I would struggle to tell you when Britain was last able to grow enough food to feed itself, but at the moment (latest DEFRA figures I can find are from 2020 in a report updated Oct 2023) production is equal to 60% of consumption (by value, I can't easily find a by calorie figure).
This proportion has been essentially unchanged since about 2005, which means that British agricultural production has managed to increase since then to keep pace with population growth of about 10%.
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
I thought we'd seen quite a lot of polling recently where every age group was positive for Labour, e.g. yesterday's R&W:
Mildly terrifying. The UK only produces 60% of our food consumption...
What is he planning?
An end to obesity ?
Win/win...
I'm going to do some heroic back-of-envelope calculations and work out what our excess calorie consumption is...
EDIT: It's already been done! Apparently we eat on average 300 excess calories a day - cutting that out gets us down about 13%. So 27% to find elsewhere. Mushrooms? Insects?
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.
Nixey and company are instances of something we are going to see more of, with a sort of revival of Gibbon's literate (and funny) but ludicrous view of the effects of the rise of Christianity on the Roman empire, its decline and fall. This has to idealise the stuff of the pagan empire, and demonise everything about the rise of the church. Like its opposite it is the very stuff of bad history.
Finally some good policy from Rishi. A 'Buy British' policy will shore up the rural vote, the farming vote and even some of the Middle England vote for the Tories.
Post Brexit and Putin's invasion of Ukraine we cannot rely on most of our food coming from imports, we need to grow and produce more of our own. I would also hope he increases farm subsidies for food production too
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.
Finally some good policy from Rishi. A 'Buy British' policy will shore up the rural vote, the farming vote and even some of the Middle England vote for the Tories.
Post Brexit and Putin's invasion of Ukraine we cannot rely on most of our food coming from imports, we need to grow and produce more of our own. I would also hope he increases farm subsidies for food production too
It’s not a policy, is it?
Is he going to cancel the trade deals that secured cheaper imports of food?
Mildly terrifying. The UK only produces 60% of our food consumption...
What is he planning?
An end to obesity ?
Win/win...
I'm going to do some heroic back-of-envelope calculations and work out what our excess calorie consumption is...
Though not all calories are created equal.
Farming (or buying) cheap shit like lots of potatoes and other carbs etc is driving an obesity epidemic but relatively cheap.
Getting good quality grass-fed meat etc is far healthier and results in fewer calories consumed by the end consumer but is more expensive and requires more calories in the chain.
We have good quality locally sourced meat of course, but if its more affordable then filling up on good quality beef etc from overseas gives you more protein and nutrition and less obesity than eating potato chips from English farms.
I would struggle to tell you when Britain was last able to grow enough food to feed itself, but at the moment (latest DEFRA figures I can find are from 2020 in a report updated Oct 2023) production is equal to 60% of consumption (by value, I can't easily find a by calorie figure).
This proportion has been essentially unchanged since about 2005, which means that British agricultural production has managed to increase since then to keep pace with population growth of about 10%.
Is this part of an anti-obesity policy?
I hadn't realised quite how much of our food we imported, just prior to WWII - around 60%. We managed to get that down to about 25% by the end of the war.
Rishi is clearly contemplating a far more serious national emergency,
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.
Nixey and company are instances of something we are going to see more of, with a sort of revival of Gibbon's literate (and funny) but ludicrous view of the effects of the rise of Christianity on the Roman empire, its decline and fall. This has to idealise the stuff of the pagan empire, and demonise everything about the rise of the church. Like its opposite it is the very stuff of bad history.
No one has seriously attacked or defended Gibbon for decades, because it's generally accepted that, great writer though he was, most of his judgements were wrong.
I won't deny that I find quite a lot to admire about pagan Rome, but one can't gloss over its horrors, either.
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.
I would struggle to tell you when Britain was last able to grow enough food to feed itself, but at the moment (latest DEFRA figures I can find are from 2020 in a report updated Oct 2023) production is equal to 60% of consumption (by value, I can't easily find a by calorie figure).
This proportion has been essentially unchanged since about 2005, which means that British agricultural production has managed to increase since then to keep pace with population growth of about 10%.
