritage. But a peculiar sequence of events has allowed a relatively small cabal of fundamentalist freaks to
pervert Islam to violent ends - and a lot of Muslims are bullied into silence by them, and thus entire nations have been captured - Iran is the classic
example
As both Mao and Mussolini observed, you don’t need vast armies to seize power over many millions of people, you just need a reasonable number of extreme, disciplined and aggressive fighters - the complacent majority will acquiesce in favour of a quiet life
Careful does not mean don't offend here, as things like saying blasphemy is not and should not be illegal here is going to offend. It means precise.
I'm eating a range of meats across the week but obviously limited amounts on a particular day.
Today I was more limited in what I ate as I was too busy with the kids this morning before going to work that I didn't have time to prepare lunch or breakfast, so I bought a chorizo from Tesco's and ripped it in two, having half for breakfast and half for lunch. For dinner tonight I just had some pork belly slices.
There's loads of meats out there to try. I've never particularly liked turkey, finding it rather dry, I prefer chicken - we won't have turkey at Christmas, we have chicken and gammon instead. Venison I've never been too fussed by. But most meats I'll have with the exception of rabbit since we had a pet rabbit, that to me now would be like eating dog.
Reeves is getting on my nerves and just dropping the 28 billion green pledge looks insane . Fair enough lower it but to just ditch the whole thing is going to piss of a lot of Labour voters .
This obsession with avoiding Tory attacks is looking spineless . And really wtf is the point of voting Labour for just Tory policies with a less annoying cabinet .
There’s also an arrogance that Labour to Green switchers are just going to come back at the GE .
Who the fxck is advising Starmer ?
Avoid the head tho. Lots of gristle
I always feel that trans... enthusiasts... would do well to spend some time understanding why someone might not agree with them.
The quran, like the Bible, is full of rotten, evil, horrid stuff that is appalling to modern, secular tastes. Thankfully most enlightened people disregard those elements, or even laugh at them.
The problem is they are there, and the extremists are taking their instructions literally.
Islamic extremists are beheading people not because they've twisted an angelic faith, but because the quran says to behead your enemies. Its there in black and white.
The West Wing portrayed this excellently with Christianity, responding to those who latch on to some passages for eg homophobic reasons by going for even more extreme Biblical passages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-ip47WYWc
The same that has been done with the Bible can be with the Quran - the zealots are those taking what does exist within the religion seriously, rather than with the appropriate and modern grains of salt.
The modern way is to pervert religion to being something more secular and enlightened by disregarding the horrible passages. Lets not pretend they're not there, because they are, and being dishonest just isn't helpful.
“Minds are only changed by empathy”
Hmm. The Japanese mind was changed vis a vis the continuance of the war by seeing 100,000 of their compatriots vaporised in a second. That wasn’t particularly empathetic
It's why the yellers on many issues succeed at driving the course of debate and acceptable conduct. Without resistance, they get what they want even if people grumble privately as their minds are unchanged.
I think in practice CofE ones are fairly modest in their religious aims, reflecting the diverse and secular families that go there (there are far more Christian school places than Christian parents). My suspicion is that Muslim schools are less diverse (unlikely to be many areas where that's the only choice) and therefore not a good thing for community integration.
So I agree that banning religious state education would be a good step, of many.
If my children were to go to a religious school, which I haven't ruled out, I'd make sure theu are fully versed in agnostic atheism beforehand.
Your comment works both ways.
No our secular values are not remotely rooted in Christianity. They're rooted in thousands of years of philosophy and evolution from Greco-Roman times onwards.
There have been other Islams - much more tolerant and urbane. The Islam of Omar Khayyam and his jug of wine. The Islam of Al Andalus and the great Muslim scholars. The Islam of the Sufi mystics
Islamism is ONE interpretation of Islam, barbaric and pugnacious. Unfortunately it is ascendant
The Greek and later, more outspokenly anti-clerical Enlightenment inheritance is also strong, obviously, so there's a bit of everything, in there.
But that can be taken too far. When I read Tom Holland's Dominion he seemed to argue that every non-religious philosophy of the West is essentially still Christian, cherry picking individuals who may have even been totally ignored in their day whose views are now seen as more secular, and therefore claiming the secular view is inherently Christian. I don't know if he is Christian or not, but I think he overstated the case regardless. Having roots in something is important, but can be overplayed.
