Was listening to someone French this morning saying that French business is busy in talks with MLP and sucking up as they are infinitely more worried about what he described as the uncosted plans and potential tax rises by the left block than they are by a hard right controlled parliament.
Is it possible that Macron’s snap election call could turn out to be a worse decision than Rishi’s?
Ultimately, despite disagreeing with Labour, at least we should get at least four years of stability, maybe 8/9 if Starmer doesn’t cock up, whereas France is going to be all over the shop with a lame duck president, a polarised parliament, divisive Presidential elections in just under three years.
Rishi’s Tory seppuku could actually turn out to be his greatest act for the country in the medium term.
Was listening to someone French this morning saying that French business is busy in talks with MLP and sucking up as they are infinitely more worried about what he described as the uncosted plans and potential tax rises by the left block than they are by a hard right controlled parliament.
Is it possible that Macron’s snap election call could turn out to be a worse decision than Rishi’s?
Ultimately, despite disagreeing with Labour, at least we should get at least four years of stability, maybe 8/9 if Starmer doesn’t cock up, whereas France is going to be all over the shop with a lame duck president, a polarised parliament, divisive Presidential elections in just under three years.
Rishi’s Tory seppuku could actually turn out to be his greatest act for the country in the medium term.
Rishi's Tory seppuku. Good analogy.
I honestly don't know how he and Theresa May built political skills with media, interview and debating skills that inept.
Nor do I understand what process/training CCHQ put candidates through. Whatever it is it clearly isn't good enough. And it should be refreshed regularly for elected MPs as part of their CPD.
Seppuku implies honour and intent. I’d say he’s much closer to Sideshow Bob repeatedly stepping on rakes.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
Proper history is hard. Pop history is toe curling. Doing history with regard to some narrow conclusion about issue X and group Y and facts Z right now is what extremists do.
Everyone's at it, though Biggar is only an historian in the sense that he may self-identify as one.
Not a huge fan of Biggar, but if you are to describe as 'Not a senior academic' (see the link) someone who has held professorships at Leeds, TCD and Oxford you have to provide at least a scintilla of backing.
Possible the tweeter has a problem with someone noisily shoving their historical oar in for the umpteenth time being described as a senior academic in that context. It's a bit like Hugh 'Scotland doesn't need a lockdown' Pennington, a bacteriologist, being the go to boffin for the Scottish press during a pandemic.
Back in Blighty and the weather is beaut. Dunno what you’re all moaning about
LOL. There are plenty of specialist sites for weather chat. I visit many of them. Suggest you do likewise.
The weather will play its part in the election, though. It's been evident for a while that the pattern would bring us awful cold cloudy weather for the first half of the campaign - enough to get everyone thoroughly pissed off and cross, and blaming the government.
Then it would start to improve and feel much more summery in the closing stages. We could be in mid to high 20s next week for example. That gets people feeling optimistic for the future. Things can only get better.
Perfect evolution for Labour, but maybe not so bad for the Tories either. Not so good for Reform - I think they really need people feeling depressed and angry.
Fair point. What's your prognosis for early July? I'm cycling in Shropshire so keen to know regardless of the election!
Long term Northern Hemisphere pattern seems to be setting things up for Atlantic ridging. Of course Atlantic ridging can be in the wrong place, but on the balance of probabilities it's looking pretty encouraging.
So whereas I thought I might have to vote LibDem, I’m no longer sure!
There is nothing about Newton Abbot that says Labour to me in any manner for a tactical vote. Lib Dem all the way.
Can I ask you please to be searingly honest? Are you a LibDem voter? Your “nothing […] in any manner” makes me less, not more, likely to believe you. It’s overdone.
Tactical.Vote didn’t even think about it, seemingly. They put LibDem from the word go.
Best for Britain took 3 weeks to weigh it up, carefully, and concluded that I should vote Labour.
I'm not convinced that a lot of "carefully" goes into in most of the tactical voting sites. They mostly appear to look at the MRPs and see which non-Conservative party is in the lead, then just recommend that one.
As Best for Britain have chosen to embed Survation's data into their site - which is one of the less plausible projections IMO - I wouldn't give them any special credence.
Indeed. And with Newton Abbott history is your guide anyway, in its former guise in 01 and 05 it was held by LD expenses bad boy Richard Younger-Ross and the new boundaries aren't so out of place. Muscle memory makes LDs the challenger but it's a seat where Labour will be cocky and 'fancy it on the surrrrrrrge' and get in the way so it may well stay blue
A practical consideration, if you accept the overall pollling that suggests that Labour will win, is whether you want a Government or Opposition MP. A case for voting Labour in seats like Didcot and Wantage where there appears to be a 3-way marginal is that it's more useful to have some Labour MPs in Government representing uncharactaristic constituencies than one extra Tory or LibDem in opposition.
That's a stretch Nick - got to admire the lateral thinking there.
Ha! I was thinking that. The good doctor Palmer should be a politician with triangulation like that @NickPalmer
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
I know shy Tories are historically a thing - but I also didn't see why people assumed the DKs were going to "come home" when it is so clear even typical Tories are upset with the party and how it has governed, and they seem to be loosing Tories to the "centre" and the right - with Starmer and the LDs stealing the wets who can't stand the culture war stuff and only care about the economy, and Farage parking his tanks on the lawn in the culture war sphere. I think we do really need to consider that the Tories will not be the party of opposition and are going to go extinct as a political force - if not fully in this election then in the near future (the only situation I see keeping the Tory Party alive is Farage being the only Reform MP and then crossing over to the Tories and becoming their leader. Which is a nightmare scenario in many ways....)
Starmer is a social democrat, the LDs put out a social democrat manifesto. The Greens are hard left, Farage and Reform hard right.
The Tories still represent the liberal centre right and still are second to Labour in virtually every current poll
Starmer is a Cameroon. He has set out a Cameroon vision for the future. He has not put out a socially democratic manifesto. Do I know who Starmer is "in his heart" - no. But when we have the likes of Rory goddamn Stewart pointing out that the next Labour government is just going to do austerity lite, I think it's clear that the next government isn't doing anything particularly to the left.
No Starmer is a Brownite as will soon become apparent in government. Already his advisers are recommending increasing CGT on property owners and businesses, plus we have the end of the VAT exemption for private education etc.
Starmer is no Cameroon or Cleggite, he is not even a Blairite. Ideologically he is closer to John Smith, Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown or Harold Wilson than Blair
I mean, I would like this to be the case - but I don't see evidence of it as you do. Labour have made a point of sending Reeves and Streeting front and centre this campaign; the woman who doesn't want to raise taxes on any wealth and the man who wants to sell of bits of the NHS.
Reeves and Streeting are Blairites yes, Starmer and Rayner aren't, they are soft left Brownites. Rayner with a tinge of Corbynite too
Reeves and Streeting are both from the same vintage - younger end of Gen X, came of age during Blair's ascendency, active in student politics when it wasn't a hotbed of Labour left. I think their world view reflects the conditions of their youth. Starmer would have come of age in the early 80s. Different world.
I think Nige is going for a Trumpite 'the role of PM was stolen from me' narrative, with everyone being blamed other than him. And there will be elements of the British Right - perhaps large elements - happy to feed the conspiracy.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
Proper history is hard. Pop history is toe curling. Doing history with regard to some narrow conclusion about issue X and group Y and facts Z right now is what extremists do.
Everyone's at it, though Biggar is only an historian in the sense that he may self-identify as one.
Not a huge fan of Biggar, but if you are to describe as 'Not a senior academic' (see the link) someone who has held professorships at Leeds, TCD and Oxford you have to provide at least a scintilla of backing.
Professorships in theology LOL. "Intellectual tennis without a net" (Daniel Dennett)
One of the petty reasons I have for disliking Farage is that, like Trump, everything is part of a conspiracy against him. It's really tiresome.
Reform have not been "stitched up" by the vetting firm they used. They (the vetting firm) have simply not been good enough for one or more of many possible reasons: poor judging criteria, inefficient vetting methods, general incompetence, not charging enough to do a thorough job, taking too much profit from their fee to do a thorough job, inevitability of falling short of perfection given the time available to do the job, impossibility of finding 632 candidates for Reform that didn't have something unsavoury in their past, etc.
The victim mentality really doesn't elicit any sympathy from me.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
Proper history is hard. Pop history is toe curling. Doing history with regard to some narrow conclusion about issue X and group Y and facts Z right now is what extremists do.
Everyone's at it, though Biggar is only an historian in the sense that he may self-identify as one.
Not a huge fan of Biggar, but if you are to describe as 'Not a senior academic' (see the link) someone who has held professorships at Leeds, TCD and Oxford you have to provide at least a scintilla of backing.
Possible the tweeter has a problem with someone noisily shoving their historical oar in for the umpteenth time being described as a senior academic in that context. It's a bit like Hugh 'Scotland doesn't need a lockdown' Pennington, a bacteriologist, being the go to boffin for the Scottish press during a pandemic.
Maybe. Though TBF theologians and ethicists like Biggar occasionally find folks from other disciplines treading on their lawn, sometimes wearing hob nailed boots.
Has anyone considered what proportion of undecideds are unlikely to cast a vote? It seems to me perfectly possible that someone who tells a pollster they are undecided may well not be intending to cast a vote.
