Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
Even I wouldn't go that far. 40% of the country voted Labour in 2017, and 32% in 2019 - I don't think anywhere near that number of posters here supported Corbyn's Labour at that time. I would guess this forum is disproportionately older, wealthier, and male than the electorate as a whole.
And fortunately, therefore less likely to vote for an anti-Semite to be PM.
Jeremy Corbyn was not personally antisemitic. Speaking of which, did you see that anti-Zionism is now a protected characteristic?
Yes, I had heard that, and it'll be interesting to see how that pans out, given that anti-Zionism is often a gateway to, or a cover for, outright anti-Semitism.
"Jeremy Corbyn was not personally antisemitic. "
I'm not so sure. when the controversy first started, I decided that he was probably just someone who was naive, a "passive anti-Semite". Then, as events unfolded, it seemed clearer and clearer that he was either/or/and totally thick, or actually actively anti-Semitic. And I pay him a complement by saying he's not totally thick.
Racism - and anti-Semitism - can take many forms. It doesn't have to be racially abusing a black person in the street, or painting a swastika on a synagogue door.
I have to say that the current Israeli government is making it very difficult indeed to sympathise with them. However, too often failing to sympathise with them is being described as antisemitic. Personally I would at the moment, describe myself as pro Gazan, unless they're leaders of Hamas!
Recent events have made me despise the Israeli government even more than before, yet the sheer amount of anti-Jewish sh*t we've seen flung about in the name of 'Palestinians' convinces me even more that Jews need a homeland (*), as well as the Palestinians.
I hope @Casino_Royale hasn't left the site. Sure, he has his moments, but don't we all? I don't think any of us really overstepped the mark with him yesterday, but there a fair few of us were nailing him about Chaz, and we do know he suffers from the black dog occasionally, so maybe we should have rowed back a bit once he started going batshit.
I'm feeling blameless, as I was on my lunch break and missed it all
I do tease CR sometimes, but try to back off when I think he's going full tonto. On the flip side, he's very happy to dish it out, as he did yesterday to anyone showing insufficient deference to our God-chosen rulers.
A Constitutional Monarchy is not "God chosen". It exists by our permission.
"God chosen" is just a .. er .. Hail Mary Pass by washed up Republicans who have had limited supporting arguments for about 400 years, and none at all at present. Even more .
That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?
The relentless mediocre witless humourless lifeless inert festering smelly blob of twatty leftwing PB - from @DougSeal to @Foxy, from @kinabalu to @Benpointer to @RochdalePioneers to @Roger to @EvanGladne, in all its desperate and piffling monotony, will have overwhelmed and destroyed everything of value, like the ghastly fungus in The Last of Us
Bring back CASINO
"That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?"
This cannot be true. You listen to most of the leftwing posters you mentioned and PB is a den of right wingers with a few left wing voices.
Must be the case.
Leon is just projecting again. There are plenty of other right-leaning folk on here, from TSE and RCS through edmund, topping, and many others.
If Leon means right-wing headcases, he might have a better argument. But then that's a small minority group in this country, thankfully. And of them, finding those who can type using actual words narrows it down even more.
Highlights a problem for the political right.
"Right wing" and "headcase" are increasingly synonymous in many people's minds.
See the US for a really bad case of that, where "thinking that insurrection is a bad thing" makes you insufficiently right wing to be a proper Republican.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
Even I wouldn't go that far. 40% of the country voted Labour in 2017, and 32% in 2019 - I don't think anywhere near that number of posters here supported Corbyn's Labour at that time. I would guess this forum is disproportionately older, wealthier, and male than the electorate as a whole.
And fortunately, therefore less likely to vote for an anti-Semite to be PM.
What - that well known definitely not anti-Semitic Boris Johnson?
"Boris Johnson has invoked some of the oldest and most pernicious antisemitic stereotypes in a book he wrote when he was a Conservative shadow minister. He describes “Jewish oligarchs” who run the media, and fiddle the figures to fix elections in their favour.
He portrays a Jewish character, Sammy Katz, with a “proud nose and curly hair”, and paints him as a malevolent, stingy, snake-like Jewish businessman who exploits immigrant workers for profit. There is nothing subtle about this. We know what antisemitism looks like."
My views on Boris Johnson have been known for years on here. They are not generally positive.
But I guess your attempted deflection means you agree that the 32% of people who voted Labour in 2019 were voting for an anti-Semite? (I'll give the 40% in 2017 the benefit of the doubt, as it was not as clear back then)?
When it comes to electoralism I am a cynic - I think I've voted Labour once in a GLA election when I lived in North London briefly - but in other elections I've voted ABC (which disgustingly meant voting LD), voted my heart (Green) or have spoiled my ballot.
But I do also disagree with the premise, yes - I don't think Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite.
That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?
The relentless mediocre witless humourless lifeless inert festering smelly blob of twatty leftwing PB - from @DougSeal to @Foxy, from @kinabalu to @Benpointer to @RochdalePioneers to @Roger to @EvanGladne, in all its desperate and piffling monotony, will have overwhelmed and destroyed everything of value, like the ghastly fungus in The Last of Us
Bring back CASINO
"That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?"
This cannot be true. You listen to most of the leftwing posters you mentioned and PB is a den of right wingers with a few left wing voices.
Must be the case.
Leon is just projecting again. There are plenty of other right-leaning folk on here, from TSE and RCS through edmund, topping, and many others.
If Leon means right-wing headcases, he might have a better argument. But then that's a small minority group in this country, thankfully. And of them, finding those who can type using actual words narrows it down even more.
Highlights a problem for the political right.
"Right wing" and "headcase" are increasingly synonymous in many people's minds.
See the US for a really bad case of that, where "thinking that insurrection is a bad thing" makes you insufficiently right wing to be a proper Republican.
It is why support for the monarchy is so high in this country.
Republicans in this country need a new name like the Democratic Patriots.
Huzzah, the nursery has just acknowledged that I should have had 4 more days half price due to holiday last year. £59 credit received !
Interestingly due to increasing Mrs' hours I'm going to be over the effective £666.66/£833.33 cap till we get the 15 hours in September (Have some in reserve to cover and not lose out on 25% though). Though this will be a "self sorting" issue generally long term with the 15/30 hrs kicking in earlier.
That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?
The relentless mediocre witless humourless lifeless inert festering smelly blob of twatty leftwing PB - from @DougSeal to @Foxy, from @kinabalu to @Benpointer to @RochdalePioneers to @Roger to @EvanGladne, in all its desperate and piffling monotony, will have overwhelmed and destroyed everything of value, like the ghastly fungus in The Last of Us
Bring back CASINO
"That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?"
This cannot be true. You listen to most of the leftwing posters you mentioned and PB is a den of right wingers with a few left wing voices.
Must be the case.
Leon is just projecting again. There are plenty of other right-leaning folk on here, from TSE and RCS through edmund, topping, and many others.
If Leon means right-wing headcases, he might have a better argument. But then that's a small minority group in this country, thankfully. And of them, finding those who can type using actual words narrows it down even more.
If you mean me I don't think I'm right-wing what with being a member of the Labour Party and so forth, although I take the point that I might have been back when right-wing meant "free markets, deregulation and fighting Communism" rather than whatever it is now.
Being a member of the Labour Party means you support Keir “Kid Starver, Genocide” Starmer.
So you are Literally Worse Than…. Starmer?
Didn’t you get the memo?
Whilst the culture war has tried to make things muddy, I feel the labels left / right / liberal are pretty easy to identify.
Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers? You're right wing. Do you fight for the interests of workers over capital? You're left wing. Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but really really would prefer if everyone pretended that you're still a good person? You're a liberal (and right wing).
By this definition you are right wing because you support maximally open borders.
Capitalism isn't in favour of maximally open borders via the dissolution of states - as I am. Because capitalism needs states to exist to enforce property rights. Maybe we could argue that some people (al la Musk or Theil) would prefer a neofeudal system where they essentially are allowed their own private armies to enforce their property rights, but most capitalists are happy to have that cost put on the state.
Also, no borders is good for workers. Because "British" workers could also just go wherever they wanted.
So in the world that exists in reality, you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but you'd really, really prefer it if people pretended that you don't, because there is a different world that exists in your head?
It is not in the interests of the workers to be a border fascist. Indeed, it is not in the interest of the workers to be anti immigrant in a liberal way.
Most immigrants share the same class interest as workers as workers already here. Immigrants are not the group with power in how they impact workers - capitalists are. You could have a state that had open borders and also held companies to the law on misusing immigrant and under waged labour. You could have a state that invested in infrastructure and redistributed wealth and power to all workers, regardless of immigration statues. That is a decision by the state that is deferential to capital, not to the workers. I would happily enforce minimum wage on employers more harshly, and demand that all workers get access to workers' rights, and workers get representation in company decisions, etc. Immigrant or not.
Making the issue about immigrants rather than how companies pit factions of workers against each other to stall a unified workers' movement, or try to illegally hire people under minimum wage and without their full rights as worker to maximize their profits, is a slight of hand trick. Immigrants are not the enemy of the worker - the boss is.
Are you able to distinguish between immigration and immigrants?
If workers in Germany go on strike for better conditions and the bosses respond by hiring an army of Jimmy Nails from England, whose interests are being served?
Also why do you talk about "illegally hiring people under minimum wage" when in your world there is no state to enforce a minimum wage?
You asked me to come back to the real world, so I did!
Capitals interests are being served, obviously - but the person doing that is capital, not the workers. Those English workers shouldn't scab. But that's why immigration becomes an issue - capital needs immigrants to be in precarity so that they won't join a union themselves and will scab because they fear the repercussions. The best case scenario for capital is where people have to come here illegally and the illegal workers get punished for working but the employer doesn't - essentially giving the employer free reign to keep their workers in any condition they like, paying them a pittance (if paying them at all) and then using the state to get rid of them if they organise or complain - maximising the labour whilst minimising profit loss. Which is what is currently happening in the UK.
The fight against immigrants plays into capitals ability to do this. The more we are convinced immigrants are the problem and there should be fewer of them, the more precarious the living conditions of immigrants become, the more capitalists can abuse them and their work.
I hope @Casino_Royale hasn't left the site. Sure, he has his moments, but don't we all? I don't think any of us really overstepped the mark with him yesterday, but there a fair few of us were nailing him about Chaz, and we do know he suffers from the black dog occasionally, so maybe we should have rowed back a bit once he started going batshit.
I'm feeling blameless, as I was on my lunch break and missed it all
I do tease CR sometimes, but try to back off when I think he's going full tonto. On the flip side, he's very happy to dish it out, as he did yesterday to anyone showing insufficient deference to our God-chosen rulers.
Just because they are the one's who stomped off in a huff, doesn't mean anyone should feel sorry for them. As you say - they're happy enough to give their opinion all the time and demand deference. I'm also somewhat confused about why more people are using HMG and HMK to refer to things - is Charles particularly majestic?