Is this part of an anti-obesity policy?
Oooo I know the answer to this one. Apparently we grow enough food to make sure everyone gets enough calories to not starve, provided they have no choice in what they eat. There’s an election winning proposition.
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.
Like you I steer clear of this debate. There is a moral case for reparations IMHO but the practicalities are difficult and the political reality is that they will never happen so I don't see it as a fruitful discussion. Having lived in the Caribbean and the Southern US and studied 19C economic history I find efforts to minimise the centrality of the Atlantic slave economy to our prosperity and power bizzare, equally efforts to play down the holocaust of suffering that it involved for Africans who made the middle passage, and their descendents.
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.
Trump and Le Pen are both protectionists, in Australia the National party, part of the opposition Coalition is protectionist and pro agricultural subsidy as is NZ First, part of the governing coalition in New Zealand. Modi is also relatively protectonist as are Putin and Xi. The era of unchallenged global free trade is over
He has literally™ turned into Liz Truss at her most risible.
Truss: "We import two-thirds of our cheese. That is a disgrace."
Sunak: "We shouldn’t be reliant on foreign food. Buy British."
British oranges are a must at Christmas time. British bananas are an all year round treat. Don't miss the Scottish mango season. Curries, especially Indian ones, are especially made entirely from ingredients grown in the outer Hebrides.
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
I thought we'd seen quite a lot of polling recently where every age group was positive for Labour, e.g. yesterday's R&W:
Sub sample KLAXON rules apply but Redfield and Techne consistently show all age groups with a lead for Lab but a rather flat age profile to VI curve and have for 2 to 3 months or more The others generally have over 65s with a Con lead of varying degrees with occasional exceptions and steeper age/VI curves
Finally some good policy from Rishi. A 'Buy British' policy will shore up the rural vote, the farming vote and even some of the Middle England vote for the Tories.
Post Brexit and Putin's invasion of Ukraine we cannot rely on most of our food coming from imports, we need to grow and produce more of our own. I would also hope he increases farm subsidies for food production too
It’s not a policy, is it?
Is he going to cancel the trade deals that secured cheaper imports of food?
The vast majority of Leave voters (except a handful of libertarians like Hannan, Richard Tyndall and Bart Roberts) did not vote for new trade deals, they voted to cut immigration and regain control of our laws and sovereignty. Farmers certainly didn't vote for any trade deals that see cheap foreign food imports filling our supermarkets, they voted for tighter controls on EU food imports and more support for British farms and food producers
Finally some good policy from Rishi. A 'Buy British' policy will shore up the rural vote, the farming vote and even some of the Middle England vote for the Tories.
Post Brexit and Putin's invasion of Ukraine we cannot rely on most of our food coming from imports, we need to grow and produce more of our own. I would also hope he increases farm subsidies for food production too
It’s not a policy, is it?
Is he going to cancel the trade deals that secured cheaper imports of food?
Interesting point. Presumably there are clauses in these agreements that mean one of the signatories can't actively slag off the produce of the other signatory to dissuade its consumers from buying it.
Analysis of the seats the Tories could keep at the election suggests the party will be evenly split between rightward-leaning and moderate MPs, setting up the mother of all leadership contests
Yeah, but it's the members who count I'm that situation.
Rishi is seen as centrist though i doubt he is, so on top of natural leanings the more centrist candidate will lose as their wing is at fault for the loss.
Though perhaps half the members will jump to Reform post election if Tories drop to 50 seats.
Might be a good time to join, much better chance of being selected for the next election with less competition.
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
I thought we'd seen quite a lot of polling recently where every age group was positive for Labour, e.g. yesterday's R&W:
Sub sample KLAXON rules apply but Redfield and Techne consistently show all age groups with a lead for Lab but a rather flat age profile to VI curve and have for 2 to 3 months or more The others generally have over 65s with a Con lead of varying degrees with occasional exceptions and steeper age/VI curves
Notably, most polls show Reform doing better than the Conservatives, among people of working age.
Buy British is good imo but too late. From a personal perspective, shelter, food and energy and the production and distribution of such should be the responsibility of the national government. I'm a protectionist. This one pleases me even if it's a pishy millionth of the impetus required
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.