I know shy Tories are historically a thing - but I also didn't see why people assumed the DKs were going to "come home" when it is so clear even typical Tories are upset with the party and how it has governed, and they seem to be loosing Tories to the "centre" and the right - with Starmer and the LDs stealing the wets who can't stand the culture war stuff and only care about the economy, and Farage parking his tanks on the lawn in the culture war sphere. I think we do really need to consider that the Tories will not be the party of opposition and are going to go extinct as a political force - if not fully in this election then in the near future (the only situation I see keeping the Tory Party alive is Farage being the only Reform MP and then crossing over to the Tories and becoming their leader. Which is a nightmare scenario in many ways....)
Starmer is a social democrat, the LDs put out a social democrat manifesto. The Greens are hard left, Farage and Reform hard right.
The Tories still represent the liberal centre right and still are second to Labour in virtually every current poll
Starmer is a Cameroon. He has set out a Cameroon vision for the future. He has not put out a socially democratic manifesto. Do I know who Starmer is "in his heart" - no. But when we have the likes of Rory goddamn Stewart pointing out that the next Labour government is just going to do austerity lite, I think it's clear that the next government isn't doing anything particularly to the left.
No Starmer is a Brownite as will soon become apparent in government. Already his advisers are recommending increasing CGT on property owners and businesses, plus we have the end of the VAT exemption for private education etc.
Starmer is no Cameroon or Cleggite, he is not even a Blairite. Ideologically he is closer to John Smith, Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown or Harold Wilson than Blair
I mean, I would like this to be the case - but I don't see evidence of it as you do. Labour have made a point of sending Reeves and Streeting front and centre this campaign; the woman who doesn't want to raise taxes on any wealth and the man who wants to sell of bits of the NHS.
Reeves and Streeting are Blairites yes, Starmer and Rayner aren't, they are soft left Brownites. Rayner with a tinge of Corbynite too
I think you'll find they are all going to be Starmerites after 4th July.
Oh no, once Labour gets a majority that is when the internal divisions really begin
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
So whereas I thought I might have to vote LibDem, I’m no longer sure!
There is nothing about Newton Abbot that says Labour to me in any manner for a tactical vote. Lib Dem all the way.
Can I ask you please to be searingly honest? Are you a LibDem voter? Your “nothing […] in any manner” makes me less, not more, likely to believe you. It’s overdone.
Tactical.Vote didn’t even think about it, seemingly. They put LibDem from the word go.
Best for Britain took 3 weeks to weigh it up, carefully, and concluded that I should vote Labour.
I'm not convinced that a lot of "carefully" goes into in most of the tactical voting sites. They mostly appear to look at the MRPs and see which non-Conservative party is in the lead, then just recommend that one.
As Best for Britain have chosen to embed Survation's data into their site - which is one of the less plausible projections IMO - I wouldn't give them any special credence.
Indeed. And with Newton Abbott history is your guide anyway, in its former guise in 01 and 05 it was held by LD expenses bad boy Richard Younger-Ross and the new boundaries aren't so out of place. Muscle memory makes LDs the challenger but it's a seat where Labour will be cocky and 'fancy it on the surrrrrrrge' and get in the way so it may well stay blue
A practical consideration, if you accept the overall pollling that suggests that Labour will win, is whether you want a Government or Opposition MP. A case for voting Labour in seats like Didcot and Wantage where there appears to be a 3-way marginal is that it's more useful to have some Labour MPs in Government representing uncharactaristic constituencies than one extra Tory or LibDem in opposition.
Usual disclaimer: no one apart from the local CLP chair thinks that Didcot & Wantage is a three-way marginal.
Though I grant you have more experience of three-ways than most of us.
Hardly, NPxMP. If Didcot were to elect a Labour MP, he would pass totally unnoticed in the throng of Labour MPs. Nobody would need to take any notice of him. A bit like the Conservative MP in recent years.
With the new regulations now in place as regards the requirement to provide photo ID when voting, does anyone consider, as I do, that this is likely to have a material impact in reducing turnout figures. The 2.5% bands currently on offer from the Betfair Exchange immediately below the 60% level certainly offer some attractions should you believe that this is likely to prove to be the percentage who ultimately cast their vote:
Betfair Current Decimal Odds Turnout Band % To Buy To Sell 55.00% - 57.49% 19.0 36.0
57.50% - 59.99% 5.8 6.2
A certain level of voters will not have the required form of ID readily to hand or may not even possess such ID. Others may forget to take this with them to the polling station or simply cannot be bothered. There is also likely to be a significant number who voted Conservative in 2019 but who, like myself, although feeling very badly let down, cannot bring themselves to vote for an alternative party and have therefore consciously decided to abstain. I may be wrong but I wonder whether the number in this category may prove to be be very substantial.
Morning All! Brighter today for the second day running. What’s going on?
I had my postal vote disallowed for the Police etc Commissioner election because my signature has changed, due to my (considerable) hand problems. Now I’m wondering if the several years old picture on my bus pass will be acceptable. (I’ve decided to vote in person this time, as I can’t guarantee my signature.)
PfP raises an issue which may have a surprising amount of cut-through. The oldies around here (i.e. most of the population) are not so much likely to forget their id as to be affronted by the very suggestion that the custom of a lifetime has been changed unhelpfully and unnecessarily. This has in some cases sparked an 'eff 'em' attitude likely to results in a change in the voting habit of a lifetime.
I think PfP is right. Turnout looks like a sell, and stay-at-homes and protest voters might be up a tad.
There are multiple factors pointing to turnout falling substantially compared to 2019:
1997 was the last election when there was serious widespread dillusionment amongst Conservative voters. Measuring against 1987 (not 1992, because in 1987 like 1997 the result was not in real doubt), turnout fell by 3.9% to 71.4%.
At least in 1997 there was fairly widespread enthusiasm about Labour taking over, and that probably kept turnout up to a degree, countering the effect of Conservative disillusionment. The mood towards Starmer's Labour now seems closer to that of 2001, when the gloss had come off New Labour. In that election, turnout fell by a massive 12.0% to a record postwar low of 59.4%.
So going from an election (1987) where supporters of the Conservatives were positive about their party and Thatcher also caused a strong reaction on the left, to one where Conservatives were disillusioned and Labour supporters weren't particularly enthused any more to compensate (2001), turnout fell by 15.9% in 14 years. If you disagree with me and think that 1992 is a better benchmark, then the fall was 18.3% in the 9 years to 2001.
In 2019, there were once again I think a lot of factors on both sides enthusing the electorate to go out and vote in what was once again a Brexit election following a high turnout referendum 3 years earlier. Johnson enthused Conservatives to "get Brexit done", Remainers tried hard to stop that, and we need to remember too that Corbyn's brand of Marmite drew strong reactions in both directions.
Exceptionally, we seem to have all the ingredients in place to go from a moderately high turnout election (by the standards of the 21st century) to a low turnout one in the space of just one electoral cycle.
Add to that the change in voter ID requirements. It's certain to have a much greater impact than on the misinformed 0.25% who turn up in the local elections only to find they could not vote. The problem is more those who knew the score and did not turn up to vote in the first place. The Electoral Commission cite evidence that 4% of non-voters cite the ID requirements as a reason for not voting. 4% of non-voters in the local elections amounts to about 2.5% of all voters, and very few seem to have done anything to sort out the necessary ID in the month or so since.
I know shy Tories are historically a thing - but I also didn't see why people assumed the DKs were going to "come home" when it is so clear even typical Tories are upset with the party and how it has governed, and they seem to be loosing Tories to the "centre" and the right - with Starmer and the LDs stealing the wets who can't stand the culture war stuff and only care about the economy, and Farage parking his tanks on the lawn in the culture war sphere. I think we do really need to consider that the Tories will not be the party of opposition and are going to go extinct as a political force - if not fully in this election then in the near future (the only situation I see keeping the Tory Party alive is Farage being the only Reform MP and then crossing over to the Tories and becoming their leader. Which is a nightmare scenario in many ways....)
My reasoning is this.
Taking the step to vote Labour or Lib Dem for a habitual Tory voter is a big step. If a voter cannot take that step in an opinion poll, then doing so in the polling booth is unlikely.
Most voters are going to be angry about the actions of the party leadership, at Sunak and Truss. But when they vote it's the reassuring presence of their local Tory on the ballot paper. It's much easier to vote for the blameless local Tory than to support the party leadership. This is especially the case when the election outcome appears to be a forgone conclusion. Sunak won't be PM after the election anyway.
Under FPTP most political campaigning becomes negative. Only a vote for y can stop x. At the end of the day if you're a core Tory voter, someone who makes up the 20-30% of their support total, who else are you going to vote for who will stop Labour from winning your seat? If your Tory vote was never a positive vote for the Tories, but a negative vote against Labour, then you're trapped into making that vote regardless of how poor the Tories are. And, anyway, this time the Tories are bound to lose, so your Tory vote won't prolong the disaster of the incumbent government, but will act to restrain the worst excesses of the inevitable Labour government.
I think this is all enough to see the Tories back up to 29%. Their worst vote share ever, so not exactly a good result, but better than suggested by the opinion polls.
29% - I really don’t see the Tories getting 24% and that’s in danger
It certainly is - at that level FPTP is even more of a lottery, for example: LibDem Vote 2010 was 22% and they won 57 seats LibDem Vote 2015 was 23% and they won 8 seats
The silly thing about FPTP is that rewards parties with very locally concentrated support (like the SNP) and punishes parties with wide ranging but thinly spread support (Lib Dems, Reform, Greens etc.). You'd think a system for electing a national government would want to incentivise the exact opposite.