Of course (and it is something I am guilty of) HMG needs more specification if the context needs it. HMG should really be HMGE or HMUK depending on circs - Scotland, Wales, NI, Mann, Australia et al are all HMG too.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
Even I wouldn't go that far. 40% of the country voted Labour in 2017, and 32% in 2019 - I don't think anywhere near that number of posters here supported Corbyn's Labour at that time. I would guess this forum is disproportionately older, wealthier, and male than the electorate as a whole.
And fortunately, therefore less likely to vote for an anti-Semite to be PM.
Jeremy Corbyn was not personally antisemitic. Speaking of which, did you see that anti-Zionism is now a protected characteristic?
Yes, I had heard that, and it'll be interesting to see how that pans out, given that anti-Zionism is often a gateway to, or a cover for, outright anti-Semitism.
"Jeremy Corbyn was not personally antisemitic. "
I'm not so sure. when the controversy first started, I decided that he was probably just someone who was naive, a "passive anti-Semite". Then, as events unfolded, it seemed clearer and clearer that he was either/or/and totally thick, or actually actively anti-Semitic. And I pay him a complement by saying he's not totally thick.
Racism - and anti-Semitism - can take many forms. It doesn't have to be racially abusing a black person in the street, or painting a swastika on a synagogue door.
Corbyn certainly demonstrated a kind of wilful blindness.
Example -
1) a “cleric” was banned from entering the U.K., for espousing violence and extreme racism. Including, multiple times, promulgating the Blood Libel 2) Corbyn campaigned for him to be allowed to enter the U.K. 3) Corbyn was told why the cleric was banned. People showed him the speeches in question - on the “clerics” own social media. 4) Corbyn again campaigned to allow him into country. And praised the “cleric”.
That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?
The relentless mediocre witless humourless lifeless inert festering smelly blob of twatty leftwing PB - from @DougSeal to @Foxy, from @kinabalu to @Benpointer to @RochdalePioneers to @Roger to @EvanGladne, in all its desperate and piffling monotony, will have overwhelmed and destroyed everything of value, like the ghastly fungus in The Last of Us
Bring back CASINO
"That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?"
This cannot be true. You listen to most of the leftwing posters you mentioned and PB is a den of right wingers with a few left wing voices.
Must be the case.
Leon is just projecting again. There are plenty of other right-leaning folk on here, from TSE and RCS through edmund, topping, and many others.
If Leon means right-wing headcases, he might have a better argument. But then that's a small minority group in this country, thankfully. And of them, finding those who can type using actual words narrows it down even more.
Highlights a problem for the political right.
"Right wing" and "headcase" are increasingly synonymous in many people's minds.
See the US for a really bad case of that, where "thinking that insurrection is a bad thing" makes you insufficiently right wing to be a proper Republican.
It is why support for the monarchy is so high in this country.
Republicans in this country need a new name like the Democratic Patriots.
Ireland might have had something to do with it too what with centuries of reporting by the London newspapers. .
That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?
The relentless mediocre witless humourless lifeless inert festering smelly blob of twatty leftwing PB - from @DougSeal to @Foxy, from @kinabalu to @Benpointer to @RochdalePioneers to @Roger to @EvanGladne, in all its desperate and piffling monotony, will have overwhelmed and destroyed everything of value, like the ghastly fungus in The Last of Us
Bring back CASINO
"That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?"
This cannot be true. You listen to most of the leftwing posters you mentioned and PB is a den of right wingers with a few left wing voices.
Must be the case.
Leon is just projecting again. There are plenty of other right-leaning folk on here, from TSE and RCS through edmund, topping, and many others.
If Leon means right-wing headcases, he might have a better argument. But then that's a small minority group in this country, thankfully. And of them, finding those who can type using actual words narrows it down even more.
If you mean me I don't think I'm right-wing what with being a member of the Labour Party and so forth, although I take the point that I might have been back when right-wing meant "free markets, deregulation and fighting Communism" rather than whatever it is now.
Being a member of the Labour Party means you support Keir “Kid Starver, Genocide” Starmer.
So you are Literally Worse Than…. Starmer?
Didn’t you get the memo?
Whilst the culture war has tried to make things muddy, I feel the labels left / right / liberal are pretty easy to identify.
Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers? You're right wing. Do you fight for the interests of workers over capital? You're left wing. Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but really really would prefer if everyone pretended that you're still a good person? You're a liberal (and right wing).
By this definition you are right wing because you support maximally open borders.
Capitalism isn't in favour of maximally open borders via the dissolution of states - as I am. Because capitalism needs states to exist to enforce property rights. Maybe we could argue that some people (al la Musk or Theil) would prefer a neofeudal system where they essentially are allowed their own private armies to enforce their property rights, but most capitalists are happy to have that cost put on the state.
Also, no borders is good for workers. Because "British" workers could also just go wherever they wanted.
So in the world that exists in reality, you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but you'd really, really prefer it if people pretended that you don't, because there is a different world that exists in your head?
It is not in the interests of the workers to be a border fascist. Indeed, it is not in the interest of the workers to be anti immigrant in a liberal way.
Most immigrants share the same class interest as workers as workers already here. Immigrants are not the group with power in how they impact workers - capitalists are. You could have a state that had open borders and also held companies to the law on misusing immigrant and under waged labour. You could have a state that invested in infrastructure and redistributed wealth and power to all workers, regardless of immigration statues. That is a decision by the state that is deferential to capital, not to the workers. I would happily enforce minimum wage on employers more harshly, and demand that all workers get access to workers' rights, and workers get representation in company decisions, etc. Immigrant or not.
Making the issue about immigrants rather than how companies pit factions of workers against each other to stall a unified workers' movement, or try to illegally hire people under minimum wage and without their full rights as worker to maximize their profits, is a slight of hand trick. Immigrants are not the enemy of the worker - the boss is.
Are you able to distinguish between immigration and immigrants?
If workers in Germany go on strike for better conditions and the bosses respond by hiring an army of Jimmy Nails from England, whose interests are being served?
Also why do you talk about "illegally hiring people under minimum wage" when in your world there is no state to enforce a minimum wage?
You asked me to come back to the real world, so I did!
Capitals interests are being served, obviously - but the person doing that is capital, not the workers. Those English workers shouldn't scab. But that's why immigration becomes an issue - capital needs immigrants to be in precarity so that they won't join a union themselves and will scab because they fear the repercussions. The best case scenario for capital is where people have to come here illegally and the illegal workers get punished for working but the employer doesn't - essentially giving the employer free reign to keep their workers in any condition they like, paying them a pittance (if paying them at all) and then using the state to get rid of them if they organise or complain - maximising the labour whilst minimising profit loss. Which is what is currently happening in the UK.
The fight against immigrants plays into capitals ability to do this. The more we are convinced immigrants are the problem and there should be fewer of them, the more precarious the living conditions of immigrants become, the more capitalists can abuse them and their work.
The English workers are going to Germany in order to work, not in order to join a union and strike in solidarity with the Germans.
It's quite revealing that when it comes to individual workers acting in their own interests, you see them as scabs.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
Even I wouldn't go that far. 40% of the country voted Labour in 2017, and 32% in 2019 - I don't think anywhere near that number of posters here supported Corbyn's Labour at that time. I would guess this forum is disproportionately older, wealthier, and male than the electorate as a whole.
And fortunately, therefore less likely to vote for an anti-Semite to be PM.
Jeremy Corbyn was not personally antisemitic. Speaking of which, did you see that anti-Zionism is now a protected characteristic?
Anti-Zionism is not a protected characteristic, those are set out in the Equality Act. To the extent that those who are opposed to Zionism hold it as a philosophical belief then they fall within that protected characteristics. That is an issue that will depend on the facts of each case.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
Even I wouldn't go that far. 40% of the country voted Labour in 2017, and 32% in 2019 - I don't think anywhere near that number of posters here supported Corbyn's Labour at that time. I would guess this forum is disproportionately older, wealthier, and male than the electorate as a whole.
And fortunately, therefore less likely to vote for an anti-Semite to be PM.
Jeremy Corbyn was not personally antisemitic. Speaking of which, did you see that anti-Zionism is now a protected characteristic?
Yes, I had heard that, and it'll be interesting to see how that pans out, given that anti-Zionism is often a gateway to, or a cover for, outright anti-Semitism.
"Jeremy Corbyn was not personally antisemitic. "
I'm not so sure. when the controversy first started, I decided that he was probably just someone who was naive, a "passive anti-Semite". Then, as events unfolded, it seemed clearer and clearer that he was either/or/and totally thick, or actually actively anti-Semitic. And I pay him a complement by saying he's not totally thick.
Racism - and anti-Semitism - can take many forms. It doesn't have to be racially abusing a black person in the street, or painting a swastika on a synagogue door.
I have to say that the current Israeli government is making it very difficult indeed to sympathise with them. However, too often failing to sympathise with them is being described as antisemitic. Personally I would at the moment, describe myself as pro Gazan, unless they're leaders of Hamas!
Recent events have made me despise the Israeli government even more than before, yet the sheer amount of anti-Jewish sh*t we've seen flung about in the name of 'Palestinians' convinces me even more that Jews need a homeland (*), as well as the Palestinians.
(*) as do other groups, such as the Kurds...
I think I'm generally a reasonable sort of person, able to be swayed by a good argument, and open to compromise (while still holding to the ideals of very left-wing principles).
But with Gaza I am finding myself repelled by the advocates on both sides. The more I hear from people in support of Palestine, the more staunch does my support of Jewish self-defence become. The more I hear from the Israeli government, the more inclined I am towards recognition and support for an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza strip.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
Even I wouldn't go that far. 40% of the country voted Labour in 2017, and 32% in 2019 - I don't think anywhere near that number of posters here supported Corbyn's Labour at that time. I would guess this forum is disproportionately older, wealthier, and male than the electorate as a whole.
And fortunately, therefore less likely to vote for an anti-Semite to be PM.
Jeremy Corbyn was not personally antisemitic. Speaking of which, did you see that anti-Zionism is now a protected characteristic?
Anti-Zionism is not a protected characteristic, those are set out in the Equality Act. To the extent that those who are opposed to Zionism hold it as a philosophical belief then they fall within that protected characteristics. That is an issue that will depend on the facts of each case.
It parallels the recent anti-trans ruling in that both can be protected philosophical beliefs. Venn diagrams showing who cheered each verdict would be interesting!
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
There are left wing tools and right wing tools for sure. Prolly a few centrist ones as well.
The wheels of the American justice system grind exceedingly slow but there has been an important change of pace in the last week or so.
The Court of Appeals found that Trump did not have immunity. Basically because the Constitution doesn't say he has whilst it does grant limited immunity elsewhere. This type of reasoning is somewhat problematic for an Originalist based SC. Trump says he will appeal of course but he does not have a right to a hearing in the SC and they just might say no.
The CFO of Trump's businesses is negotiating a plea bargain on perjury. He was the principal witness on financial matters in the fraud case in New York. Justice Erdogan wants to know about it. By today. The question of who suborned Alan Weisselberg to commit that perjury is next up on the rank but even as a starter this has the potential to make appealing Erdogan's judgment more difficult and justify even harsher penalties.