Like you I steer clear of this debate. There is a moral case for reparations IMHO but the practicalities are difficult and the political reality is that they will never happen so I don't see it as a fruitful discussion. Having lived in the Caribbean and the Southern US and studied 19C economic history I find efforts to minimise the centrality of the Atlantic slave economy to our prosperity and power bizzare, equally efforts to play down the holocaust of suffering that it involved for Africans who made the middle passage, and their descendents.
Understanding our history, warts and all, is good.
Feeling personally repulsive for any of it (including the good and noble bits) is bad.
We should only ever be judged on our current actions, and we shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying benefits from anything done in the past we wouldn’t do now.
Plus, the language of reparations is far more divisive than simply saying “who needs aid most today”.
The vast majority of Leave voters (except a handful of libertarians like Hannan, Richard Tyndall and Bart Roberts) did not vote for new trade deals, they voted to cut immigration and regain control of our laws and sovereignty. Farmers certainly didn't vote for any trade deals that see cheap foreign food imports filling our supermarkets, they voted for tighter controls on EU food imports and more support for British farms and food producers
Mildly terrifying. The UK only produces 60% of our food consumption...
What is he planning?
An end to obesity ?
Win/win...
IN the second world war we went from about 30% home produced food to nearly 90% (I think) by utilising more marginal farmland better and judicious use of other bits of land (parks etc).
Mildly terrifying. The UK only produces 60% of our food consumption...
What is he planning?
An end to obesity ?
Win/win...
I'm going to do some heroic back-of-envelope calculations and work out what our excess calorie consumption is...
EDIT: It's already been done! Apparently we eat on average 300 excess calories a day - cutting that out gets us down about 13%. So 27% to find elsewhere. Mushrooms? Insects?
Think Bigger.
Think about the “out of work, working age, but not seeking work” portion of the population.
We could reduced population to balance immigration, reduce imports, reduce benefits, ease house prices without building, reduce the pressure on the NHS, reduce pressure on infrastructure, reduce chavs….
“Eat the Poor. It’s Great for Britain. And OK for you.”
Buy British is good imo but too late. From a personal perspective, shelter, food and energy and the production and distribution of such should be the responsibility of the national government. I'm a protectionist. This one pleases me even if it's a pishy millionth of the impetus required
There's an idea of a vaguely competent Sunak campaign in there somewhere.
But for some reason he chose loser Isaac Levido to run it, why?
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.
I don't make any money from rent? Or do you mean the fact I don't have to pay rent because of the death of my mother and her life insurance paying off the mortgage and my father not selling the house and therefore when I left uni I forced my way into living in said empty house against his will, and the familial fallout thereafter?
Like I said - I accept I am very privileged and, in many ways, lucky. Personally would prefer my mum didn't die when I was 11 and the trauma that caused compared to no rent now - I don't know if an economist or actuary could tell me which will be more economically valuable to me in the long term.
Analysis of the seats the Tories could keep at the election suggests the party will be evenly split between rightward-leaning and moderate MPs, setting up the mother of all leadership contests
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.
Slavery did have minimal economic contribution to the development of the UK, which is part of the reason why we abolished it.
Slavery has existed since time immemorial and yet Britain was the first and only dominant Empire to abolish it. Why?
Because the rise of Britain was not based upon, funded by or relying upon slavery. Instead we discovered the key to economic growth - investing in technology. Improving productivity. Something slave-based economies being over-reliant on cheap manual labour were typically* singularly lacking in.
It is investment, productivity and most of all education and technology that was behind the UK's economic rise. Its also what we need a return to and we're struggling now due to a lack of investment in productivity and an overreliance on cheap manual labour instead.
* The Romans being a notable exception who heavily invested as well as having slavery, which is why they came to dominate their era and were so successful for so long.
Finally some good policy from Rishi. A 'Buy British' policy will shore up the rural vote, the farming vote and even some of the Middle England vote for the Tories.
Post Brexit and Putin's invasion of Ukraine we cannot rely on most of our food coming from imports, we need to grow and produce more of our own. I would also hope he increases farm subsidies for food production too
It’s not a policy, is it?