Was listening to someone French this morning saying that French business is busy in talks with MLP and sucking up as they are infinitely more worried about what he described as the uncosted plans and potential tax rises by the left block than they are by a hard right controlled parliament.
Is it possible that Macron’s snap election call could turn out to be a worse decision than Rishi’s?
Ultimately, despite disagreeing with Labour, at least we should get at least four years of stability, maybe 8/9 if Starmer doesn’t cock up, whereas France is going to be all over the shop with a lame duck president, a polarised parliament, divisive Presidential elections in just under three years.
Rishi’s Tory seppuku could actually turn out to be his greatest act for the country in the medium term.
Was listening to someone French this morning saying that French business is busy in talks with MLP and sucking up as they are infinitely more worried about what he described as the uncosted plans and potential tax rises by the left block than they are by a hard right controlled parliament.
Is it possible that Macron’s snap election call could turn out to be a worse decision than Rishi’s?
Ultimately, despite disagreeing with Labour, at least we should get at least four years of stability, maybe 8/9 if Starmer doesn’t cock up, whereas France is going to be all over the shop with a lame duck president, a polarised parliament, divisive Presidential elections in just under three years.
Rishi’s Tory seppuku could actually turn out to be his greatest act for the country in the medium term.
Rishi's Tory seppuku. Good analogy.
I honestly don't know how he and Theresa May built political skills with media, interview and debating skills that inept.
Nor do I understand what process/training CCHQ put candidates through. Whatever it is it clearly isn't good enough. And it should be refreshed regularly for elected MPs as part of their CPD.
Harsh on May. She failed, but I'm not sure anyone else could have done better. And she had put in the hard yards of campaigning, in local government and hopeless elections. She wasn't great, but she was a tryer.
Rishi just doesn't have a clue.
May also got 42% of the vote in 2017 and 317 seats, at the time the highest Tory voteshare since 1987 and the second highest number of Tory seats since 1992
The only problem with crediting May for those figures, is that you then have to credit Corbyn too - he'd have beaten every Tory voteshare since 1992.
That election was an anomaly, with the LDs still in the coalition doghouse, and a non-Farage UKIP dropping from 12.78 to under 2%, leading to the largest two party share in nearly fifty years.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
They only focus on the last part, and the unfree bit at that. Which ended before the largest increases in Britain's prosperity anyway.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
It's mainly metropolitan liberals broadcasting out their vapid bilge without a clue or care as to its impact, provided it makes them look good in their social circle.
IR emerges from the slave trade because you have material to process and transport, and profits to invest.
Well, as @rcs1000 often points out, big events have multiple causes. You can point to the profits from slavery, as one factor in industrialisation. As you can, the profits from agriculture, and the Baltic and Mediterranean trades. There was more to the British economy than slavery, in 1790. Add in a stable banking and legal system, and people thinking and inventing in new ways, in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries, and the the stimulus to manufacturing from the Napoleonic wars, and you have a very fortunate combination of circumstances.
The Industrial Revolution floated almost all boats. Even poor countries are in the main, very much richer than they were 200 years ago. Without the Industrial Revolution, conquest of lands, plunder, and enslavement, would be very much norms today, as they were back in the day.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
Proper history is hard. Pop history is toe curling. Doing history with regard to some narrow conclusion about issue X and group Y and facts Z right now is what extremists do.
Everyone's at it, though Biggar is only an historian in the sense that he may self-identify as one.
Not a huge fan of Biggar, but if you are to describe as 'Not a senior academic' (see the link) someone who has held professorships at Leeds, TCD and Oxford you have to provide at least a scintilla of backing.
Professorships in theology LOL. "Intellectual tennis without a net" (Daniel Dennett)
I've never been impressed by the argument that people need to stay in their lane.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
A practical consideration, if you accept the overall pollling that suggests that Labour will win, is whether you want a Government or Opposition MP. A case for voting Labour in seats like Didcot and Wantage where there appears to be a 3-way marginal is that it's more useful to have some Labour MPs in Government representing uncharactaristic constituencies than one extra Tory or LibDem in opposition.
.. and take your place in the queue of 400 plus Labour back bench supplicants for the Minister's ear.
Apparently the crossover age Labour > Conservative is now over 70. Perhaps a positive side effect of all this is Boomers and Millennials finally agreeing on something.
Was listening to someone French this morning saying that French business is busy in talks with MLP and sucking up as they are infinitely more worried about what he described as the uncosted plans and potential tax rises by the left block than they are by a hard right controlled parliament.
Is it possible that Macron’s snap election call could turn out to be a worse decision than Rishi’s?
Ultimately, despite disagreeing with Labour, at least we should get at least four years of stability, maybe 8/9 if Starmer doesn’t cock up, whereas France is going to be all over the shop with a lame duck president, a polarised parliament, divisive Presidential elections in just under three years.
Rishi’s Tory seppuku could actually turn out to be his greatest act for the country in the medium term.
This here is a clear indicator of why capitalists are happier with the far right than the left - whether or not these plans are truly "uncosted" doesn't really matter to me - it's the idea of tax rises and any left wing policies that make businesses willing to go as far right as needed. The far right is not a threat to big business; indeed they are a boon to it, with mass privatisation and government contracts for specific things. The far right are also avid anti workers unions, organising society by the clear progression of dictators and dictated to - the father is the dictator in the house, the boss is the dictator in the workplace, the blessed leader is the dictator of politics, etc.
The far right is the antibodies of capitalism to the "threat" of left wing organising. Some of you may use this to argue that leftists should accept "centrism", some of you will gleefully attack the left as "woke" or "militant". But the reason we're seeing a repeat of the 20th century within global politics is simple - capitalism has sucked as much as it can out of workers with only minor immiseration, and now we're at the stage of mass immiseration. When that happens, the left organises. And when that happens - the reactionaries, well, react.
Big business still prefers the liberal centre right to the far right, not least as it needs immigrant labour the far right will deny it. It is also wary of the tariffs and protectionism of the far right.
It only prefers the far right to the hard left and its high taxes, nationalisations and high spending
Yes and no. Even liberal centrists like ideas like individual rights and collective bargaining, and as capitalism needs to squeeze more and more profit out of a system it has to attack those things - because the easiest cost to cut is wages and labour. And big business just want cheaper labour, not necessarily immigrant labour - if the far right turn up and say they will scrap the minimum wage and stop immigration big business will be more than happy knowing they have a captured labour pool they can pay like crap.
And tariffs and protectionism are bad for business, sure; but the far right will also do massive government contracts to the private sector, preferring the private sector to deliver for the National Good. Nazis did a huge mass of privatisation, as did the fascists of Italy and Spain. Hell, the Spanish fascists were directly at war with the anarchists in part because the left collectivised farming under anarchist principles and land owners wanted their land back!
Far right like Le Pen support increased minimum wages and state pensions
For the Volk. And will define some people non-volkish, who will likely not have those protections. They will become the needed labour underclass. And the people defined as Volk grows ever smaller, and the non-volkish ever greater - as dissent is not allowed and dissent is non-volkish.
A practical consideration, if you accept the overall pollling that suggests that Labour will win, is whether you want a Government or Opposition MP. A case for voting Labour in seats like Didcot and Wantage where there appears to be a 3-way marginal is that it's more useful to have some Labour MPs in Government representing uncharactaristic constituencies than one extra Tory or LibDem in opposition.
.. and take your place in the queue of 400 plus Labour back bench supplicants for the Minister's ear.
That really should be the Lib Dems calling card at the moment vote Labour and your voice will be 1 of 400+ others trying to get attention. As a lib dem we will be able to highlight your issues
One of the petty reasons I have for disliking Farage is that, like Trump, everything is part of a conspiracy against him. It's really tiresome.
Reform have not been "stitched up" by the vetting firm they used. They (the vetting firm) have simply not been good enough for one or more of many possible reasons: poor judging criteria, inefficient vetting methods, general incompetence, not charging enough to do a thorough job, taking too much profit from their fee to do a thorough job, inevitability of falling short of perfection given the time available to do the job, impossibility of finding 632 candidates for Reform that didn't have something unsavoury in their past, etc.
The victim mentality really doesn't elicit any sympathy from me.
Is it not more deliberate? That it appeals to people who think the world is against them, and plays into his anti-establishment grift?
Prior to the stuff about Russell Brand coming out, he embraced a lot of the conspiracy theories, and the "if you speak the truth they will come for you" audience. It might have been a genuine conversion, but 'coincidentally' it also gave him an audience who were more likely to be sceptical about the claims against him, and perhaps even helped his brand (no pun intended).
I think Nige is going for a Trumpite 'the role of PM was stolen from me' narrative, with everyone being blamed other than him. And there will be elements of the British Right - perhaps large elements - happy to feed the conspiracy.
Unfortunately, some of those elements edit newspapers.
One of the petty reasons I have for disliking Farage is that, like Trump, everything is part of a conspiracy against him. It's really tiresome.
Reform have not been "stitched up" by the vetting firm they used. They (the vetting firm) have simply not been good enough for one or more of many possible reasons: poor judging criteria, inefficient vetting methods, general incompetence, not charging enough to do a thorough job, taking too much profit from their fee to do a thorough job, inevitability of falling short of perfection given the time available to do the job, impossibility of finding 632 candidates for Reform that didn't have something unsavoury in their past, etc.