The hearing on whether Trump is able to be on the ballot at all goes before the SC tomorrow. I think the oral submissions are down for 2 days. As it is, I think that case encourages Haley to hang on in there as the last (wo)man standing if they rule against him.
My observation for the morning is that all 3 of these carry significant risk factors for Trump that do not seem to be reflected in his odds of being either the nominee or the next President.
I think you mean Justice Engoron, not Erdogan.
Erdogan is the refugee from The Great Dictator who runs Hungary .
To put flesh on the bones, Justice Engoron has written to all of them, including eg Trump's (perhaps soon to be ex-) lawyer Alina Habbadabbaboo, demanding they tell him everything they know about the alleged perjury which is not subject to client privilege. He's laying it on quite thick, invoking a doctrine that says if one thing is found to be false, all the man's testimony could be ruled unreliable.
I wonder if we can expect a new motion to the Court from the Prosecutor? I'm not sure if that can happen after the prosecution case has been rested.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
Even I wouldn't go that far. 40% of the country voted Labour in 2017, and 32% in 2019 - I don't think anywhere near that number of posters here supported Corbyn's Labour at that time. I would guess this forum is disproportionately older, wealthier, and male than the electorate as a whole.
And fortunately, therefore less likely to vote for an anti-Semite to be PM.
Jeremy Corbyn was not personally antisemitic. Speaking of which, did you see that anti-Zionism is now a protected characteristic?
Anti-Zionism is not a protected characteristic, those are set out in the Equality Act. To the extent that those who are opposed to Zionism hold it as a philosophical belief then they fall within that protected characteristics. That is an issue that will depend on the facts of each case.
Sounds similar to the recent decision that not believing in gender identity is protected. It's an interesting area. Presumably there are many beliefs that are not deemed worthy of protection.
I hope @Casino_Royale hasn't left the site. Sure, he has his moments, but don't we all? I don't think any of us really overstepped the mark with him yesterday, but there a fair few of us were nailing him about Chaz, and we do know he suffers from the black dog occasionally, so maybe we should have rowed back a bit once he started going batshit.
I like Casino, and he has interesting things to say. I also enjoy arguing with him
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
There are left wing tools and right wing tools for sure. Prolly a few centrist ones as well.
And then there's Galloway. A tool for all seasons.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
I'd correct anyone calling me left wing, FWIW. But I see myself as centrist, possibly slightly to the left (although on political compass etc I do come out on the left - almost as much as I come out as libertarian, so maybe I kid myself).
I was in a (then!) safe seat in 2019, so I was spared making a choice between Corbyn and Johnson. If I'd been in a competitive seat... Well, I really don't know. I might still have effectively abstained by voting for someone else. Both appalled me.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
Even I wouldn't go that far. 40% of the country voted Labour in 2017, and 32% in 2019 - I don't think anywhere near that number of posters here supported Corbyn's Labour at that time. I would guess this forum is disproportionately older, wealthier, and male than the electorate as a whole.
And fortunately, therefore less likely to vote for an anti-Semite to be PM.
What - that well known definitely not anti-Semitic Boris Johnson?
"Boris Johnson has invoked some of the oldest and most pernicious antisemitic stereotypes in a book he wrote when he was a Conservative shadow minister. He describes “Jewish oligarchs” who run the media, and fiddle the figures to fix elections in their favour.
He portrays a Jewish character, Sammy Katz, with a “proud nose and curly hair”, and paints him as a malevolent, stingy, snake-like Jewish businessman who exploits immigrant workers for profit. There is nothing subtle about this. We know what antisemitism looks like."
My views on Boris Johnson have been known for years on here. They are not generally positive.
But I guess your attempted deflection means you agree that the 32% of people who voted Labour in 2019 were voting for an anti-Semite? (I'll give the 40% in 2017 the benefit of the doubt, as it was not as clear back then)?
When it comes to electoralism I am a cynic - I think I've voted Labour once in a GLA election when I lived in North London briefly - but in other elections I've voted ABC (which disgustingly meant voting LD), voted my heart (Green) or have spoiled my ballot.
But I do also disagree with the premise, yes - I don't think Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite.
This is a 52 page document I can't read through right now - it also seems to be a submission of evidence towards a larger review that I imagine also considered other evidence.
With a quick scan I can see lots of references to "members" - who are not Jeremy Corbyn - and stuff that is clearly anti-Semitic. But the Forde report notes this existed and also that the leadership did wanted this dealt with, and that it was slow because (in part) some staff within Labour who disliked Corbyn slowed this down to make Corbyn look bad.
The anti-Zionist stuff I have covered before - it is not anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist, many Jewish people are anti-Zionist, Zionism is not interchangeable with Jewishness and, indeed, the belief that it is is itself a form of anti-Semitism.
I would agree that Corbyn was on the wrong side of what is the "socialism of fools" problem. Many people discussing class interest go out of their way to make it clear that class interest is not a shadowy kabal of people working behind the scenes controlling everything, but instead the effect of people who generally speaking all benefit from the same things and have the power anyway so get to make decisions that benefit them. When it comes to the mural issue and such - I think that is someone who was a pretty unimportant politician for a long time supporting things that could be seen, at a quick glance, as a critique of class interest but fall into anti-Semitism. Corbyn should have been better at scrutinising things like that - he wasn't. I think that is a reasonable criticism, and I think it suggests a blind spot that could come under unconscious bias - but I don't think he actively believes that Jewish people secretly run everything.
I would note that people like Siobhan McDonagh, for example, literally once said "criticisms of capitalism are inherently anti-Semitic" - which is itself hugely anti-Semitic because the assumption is that capitalism is somehow inherently linked to Jewishness. Would anyone make the same argument about being anti-socialist or anti-communist being anti-Semitic? One could - the literal Nazi conspiracy of Judaeo Bolshevism (now reheated as Cultural Marxism) is the belief that Jewish people introduced left wing ideas to destroy the West (the modern version of Cultural Marxism has a load of Jewish academics deciding to introduce ideas like CRT or post-Modernism after the USSR is clearly losing the Cold War to try and win "culturally" - again, things said by right wing public luminaries like Jordan Peterson all the god damn time).
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
Anyway, apparently you won the meaningless Nevada primary for the Republicans.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
I'd correct anyone calling me left wing, FWIW. But I see myself as centrist, possibly slightly to the left (although on political compass etc I do come out on the left - almost as much as I come out as libertarian, so maybe I kid myself).
I was in a (then!) safe seat in 2019, so I was spared making a choice between Corbyn and Johnson. If I'd been in a competitive seat... Well, I really don't know. I might still have effectively abstained by voting for someone else. Both appalled me.
With many posters their 'tone' and 'content' are not completely aligned. I'd perhaps put you in that category. Your tone - your vibe if you like - is further left than your content.
I hope @Casino_Royale hasn't left the site. Sure, he has his moments, but don't we all? I don't think any of us really overstepped the mark with him yesterday, but there a fair few of us were nailing him about Chaz, and we do know he suffers from the black dog occasionally, so maybe we should have rowed back a bit once he started going batshit.
I like Casino, and he has interesting things to say. I also enjoy arguing with him
Hopefully Casino will be back soon 👍.
The Eagles wrote a song about this site:
'You can check out any time you like but you can never leave'
I hope @Casino_Royale hasn't left the site. Sure, he has his moments, but don't we all? I don't think any of us really overstepped the mark with him yesterday, but there a fair few of us were nailing him about Chaz, and we do know he suffers from the black dog occasionally, so maybe we should have rowed back a bit once he started going batshit.
I like Casino, and he has interesting things to say. I also enjoy arguing with him
Hopefully Casino will be back soon 👍.
The Eagles wrote a song about this site:
'You can check out any time you like but you can never leave'
There was certainly no peaceful easy feeling around when he (hopefully temporarily) left.
The wheels of the American justice system grind exceedingly slow but there has been an important change of pace in the last week or so.
The Court of Appeals found that Trump did not have immunity. Basically because the Constitution doesn't say he has whilst it does grant limited immunity elsewhere. This type of reasoning is somewhat problematic for an Originalist based SC. Trump says he will appeal of course but he does not have a right to a hearing in the SC and they just might say no.
The CFO of Trump's businesses is negotiating a plea bargain on perjury. He was the principal witness on financial matters in the fraud case in New York. Justice Erdogan wants to know about it. By today. The question of who suborned Alan Weisselberg to commit that perjury is next up on the rank but even as a starter this has the potential to make appealing Erdogan's judgment more difficult and justify even harsher penalties.
The hearing on whether Trump is able to be on the ballot at all goes before the SC tomorrow. I think the oral submissions are down for 2 days. As it is, I think that case encourages Haley to hang on in there as the last (wo)man standing if they rule against him.
My observation for the morning is that all 3 of these carry significant risk factors for Trump that do not seem to be reflected in his odds of being either the nominee or the next President.
I think you mean Justice Engoron, not Erdogan.
Erdogan is the refugee from The Great Dictator who runs Hungary .
To put flesh on the bones, Justice Engoron has written to all of them, including eg Trump's (perhaps soon to be ex-) lawyer Alina Habbadabbaboo, demanding they tell him everything they know about the alleged perjury which is not subject to client privilege. He's laying it on quite thick..
Is he laying it on thick ?
Weisselberg's rumoured plea bargain to perjury charges would indeed call all of his testimony in to question.
Puts Trump in a very sticky position.
Btw, if the SC are going to take up the immunity case (which I doubt), they'd have to question Marbury itself. Which would shake the entire basis of the court's legitimacy for the last couple of centuries.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24409152/dc-circuit-immunity-opinion.pdf ..The separation of powers doctrine, as expounded in Marbury and its progeny, necessarily permits the Judiciary to oversee the federal criminal prosecution of a former President for his official acts because the fact of the prosecution means that the former President has allegedly acted in defiance of the Congress’s laws. Although certain discretionary actions may be insulated from judicial review, the structure of the Constitution mandates that the President is “amenable to the laws for his conduct” and “cannot at his discretion” violate them. Marbury, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) at 166. Here, former President Trump’s actions allegedly violated generally applicable criminal laws, meaning those acts were not properly within the scope of his lawful discretion; accordingly, Marbury and its progeny provide him no structural immunity from the charges in the Indictment.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
There are left wing tools and right wing tools for sure. Prolly a few centrist ones as well.
And then there's Galloway. A tool for all seasons.
Speaking of which, is he in with a shout in Rochdale? Scotland was done with his nonsense years ago, disappointing that England seems not quite there yet.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
Anyway, apparently you won the meaningless Nevada primary for the Republicans.
I hope @Casino_Royale hasn't left the site. Sure, he has his moments, but don't we all? I don't think any of us really overstepped the mark with him yesterday, but there a fair few of us were nailing him about Chaz, and we do know he suffers from the black dog occasionally, so maybe we should have rowed back a bit once he started going batshit.
I like Casino, and he has interesting things to say. I also enjoy arguing with him
Hopefully Casino will be back soon 👍.
The Eagles wrote a song about this site:
'You can check out any time you like but you can never leave'
There was certainly no peaceful easy feeling around when he (hopefully temporarily) left.