Is he going to cancel the trade deals that secured cheaper imports of food?
The vast majority of Leave voters (except a handful of libertarians like Hannan, Richard Tyndall and Bart Roberts) did not vote for new trade deals, they voted to cut immigration and regain control of our laws and sovereignty. Farmers certainly didn't vote for any trade deals that see cheap foreign food imports filling our supermarkets, they voted for tighter controls on EU food imports and more support for British farms and food producers
The Brexit ideal is, it seems, an unlikely combination of Singapore-on-Thames and North Korean Juche.
About as well as the straight rather than bendy British bananas we can now grow post-Brexit.
When Labour get in all British bananas will have, by law, to bend to the left instead of the right and won't fit in British fruit bowls. It's in the Reform manifesto and the Daily Express so it's true.
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!
It is mainly bollox unless very recent, ie any living person. Where do you stop at the stone age, there are no slaves still alive. Why the F**k should anyone have to pay because some knobhead did something 200 years ago. There is no correlation that those countries woudl ever have done anything to have any wealth, ie money has been poured into Africa by the billions for the whole of my life and has all been squandered and they live mainly in poverty still. Bleeding hearts like you would give all our money away so that we are all inpoverty , mental. You cannot change teh past and the whingers and snowflakes need to waken up smell teh coffee and get on with making their own way in life rather than trying to blame something from 200 years ago for their fecklessness and woes.
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.
Like you I steer clear of this debate. There is a moral case for reparations IMHO but the practicalities are difficult and the political reality is that they will never happen so I don't see it as a fruitful discussion. Having lived in the Caribbean and the Southern US and studied 19C economic history I find efforts to minimise the centrality of the Atlantic slave economy to our prosperity and power bizzare, equally efforts to play down the holocaust of suffering that it involved for Africans who made the middle passage, and their descendents.
Understanding our history, warts and all, is good.
Feeling personally repulsive for any of it (including the good and noble bits) is bad.
We should only ever be judged on our current actions, and we shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying benefits from anything done in the past we wouldn’t do now.
Plus, the language of reparations is far more divisive than simply saying “who needs aid most today”.
I mostly agree with this - I don't feel personally repulsed or personally guilty about the impact of the British Empire on me. I just recognise that I benefited from it and other people were vastly disadvantaged by it. I think it would be a good thing, based on our current understanding of morality, to do things now to balance that out more. And calling it "foreign aid" is fine by me.
The vast majority of Leave voters (except a handful of libertarians like Hannan, Richard Tyndall and Bart Roberts) did not vote for new trade deals, they voted to cut immigration and regain control of our laws and sovereignty. Farmers certainly didn't vote for any trade deals that see cheap foreign food imports filling our supermarkets, they voted for tighter controls on EU food imports and more support for British farms and food producers
Bollocks.
What they voted for is what they got.
They were told before the vote this would happen.
An escape from the EU, an economy doing fine by comparison with others, and the opportunity to make our own decisions? Yup. I have never been more positive about Brexit. Once it’s divorced from its authors (being anti Brexit isn’t a proxy for being anti Tory) it will properly bed in.
McDonald's is removing artificial intelligence (AI) powered ordering technology from its drive-through restaurants in the US, after customers shared its comical mishaps online.
A trial of the system - which uses voice recognition software to process orders - was announced in 2019.
It has not proved entirely reliable however - resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders. ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars worth of chicken nuggets.
McDonald's told franchisees it would remove the tech from the more than 100 restaurants it’s been testing it in by the end of July, according to a trade publication, external.
Finally some good policy from Rishi. A 'Buy British' policy will shore up the rural vote, the farming vote and even some of the Middle England vote for the Tories.
Post Brexit and Putin's invasion of Ukraine we cannot rely on most of our food coming from imports, we need to grow and produce more of our own. I would also hope he increases farm subsidies for food production too
Rishi needs to go into a pub on the Dales within 30 seconds he would be asked to justify the Australia / New Zealand trade deals where lamb is a sold at a price that just about covers the cost of slaughter
At the start of the election campaign, Rishi Sunak's personal rating was -37 compared to Keir Starmer's +7. In Deltapoll's latest survey, Starmer has risen to +14 while Sunak has fallen to a new all-time low of -45.