The victim mentality really doesn't elicit any sympathy from me.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Germany lost totally. That's why they paid reparations, (something that many Jews violently opposed at the time), and lost lands in the East. If people want reparations for wrongs long past, they have to obtain them by force of arms.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
They only focus on the last part, and the unfree bit at that. Which ended before the largest increases in Britain's prosperity anyway.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
It's mainly metropolitan liberals broadcasting out their vapid bilge without a clue or care as to its impact, provided it makes them look good in their social circle.
IR emerges from the slave trade because you have material to process and transport, and profits to invest.
One could argue that the IR happened partly because of the lack of slave labour in the UK but, yes, all that cheap raw cotton for those northern mills had to come from somewhere, and I think we know where.
Rather more important than cotton was coal, and it came from Britain. Britain was a huge resource exporter during that period.
I admit I'm no historian, but this extract from the Wikipedia* page on the Economic History of the UK seems to indicate that textile manufacturing was one of the main driving forces of the industrial revolution which, in turn, drove the demand for coal:
"The steam engine was invented and became a power supply that soon surpassed waterfalls and horsepower. The first practicable steam engine was invented by Thomas Newcomen, and was used for pumping water out of mines. A much more powerful steam engine was invented by James Watt; it had a reciprocating engine capable of powering machinery. The first steam-driven textile mills began to appear in the last quarter of the 18th century, and this transformed the industrial revolution into an urban phenomenon, greatly contributing to the appearance and rapid growth of industrial towns.
The progress of the textile trade soon outstripped the original supplies of raw materials. By the turn of the 19th century, imported American cotton had replaced wool in the North West of England, though wool remained the chief textile in Yorkshire. Textiles have been identified as the catalyst in technological change in this period. The application of steam power stimulated the demand for coal; the demand for machinery and rails stimulated the iron industry; and the demand for transportation to move raw material in and finished products out stimulated the growth of the canal system, and (after 1830) the railway system.
Such an unprecedented degree of economic growth was not sustained by domestic demand alone. The application of technology and the factory system created such levels of mass production and cost efficiency that enabled British manufacturers to export inexpensive cloth and other items worldwide."
* Yes, I know.
The progress of the textile trade soon outstripped the original supplies of raw materials. By the turn of the 19th century, imported American cotton had replaced wool in the North West of England, though wool remained the chief textile in Yorkshire.
The textile boom was due to the low prices and availability of imported American cotton. The availability and low cost of being due to chattel slavery in the American South.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
Proper history is hard. Pop history is toe curling. Doing history with regard to some narrow conclusion about issue X and group Y and facts Z right now is what extremists do.
Everyone's at it, though Biggar is only an historian in the sense that he may self-identify as one.
Not a huge fan of Biggar, but if you are to describe as 'Not a senior academic' (see the link) someone who has held professorships at Leeds, TCD and Oxford you have to provide at least a scintilla of backing.
Professorships in theology LOL. "Intellectual tennis without a net" (Daniel Dennett)
I've never been impressed by the argument that people need to stay in their lane.
Depends on the nature of their own lane. Churchill moonlighting as historian yes, theology profs not so much
Apparently the crossover age Labour > Conservative is now over 70. Perhaps a positive side effect of all this is Boomers and Millennials finally agreeing on something.
I think that's on the Deltapoll data from last night, generally speaking it's around or either side of 65 for most of the polling from memory
It seems like YouGov gains the most traction and socials and moves the betting markets the most,
Even though, with their track record, it should probably be Survation that gets most of our attention in terms of individual pollsters…
It's by no means obvious what does and doesn't gain traction.
Betfair does not necessarily move in sync with the spreads on Sporting Index. Some minor opportunities occasionally arise from this. Likewise opportunities arise when either, or both, fail to react to poll results. I'm not sure if the punters rate some pollsters higher than others, and if so,why.
Personally I take notice of them all, but maybe put a little more confidence in the established pollsters. These would certainly include Survation.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Should descendents of people who migrated to Britain because of the famine be exempt from paying reparations?
So whereas I thought I might have to vote LibDem, I’m no longer sure!
There is nothing about Newton Abbot that says Labour to me in any manner for a tactical vote. Lib Dem all the way.
Can I ask you please to be searingly honest? Are you a LibDem voter? Your “nothing […] in any manner” makes me less, not more, likely to believe you. It’s overdone.
Tactical.Vote didn’t even think about it, seemingly. They put LibDem from the word go.
Best for Britain took 3 weeks to weigh it up, carefully, and concluded that I should vote Labour.
I'm not convinced that a lot of "carefully" goes into in most of the tactical voting sites. They mostly appear to look at the MRPs and see which non-Conservative party is in the lead, then just recommend that one.
As Best for Britain have chosen to embed Survation's data into their site - which is one of the less plausible projections IMO - I wouldn't give them any special credence.
Indeed. And with Newton Abbott history is your guide anyway, in its former guise in 01 and 05 it was held by LD expenses bad boy Richard Younger-Ross and the new boundaries aren't so out of place. Muscle memory makes LDs the challenger but it's a seat where Labour will be cocky and 'fancy it on the surrrrrrrge' and get in the way so it may well stay blue
A practical consideration, if you accept the overall pollling that suggests that Labour will win, is whether you want a Government or Opposition MP. A case for voting Labour in seats like Didcot and Wantage where there appears to be a 3-way marginal is that it's more useful to have some Labour MPs in Government representing uncharactaristic constituencies than one extra Tory or LibDem in opposition.
What benefits for an individual constituents is there for having a Govt MP. On the contrary if they get appointed to a Govt post they become less useful as they can't serve on an APPC or other committees and have a split focus on their commitments and could have a conflict of interest. They become less useful to represent your issues (I speak with someone with experience in this matter as the key MP in the campaign I am involved in was appointed a minister and had to resign as chair of the APPC).
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Yes, Malcolm. Can you think of a particular type of person that sort of thing used to happen to in the Deep South?
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Germany lost totally. That's why they paid reparations, (something that many Jews violently opposed at the time), and lost lands in the East. If people want reparations for wrongs long past, they have to obtain them by force of arms.
So the only moral precept is might is right? I mean, if you insist - Global Revolution Now, Comrade!
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
They only focus on the last part, and the unfree bit at that. Which ended before the largest increases in Britain's prosperity anyway.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
It's mainly metropolitan liberals broadcasting out their vapid bilge without a clue or care as to its impact, provided it makes them look good in their social circle.
IR emerges from the slave trade because you have material to process and transport, and profits to invest.
Well, as @rcs1000 often points out, big events have multiple causes. You can point to the profits from slavery, as one factor in industrialisation. As you can, the profits from agriculture, and the Baltic and Mediterranean trades. There was more to the British economy than slavery, in 1790..
Of course. But as I noted upthread, the profits from the sugar trade were pretty well banked and done by then.
My antecedents in Pakistan and India were the victims of real evil from the British Empire and I will happily accept £10 million compensation on their behalf as I want to expand my property portfolio to have some holiday homes.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Germany lost totally. That's why they paid reparations, (something that many Jews violently opposed at the time), and lost lands in the East. If people want reparations for wrongs long past, they have to obtain them by force of arms.
So the only moral precept is might is right? I mean, if you insist - Global Revolution Now, Comrade!
International affairs operate mainly on the principle that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must. Hegemonic powers like the USA accept restraints on their own behaviour, only insofar as adhering to the rules suits them.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Germany lost totally. That's why they paid reparations, (something that many Jews violently opposed at the time), and lost lands in the East. If people want reparations for wrongs long past, they have to obtain them by force of arms.
So the only moral precept is might is right? I mean, if you insist - Global Revolution Now, Comrade!
You may be deluding yourself about which side you will be deemed to be on in such a revolution.
Mr. grss, there's still a high correlation between descent from the Normans accompanying the Conqueror and being of high status in society (MPs, wealthy, etc). Should I, as a Yorkshireman, be entitled to reparations for the Harrowing of the North?
I don't want reparations, of course. Only a fool would advocate that people who have done nothing wrong should be compelled give money to people who have suffered no wrong at their hands.
I'm just curious if you think an ongoing impact is the clinching argument. Yorkshire's population was dramatically hit, I think Marc Morris asserted 75% total dead (mostly starved).
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Should descendents of people who migrated to Britain because of the famine be exempt from paying reparations?
Yes. I mean, most workers would be, when looking at private individuals. When it comes to the wealth owned in common, that of the state, that's a bit more difficult. I think it is fair to accept that even our working class have benefitted from the state foundations built by slavery, at the expense of other countries and individuals. In that instance I think long term international aid, with no strings attached, and potentially individual reparation repayments (where individual descendants can be identified) would fit the bill. Personally if I was overlord of the UK that would be done via progressive means (taking wealth from the already wealthy and distributing it internationally as well as nationally), but, thankfully, I am not.
Mr. F, I am unconvinced we shall see reparations enthusiasts invading Africa to extort reparations from the descendants of African slave traders.
For heavens sake. In a modern slavery case would you think it was valid mitigation to say ok I did buy this person, but I bought them from someone the same colour as them? If no, what makes the claim valid for the 18th century? Do you think they were moral primitives not to be held to the same standard as us?
Mr. grss, there's still a high correlation between descent from the Normans accompanying the Conqueror and being of high status in society (MPs, wealthy, etc). Should I, as a Yorkshireman, be entitled to reparations for the Harrowing of the North?
I don't want reparations, of course. Only a fool would advocate that people who have done nothing wrong should be compelled give money to people who have suffered no wrong at their hands.