I mean the "knowing the difference between a man and a woman" dogwhistle on the week of the Brianna Ghey judgement whilst her mother is in attendance for PMQs does kinda seem pretty shitty and transphobic - yeah.
I hope @Casino_Royale hasn't left the site. Sure, he has his moments, but don't we all? I don't think any of us really overstepped the mark with him yesterday, but there a fair few of us were nailing him about Chaz, and we do know he suffers from the black dog occasionally, so maybe we should have rowed back a bit once he started going batshit.
I like Casino, and he has interesting things to say. I also enjoy arguing with him
Hopefully Casino will be back soon 👍.
The Eagles wrote a song about this site:
'You can check out any time you like but you can never leave'
There was certainly no peaceful easy feeling around when he (hopefully temporarily) left.
Gonna be a heartache tonight.
Sadly it appears CR will not be taking it to the limit (and beyond) of his outrage one more time.
I mean the "knowing the difference between a man and a woman" dogwhistle on the week of the Brianna Ghey judgement whilst her mother is in attendance for PMQs does kinda seem pretty shitty and transphobic - yeah.
That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?
The relentless mediocre witless humourless lifeless inert festering smelly blob of twatty leftwing PB - from @DougSeal to @Foxy, from @kinabalu to @Benpointer to @RochdalePioneers to @Roger to @EvanGladne, in all its desperate and piffling monotony, will have overwhelmed and destroyed everything of value, like the ghastly fungus in The Last of Us
Bring back CASINO
"That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?"
This cannot be true. You listen to most of the leftwing posters you mentioned and PB is a den of right wingers with a few left wing voices.
Must be the case.
Leon is just projecting again. There are plenty of other right-leaning folk on here, from TSE and RCS through edmund, topping, and many others.
If Leon means right-wing headcases, he might have a better argument. But then that's a small minority group in this country, thankfully. And of them, finding those who can type using actual words narrows it down even more.
If you mean me I don't think I'm right-wing what with being a member of the Labour Party and so forth, although I take the point that I might have been back when right-wing meant "free markets, deregulation and fighting Communism" rather than whatever it is now.
Being a member of the Labour Party means you support Keir “Kid Starver, Genocide” Starmer.
So you are Literally Worse Than…. Starmer?
Didn’t you get the memo?
Whilst the culture war has tried to make things muddy, I feel the labels left / right / liberal are pretty easy to identify.
Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers? You're right wing. Do you fight for the interests of workers over capital? You're left wing. Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but really really would prefer if everyone pretended that you're still a good person? You're a liberal (and right wing).
By this definition you are right wing because you support maximally open borders.
Capitalism isn't in favour of maximally open borders via the dissolution of states - as I am. Because capitalism needs states to exist to enforce property rights. Maybe we could argue that some people (al la Musk or Theil) would prefer a neofeudal system where they essentially are allowed their own private armies to enforce their property rights, but most capitalists are happy to have that cost put on the state.
Also, no borders is good for workers. Because "British" workers could also just go wherever they wanted.
So in the world that exists in reality, you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but you'd really, really prefer it if people pretended that you don't, because there is a different world that exists in your head?
It is not in the interests of the workers to be a border fascist. Indeed, it is not in the interest of the workers to be anti immigrant in a liberal way.
Most immigrants share the same class interest as workers as workers already here. Immigrants are not the group with power in how they impact workers - capitalists are. You could have a state that had open borders and also held companies to the law on misusing immigrant and under waged labour. You could have a state that invested in infrastructure and redistributed wealth and power to all workers, regardless of immigration statues. That is a decision by the state that is deferential to capital, not to the workers. I would happily enforce minimum wage on employers more harshly, and demand that all workers get access to workers' rights, and workers get representation in company decisions, etc. Immigrant or not.
Making the issue about immigrants rather than how companies pit factions of workers against each other to stall a unified workers' movement, or try to illegally hire people under minimum wage and without their full rights as worker to maximize their profits, is a slight of hand trick. Immigrants are not the enemy of the worker - the boss is.
Are you able to distinguish between immigration and immigrants?
If workers in Germany go on strike for better conditions and the bosses respond by hiring an army of Jimmy Nails from England, whose interests are being served?
Also why do you talk about "illegally hiring people under minimum wage" when in your world there is no state to enforce a minimum wage?
You asked me to come back to the real world, so I did!
Capitals interests are being served, obviously - but the person doing that is capital, not the workers. Those English workers shouldn't scab. But that's why immigration becomes an issue - capital needs immigrants to be in precarity so that they won't join a union themselves and will scab because they fear the repercussions. The best case scenario for capital is where people have to come here illegally and the illegal workers get punished for working but the employer doesn't - essentially giving the employer free reign to keep their workers in any condition they like, paying them a pittance (if paying them at all) and then using the state to get rid of them if they organise or complain - maximising the labour whilst minimising profit loss. Which is what is currently happening in the UK.
The fight against immigrants plays into capitals ability to do this. The more we are convinced immigrants are the problem and there should be fewer of them, the more precarious the living conditions of immigrants become, the more capitalists can abuse them and their work.
The English workers are going to Germany in order to work, not in order to join a union and strike in solidarity with the Germans.
It's quite revealing that when it comes to individual workers acting in their own interests, you see them as scabs.
Being imported labour to break a strike is the definition of a scab, yes.
So why are you so hung up on immigration being anti worker? Do you disagree with any of the arguments I've put forward, or do you just want to keep saying the same thing over and over again until one of us gets bored?
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
There are left wing tools and right wing tools for sure. Prolly a few centrist ones as well.
And then there's Galloway. A tool for all seasons.
Speaking of which, is he in with a shout in Rochdale? Scotland was done with his nonsense years ago, disappointing that England seems not quite there yet.
God I hope not. That would be an intensely negative development. Past his sell-by, though, surely? Although tbf I haven't seen him 'in action' for quite a while (an excellent state of affairs which I'd be hoping to extend indefinitely).
He simply cannot read a room. Private jets, £1,000 bets, murder victims.
Just when you think a PMQs couldn’t be any worse for the Tories, this one. Those packed in behind Rishi literally dropped their heads when he done the transphobic joke, and since have sat there silent, arms crossed, heads down or muttering to someone close by.
He simply cannot read a room. Private jets, £1,000 bets, murder victims.
Brianna Ghey is targeted and murdered for being Trans. Starmer starts off paying tribute to her mother sat in the public gallery.
Starmer attacks Sunak for not keeping his promises. Sunak attacks Starmer thus: "We are bringing the waiting lists down for the longest waiters and making progress, but it is a bit rich to hear about promises from someone who has broken every single promise he was elected on.
I think I have counted almost 30 in the last year. Pensions, planning, peerages, public sector pay, tuition fees, childcare, second referendums, defining a woman, although in fairness that was only 99% of a u-turn."
Do you really say "Starmer doesn't know what a woman is" when the mother of a transwoman recently murdered is sat watching?
That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?
The relentless mediocre witless humourless lifeless inert festering smelly blob of twatty leftwing PB - from @DougSeal to @Foxy, from @kinabalu to @Benpointer to @RochdalePioneers to @Roger to @EvanGladne, in all its desperate and piffling monotony, will have overwhelmed and destroyed everything of value, like the ghastly fungus in The Last of Us
Bring back CASINO
"That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?"
This cannot be true. You listen to most of the leftwing posters you mentioned and PB is a den of right wingers with a few left wing voices.
Must be the case.
Leon is just projecting again. There are plenty of other right-leaning folk on here, from TSE and RCS through edmund, topping, and many others.
If Leon means right-wing headcases, he might have a better argument. But then that's a small minority group in this country, thankfully. And of them, finding those who can type using actual words narrows it down even more.
If you mean me I don't think I'm right-wing what with being a member of the Labour Party and so forth, although I take the point that I might have been back when right-wing meant "free markets, deregulation and fighting Communism" rather than whatever it is now.
Being a member of the Labour Party means you support Keir “Kid Starver, Genocide” Starmer.
So you are Literally Worse Than…. Starmer?
Didn’t you get the memo?
Whilst the culture war has tried to make things muddy, I feel the labels left / right / liberal are pretty easy to identify.
Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers? You're right wing. Do you fight for the interests of workers over capital? You're left wing. Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but really really would prefer if everyone pretended that you're still a good person? You're a liberal (and right wing).
By this definition you are right wing because you support maximally open borders.
Capitalism isn't in favour of maximally open borders via the dissolution of states - as I am. Because capitalism needs states to exist to enforce property rights. Maybe we could argue that some people (al la Musk or Theil) would prefer a neofeudal system where they essentially are allowed their own private armies to enforce their property rights, but most capitalists are happy to have that cost put on the state.
Also, no borders is good for workers. Because "British" workers could also just go wherever they wanted.
So in the world that exists in reality, you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but you'd really, really prefer it if people pretended that you don't, because there is a different world that exists in your head?
It is not in the interests of the workers to be a border fascist. Indeed, it is not in the interest of the workers to be anti immigrant in a liberal way.
Most immigrants share the same class interest as workers as workers already here. Immigrants are not the group with power in how they impact workers - capitalists are. You could have a state that had open borders and also held companies to the law on misusing immigrant and under waged labour. You could have a state that invested in infrastructure and redistributed wealth and power to all workers, regardless of immigration statues. That is a decision by the state that is deferential to capital, not to the workers. I would happily enforce minimum wage on employers more harshly, and demand that all workers get access to workers' rights, and workers get representation in company decisions, etc. Immigrant or not.
Making the issue about immigrants rather than how companies pit factions of workers against each other to stall a unified workers' movement, or try to illegally hire people under minimum wage and without their full rights as worker to maximize their profits, is a slight of hand trick. Immigrants are not the enemy of the worker - the boss is.
Are you able to distinguish between immigration and immigrants?
If workers in Germany go on strike for better conditions and the bosses respond by hiring an army of Jimmy Nails from England, whose interests are being served?
Also why do you talk about "illegally hiring people under minimum wage" when in your world there is no state to enforce a minimum wage?
You asked me to come back to the real world, so I did!
Capitals interests are being served, obviously - but the person doing that is capital, not the workers. Those English workers shouldn't scab. But that's why immigration becomes an issue - capital needs immigrants to be in precarity so that they won't join a union themselves and will scab because they fear the repercussions. The best case scenario for capital is where people have to come here illegally and the illegal workers get punished for working but the employer doesn't - essentially giving the employer free reign to keep their workers in any condition they like, paying them a pittance (if paying them at all) and then using the state to get rid of them if they organise or complain - maximising the labour whilst minimising profit loss. Which is what is currently happening in the UK.
The fight against immigrants plays into capitals ability to do this. The more we are convinced immigrants are the problem and there should be fewer of them, the more precarious the living conditions of immigrants become, the more capitalists can abuse them and their work.
The English workers are going to Germany in order to work, not in order to join a union and strike in solidarity with the Germans.
It's quite revealing that when it comes to individual workers acting in their own interests, you see them as scabs.
Being imported labour to break a strike is the definition of a scab, yes.