The vast majority of Leave voters (except a handful of libertarians like Hannan, Richard Tyndall and Bart Roberts) did not vote for new trade deals, they voted to cut immigration and regain control of our laws and sovereignty. Farmers certainly didn't vote for any trade deals that see cheap foreign food imports filling our supermarkets, they voted for tighter controls on EU food imports and more support for British farms and food producers
Bollocks.
What they voted for is what they got.
They were told before the vote this would happen.
They have got the free movement ended they voted for, they have got the regained sovereignty too.
Now Leave voting farmers want tariffs on food imports and leave voting factory workers want tariffs on goods imports, much like Le Pen is promising to French farmers and blue collar workers and Trump is promising to US farmers and manufacturing workers.
Farage is much more pro border controls, more protectionist and anti free trade than Johnson was and has now regained control of the Brexit movement from Boris so is pushing the Tories to follow suit
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.
Edit - I also want Chevening as well.
You obviously haven’t been to Chevening…
I have, on more than one occasion.
And you’d still want it! Think of the bills. Scratch the surface and it’s like most houses of that vintage. You want Chevening and a minimum of £100m on top I reckon.
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.
Edit - I also want Chevening as well.
You obviously haven’t been to Chevening…
I have, on more than one occasion.
And you’d still want it! Think of the bills. Scratch the surface and it’s like most houses of that vintage. You want Chevening and a minimum of £100m on top I reckon.
Finally some good policy from Rishi. A 'Buy British' policy will shore up the rural vote, the farming vote and even some of the Middle England vote for the Tories.
Post Brexit and Putin's invasion of Ukraine we cannot rely on most of our food coming from imports, we need to grow and produce more of our own. I would also hope he increases farm subsidies for food production too
Rishi needs to go into a pub on the Dales within 30 seconds he would be asked to justify the Australia / New Zealand trade deals where lamb is a sold at a price that just about covers the cost of slaughter
The vast majority of Leave voters (except a handful of libertarians like Hannan, Richard Tyndall and Bart Roberts) did not vote for new trade deals, they voted to cut immigration and regain control of our laws and sovereignty. Farmers certainly didn't vote for any trade deals that see cheap foreign food imports filling our supermarkets, they voted for tighter controls on EU food imports and more support for British farms and food producers
Bollocks.
What they voted for is what they got.
They were told before the vote this would happen.
And the damage has been done you simply can’t compete against the mega New Zealand and Australian farms
Finally some good policy from Rishi. A 'Buy British' policy will shore up the rural vote, the farming vote and even some of the Middle England vote for the Tories.
Post Brexit and Putin's invasion of Ukraine we cannot rely on most of our food coming from imports, we need to grow and produce more of our own. I would also hope he increases farm subsidies for food production too
Rishi needs to go into a pub on the Dales within 30 seconds he would be asked to justify the Australia / New Zealand trade deals where lamb is a sold at a price that just about covers the cost of slaughter
Affordable, good quality food.
What's not to like?
Precisely what we should have more of. 👍
But not British food from British farms - which is what Rishi is campaigning for today
The vast majority of Leave voters (except a handful of libertarians like Hannan, Richard Tyndall and Bart Roberts) did not vote for new trade deals, they voted to cut immigration and regain control of our laws and sovereignty. Farmers certainly didn't vote for any trade deals that see cheap foreign food imports filling our supermarkets, they voted for tighter controls on EU food imports and more support for British farms and food producers
The vast majority of Leave voters (except a handful of libertarians like Hannan, Richard Tyndall and Bart Roberts) did not vote for new trade deals, they voted to cut immigration and regain control of our laws and sovereignty. Farmers certainly didn't vote for any trade deals that see cheap foreign food imports filling our supermarkets, they voted for tighter controls on EU food imports and more support for British farms and food producers
Bollocks.
What they voted for is what they got.
They were told before the vote this would happen.
And the damage has been done you simply can’t compete against the mega New Zealand and Australian farms
The ghost of David Riccardo would like a word.