I'm just curious if you think an ongoing impact is the clinching argument. Yorkshire's population was dramatically hit, I think Marc Morris asserted 75% total dead (mostly starved).
I think Norman reparations would bankrupt France so we really should be in favour of reparations.
Mr. grss, there's still a high correlation between descent from the Normans accompanying the Conqueror and being of high status in society (MPs, wealthy, etc). Should I, as a Yorkshireman, be entitled to reparations for the Harrowing of the North?
I don't want reparations, of course. Only a fool would advocate that people who have done nothing wrong should be compelled give money to people who have suffered no wrong at their hands.
I'm just curious if you think an ongoing impact is the clinching argument. Yorkshire's population was dramatically hit, I think Marc Morris asserted 75% total dead (mostly starved).
I do think that the land owners who are descendants of Norman invaders should not have their land and it should be owned in common by the people - yes. To be fair I think that of most aristocratic land ownership, including the monarchy. The formation of countries is, itself, an act of colonisation - just viewed differently. When countries expand to include contiguous territory people don't tend to think of it as colonisation - but it is.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Should descendents of people who migrated to Britain because of the famine be exempt from paying reparations?
Since 75% of the English population were at one point serfs in indentured servitude, go far back enough, and we're all entitled to some compensation. Come to think of it, the Romans don't get out of reparations to us Brits just because they've cleverly rebranded themselves as "Italian".
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Should descendents of people who migrated to Britain because of the famine be exempt from paying reparations?
Yes. I mean, most workers would be, when looking at private individuals. When it comes to the wealth owned in common, that of the state, that's a bit more difficult. I think it is fair to accept that even our working class have benefitted from the state foundations built by slavery, at the expense of other countries and individuals. In that instance I think long term international aid, with no strings attached, and potentially individual reparation repayments (where individual descendants can be identified) would fit the bill. Personally if I was overlord of the UK that would be done via progressive means (taking wealth from the already wealthy and distributing it internationally as well as nationally), but, thankfully, I am not.
Why distribute any of it nationally? You would perpetuate the injustice by giving people even more who, by your own argument, are benefitting from slavery even today.
Attitudes like yours cannot be part of the global revolution I'm afraid.
Mr. grss, there's still a high correlation between descent from the Normans accompanying the Conqueror and being of high status in society (MPs, wealthy, etc). Should I, as a Yorkshireman, be entitled to reparations for the Harrowing of the North?
I don't want reparations, of course. Only a fool would advocate that people who have done nothing wrong should be compelled give money to people who have suffered no wrong at their hands.
I'm just curious if you think an ongoing impact is the clinching argument. Yorkshire's population was dramatically hit, I think Marc Morris asserted 75% total dead (mostly starved).
I would imagine that, 1000 years later, almost all of those of British descent have Norman ancestors, as well as Anglo-Saxon and Viking ancestors. And probably smatterings of quite a few others too.
So whereas I thought I might have to vote LibDem, I’m no longer sure!
There is nothing about Newton Abbot that says Labour to me in any manner for a tactical vote. Lib Dem all the way.
Can I ask you please to be searingly honest? Are you a LibDem voter? Your “nothing […] in any manner” makes me less, not more, likely to believe you. It’s overdone.
Tactical.Vote didn’t even think about it, seemingly. They put LibDem from the word go.
Best for Britain took 3 weeks to weigh it up, carefully, and concluded that I should vote Labour.
I'm not convinced that a lot of "carefully" goes into in most of the tactical voting sites. They mostly appear to look at the MRPs and see which non-Conservative party is in the lead, then just recommend that one.
As Best for Britain have chosen to embed Survation's data into their site - which is one of the less plausible projections IMO - I wouldn't give them any special credence.
Indeed. And with Newton Abbott history is your guide anyway, in its former guise in 01 and 05 it was held by LD expenses bad boy Richard Younger-Ross and the new boundaries aren't so out of place. Muscle memory makes LDs the challenger but it's a seat where Labour will be cocky and 'fancy it on the surrrrrrrge' and get in the way so it may well stay blue
A practical consideration, if you accept the overall pollling that suggests that Labour will win, is whether you want a Government or Opposition MP. A case for voting Labour in seats like Didcot and Wantage where there appears to be a 3-way marginal is that it's more useful to have some Labour MPs in Government representing uncharactaristic constituencies than one extra Tory or LibDem in opposition.
What benefits for an individual constituents is there for having a Govt MP. On the contrary if they get appointed to a Govt post they become less useful as they can't serve on an APPC or other committees and have a split focus on their commitments and could have a conflict of interest. They become less useful to represent your issues (I speak with someone with experience in this matter as the key MP in the campaign I am involved in was appointed a minister and had to resign as chair of the APPC).
Martin Lewis at moneysavingexpert has two reasons for not being a politician. One his mental health, the other is he currently has more influence on policy (in his sphere of interest and expertise) than any politician bar the PM and Chancellor.
I know shy Tories are historically a thing - but I also didn't see why people assumed the DKs were going to "come home" when it is so clear even typical Tories are upset with the party and how it has governed, and they seem to be loosing Tories to the "centre" and the right - with Starmer and the LDs stealing the wets who can't stand the culture war stuff and only care about the economy, and Farage parking his tanks on the lawn in the culture war sphere. I think we do really need to consider that the Tories will not be the party of opposition and are going to go extinct as a political force - if not fully in this election then in the near future (the only situation I see keeping the Tory Party alive is Farage being the only Reform MP and then crossing over to the Tories and becoming their leader. Which is a nightmare scenario in many ways....)
My reasoning is this.
Taking the step to vote Labour or Lib Dem for a habitual Tory voter is a big step. If a voter cannot take that step in an opinion poll, then doing so in the polling booth is unlikely.
Most voters are going to be angry about the actions of the party leadership, at Sunak and Truss. But when they vote it's the reassuring presence of their local Tory on the ballot paper. It's much easier to vote for the blameless local Tory than to support the party leadership. This is especially the case when the election outcome appears to be a forgone conclusion. Sunak won't be PM after the election anyway.
Under FPTP most political campaigning becomes negative. Only a vote for y can stop x. At the end of the day if you're a core Tory voter, someone who makes up the 20-30% of their support total, who else are you going to vote for who will stop Labour from winning your seat? If your Tory vote was never a positive vote for the Tories, but a negative vote against Labour, then you're trapped into making that vote regardless of how poor the Tories are. And, anyway, this time the Tories are bound to lose, so your Tory vote won't prolong the disaster of the incumbent government, but will act to restrain the worst excesses of the inevitable Labour government.
I think this is all enough to see the Tories back up to 29%. Their worst vote share ever, so not exactly a good result, but better than suggested by the opinion polls.
29% - I really don’t see the Tories getting 24% and that’s in danger
It certainly is - at that level FPTP is even more of a lottery, for example: LibDem Vote 2010 was 22% and they won 57 seats LibDem Vote 2015 was 23% and they won 8 seats
Your LD vote share figure for 2015 is spectacularly incorrect.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
They only focus on the last part, and the unfree bit at that. Which ended before the largest increases in Britain's prosperity anyway.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
It's mainly metropolitan liberals broadcasting out their vapid bilge without a clue or care as to its impact, provided it makes them look good in their social circle.
IR emerges from the slave trade because you have material to process and transport, and profits to invest.
Well, as @rcs1000 often points out, big events have multiple causes. You can point to the profits from slavery, as one factor in industrialisation. As you can, the profits from agriculture, and the Baltic and Mediterranean trades. There was more to the British economy than slavery, in 1790..
Of course. But as I noted upthread, the profits from the sugar trade were pretty well banked and done by then.
Slave owners tend to be lazy, like people who have access to vast natural resources The profits of slavery will go into a new wing for one's country house, art, race horses, more than into devising more efficient ways of working. The South of the USA for example, had fallen a very long way behind the North, by 1860. Bizarrely, almost all slave owners died deeply in debt (like Jefferson), because of their conspicuous, and ostentatious, consumption.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Germany lost totally. That's why they paid reparations, (something that many Jews violently opposed at the time), and lost lands in the East. If people want reparations for wrongs long past, they have to obtain them by force of arms.
So the only moral precept is might is right? I mean, if you insist - Global Revolution Now, Comrade!
You may be deluding yourself about which side you will be deemed to be on in such a revolution.
People shall know me by my actions. I know that I am, globally, extremely privileged. And I can't exact a one man revolution. But I'll be fighting against the rich and powerful who are hoarding their wealth.
Apparently the crossover age Labour > Conservative is now over 70. Perhaps a positive side effect of all this is Boomers and Millennials finally agreeing on something.
I think that's on the Deltapoll data from last night, generally speaking it's around or either side of 65 for most of the polling from memory
So whereas I thought I might have to vote LibDem, I’m no longer sure!
There is nothing about Newton Abbot that says Labour to me in any manner for a tactical vote. Lib Dem all the way.
Can I ask you please to be searingly honest? Are you a LibDem voter? Your “nothing […] in any manner” makes me less, not more, likely to believe you. It’s overdone.
Tactical.Vote didn’t even think about it, seemingly. They put LibDem from the word go.
Best for Britain took 3 weeks to weigh it up, carefully, and concluded that I should vote Labour.
I'm not convinced that a lot of "carefully" goes into in most of the tactical voting sites. They mostly appear to look at the MRPs and see which non-Conservative party is in the lead, then just recommend that one.
As Best for Britain have chosen to embed Survation's data into their site - which is one of the less plausible projections IMO - I wouldn't give them any special credence.