So why are you so hung up on immigration being anti worker? Do you disagree with any of the arguments I've put forward, or do you just want to keep saying the same thing over and over again until one of us gets bored?
As the supply of labour goes up, the price of labour comes down.
If the supply of unskilled labour tends to infinity, the price of labour tends to zero absent regulation.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
There are left wing tools and right wing tools for sure. Prolly a few centrist ones as well.
And then there's Galloway. A tool for all seasons.
Speaking of which, is he in with a shout in Rochdale? Scotland was done with his nonsense years ago, disappointing that England seems not quite there yet.
Is there much betting on the by-elections? I suspect, no, Galloway has no chance in Rochdale. And Reform UK have no chance in any of the 3.
Christ on a bike. Did a Tory MP just say in PMQs that they attempted suicide in 2021?
I found it traumatic enough yesterday having to go through those questions for a life insurance application. Can't imagine volunteering the information in the Commons chamber.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
There are left wing tools and right wing tools for sure. Prolly a few centrist ones as well.
And then there's Galloway. A tool for all seasons.
Speaking of which, is he in with a shout in Rochdale? Scotland was done with his nonsense years ago, disappointing that England seems not quite there yet.
God I hope not. That would be an intensely negative development. Past his sell-by, though, surely? Although tbf I haven't seen him 'in action' for quite a while (an excellent state of affairs which I'd be hoping to extend indefinitely).
Sadly it appears to be the Corbynite lefty wing (to which I am not totally unsympathetic) that are most ‘excited’ by the prospect of GG.
I mean the "knowing the difference between a man and a woman" dogwhistle on the week of the Brianna Ghey judgement whilst her mother is in attendance for PMQs does kinda seem pretty shitty and transphobic - yeah.
Since Tim was mentioned..
And now literally called to apologise by an MP an refuses to do so... twat
The wheels of the American justice system grind exceedingly slow but there has been an important change of pace in the last week or so.
The Court of Appeals found that Trump did not have immunity. Basically because the Constitution doesn't say he has whilst it does grant limited immunity elsewhere. This type of reasoning is somewhat problematic for an Originalist based SC. Trump says he will appeal of course but he does not have a right to a hearing in the SC and they just might say no.
The CFO of Trump's businesses is negotiating a plea bargain on perjury. He was the principal witness on financial matters in the fraud case in New York. Justice Erdogan wants to know about it. By today. The question of who suborned Alan Weisselberg to commit that perjury is next up on the rank but even as a starter this has the potential to make appealing Erdogan's judgment more difficult and justify even harsher penalties.
The hearing on whether Trump is able to be on the ballot at all goes before the SC tomorrow. I think the oral submissions are down for 2 days. As it is, I think that case encourages Haley to hang on in there as the last (wo)man standing if they rule against him.
My observation for the morning is that all 3 of these carry significant risk factors for Trump that do not seem to be reflected in his odds of being either the nominee or the next President.
I think you mean Justice Engoron, not Erdogan.
Erdogan is the refugee from The Great Dictator who runs Hungary .
To put flesh on the bones, Justice Engoron has written to all of them, including eg Trump's (perhaps soon to be ex-) lawyer Alina Habbadabbaboo, demanding they tell him everything they know about the alleged perjury which is not subject to client privilege. He's laying it on quite thick..
Is he laying it on thick ?
Weisselberg's rumoured plea bargain to perjury charges would indeed call all of his testimony in to question.
Puts Trump in a very sticky position.
Btw, if the SC are going to take up the immunity case (which I doubt), they'd have to question Marbury itself. Which would shake the entire basis of the court's legitimacy for the last couple of centuries.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24409152/dc-circuit-immunity-opinion.pdf ..The separation of powers doctrine, as expounded in Marbury and its progeny, necessarily permits the Judiciary to oversee the federal criminal prosecution of a former President for his official acts because the fact of the prosecution means that the former President has allegedly acted in defiance of the Congress’s laws. Although certain discretionary actions may be insulated from judicial review, the structure of the Constitution mandates that the President is “amenable to the laws for his conduct” and “cannot at his discretion” violate them. Marbury, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) at 166. Here, former President Trump’s actions allegedly violated generally applicable criminal laws, meaning those acts were not properly within the scope of his lawful discretion; accordingly, Marbury and its progeny provide him no structural immunity from the charges in the Indictment.
I agree that it is very unlikely that the SC will even look at the immunity argument. It is patent rubbish, even by Trump's woeful standards. That should allow the criminal prosecutions to get back on track but it is still doubtful we will have a verdict in them much before November.
But the net is tightening. And yet the odds do not really reflect this.
What did Big Rish say? (Trying to buy BMW seats on FB and didn't see it.)
You'll have to watch the clip for the full effect.
- Murder victim (who happens to be Trans) mother is in the HoC - Starmer pays tribute - Sunak makes anti-woke culture war joke about definition of woman
What did Big Rish say? (Trying to buy BMW seats on FB and didn't see it.)
You'll have to watch the clip for the full effect.
- Murder victim (who happens to be Trans) mother is in the HoC - Starmer pays tribute - Sunak makes anti-woke culture war joke about definition of woman
And refuses to apologise!
Wtf. It doesn't matter where you stand on Trans stuff - it's crass, insensitive, juvenile behaviour in this context.
That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?
The relentless mediocre witless humourless lifeless inert festering smelly blob of twatty leftwing PB - from @DougSeal to @Foxy, from @kinabalu to @Benpointer to @RochdalePioneers to @Roger to @EvanGladne, in all its desperate and piffling monotony, will have overwhelmed and destroyed everything of value, like the ghastly fungus in The Last of Us
Bring back CASINO
"That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?"
This cannot be true. You listen to most of the leftwing posters you mentioned and PB is a den of right wingers with a few left wing voices.
Must be the case.
Leon is just projecting again. There are plenty of other right-leaning folk on here, from TSE and RCS through edmund, topping, and many others.
If Leon means right-wing headcases, he might have a better argument. But then that's a small minority group in this country, thankfully. And of them, finding those who can type using actual words narrows it down even more.
If you mean me I don't think I'm right-wing what with being a member of the Labour Party and so forth, although I take the point that I might have been back when right-wing meant "free markets, deregulation and fighting Communism" rather than whatever it is now.
Being a member of the Labour Party means you support Keir “Kid Starver, Genocide” Starmer.
So you are Literally Worse Than…. Starmer?
Didn’t you get the memo?
Whilst the culture war has tried to make things muddy, I feel the labels left / right / liberal are pretty easy to identify.
Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers? You're right wing. Do you fight for the interests of workers over capital? You're left wing. Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but really really would prefer if everyone pretended that you're still a good person? You're a liberal (and right wing).
By this definition you are right wing because you support maximally open borders.
Capitalism isn't in favour of maximally open borders via the dissolution of states - as I am. Because capitalism needs states to exist to enforce property rights. Maybe we could argue that some people (al la Musk or Theil) would prefer a neofeudal system where they essentially are allowed their own private armies to enforce their property rights, but most capitalists are happy to have that cost put on the state.
Also, no borders is good for workers. Because "British" workers could also just go wherever they wanted.
So in the world that exists in reality, you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but you'd really, really prefer it if people pretended that you don't, because there is a different world that exists in your head?
It is not in the interests of the workers to be a border fascist. Indeed, it is not in the interest of the workers to be anti immigrant in a liberal way.
Most immigrants share the same class interest as workers as workers already here. Immigrants are not the group with power in how they impact workers - capitalists are. You could have a state that had open borders and also held companies to the law on misusing immigrant and under waged labour. You could have a state that invested in infrastructure and redistributed wealth and power to all workers, regardless of immigration statues. That is a decision by the state that is deferential to capital, not to the workers. I would happily enforce minimum wage on employers more harshly, and demand that all workers get access to workers' rights, and workers get representation in company decisions, etc. Immigrant or not.
Making the issue about immigrants rather than how companies pit factions of workers against each other to stall a unified workers' movement, or try to illegally hire people under minimum wage and without their full rights as worker to maximize their profits, is a slight of hand trick. Immigrants are not the enemy of the worker - the boss is.
Are you able to distinguish between immigration and immigrants?
If workers in Germany go on strike for better conditions and the bosses respond by hiring an army of Jimmy Nails from England, whose interests are being served?
Also why do you talk about "illegally hiring people under minimum wage" when in your world there is no state to enforce a minimum wage?
You asked me to come back to the real world, so I did!
Capitals interests are being served, obviously - but the person doing that is capital, not the workers. Those English workers shouldn't scab. But that's why immigration becomes an issue - capital needs immigrants to be in precarity so that they won't join a union themselves and will scab because they fear the repercussions. The best case scenario for capital is where people have to come here illegally and the illegal workers get punished for working but the employer doesn't - essentially giving the employer free reign to keep their workers in any condition they like, paying them a pittance (if paying them at all) and then using the state to get rid of them if they organise or complain - maximising the labour whilst minimising profit loss. Which is what is currently happening in the UK.
The fight against immigrants plays into capitals ability to do this. The more we are convinced immigrants are the problem and there should be fewer of them, the more precarious the living conditions of immigrants become, the more capitalists can abuse them and their work.
The English workers are going to Germany in order to work, not in order to join a union and strike in solidarity with the Germans.
It's quite revealing that when it comes to individual workers acting in their own interests, you see them as scabs.
Being imported labour to break a strike is the definition of a scab, yes.
So why are you so hung up on immigration being anti worker? Do you disagree with any of the arguments I've put forward, or do you just want to keep saying the same thing over and over again until one of us gets bored?
As the supply of labour goes up, the price of labour comes down.
If the supply of unskilled labour tends to infinity, the price of labour tends to zero absent regulation.
Who decides the value of labour? If all the cards are in the hands of capital - capital. If all the cards are in the hands of labour - labour. If there is an excess of labour, but labour unionises and refuses to work unless they're all paid enough to live on, what can capital do? Try and break the strike - with scabs or cops. So the answer is worker solidarity. And that actually capital is always the actor that is squeezing labour in this scenario - not other workers.
What did Big Rish say? (Trying to buy BMW seats on FB and didn't see it.)
You'll have to watch the clip for the full effect.
- Murder victim (who happens to be Trans) mother is in the HoC - Starmer pays tribute - Sunak makes anti-woke culture war joke about definition of woman
And refuses to apologise!
Wtf
And then the Tory MP who declared war on the Archbishop of Canterbury over Rwanda and people seeking asylum.
The Conservative Party at war with the Church of England over how to agree to manage asylum seekers crossing the channel in boats 🤷♀️ This is a party getting itself into a complete and utter mess! Whatever has Conservatism in this country been hi-jacked with?
What did Big Rish say? (Trying to buy BMW seats on FB and didn't see it.)
You'll have to watch the clip for the full effect.
- Murder victim (who happens to be Trans) mother is in the HoC - Starmer pays tribute - Sunak makes anti-woke culture war joke about definition of woman
This culture wars stuff is hard to calibrate; particularly as practiced with the sheer ineptness of the tories. They had to go from pretending to despise the England football team to pretending to love them in the space of 24 hours over the knee business.