If mega New Zealand or Aussie farm are more efficient, then why should we have autarky?
Our farmers should invest to become more productive so they can compete, which boosts our economy, and/or consumers should have access to good quality, affordable food. And we should invest economically more into that which we have a competitive advantage in.
Finally some good policy from Rishi. A 'Buy British' policy will shore up the rural vote, the farming vote and even some of the Middle England vote for the Tories.
Post Brexit and Putin's invasion of Ukraine we cannot rely on most of our food coming from imports, we need to grow and produce more of our own. I would also hope he increases farm subsidies for food production too
Rishi needs to go into a pub on the Dales within 30 seconds he would be asked to justify the Australia / New Zealand trade deals where lamb is a sold at a price that just about covers the cost of slaughter
Affordable, good quality food.
What's not to like?
Precisely what we should have more of. 👍
But not British food from British farms - which is what Rishi is campaigning for today
So that your cheap Australian food going
Yes, Rishi is an idiot, that much is clear.
The cheap Australian food is a good thing and a good win for the consumers in this country.
Buy British is good imo but too late. From a personal perspective, shelter, food and energy and the production and distribution of such should be the responsibility of the national government. I'm a protectionist. This one pleases me even if it's a pishy millionth of the impetus required
There's an idea of a vaguely competent Sunak campaign in there somewhere.
But for some reason he chose loser Isaac Levido to run it, why?
Dunno. But the poor guy will never work again in elections I guess.
Another traitorous Reform candidate that shills for Putin.
Reform is the party of UK hating traitors.
No fucking way the Tory party merges with these roasters.
A candidate for Nigel Farage’s Reform party called the King “weak” and claimed he was under the control of global elites.
Angela Carter-Begbie questioned the King’s loyalty to Britain, saying it was “about time King Charles show where he truly lye” [sic], and said she was “not a fan”.
The candidate, who is standing for Reform in the new seat of Queen’s Park and Maida Vale in northwest London at the general election, wrote on her Twitter/X account on April 23 to say that he was “under the WEF”, referring to the World Economic Forum, which organises the annual meeting in Davos of world political and business leaders.
The conspiracy theory, which aligns itself with claims that a shadowy global elite control the world’s population, is one of several she had promoted online.
These include the conspiracy theories that the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers was an “inside job” and the Covid-19 vaccine rollout was “like the Holocaust”.
Carter-Begbie blamed the fathers of grooming-gang victims for the crimes of their predators and repeatedly posted in support of the far-right leader Tommy Robinson.
She also claimed the war in Ukraine was started by Nato.
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!
It is mainly bollox unless very recent, ie any living person. Where do you stop at the stone age, there are no slaves still alive. Why the F**k should anyone have to pay because some knobhead did something 200 years ago. There is no correlation that those countries woudl ever have done anything to have any wealth, ie money has been poured into Africa by the billions for the whole of my life and has all been squandered and they live mainly in poverty still. Bleeding hearts like you would give all our money away so that we are all inpoverty , mental. You cannot change teh past and the whingers and snowflakes need to waken up smell teh coffee and get on with making their own way in life rather than trying to blame something from 200 years ago for their fecklessness and woes.
I mean we can take a single family - the Cumberbatches. The Cumberbatches are independently wealthy, and live very nice lives as actors, having benefited from private schooling and good education and wealthy living in the UK. The Cumberbatch family also made a lot of its wealth due to a family member owning slaves who did labour for him and he made profit. You can see the direct line of wealth and comfort and privilege through the lineage of one family. Indeed, Benedict's mother even told him not to do slave films because the issue of the family money and reparations will come up (instead Benedict felt the need to be in multiple films that dealt with slavery).
The thing is, there is another Cumberbatch family who can trace their lineage back to the same ancestor - because they were given that surname when that man bought them. They can look back to the point where the labour their ancestors did labour, for the profit of the Cumberbatch family, against their will. And they can trace how emancipation was followed by further oppression and how they could not escape a generational cycle of poverty due to racism and the fact that emancipation didn't come with an acre and a mule, or any reparations to speak of.
So yeah, actually, we can show direct impact on literal individuals and families when it comes to slavery. And if you scale that up to the macro you get the impact on countries. It's not hard.