We had roast beef at Christmas - not our usual choice but we found a lovely cut at a butcher in Epping (which @HYUFD might have frequented in his time). Mrs Stodge's brother cooks the best venison I've ever had - the fact he kills it, hangs it and cooks it himself may not be unrelated.
Duck is another meat which if properly prepared doesn't disappoint.
Mrs P. watched the Beyond Utopia: Escape from North Korea last night (iPlayer) I hadn't intended to watch it but got drawn in. The level of state 'yelling' at its population is frightening.
You need the Greco-Roman tradition AND the Judaeo-Christian tradition to get to the Enlightenment
That's why a lot of modern Mathematics for instance comes from the Middle East, why we use today Arabic* numerals and so on and so forth, because knowledge was being developed and spread in the enlightened Middle East more than dark ages, barbaric and pugnacious Europe at the time.
* Technically the Hindus actually invented them, but it was Arabic mathematicians who introduced them to Europeans and so we use that name.
Human beings will do an awful lot to avoid being yelled at. Especially from those holding authority over us. It might not change our minds immediately, but over time?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/68169534
- Boris writing in the Daily Telegraph, 2005
I can only imagine to have lived in Germany and Japan from 1943-45 was purgatory but self preservation and patriotism cuts both ways and all ways.
As a patriotic German in 1945, irrespective of how we view Hitler and the Nazis now and following twelve years of unrelenting propaganda, how would you react to the invasion of your country by foreigners? Of course, in the face of overwhelming military force, what can anyone do? Defend your country and die in the attempt, try to seek refuge or accept you are now the subject of an invading power?
The Japanese also had longer cultural indoctrination - again, we quote the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but the Tokyo fire bombing raids killed more people. The expectation and belief in the West, based on Okinawa, was Japanese civilians would resist fanatically to the last - we never found out the truth of that. Perhaps, in the face of the might of the American invasion, they would have yielded - it's entirely possible there would have been a far greater instance of suicide in an invaded Japan than there was in an invaded and conquered Germany.
I go back to the point the British have never experienced what it is like to be invaded and conquered - we have never suffered that sense of national humiliation the French, Germans and others have. I suspect it's one of those characteristics which always set us about from continental Europe and influenced our relationships.
If Westminster were expanded in the way planned for the Senedd it would have more than 2,000 MPs, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt has argued.
Plans to raise the number of Senedd members from 60 to 96 cleared their first hurdle in Cardiff on Tuesday.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68172202
I suppose the big question is how does raising by 36 make the Senedd more modern and better able to represent Wales, as the Welsh government states? Are the boundaries really bad?
Is there a word in chess for an overly cautious player?
Seems to me Reeves is that person.
Indeed that's a part of my liberal belief in free speech, so it'd be weird if I didn't.
Where appropriate I am willing to take my own convictions with a pinch of salt, hence why I've often said I'm a liberal and not an anarchist.
A one megaton warhead doesn't care how patriotic or otherwise you are and a post-nuclear world make Stunde Null look like paradise.
It's my fervent hope too many are too invested in the trappings of the good life to want to throw it all away. Biden, Trump, Putin, Xi even Kim Jong Un all seem to enjoy nice food, nice drink, nice clothes and travelling in style and comfort, All that ends with the first missile.
God bless leaders like Brown, May, Johnson and Truss, who realise that their time is up and just go.
That belief that everyone was equal you're claiming as religious?
Well the Bible does endorse slavery, as quoted in that West Wing video I linked to before, so if you want to claim that one, then perhaps you're right?
Or perhaps, it was written based on the philosophy of its time, philosophy which has evolved over thousands of years and which viewed "all men" being equal as wealthy, educated, white land owning males - and others didn't count.
You've finally lost it.
Let's start off with the obvious fact that literally everyone on planet earth agrees that there are human rights. It's just that they don't all agree with what those rights are. Go to - say - Christian America. They'll be big on the human right to go to church. But not so big on the human right to have an abortion.