What did Big Rish say? (Trying to buy BMW seats on FB and didn't see it.)
You'll have to watch the clip for the full effect.
- Murder victim (who happens to be Trans) mother is in the HoC - Starmer pays tribute - Sunak makes anti-woke culture war joke about definition of woman
And refuses to apologise!
Wtf
And then the Tory MP who declared war on the Archbishop of Canterbury over Rwanda and illegal migration.
The Conservative Party at war with the Church of England over how to agree to manage asylum seekers crossing the channel in boats 🤷♀️ This is a party getting itself into a complete and utter mess! Whatever has Conservatism in this country been hi-jacked with?
I mean the "knowing the difference between a man and a woman" dogwhistle on the week of the Brianna Ghey judgement whilst her mother is in attendance for PMQs does kinda seem pretty shitty and transphobic - yeah.
Since Tim was mentioned..
And now literally called to apologise by an MP an refuses to do so... twat
Cleverley is a Bluto bearded boor who’d had a few drinks, what’s Rishi’s excuse?
What did Big Rish say? (Trying to buy BMW seats on FB and didn't see it.)
You'll have to watch the clip for the full effect.
- Murder victim (who happens to be Trans) mother is in the HoC - Starmer pays tribute - Sunak makes anti-woke culture war joke about definition of woman
If we hadn't had the Truss Experience to compare him to I think people would be judging Sunak a lot more harshly.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
There are left wing tools and right wing tools for sure. Prolly a few centrist ones as well.
And then there's Galloway. A tool for all seasons.
Speaking of which, is he in with a shout in Rochdale? Scotland was done with his nonsense years ago, disappointing that England seems not quite there yet.
God I hope not. That would be an intensely negative development. Past his sell-by, though, surely? Although tbf I haven't seen him 'in action' for quite a while (an excellent state of affairs which I'd be hoping to extend indefinitely).
He got 22% in the 2021 Batley & Spen by-election, but only 1% in West Bromwich East in 2019 and 6% in Manchester Gorton in 2017. He led the All for Unity list for South Scotland at the 2021 elections. They got 1.5%.
Labour are polling much better now than 2017-21. I can’t see how Galloway will come close. If he’s lucky, he could be a distant 2nd.
That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?
The relentless mediocre witless humourless lifeless inert festering smelly blob of twatty leftwing PB - from @DougSeal to @Foxy, from @kinabalu to @Benpointer to @RochdalePioneers to @Roger to @EvanGladne, in all its desperate and piffling monotony, will have overwhelmed and destroyed everything of value, like the ghastly fungus in The Last of Us
Bring back CASINO
"That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?"
This cannot be true. You listen to most of the leftwing posters you mentioned and PB is a den of right wingers with a few left wing voices.
Must be the case.
Leon is just projecting again. There are plenty of other right-leaning folk on here, from TSE and RCS through edmund, topping, and many others.
If Leon means right-wing headcases, he might have a better argument. But then that's a small minority group in this country, thankfully. And of them, finding those who can type using actual words narrows it down even more.
If you mean me I don't think I'm right-wing what with being a member of the Labour Party and so forth, although I take the point that I might have been back when right-wing meant "free markets, deregulation and fighting Communism" rather than whatever it is now.
Being a member of the Labour Party means you support Keir “Kid Starver, Genocide” Starmer.
So you are Literally Worse Than…. Starmer?
Didn’t you get the memo?
Whilst the culture war has tried to make things muddy, I feel the labels left / right / liberal are pretty easy to identify.
Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers? You're right wing. Do you fight for the interests of workers over capital? You're left wing. Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but really really would prefer if everyone pretended that you're still a good person? You're a liberal (and right wing).
By this definition you are right wing because you support maximally open borders.
Capitalism isn't in favour of maximally open borders via the dissolution of states - as I am. Because capitalism needs states to exist to enforce property rights. Maybe we could argue that some people (al la Musk or Theil) would prefer a neofeudal system where they essentially are allowed their own private armies to enforce their property rights, but most capitalists are happy to have that cost put on the state.
Also, no borders is good for workers. Because "British" workers could also just go wherever they wanted.
So in the world that exists in reality, you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but you'd really, really prefer it if people pretended that you don't, because there is a different world that exists in your head?
It is not in the interests of the workers to be a border fascist. Indeed, it is not in the interest of the workers to be anti immigrant in a liberal way.
Most immigrants share the same class interest as workers as workers already here. Immigrants are not the group with power in how they impact workers - capitalists are. You could have a state that had open borders and also held companies to the law on misusing immigrant and under waged labour. You could have a state that invested in infrastructure and redistributed wealth and power to all workers, regardless of immigration statues. That is a decision by the state that is deferential to capital, not to the workers. I would happily enforce minimum wage on employers more harshly, and demand that all workers get access to workers' rights, and workers get representation in company decisions, etc. Immigrant or not.
Making the issue about immigrants rather than how companies pit factions of workers against each other to stall a unified workers' movement, or try to illegally hire people under minimum wage and without their full rights as worker to maximize their profits, is a slight of hand trick. Immigrants are not the enemy of the worker - the boss is.
Are you able to distinguish between immigration and immigrants?
If workers in Germany go on strike for better conditions and the bosses respond by hiring an army of Jimmy Nails from England, whose interests are being served?
Also why do you talk about "illegally hiring people under minimum wage" when in your world there is no state to enforce a minimum wage?
You asked me to come back to the real world, so I did!
Capitals interests are being served, obviously - but the person doing that is capital, not the workers. Those English workers shouldn't scab. But that's why immigration becomes an issue - capital needs immigrants to be in precarity so that they won't join a union themselves and will scab because they fear the repercussions. The best case scenario for capital is where people have to come here illegally and the illegal workers get punished for working but the employer doesn't - essentially giving the employer free reign to keep their workers in any condition they like, paying them a pittance (if paying them at all) and then using the state to get rid of them if they organise or complain - maximising the labour whilst minimising profit loss. Which is what is currently happening in the UK.
The fight against immigrants plays into capitals ability to do this. The more we are convinced immigrants are the problem and there should be fewer of them, the more precarious the living conditions of immigrants become, the more capitalists can abuse them and their work.
The English workers are going to Germany in order to work, not in order to join a union and strike in solidarity with the Germans.
It's quite revealing that when it comes to individual workers acting in their own interests, you see them as scabs.
Being imported labour to break a strike is the definition of a scab, yes.
So why are you so hung up on immigration being anti worker? Do you disagree with any of the arguments I've put forward, or do you just want to keep saying the same thing over and over again until one of us gets bored?
As the supply of labour goes up, the price of labour comes down.
If the supply of unskilled labour tends to infinity, the price of labour tends to zero absent regulation.
Without being in any way disrespectful a statement of the blindingly obvious @Sandpit. And yet the elasticity of labour that free movement created was supposedly good for the less skilled and poorer paid and these people were "stupid" to vote against it
The long term problem of politico-economic ideologues, particularly those on the far left: they divide the world into labour and capital.
Aside from the fact there's a whole plethora of policies that are good or bad for both labour and capital (and very few that are truly zero-sum in the long term), this always forgets the third estate: the consumer.
Untrammelled capital leads to monopolies which leads to poor quality products and services, technological stagnation and product incompatibility, and unsafe and polluting industries.
Untrammelled labour power leads to closed shops, surly customer service, price inflation and restrictions on consumer choice.
A cosy-up between the two too often leads to them colluding to do over the consumer.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
There are left wing tools and right wing tools for sure. Prolly a few centrist ones as well.
And then there's Galloway. A tool for all seasons.
Speaking of which, is he in with a shout in Rochdale? Scotland was done with his nonsense years ago, disappointing that England seems not quite there yet.
God I hope not. That would be an intensely negative development. Past his sell-by, though, surely? Although tbf I haven't seen him 'in action' for quite a while (an excellent state of affairs which I'd be hoping to extend indefinitely).
Sadly it appears to be the Corbynite lefty wing (to which I am not totally unsympathetic) that are most ‘excited’ by the prospect of GG.
There is some twattery in that space, I'm afraid. Pro Palestine should not in any sane world mean signing up to Galloway's shallow nasty populism. He's another narcissist who's all about his personal brand, is my take. Has been for years.
What did Big Rish say? (Trying to buy BMW seats on FB and didn't see it.)
You'll have to watch the clip for the full effect.
- Murder victim (who happens to be Trans) mother is in the HoC - Starmer pays tribute - Sunak makes anti-woke culture war joke about definition of woman
If we hadn't had the Truss Experience to compare him to I think people would be judging Sunak a lot more harshly.
The scariest thing might be that even with the benefit of hindsight Truss and Sunak were both comfortably in the top half performers in Bozo's cabinet, probably both in the top quarter. How bad would the others have been!?
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
Anyway, apparently you won the meaningless Nevada primary for the Republicans.
So congratulations.
He has the Big Mo now. Cue the "NOTA" scream?
A outright win in a previous Nevada gubernatorial primary still didn't give him the nomination. So I'm not getting too excited about it.
That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?
The relentless mediocre witless humourless lifeless inert festering smelly blob of twatty leftwing PB - from @DougSeal to @Foxy, from @kinabalu to @Benpointer to @RochdalePioneers to @Roger to @EvanGladne, in all its desperate and piffling monotony, will have overwhelmed and destroyed everything of value, like the ghastly fungus in The Last of Us
Bring back CASINO
"That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?"
This cannot be true. You listen to most of the leftwing posters you mentioned and PB is a den of right wingers with a few left wing voices.
Must be the case.
Leon is just projecting again. There are plenty of other right-leaning folk on here, from TSE and RCS through edmund, topping, and many others.
If Leon means right-wing headcases, he might have a better argument. But then that's a small minority group in this country, thankfully. And of them, finding those who can type using actual words narrows it down even more.
If you mean me I don't think I'm right-wing what with being a member of the Labour Party and so forth, although I take the point that I might have been back when right-wing meant "free markets, deregulation and fighting Communism" rather than whatever it is now.
Being a member of the Labour Party means you support Keir “Kid Starver, Genocide” Starmer.
So you are Literally Worse Than…. Starmer?
Didn’t you get the memo?
Whilst the culture war has tried to make things muddy, I feel the labels left / right / liberal are pretty easy to identify.
Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers? You're right wing. Do you fight for the interests of workers over capital? You're left wing. Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but really really would prefer if everyone pretended that you're still a good person? You're a liberal (and right wing).
By this definition you are right wing because you support maximally open borders.
Capitalism isn't in favour of maximally open borders via the dissolution of states - as I am. Because capitalism needs states to exist to enforce property rights. Maybe we could argue that some people (al la Musk or Theil) would prefer a neofeudal system where they essentially are allowed their own private armies to enforce their property rights, but most capitalists are happy to have that cost put on the state.
Also, no borders is good for workers. Because "British" workers could also just go wherever they wanted.
So in the world that exists in reality, you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but you'd really, really prefer it if people pretended that you don't, because there is a different world that exists in your head?
It is not in the interests of the workers to be a border fascist. Indeed, it is not in the interest of the workers to be anti immigrant in a liberal way.