Another traitorous Reform candidate that shills for Putin.
Reform is the party of UK hating traitors.
No fucking way the Tory party merges with these roasters.
A candidate for Nigel Farage’s Reform party called the King “weak” and claimed he was under the control of global elites.
Angela Carter-Begbie questioned the King’s loyalty to Britain, saying it was “about time King Charles show where he truly lye” [sic], and said she was “not a fan”.
The candidate, who is standing for Reform in the new seat of Queen’s Park and Maida Vale in northwest London at the general election, wrote on her Twitter/X account on April 23 to say that he was “under the WEF”, referring to the World Economic Forum, which organises the annual meeting in Davos of world political and business leaders.
The conspiracy theory, which aligns itself with claims that a shadowy global elite control the world’s population, is one of several she had promoted online.
These include the conspiracy theories that the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers was an “inside job” and the Covid-19 vaccine rollout was “like the Holocaust”.
Carter-Begbie blamed the fathers of grooming-gang victims for the crimes of their predators and repeatedly posted in support of the far-right leader Tommy Robinson.
She also claimed the war in Ukraine was started by Nato.
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.
Slavery did have minimal economic contribution to the development of the UK, which is part of the reason why we abolished it.
Slavery has existed since time immemorial and yet Britain was the first and only dominant Empire to abolish it. Why?
Because the rise of Britain was not based upon, funded by or relying upon slavery. Instead we discovered the key to economic growth - investing in technology. Improving productivity. Something slave-based economies being over-reliant on cheap manual labour were typically* singularly lacking in.
It is investment, productivity and most of all education and technology that was behind the UK's economic rise. Its also what we need a return to and we're struggling now due to a lack of investment in productivity and an overreliance on cheap manual labour instead.
* The Romans being a notable exception who heavily invested as well as having slavery, which is why they came to dominate their era and were so successful for so long.
I think there is truth to the argument that the profits from slavery provided some of the capital that drove industrialisation. But, it's not, by any means, the whole of the story. And, in the long run, industrialisation benefitted the whole world, not just the UK.
McDonald's is removing artificial intelligence (AI) powered ordering technology from its drive-through restaurants in the US, after customers shared its comical mishaps online.
A trial of the system - which uses voice recognition software to process orders - was announced in 2019.
It has not proved entirely reliable however - resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders. ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars worth of chicken nuggets.
McDonald's told franchisees it would remove the tech from the more than 100 restaurants it’s been testing it in by the end of July, according to a trade publication, external.
This is why I find Leon’s paranoia about AI so pointless, the current version of AI is in many sectors a complete dead-end because until it knows when it is hallucinating it can’t be trusted
McDonald's is removing artificial intelligence (AI) powered ordering technology from its drive-through restaurants in the US, after customers shared its comical mishaps online.
A trial of the system - which uses voice recognition software to process orders - was announced in 2019.
It has not proved entirely reliable however - resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders. ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars worth of chicken nuggets.
McDonald's told franchisees it would remove the tech from the more than 100 restaurants it’s been testing it in by the end of July, according to a trade publication, external.
This is why I find Leon’s paranoia about AI so pointless, the current version of AI is in many sectors a complete dead-end because until it knows when it is hallucinating it can’t be trusted
We tried AI to spot fraudulent/AML transactions.
It flagged up 80% of legitimate transactions as dodgy and only flagged up 5% of fraudulent transactions as dodgy.
We are working hard across this three-way marginal to keep #Wimbledon blue.
Yeah but no mate, it's going Lib Dem.
I'm 99% sure the Tories will lose Wimbledon but it's difficult to say whether it'll go LD or Lab.
The generic drop in the Tory vote will be sufficient to ensure it doesn't stay Conservative this time round. So both the Lib Dems and Labour can and will try to take it without explicit tactical pact there. My guess is soft Tories will be more likely to switch to the Lib Dems so it will go Lib Dem than Labour, but either is well possible.
We are working hard across this three-way marginal to keep #Wimbledon blue.
Yeah but no mate, it's going Lib Dem.