Go to Thailand, and they'll be big on the human right to be transexual and do sex work. But not so big on the human right of criticizing the King.
And your last point - unless you are saying the secular values include slavery - is utterly absurd.
New PB law. No disagreeing with @rcs1000, otherwise I wield the ban hammer.
Attacker is a refugee given “leave to remain”, and a convicted sex offender
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/clapham-acid-attack-news-lessar-avenue-london-corrosive-substance-z2707c8fp
I sometimes feel like the authorities are trying to drive us all so mad we elect a British Hitler
The number of Lords not to exceed the number of MPs - this would encourage those who are not really interested or able to contibute anymore to resign, so new Lords can be appointed. And means you cannot just flood new Lords in to get your way.
Maximum 20 years service - it's not a job for life, and since they are not elected why should people serve decade after decade?
Failure to participate in a percentage of votes in a year without an absence authorised by the Chamber to see someone void their place - because it's a job, albeit part time, not just a fancy title.
Just stop replacing the Hereditaries already - because really, it's getting silly.
No MPs to be elevated until 8 years or 2 parliamentary terms passes, whichever is longer - because it's not a retirement home
No one who has donated more than £1000 to a party (or a body they control/lead donated £10000) may be elevated until 8 years or 2 parliamentary terms passes, whichever is longer - to avoid any appearance of buying a place.
And so on.
Mandelson was fairly influential then as well and the analogy used by Roy Jenkins at the time was that of Blair trying to walk down a corridor holding an expensive vase. He didn't dare look left or right - just had to make sure he got the vase to the end of the corridor safely. Even at his destination, he resisted a celebratory pirouette (a nod to Kinnock and Sheffield perhaps?).
Irrespective of the siren calls on here and elsewhere to be more radical and more daring, Starmer and Mandelson will know he hasn't won a single vote and the votes he needs are from those who want to be reassured the country will be run properly and effectively. They aren't interested in radical solutions just competence and an absence of grift and sleaze.
That group of ex-Conservative voters who are already in the Labour camp are one thing but the key objective now is the targeting of the 2019 Conservatives who are Don't Knows in polls. Getting them either to come to Labour or stay at home is the objective and the way to frighten the horses would be for Labour to start sounding radical and different.
This is about winning the election - getting 326 or more Labour MPs on the Commons benches. Once that has been achieved, the way can be prepared for the more radical proposals.
The most pertinent question is perhaps why Wales, with 60% of Scotland's population and a population around 50% greater than that of Northern Ireland, has hitherto had by far the smallest elected chamber of anywhere except London (which is also absurdly small but has very few actual powers compared to Wales).
It's ludicrous.
As for the impact, they're still using the genuinely mad D'Hondt system which has entrenched the disastrous one-party rule of Labour (which is of course why they're using it). Changing to STV would be more democratic but won't happen while Welsh Labour breath air.
However, abolishing the constituencies which give Labour a lock on around 45% of the seats in any scenario might help make it more democratic simply by giving other parties a proper look-in in the Valleys.
🚨 BREAKING: Abdul Ezedi, the man wanted in connection with the chemical attack in Clapham, was an asylum seeker.
Government sources have told GB News that Ezedi was denied asylum on his first two attempts, but his third application was then granted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-denying_Ordinance_(French_Revolution)
Gladstone in 1884 conceded boundary changes to the Conservatives if he could keep control of the franchise. However, that probably was just idiocy instead of generosity.
In 1928 the Conservatives brought in votes for women despite claims it would hurt them electorally. It is worth noting this was not the view of their own campaigning staff.
After that I'm struggling.
What is the point of the HoL? If you think there's no point, just abolish it. If you think it serves a purpose, what form will best serve that purpose?
Personally, I'm of the view that elected politicians get things wrong, and a second house is vital. Therefore make it unelected and experts.
Others differ.
https://twitter.com/LozzaFox/status/1753109563333894299
Indeed, punk is no more. Nor are chopper bikes.
Labour needs a punch bowl for that scenario.
Encouraging a broader inclusion of experts I am less sure of how to accomplish which is why I did not mention it, but support.
Voter ID seems like it may have been an attempt to make a change to benefit one side, but actually it may hurt them.