Most immigrants share the same class interest as workers as workers already here. Immigrants are not the group with power in how they impact workers - capitalists are. You could have a state that had open borders and also held companies to the law on misusing immigrant and under waged labour. You could have a state that invested in infrastructure and redistributed wealth and power to all workers, regardless of immigration statues. That is a decision by the state that is deferential to capital, not to the workers. I would happily enforce minimum wage on employers more harshly, and demand that all workers get access to workers' rights, and workers get representation in company decisions, etc. Immigrant or not.
Making the issue about immigrants rather than how companies pit factions of workers against each other to stall a unified workers' movement, or try to illegally hire people under minimum wage and without their full rights as worker to maximize their profits, is a slight of hand trick. Immigrants are not the enemy of the worker - the boss is.
Are you able to distinguish between immigration and immigrants?
If workers in Germany go on strike for better conditions and the bosses respond by hiring an army of Jimmy Nails from England, whose interests are being served?
Also why do you talk about "illegally hiring people under minimum wage" when in your world there is no state to enforce a minimum wage?
You asked me to come back to the real world, so I did!
Capitals interests are being served, obviously - but the person doing that is capital, not the workers. Those English workers shouldn't scab. But that's why immigration becomes an issue - capital needs immigrants to be in precarity so that they won't join a union themselves and will scab because they fear the repercussions. The best case scenario for capital is where people have to come here illegally and the illegal workers get punished for working but the employer doesn't - essentially giving the employer free reign to keep their workers in any condition they like, paying them a pittance (if paying them at all) and then using the state to get rid of them if they organise or complain - maximising the labour whilst minimising profit loss. Which is what is currently happening in the UK.
The fight against immigrants plays into capitals ability to do this. The more we are convinced immigrants are the problem and there should be fewer of them, the more precarious the living conditions of immigrants become, the more capitalists can abuse them and their work.
The English workers are going to Germany in order to work, not in order to join a union and strike in solidarity with the Germans.
It's quite revealing that when it comes to individual workers acting in their own interests, you see them as scabs.
Mass immigration is basically an unholy alliance between capitalists wanting cheap labour and woke leftists wanting to get round the fire singing kumbaya.
What did Big Rish say? (Trying to buy BMW seats on FB and didn't see it.)
You'll have to watch the clip for the full effect.
- Murder victim (who happens to be Trans) mother is in the HoC - Starmer pays tribute - Sunak makes anti-woke culture war joke about definition of woman
What did Big Rish say? (Trying to buy BMW seats on FB and didn't see it.)
You'll have to watch the clip for the full effect.
- Murder victim (who happens to be Trans) mother is in the HoC - Starmer pays tribute - Sunak makes anti-woke culture war joke about definition of woman
And refuses to apologise!
Wtf. It doesn't matter where you stand on Trans stuff - it's crass, insensitive, juvenile behaviour in this context.
It’s coming with a sarcastic attack line someone has written for you, and pressing on not reading a room.
Although people say Boris and Truss done for themselves, the truth is the Conservative Parliamentary Party done both in, in order to install Sunak.
I mean the "knowing the difference between a man and a woman" dogwhistle on the week of the Brianna Ghey judgement whilst her mother is in attendance for PMQs does kinda seem pretty shitty and transphobic - yeah.
Since Tim was mentioned..
And now literally called to apologise by an MP an refuses to do so... twat
Cleverley is a Bluto bearded boor who’d had a few drinks, what’s Rishi’s excuse?
Somehow this feels even worse then not saying anything
"This is the last question, he he says he wants to address a point to Brianna Ghey’s mother. He says:
I said earlier this week what happened was an unspeakable and shocking tragedy. And, as I said earlier this week, in the face of that for her mother to demonstrate the compassion and empathy that she did last weekend, I thought demonstrated the very best of humanity in the face of seeing the very worst of humanity, and she deserves all our admiration.
This Government has got to stop using the trans community as a punchline at PMQs.
We @ToryReformGroup have consistently warned of this “othering” of one of the most marginalised communities in the U.K. We have seen recently what horrors some trans people have been subjected to.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
There are left wing tools and right wing tools for sure. Prolly a few centrist ones as well.
And then there's Galloway. A tool for all seasons.
Speaking of which, is he in with a shout in Rochdale? Scotland was done with his nonsense years ago, disappointing that England seems not quite there yet.
Is there much betting on the by-elections? I suspect, no, Galloway has no chance in Rochdale. And Reform UK have no chance in any of the 3.
Even if true the vote share will still be worth seeing. As it will for William Howarth who is standing on behalf of grooming victims. Mysteriously another Howarth, Michael, is also standing as an independent.
He simply cannot read a room. Private jets, £1,000 bets, murder victims.
"bad"
Sunak listed “pensions, planning, peerages”, among others, before adding that that the Labour leader had u-turned on “defining a woman, although, in fairness, that was only 99 per cent of a u-turn.”
This Government has got to stop using the trans community as a punchline at PMQs.
We @ToryReformGroup have consistently warned of this “othering” of one of the most marginalised communities in the U.K. We have seen recently what horrors some trans people have been subjected to.
Define trans rights? If trans rights equals believing that biological sex isn't real and doesn't matter, then no, he and lots of others (including me) don't believe in trans rights.
My best guess is Sunak will try and make this into another round of making the press ask Starmer if "women can have a penis" and watching Starmer squirm because he is also willing to press the big transphobia button, but has the sense not to do it in front of a dead transgirl's mother or in LGBTQ+ History month. It's worked in the past, and many of this parish agree with it and fuel the flames of it.
I mean the "knowing the difference between a man and a woman" dogwhistle on the week of the Brianna Ghey judgement whilst her mother is in attendance for PMQs does kinda seem pretty shitty and transphobic - yeah.
Since Tim was mentioned..
And now literally called to apologise by an MP an refuses to do so... twat
Best to just apologise and neuter it rather than let it run.
It was tactless, certainly, and he should apologise and not do an Ed Davey and just refuse or offer a mealy mouthed, qualified, apology.
Have you thought, @Leon, that this board might actually be representative of the country? And there are very few right-wingers left?
There are very few people accepted as right-wing anymore. Even 5 years ago no-one would seriously be arguing Sunak was a liberal lefty Europhile. Today, he apparently is that to a significant proportion of the Tory party, despite being an early Brexiteer, free markets, low regulation type with little to say on social and cultural policies either way beyond the status quo.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
Yep. And another thought related to that. With the advent of these culture war type dividing lines (rather than economic) 'right wing' has taken on overtones of nastiness such as 'racist'. This has given it (unfairly really) the air of an insult which its opposite (left wing) does not generally carry. Therefore many people who are (genuinely) right wing bridle at the label whereas in the past they might not have.
Left wing can also be an insult.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
It can, but not quite so much. Eg something I've noticed. When a person is called to their face 'right wing' they are very likely to be keen to qualify with "Well I'd say centre right, actually". Or right of centre. You don't see this so much with people called 'left wing'. They are usually content with that handle.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
There are left wing tools and right wing tools for sure. Prolly a few centrist ones as well.
And then there's Galloway. A tool for all seasons.
Speaking of which, is he in with a shout in Rochdale? Scotland was done with his nonsense years ago, disappointing that England seems not quite there yet.
Is there much betting on the by-elections? I suspect, no, Galloway has no chance in Rochdale. And Reform UK have no chance in any of the 3.
Even if true the vote share will still be worth seeing. As it will for William Howarth who is standing on behalf of grooming victims. Mysteriously another Howarth, Michael, is also standing as an independent.
Most single issue independent candidates most of the time get very few votes. It is difficult to cut through at a by-election campaign. Does W Howarth already have a high profile locally?
What did Big Rish say? (Trying to buy BMW seats on FB and didn't see it.)
You'll have to watch the clip for the full effect.
- Murder victim (who happens to be Trans) mother is in the HoC - Starmer pays tribute - Sunak makes anti-woke culture war joke about definition of woman
If we hadn't had the Truss Experience to compare him to I think people would be judging Sunak a lot more harshly.
The scariest thing might be that even with the benefit of hindsight Truss and Sunak were both comfortably in the top half performers in Bozo's cabinet, probably both in the top quarter. How bad would the others have been!?
John Bruton, former Taoiseach of Ireland, died yesterday, so there was a lot of hagiography and political history. One thing that I found striking was the way in which political figures didn't just disappear after taking a knock, but hung around.
Maybe this was a feature of a fairly incestuous political culture, or just that with a limited pool of capable people they didn't have the luxury of them walking away.
The period 2015-2019 was one of great upheaval in British politics, and a lot of relatively capable people were pushed out for being on the wrong side of one ideological divide or another, or due to not being sufficiently personally loyal to the leader of the day.
The thing is, Sunak presumably supports trans rights. So, what's he supposed to apologise for?
That said, he's a bloody idiot for saying anything around that subject today.
He could apologise for being a twat (although it may get a little repetitive after a while).
The most problematic thing for Sunak is people just think he's an arsehole. Simple as that.
And he is. He's not stupid. He seems to be hard working. He is not exceptionally dishonest for a politician. He seems reasonably decisive. But, he's an arsehole and that taints everything else he says and does.
The one thing I did notice after Sunak's car crash pmqs was immediately it ended the first thing Starmer did was to go to the conservative mp who had spoken so movingly about his recent suicide bid and put his arm on his shoulder in a show of support
The one thing I did notice after Sunak's car crash pmqs was immediately it ended the first thing Starmer did was to go to the conservative mp who had spoken so movingly about his recent suicide bid and put his arm on his shoulder in a show of support
This Government has got to stop using the trans community as a punchline at PMQs.
We @ToryReformGroup have consistently warned of this “othering” of one of the most marginalised communities in the U.K. We have seen recently what horrors some trans people have been subjected to.
Define trans rights? If trans rights equals believing that biological sex isn't real and doesn't matter, then no, he and lots of others (including me) don't believe in trans rights.
That there are trans people, overlooked and marginalised people taking abuse for a long time, who actually need tlg86 to hug them and care about their welfare and happiness. It’s as simple as that, it’s not complicated.
Racist abuse, the very worst of sexism, transphobic abuse, all begins with, excused, aided and abetted by the same trans jokes Rishi told today.
The thing is, Sunak presumably supports trans rights. So, what's he supposed to apologise for?
That said, he's a bloody idiot for saying anything around that subject today.
He could apologise for being a twat (although it may get a little repetitive after a while).
The most problematic thing for Sunak is people just think he's an arsehole. Simple as that.
And he is. He's not stupid. He seems to be hard working. He is not exceptionally dishonest for a politician. He seems reasonably decisive. But, he's an arsehole and that taints everything else he says and does.
What did Big Rish say? (Trying to buy BMW seats on FB and didn't see it.)
You'll have to watch the clip for the full effect.
- Murder victim (who happens to be Trans) mother is in the HoC - Starmer pays tribute - Sunak makes anti-woke culture war joke about definition of woman
If we hadn't had the Truss Experience to compare him to I think people would be judging Sunak a lot more harshly.