Indeed. And with Newton Abbott history is your guide anyway, in its former guise in 01 and 05 it was held by LD expenses bad boy Richard Younger-Ross and the new boundaries aren't so out of place. Muscle memory makes LDs the challenger but it's a seat where Labour will be cocky and 'fancy it on the surrrrrrrge' and get in the way so it may well stay blue
A practical consideration, if you accept the overall pollling that suggests that Labour will win, is whether you want a Government or Opposition MP. A case for voting Labour in seats like Didcot and Wantage where there appears to be a 3-way marginal is that it's more useful to have some Labour MPs in Government representing uncharactaristic constituencies than one extra Tory or LibDem in opposition.
Except when SKS refuses to meet them. Like Rosie Duffield for Canterbury.
Apparently the crossover age Labour > Conservative is now over 70. Perhaps a positive side effect of all this is Boomers and Millennials finally agreeing on something.
I think that's on the Deltapoll data from last night, generally speaking it's around or either side of 65 for most of the polling from memory
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Germany lost totally. That's why they paid reparations, (something that many Jews violently opposed at the time), and lost lands in the East. If people want reparations for wrongs long past, they have to obtain them by force of arms.
So the only moral precept is might is right? I mean, if you insist - Global Revolution Now, Comrade!
You may be deluding yourself about which side you will be deemed to be on in such a revolution.
People shall know me by my actions. I know that I am, globally, extremely privileged. And I can't exact a one man revolution. But I'll be fighting against the rich and powerful who are hoarding their wealth.
But, like Saturn, the Revolution devours its own children.
Mr. grss, there's still a high correlation between descent from the Normans accompanying the Conqueror and being of high status in society (MPs, wealthy, etc). Should I, as a Yorkshireman, be entitled to reparations for the Harrowing of the North?
Given that there have been probably 30 or 40 generations since the Norman Conquest, and 2 to the power of 30 is about a billion, nearly everyone in the UK except relatively recent immigrants will have many lines of descent from all the Norman companions of the Conqueror who left descendants.
Mr. Dee, the slave trade was alive and kicking in Africa long before the colonial powers arrived. Yet, for some mystical reason, the traders' descendants never get mentioned when scrounging for reparations. Nor does the fact it was colonial powers, led by Britain, that ended the slave trade.
And it's hilarious you cite the race of the individuals, when you, seemingly (let me know if I'm mistaken), buy into the idea that white descendants are riddled with inherited guilt whereas black descendants of slave traders are not only unworthy of mention but anyone who does mention them (me) should be attacked for racism, for the sin of holding black people to the same standard as white people.
Mr. grss, interesting answer on land ownership, but I did specifically ask about reparations for Yorkshiremen for the evils committed just under a thousand years ago, as the Harrowing of the Death had an immense death toll that permanently affected Yorkshire.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Should descendents of people who migrated to Britain because of the famine be exempt from paying reparations?
Yes. I mean, most workers would be, when looking at private individuals. When it comes to the wealth owned in common, that of the state, that's a bit more difficult. I think it is fair to accept that even our working class have benefitted from the state foundations built by slavery, at the expense of other countries and individuals. In that instance I think long term international aid, with no strings attached, and potentially individual reparation repayments (where individual descendants can be identified) would fit the bill. Personally if I was overlord of the UK that would be done via progressive means (taking wealth from the already wealthy and distributing it internationally as well as nationally), but, thankfully, I am not.
Why distribute any of it nationally? You would perpetuate the injustice by giving people even more who, by your own argument, are benefitting from slavery even today.
Attitudes like yours cannot be part of the global revolution I'm afraid.
I understand you're sea lioning and trying to do an argument ad absurdum, but you are just wrong. There is enough wealth and material resource to improve the quality of life for the vast majority of people globally, even in the UK. Yes, someone like myself who is in the bottom half of earners in the UK but the top half of earners globally, may not see wealth raining down on them like mana from heaven, nor should we be the priority targets of such distribution, but we would still live in a better world.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Germany lost totally. That's why they paid reparations, (something that many Jews violently opposed at the time), and lost lands in the East. If people want reparations for wrongs long past, they have to obtain them by force of arms.
So the only moral precept is might is right? I mean, if you insist - Global Revolution Now, Comrade!
International affairs operate mainly on the principle that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must. Hegemonic powers like the USA accept restraints on their own behaviour, only insofar as adhering to the rules suits them.
That was certainly my experience when working with international tax treaties involving the US.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
They only focus on the last part, and the unfree bit at that. Which ended before the largest increases in Britain's prosperity anyway.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
It's mainly metropolitan liberals broadcasting out their vapid bilge without a clue or care as to its impact, provided it makes them look good in their social circle.
IR emerges from the slave trade because you have material to process and transport, and profits to invest.
Without the Industrial Revolution, conquest of lands, plunder, and enslavement, would be very much norms today, as they were back in the day.
Hang on, I thought we invented all that and the Roman Empire was a paradise of diversity?
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Should descendents of people who migrated to Britain because of the famine be exempt from paying reparations?
Yes. I mean, most workers would be, when looking at private individuals. When it comes to the wealth owned in common, that of the state, that's a bit more difficult. I think it is fair to accept that even our working class have benefitted from the state foundations built by slavery, at the expense of other countries and individuals. In that instance I think long term international aid, with no strings attached, and potentially individual reparation repayments (where individual descendants can be identified) would fit the bill. Personally if I was overlord of the UK that would be done via progressive means (taking wealth from the already wealthy and distributing it internationally as well as nationally), but, thankfully, I am not.
Why distribute any of it nationally? You would perpetuate the injustice by giving people even more who, by your own argument, are benefitting from slavery even today.
Attitudes like yours cannot be part of the global revolution I'm afraid.
I understand you're sea lioning and trying to do an argument ad absurdum, but you are just wrong. There is enough wealth and material resource to improve the quality of life for the vast majority of people globally, even in the UK. Yes, someone like myself who is in the bottom half of earners in the UK but the top half of earners globally, may not see wealth raining down on them like mana from heaven, nor should we be the priority targets of such distribution, but we would still live in a better world.
You are certainly not in the bottom half in the UK if you use GDP-style accounting which treats imputed rent as income.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Should descendents of people who migrated to Britain because of the famine be exempt from paying reparations?
Yes. I mean, most workers would be, when looking at private individuals. When it comes to the wealth owned in common, that of the state, that's a bit more difficult. I think it is fair to accept that even our working class have benefitted from the state foundations built by slavery, at the expense of other countries and individuals. In that instance I think long term international aid, with no strings attached, and potentially individual reparation repayments (where individual descendants can be identified) would fit the bill. Personally if I was overlord of the UK that would be done via progressive means (taking wealth from the already wealthy and distributing it internationally as well as nationally), but, thankfully, I am not.
Mr. Dee, the slave trade was alive and kicking in Africa long before the colonial powers arrived. Yet, for some mystical reason, the traders' descendants never get mentioned when scrounging for reparations. Nor does the fact it was colonial powers, led by Britain, that ended the slave trade.
And it's hilarious you cite the race of the individuals, when you, seemingly (let me know if I'm mistaken), buy into the idea that white descendants are riddled with inherited guilt whereas black descendants of slave traders are not only unworthy of mention but anyone who does mention them (me) should be attacked for racism, for the sin of holding black people to the same standard as white people.
Mr. grss, interesting answer on land ownership, but I did specifically ask about reparations for Yorkshiremen for the evils committed just under a thousand years ago, as the Harrowing of the Death had an immense death toll that permanently affected Yorkshire.
West Africans and Europeans who drove the trade were equally evil.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Germany lost totally. That's why they paid reparations, (something that many Jews violently opposed at the time), and lost lands in the East. If people want reparations for wrongs long past, they have to obtain them by force of arms.
So the only moral precept is might is right? I mean, if you insist - Global Revolution Now, Comrade!
International affairs operate mainly on the principle that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must. Hegemonic powers like the USA accept restraints on their own behaviour, only insofar as adhering to the rules suits them.
And, they even exhibit that behaviour to their closest allies - such as ourselves.
The extradition treaty is absurdly one-sided and any American citizen who commits a crime here is quickly and safely whisked away.
If you are getting involved in foreigh affairs then you as a country had better be - a) strong, or, b) have a lot of friends who are strong. We stopped being (a) quite a while ago and our politicians have been fixated on alienating any friends we still had.
Mr. grss, there's still a high correlation between descent from the Normans accompanying the Conqueror and being of high status in society (MPs, wealthy, etc). Should I, as a Yorkshireman, be entitled to reparations for the Harrowing of the North?
I don't want reparations, of course. Only a fool would advocate that people who have done nothing wrong should be compelled give money to people who have suffered no wrong at their hands.
I'm just curious if you think an ongoing impact is the clinching argument. Yorkshire's population was dramatically hit, I think Marc Morris asserted 75% total dead (mostly starved).
I think Norman reparations would bankrupt France so we really should be in favour of reparations.
You could find some injustice in all of our families if you go back far enough.
Life in the past was often nasty, brutish and short.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
Not only that but we have to pay reparations to their descendants. A few in labour active support this.
My family in the dim and distant past would have worked in these factories and although not slaves would have been exploited and led miserable,lives.
These absolute moronic halfwits that bring up these mentally deranged ideas on reparations for things that happened in the distant past should be put in public stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables for a very long time and then tarred and teathered and run out of town.