The scariest thing might be that even with the benefit of hindsight Truss and Sunak were both comfortably in the top half performers in Bozo's cabinet, probably both in the top quarter. How bad would the others have been!?
John Bruton, former Taoiseach of Ireland, died yesterday, so there was a lot of hagiography and political history. One thing that I found striking was the way in which political figures didn't just disappear after taking a knock, but hung around.
Maybe this was a feature of a fairly incestuous political culture, or just that with a limited pool of capable people they didn't have the luxury of them walking away.
The period 2015-2019 was one of great upheaval in British politics, and a lot of relatively capable people were pushed out for being on the wrong side of one ideological divide or another, or due to not being sufficiently personally loyal to the leader of the day.
The consequences will linger for some time.
Yeah, Cameron has more gravitas than the rest of the cabinet put together. Currently unpalatable to both party and country for different reasons but good that he is back in the game.
Comments
(*) as do other groups, such as the Kurds...
"Right wing" and "headcase" are increasingly synonymous in many people's minds.
See the US for a really bad case of that, where "thinking that insurrection is a bad thing" makes you insufficiently right wing to be a proper Republican.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/document-lists-9-instances-of-anti-semitism-by-corbyn-among-thousands-in-labour/
Republicans in this country need a new name like the Democratic Patriots.
Interestingly due to increasing Mrs' hours I'm going to be over the effective £666.66/£833.33 cap till we get the 15 hours in September (Have some in reserve to cover and not lose out on 25% though).
Though this will be a "self sorting" issue generally long term with the 15/30 hrs kicking in earlier.
Capitals interests are being served, obviously - but the person doing that is capital, not the workers. Those English workers shouldn't scab. But that's why immigration becomes an issue - capital needs immigrants to be in precarity so that they won't join a union themselves and will scab because they fear the repercussions. The best case scenario for capital is where people have to come here illegally and the illegal workers get punished for working but the employer doesn't - essentially giving the employer free reign to keep their workers in any condition they like, paying them a pittance (if paying them at all) and then using the state to get rid of them if they organise or complain - maximising the labour whilst minimising profit loss. Which is what is currently happening in the UK.
https://neweconomics.org/2023/07/migrant-agricultural-workers-face-absolute-poverty-while-supermarkets-profit
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2022-05-27/migrant-fruit-pickers-charged-thousands-in-illegal-fees-to-work-on-uk-farms
The fight against immigrants plays into capitals ability to do this. The more we are convinced immigrants are the problem and there should be fewer of them, the more precarious the living conditions of immigrants become, the more capitalists can abuse them and their work.
The way I see it there are problems that need solving and left wing tools and right tools that can be used. Some problems work best with left wing tools, others right wing ones. Some can be solved with either and some with neither and will just remain problems.
Pick'n'mix. And don't throw all your cliches in the same basket.
Example -
1) a “cleric” was banned from entering the U.K., for espousing violence and extreme racism. Including, multiple times, promulgating the Blood Libel
2) Corbyn campaigned for him to be allowed to enter the U.K.
3) Corbyn was told why the cleric was banned. People showed him the speeches in question - on the “clerics” own social media.
4) Corbyn again campaigned to allow him into country. And praised the “cleric”.
It's quite revealing that when it comes to individual workers acting in their own interests, you see them as scabs.
With your 'tools', I guess some are no 'wing' at all. Eg ... well I can't think of any right off but there must be some.
But with Gaza I am finding myself repelled by the advocates on both sides. The more I hear from people in support of Palestine, the more staunch does my support of Jewish self-defence become. The more I hear from the Israeli government, the more inclined I am towards recognition and support for an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza strip.
Erdogan is the refugee from The Great Dictator who runs Hungary
To put flesh on the bones, Justice Engoron has written to all of them, including eg Trump's (perhaps soon to be ex-) lawyer Alina Habbadabbaboo, demanding they tell him everything they know about the alleged perjury which is not subject to client privilege. He's laying it on quite thick, invoking a doctrine that says if one thing is found to be false, all the man's testimony could be ruled unreliable.
I wonder if we can expect a new motion to the Court from the Prosecutor? I'm not sure if that can happen after the prosecution case has been rested.
The email text:
I also enjoy arguing with him
I was in a (then!) safe seat in 2019, so I was spared making a choice between Corbyn and Johnson. If I'd been in a competitive seat... Well, I really don't know. I might still have effectively abstained by voting for someone else. Both appalled me.
With a quick scan I can see lots of references to "members" - who are not Jeremy Corbyn - and stuff that is clearly anti-Semitic. But the Forde report notes this existed and also that the leadership did wanted this dealt with, and that it was slow because (in part) some staff within Labour who disliked Corbyn slowed this down to make Corbyn look bad.
The anti-Zionist stuff I have covered before - it is not anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist, many Jewish people are anti-Zionist, Zionism is not interchangeable with Jewishness and, indeed, the belief that it is is itself a form of anti-Semitism.
I would agree that Corbyn was on the wrong side of what is the "socialism of fools" problem. Many people discussing class interest go out of their way to make it clear that class interest is not a shadowy kabal of people working behind the scenes controlling everything, but instead the effect of people who generally speaking all benefit from the same things and have the power anyway so get to make decisions that benefit them. When it comes to the mural issue and such - I think that is someone who was a pretty unimportant politician for a long time supporting things that could be seen, at a quick glance, as a critique of class interest but fall into anti-Semitism. Corbyn should have been better at scrutinising things like that - he wasn't. I think that is a reasonable criticism, and I think it suggests a blind spot that could come under unconscious bias - but I don't think he actively believes that Jewish people secretly run everything.
I would note that people like Siobhan McDonagh, for example, literally once said "criticisms of capitalism are inherently anti-Semitic" - which is itself hugely anti-Semitic because the assumption is that capitalism is somehow inherently linked to Jewishness. Would anyone make the same argument about being anti-socialist or anti-communist being anti-Semitic? One could - the literal Nazi conspiracy of Judaeo Bolshevism (now reheated as Cultural Marxism) is the belief that Jewish people introduced left wing ideas to destroy the West (the modern version of Cultural Marxism has a load of Jewish academics deciding to introduce ideas like CRT or post-Modernism after the USSR is clearly losing the Cold War to try and win "culturally" - again, things said by right wing public luminaries like Jordan Peterson all the god damn time).
So congratulations.
Ooo.
The Eagles wrote a song about this site:
'You can check out any time you like but you can never leave'
James BondCasino Royale will ReturnWeisselberg's rumoured plea bargain to perjury charges would indeed call all of his testimony in to question.
Puts Trump in a very sticky position.
Btw, if the SC are going to take up the immunity case (which I doubt), they'd have to question Marbury itself. Which would shake the entire basis of the court's legitimacy for the last couple of centuries.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24409152/dc-circuit-immunity-opinion.pdf
..The separation of powers doctrine, as expounded in Marbury and its progeny, necessarily permits the Judiciary to oversee the federal criminal prosecution of a former President for his official acts because the fact of the prosecution means that the former President has allegedly acted in defiance of the Congress’s laws. Although certain discretionary actions may be insulated from judicial review, the structure of the Constitution mandates that the President is “amenable to the laws for his conduct” and “cannot at his discretion” violate them. Marbury, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) at 166. Here, former President Trump’s actions allegedly violated generally applicable criminal laws, meaning those acts were not properly within the scope of his lawful discretion; accordingly, Marbury and its progeny provide him no structural immunity from the charges in the Indictment.
He simply cannot read a room. Private jets, £1,000 bets, murder victims.
So why are you so hung up on immigration being anti worker? Do you disagree with any of the arguments I've put forward, or do you just want to keep saying the same thing over and over again until one of us gets bored?
Starmer attacks Sunak for not keeping his promises. Sunak attacks Starmer thus:
"We are bringing the waiting lists down for the longest waiters and making progress, but it is a bit rich to hear about promises from someone who has broken every single promise he was elected on.
I think I have counted almost 30 in the last year. Pensions, planning, peerages, public sector pay, tuition fees, childcare, second referendums, defining a woman, although in fairness that was only 99% of a u-turn."
Do you really say "Starmer doesn't know what a woman is" when the mother of a transwoman recently murdered is sat watching?
Jesus.
If the supply of unskilled labour tends to infinity, the price of labour tends to zero absent regulation.
I found it traumatic enough yesterday having to go through those questions for a life insurance application. Can't imagine volunteering the information in the Commons chamber.
But the net is tightening. And yet the odds do not really reflect this.
- Murder victim (who happens to be Trans) mother is in the HoC
- Starmer pays tribute
- Sunak makes anti-woke culture war joke about definition of woman
Wtf. It doesn't matter where you stand on Trans stuff - it's crass, insensitive, juvenile behaviour in this context.
The Conservative Party at war with the Church of England over how to agree to manage asylum seekers crossing the channel in boats 🤷♀️ This is a party getting itself into a complete and utter mess! Whatever has Conservatism in this country been hi-jacked with?
The way this government talks about trans issues is going to age like a fine bin bag full of fish and orange peel.
Labour are polling much better now than 2017-21. I can’t see how Galloway will come close. If he’s lucky, he could be a distant 2nd.
Hope the house move went well.
Sunak just has no political gravitas and today really misjudged his remarks
It will lead the headlines and with the recent £1,000 bet it just adds to the narrative he is not in touch with people
That said, he's a bloody idiot for saying anything around that subject today.
So I'm not getting too excited about it.
Although people say Boris and Truss done for themselves, the truth is the Conservative Parliamentary Party done both in, in order to install Sunak.
Whatever did they see in him?
"This is the last question, he he says he wants to address a point to Brianna Ghey’s mother. He says:
I said earlier this week what happened was an unspeakable and shocking tragedy. And, as I said earlier this week, in the face of that for her mother to demonstrate the compassion and empathy that she did last weekend, I thought demonstrated the very best of humanity in the face of seeing the very worst of humanity, and she deserves all our admiration.
He does not apologise."
@ToryReformGroup
This Government has got to stop using the trans community as a punchline at PMQs.
We @ToryReformGroup have consistently warned of this “othering” of one of the most marginalised communities in the U.K. We have seen recently what horrors some trans people have been subjected to.
Sunak listed “pensions, planning, peerages”, among others, before adding that that the Labour leader had u-turned on “defining a woman, although, in fairness, that was only 99 per cent of a u-turn.”
It was tactless, certainly, and he should apologise and not do an Ed Davey and just refuse or offer a mealy mouthed, qualified, apology.
Maybe this was a feature of a fairly incestuous political culture, or just that with a limited pool of capable people they didn't have the luxury of them walking away.
The period 2015-2019 was one of great upheaval in British politics, and a lot of relatively capable people were pushed out for being on the wrong side of one ideological divide or another, or due to not being sufficiently personally loyal to the leader of the day.
The consequences will linger for some time.
Maybe a lesson for Sunak
Racist abuse, the very worst of sexism, transphobic abuse, all begins with, excused, aided and abetted by the same trans jokes Rishi told today.
I also don't think it is especially effective as I do not believe it is an issue most people care strongly about.