Would you say the same about Jewish people having art or other valuables returned to them from the German or Austrian states, or private individuals, that were lost due to the Holocaust? It's the same principle, just on a longer scale. There are clearly individuals and entire countries that have the wealth they have now due to a foundation that was built (even if only partly) on the unpaid labour of slaves. The descendants of those slaves do not have the benefit of that wealth; the descendants of those individuals and the citizens of those countries do. You can say that it is too long ago to matter now - and people like to hand wave the Roman Empire or the Vikings doing the same in history - but the thing is that slavery (and colonialization) is clearly still materially impacting those descended from those it affected even now. Hell, the island of Ireland only recently got over the population loss (via death and migration) of the Great Hunger!
Should descendents of people who migrated to Britain because of the famine be exempt from paying reparations?
Since 75% of the English population were at one point serfs in indentured servitude, go far back enough, and we're all entitled to some compensation. Come to think of it, the Romans don't get out of reparations to us Brits just because they've cleverly rebranded themselves as "Italian".
Not the greatest or most successful rebrand in history, to be honest.
Mr. grss, there's still a high correlation between descent from the Normans accompanying the Conqueror and being of high status in society (MPs, wealthy, etc). Should I, as a Yorkshireman, be entitled to reparations for the Harrowing of the North?
I don't want reparations, of course. Only a fool would advocate that people who have done nothing wrong should be compelled give money to people who have suffered no wrong at their hands.
I'm just curious if you think an ongoing impact is the clinching argument. Yorkshire's population was dramatically hit, I think Marc Morris asserted 75% total dead (mostly starved).
I think Norman reparations would bankrupt France so we really should be in favour of reparations.
I'm not touching the whole reparations argument.
But I would note that the people most triggered by the idea are (entirely coincidentally) the same ones minimising the economic contribution of slavery to the development of the UK economy over the century and a half from around 1700.
The converse seems of course to be true of those who think reparations a good idea.
If you are getting involved in foreigh affairs then you as a country had better be - a) strong, or, b) have a lot of friends who are strong. We stopped being (a) quite a while ago and our politicians have been fixated on alienating any friends we still had.
Taking that Putin money has had consequences
The attitude that if you are not hegemonic you are nothing is quite strange.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
Proper history is hard. Pop history is toe curling. Doing history with regard to some narrow conclusion about issue X and group Y and facts Z right now is what extremists do.
Everyone's at it, though Biggar is only an historian in the sense that he may self-identify as one.
Not a huge fan of Biggar, but if you are to describe as 'Not a senior academic' (see the link) someone who has held professorships at Leeds, TCD and Oxford you have to provide at least a scintilla of backing.
Professorships in theology LOL. "Intellectual tennis without a net" (Daniel Dennett)
Nice piece of lazy thinking there from one of what Schleiermacher would have called 'Religion's cultured despisers'. Puts 5 billion theists firmly in their place.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
They only focus on the last part, and the unfree bit at that. Which ended before the largest increases in Britain's prosperity anyway.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
It's mainly metropolitan liberals broadcasting out their vapid bilge without a clue or care as to its impact, provided it makes them look good in their social circle.
IR emerges from the slave trade because you have material to process and transport, and profits to invest.
Without the Industrial Revolution, conquest of lands, plunder, and enslavement, would be very much norms today, as they were back in the day.
Hang on, I thought we invented all that and the Roman Empire was a paradise of diversity?
The "woke Roman empire" is a hilarious piece of pseudo-history. Catherine Nixey for example described Third Century Rome as "liberal and tolerant", which would come as a surprise to any classical historian.
In reality, anti-semitism was rife, the social order was maintained by theatrical displays of cruelty, rape (of women and boys) was an entirely legitimate means of punishment, and the kind of racist drivel that Juvenal spouted (about the Orontes pouring its filth into the Tiber) was commonplace.
In Chablis at the moment - actually the village of Milly up the road.
What is of interest is the attitude to development. Milly is being slowly subsumed into Chablis as the town and the industrial side of the wine business continues to expand. In the U.K., they would be lying in front of the bulldozers. Here development and expansion is desired - and there are plenty of retired people who sit in the front gardens watching the world go by.
"Reform candidate called King Charles weak and questioned his loyalty Nigel Farage blames vetting ‘stitch-up’ as Angela Carter-Begbie joins list of conspiracists on the ballot"
Wow. The worry here is that the consumers of Australia and New Zealand retaliate with their own boycotts and then completely destroy the Truss's acclaimed trade deal. Rishi is showing a reckless disregard towards the legacy of Brexit.
Wow. The worry here is that the consumers of Australia and New Zealand retaliate with their own boycotts and then completely destroy the Truss's acclaimed trade deal. Rishi is showing a reckless disregard towards the legacy of Brexit.
He's showing a reckless disregard for human life. Stock up on beans.
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
They only focus on the last part, and the unfree bit at that. Which ended before the largest increases in Britain's prosperity anyway.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
It's mainly metropolitan liberals broadcasting out their vapid bilge without a clue or care as to its impact, provided it makes them look good in their social circle.
IR emerges from the slave trade because you have material to process and transport, and profits to invest.
Well, as @rcs1000 often points out, big events have multiple causes. You can point to the profits from slavery, as one factor in industrialisation. As you can, the profits from agriculture, and the Baltic and Mediterranean trades. There was more to the British economy than slavery, in 1790..
Of course. But as I noted upthread, the profits from the sugar trade were pretty well banked and done by then.
Slave owners tend to be lazy, like people who have access to vast natural resources The profits of slavery will go into a new wing for one's country house, art, race horses, more than into devising more efficient ways of working. The South of the USA for example, had fallen a very long way behind the North, by 1860. Bizarrely, almost all slave owners died deeply in debt (like Jefferson), because of their conspicuous, and ostentatious, consumption.
That's certainly true of the Southern US - but was there no net contribution to the continental economy ? That would seem unlikely.
And in any event, I'm not sure what it has to do with my point about the economic contribution to the UK economy ? Fans of Coulson would be similarly puzzled.
In Chablis at the moment - actually the village of Milly up the road.
What is of interest is the attitude to development. Milly is being slowly subsumed into Chablis as the town and the industrial side of the wine business continues to expand. In the U.K., they would be lying in front of the bulldozers. Here development and expansion is desired - and there are plenty of retired people who sit in the front gardens watching the world go by.
I don't know how it is in France, but in the parts of Germany that I know, development is generally welcomed because it means that more money will be coming into town and that means more schools, shops, etc. That goes for both commercial development (local taxes) and residential development (more money from regional/central government). Maybe we are missing the links between development and funding for local amenities?
If you are getting involved in foreigh affairs then you as a country had better be - a) strong, or, b) have a lot of friends who are strong. We stopped being (a) quite a while ago and our politicians have been fixated on alienating any friends we still had.
Taking that Putin money has had consequences
The attitude that if you are not hegemonic you are nothing is quite strange.
The argument is rather that if you're not hegemonic, you shouldn't delude yourself about your place in the world
So, this was billed as an hour-long. Anonymous and to help etc. It had a running % on the taskbar beneath so you could track how far through the course you'd got. Run by Hemisphere.
Much of it initially was just good management stuff. Don't judge people by whether they have a firm handshake or not, or whether they make good eye contact. Don't organise social events that exclusively centre on alcohol etc. Listen carefully to context. Determine what questions are important in an interview or not. So far, so fair.
It then put up a 13 minute video on the history of Britain and black people in Britain. This is where it got really interesting as it was presented as an entirely factual "did you know?" education piece presented by a softly-spoken Scottish lady.
Started off with a big play on Cheddar Man's predicted dark skin colour as the earliest black Briton, where skin colour then became lighter over time due to subsquent migration and the lattitude. Then, it jumped to the Celts and how the Romans displaced the Celts, and how black people formed some of the guards on Hadrians Wall. Suggested the Roman Empire was very inclusive. After that it jumped to the Tudors and how a few black people were in the Royal Navy at the time. Not an issue at all.
It then went on to say "this all changed" with the start of the transatlantic slave trade. And how attitudes to black people then changed to being seen as commodities. It practically suggested racism was invented here. It only very briefly touched on abolition, and didn't mention at all the Royal Navy's role in suppressing the slave trade. It then moved on to how in WWI minorities were never promoted and then into Windrush. After that, it moved onto Stephen Lawrence and the Windrush Scandal. Much to my amazement it finished with a 2-minute clip (verbatim) of David Lammy's speech in the Commons to Amber Rudd on the Windrush Scandal. Pretty much the whole thing. Ends by saying he won the Parliamentarian of the Year award.
Since I couldn't complete the mandatory training without watching this video in full, I was required to do so. The % complete then inexplicably jumped from 28% to 90% (and I couldn't navigate back) the bit being missed supposedly about interview scenarios and dos and donts, which might actually have been half-useful. But I couldn't get back to it. So I finished the course. And then I gave my feedback, which was not at all positive on the "history" video as I felt it was highly partial in both its selection and presentation of facts and how it framed them as truth. The end bit was nakedly party political.
All done now. 2/10. Something about it suggested to me that even my employer thinks it's somehow about going through the motions. But I hope in years to come such training, if it really is needed, becomes depoliticised entirely because taking amateur crowbars to history like this won't stand up to much scrutiny, even in the medium-term, and risks a backlash.
*I should also add it strongly suggested that all of Britain's wealth was founded on the slave trade, framing the reparations argument.
Well, it was (your last paragraph) because it was the foundation of foreign trade. You go from exporting a bit of wool to slaves themselves and sugar and rum and coffee and cotton and made cotton goods and stuff all in one go. The National Trust gets a lot of stick but I bet 9 houses out of 10 they control has a splendid new West Wing dating from spookily close to the date of abolition and reparations.
It was the industrial revolution which was a function of energy, technology, trade and labour.
They only focus on the last part, and the unfree bit at that. Which ended before the largest increases in Britain's prosperity anyway.
What really backfires is all the millions of Britons who worked very long and unsafe hours in the dark satanic mills - who made that happen by actually manufacturing all the products - being told today they had white privilege.
It's mainly metropolitan liberals broadcasting out their vapid bilge without a clue or care as to its impact, provided it makes them look good in their social circle.
IR emerges from the slave trade because you have material to process and transport, and profits to invest.
Well, as @rcs1000 often points out, big events have multiple causes. You can point to the profits from slavery, as one factor in industrialisation. As you can, the profits from agriculture, and the Baltic and Mediterranean trades. There was more to the British economy than slavery, in 1790..
Of course. But as I noted upthread, the profits from the sugar trade were pretty well banked and done by then.
Slave owners tend to be lazy, like people who have access to vast natural resources The profits of slavery will go into a new wing for one's country house, art, race horses, more than into devising more efficient ways of working. The South of the USA for example, had fallen a very long way behind the North, by 1860. Bizarrely, almost all slave owners died deeply in debt (like Jefferson), because of their conspicuous, and ostentatious, consumption.
The debt thing wasn’t bizarre or surprising. Slave plantations were, effectively, large industrial operations (for the day). With human machinery. The whole thing was expensive, cyclic and required massive reinvestment at regular intervals. For example, the land for cotton became exhausted and you needed to move the growing operation.
The income from selling the cotton was part of the yearly cycle and often out of sync with the costs. Which were on a variety of period cycles - some much longer than a year.
Comments
It seems like YouGov gains the most traction and socials and moves the betting markets the most,
Even though, with their track record, it should probably be Survation that gets most of our attention in terms of individual pollsters…
I think Nige is going for a Trumpite 'the role of PM was stolen from me' narrative, with everyone being blamed other than him. And there will be elements of the British Right - perhaps large elements - happy to feed the conspiracy.
Reform have not been "stitched up" by the vetting firm they used. They (the vetting firm) have simply not been good enough for one or more of many possible reasons: poor judging criteria, inefficient vetting methods, general incompetence, not charging enough to do a thorough job, taking too much profit from their fee to do a thorough job, inevitability of falling short of perfection given the time available to do the job, impossibility of finding 632 candidates for Reform that didn't have something unsavoury in their past, etc.
The victim mentality really doesn't elicit any sympathy from me.
Unless they are doing MRP this week......
Lab: 34% (-5 from 13-17 May)
SNP: 30% (+1)
Con: 13% (+1)
Lib Dem: 8% (=)
Reform: 7% (+3)
Green: 6% (-1
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1803008088514953401
1997 was the last election when there was serious widespread dillusionment amongst Conservative voters. Measuring against 1987 (not 1992, because in 1987 like 1997 the result was not in real doubt), turnout fell by 3.9% to 71.4%.
At least in 1997 there was fairly widespread enthusiasm about Labour taking over, and that probably kept turnout up to a degree, countering the effect of Conservative disillusionment. The mood towards Starmer's Labour now seems closer to that of 2001, when the gloss had come off New Labour. In that election, turnout fell by a massive 12.0% to a record postwar low of 59.4%.
So going from an election (1987) where supporters of the Conservatives were positive about their party and Thatcher also caused a strong reaction on the left, to one where Conservatives were disillusioned and Labour supporters weren't particularly enthused any more to compensate (2001), turnout fell by 15.9% in 14 years. If you disagree with me and think that 1992 is a better benchmark, then the fall was 18.3% in the 9 years to 2001.
In 2019, there were once again I think a lot of factors on both sides enthusing the electorate to go out and vote in what was once again a Brexit election following a high turnout referendum 3 years earlier. Johnson enthused Conservatives to "get Brexit done", Remainers tried hard to stop that, and we need to remember too that Corbyn's brand of Marmite drew strong reactions in both directions.
Exceptionally, we seem to have all the ingredients in place to go from a moderately high turnout election (by the standards of the 21st century) to a low turnout one in the space of just one electoral cycle.
Add to that the change in voter ID requirements. It's certain to have a much greater impact than on the misinformed 0.25% who turn up in the local elections only to find they could not vote. The problem is more those who knew the score and did not turn up to vote in the first place. The Electoral Commission cite evidence that 4% of non-voters cite the ID requirements as a reason for not voting. 4% of non-voters in the local elections amounts to about 2.5% of all voters, and very few seem to have done anything to sort out the necessary ID in the month or so since.
That election was an anomaly, with the LDs still in the coalition doghouse, and a non-Farage UKIP dropping from 12.78 to under 2%, leading to the largest two party share in nearly fifty years.
The Industrial Revolution floated almost all boats. Even poor countries are in the main, very much richer than they were 200 years ago. Without the Industrial Revolution, conquest of lands, plunder, and enslavement, would be very much norms today, as they were back in the day.
Clearly not a member of 'the buck stops here' school of leadership.
SNP: 62%
Lab: 24%
Green: 7%
Lib Dem: 2%
Reform: 2%
Con: 1%
How do 2019 Conservative voters in Scotland say they will vote in 2024?
Con: 49%
Lab: 19%
Reform: 18%
Lib Dem: 10%
SNP: 3%
Green: 0%
How do 2019 Labour voters in Scotland say they will vote in 2024?
Lab: 79%
SNP: 8%
Reform: 5%
Lib Dem: 4%
Green: 3%
Con: 1%
Prior to the stuff about Russell Brand coming out, he embraced a lot of the conspiracy theories, and the "if you speak the truth they will come for you" audience. It might have been a genuine conversion, but 'coincidentally' it also gave him an audience who were more likely to be sceptical about the claims against him, and perhaps even helped his brand (no pun intended).
The textile boom was due to the low prices and availability of imported American cotton. The availability and low cost of being due to chattel slavery in the American South.
Betfair does not necessarily move in sync with the spreads on Sporting Index. Some minor opportunities occasionally arise from this. Likewise opportunities arise when either, or both, fail to react to poll results. I'm not sure if the punters rate some pollsters higher than others, and if so,why.
Personally I take notice of them all, but maybe put a little more confidence in the established pollsters. These would certainly include Survation.
But as I noted upthread, the profits from the sugar trade were pretty well banked and done by then.
Edit - I also want Chevening as well.
I don't want reparations, of course. Only a fool would advocate that people who have done nothing wrong should be compelled give money to people who have suffered no wrong at their hands.
I'm just curious if you think an ongoing impact is the clinching argument. Yorkshire's population was dramatically hit, I think Marc Morris asserted 75% total dead (mostly starved).
Attitudes like yours cannot be part of the global revolution I'm afraid.
Nice try, though.
And it's hilarious you cite the race of the individuals, when you, seemingly (let me know if I'm mistaken), buy into the idea that white descendants are riddled with inherited guilt whereas black descendants of slave traders are not only unworthy of mention but anyone who does mention them (me) should be attacked for racism, for the sin of holding black people to the same standard as white people.
Mr. grss, interesting answer on land ownership, but I did specifically ask about reparations for Yorkshiremen for the evils committed just under a thousand years ago, as the Harrowing of the Death had an immense death toll that permanently affected Yorkshire.
Thankfully, you are not.
The extradition treaty is absurdly one-sided and any American citizen who commits a crime here is quickly and safely whisked away.
Taking that Putin money has had consequences
Life in the past was often nasty, brutish and short.
But I would note that the people most triggered by the idea are (entirely coincidentally) the same ones minimising the economic contribution of slavery to the development of the UK economy over the century and a half from around 1700.
The converse seems of course to be true of those who think reparations a good idea.
https://x.com/RishiSunak/status/1803018993118101771
In reality, anti-semitism was rife, the social order was maintained by theatrical displays of cruelty, rape (of women and boys) was an entirely legitimate means of punishment, and the kind of racist drivel that Juvenal spouted (about the Orontes pouring its filth into the Tiber) was commonplace.
What is of interest is the attitude to development. Milly is being slowly subsumed into Chablis as the town and the industrial side of the wine business continues to expand. In the U.K., they would be lying in front of the bulldozers. Here development and expansion is desired - and there are plenty of retired people who sit in the front gardens watching the world go by.
Nigel Farage blames vetting ‘stitch-up’ as Angela Carter-Begbie joins list of conspiracists on the ballot"
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-uk-angela-carter-begbie-king-charles-220fnsgb9
What is he planning?
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?type=scotland&SCOTCON=13&SCOTLAB=34&SCOTLIB=8&SCOTNAT=30&SCOTReform=7&SCOTGreen=6&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019nbbase
And in any event, I'm not sure what it has to do with my point about the economic contribution to the UK economy ? Fans of Coulson would be similarly puzzled.
Don't just buy British, buy good quality, affordable products.
If those are British, great.
If those are Spanish, Australian, Argentinian or anywhere else ... great too.
Sunak should learn some economics from David Riccardo. Or better yet, just go away altogether.
The income from selling the cotton was part of the yearly cycle and often out of sync with the costs. Which were on a variety of period cycles - some much longer than a year.