I'm 99% sure the Tories will lose Wimbledon but it's difficult to say whether it'll go LD or Lab.
The generic drop in the Tory vote will be sufficient to ensure it doesn't stay Conservative this time round. So both the Lib Dems and Labour can and will try to take it without explicit tactical pact there. My guess is soft Tories will be more likely to switch to the Lib Dems so it will go Lib Dem than Labour, but either is well possible.
It will go Lib Dem I think. I know a few folks there who are all voting Lib Dem tactically.
Lots of Lib Dem signs up when I went a couple of weeks back.
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.
Slavery did have minimal economic contribution to the development of the UK, which is part of the reason why we abolished it...
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!
It is mainly bollox unless very recent, ie any living person. Where do you stop at the stone age, there are no slaves still alive. Why the F**k should anyone have to pay because some knobhead did something 200 years ago. There is no correlation that those countries woudl ever have done anything to have any wealth, ie money has been poured into Africa by the billions for the whole of my life and has all been squandered and they live mainly in poverty still. Bleeding hearts like you would give all our money away so that we are all inpoverty , mental. You cannot change teh past and the whingers and snowflakes need to waken up smell teh coffee and get on with making their own way in life rather than trying to blame something from 200 years ago for their fecklessness and woes.
I mean we can take a single family - the Cumberbatches.
McDonald's is removing artificial intelligence (AI) powered ordering technology from its drive-through restaurants in the US, after customers shared its comical mishaps online.
A trial of the system - which uses voice recognition software to process orders - was announced in 2019.
It has not proved entirely reliable however - resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders. ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars worth of chicken nuggets.
McDonald's told franchisees it would remove the tech from the more than 100 restaurants it’s been testing it in by the end of July, according to a trade publication, external.
This is why I find Leon’s paranoia about AI so pointless, the current version of AI is in many sectors a complete dead-end because until it knows when it is hallucinating it can’t be trusted
We tried AI to spot fraudulent/AML transactions.
It flagged up 80% of legitimate transactions as dodgy and only flagged up 5% of fraudulent transactions as dodgy.
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!
It is mainly bollox unless very recent, ie any living person. Where do you stop at the stone age, there are no slaves still alive. Why the F**k should anyone have to pay because some knobhead did something 200 years ago. There is no correlation that those countries woudl ever have done anything to have any wealth, ie money has been poured into Africa by the billions for the whole of my life and has all been squandered and they live mainly in poverty still. Bleeding hearts like you would give all our money away so that we are all inpoverty , mental. You cannot change teh past and the whingers and snowflakes need to waken up smell teh coffee and get on with making their own way in life rather than trying to blame something from 200 years ago for their fecklessness and woes.
I mean we can take a single family - the Cumberbatches. The Cumberbatches are independently wealthy, and live very nice lives as actors, having benefited from private schooling and good education and wealthy living in the UK. The Cumberbatch family also made a lot of its wealth due to a family member owning slaves who did labour for him and he made profit. You can see the direct line of wealth and comfort and privilege through the lineage of one family. Indeed, Benedict's mother even told him not to do slave films because the issue of the family money and reparations will come up (instead Benedict felt the need to be in multiple films that dealt with slavery).
The thing is, there is another Cumberbatch family who can trace their lineage back to the same ancestor - because they were given that surname when that man bought them. They can look back to the point where the labour their ancestors did labour, for the profit of the Cumberbatch family, against their will. And they can trace how emancipation was followed by further oppression and how they could not escape a generational cycle of poverty due to racism and the fact that emancipation didn't come with an acre and a mule, or any reparations to speak of.
So yeah, actually, we can show direct impact on literal individuals and families when it comes to slavery. And if you scale that up to the macro you get the impact on countries. It's not hard.
There will also be descendants of the slave owner who inherited little or nothing, and now live ordinary lives, and descendants of the slave, who prospered, and the longer the period of time, the more that the numbers in either group will multiply. Nothing is set in stone.
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!
It is mainly bollox unless very recent, ie any living person. Where do you stop at the stone age, there are no slaves still alive. Why the F**k should anyone have to pay because some knobhead did something 200 years ago. There is no correlation that those countries woudl ever have done anything to have any wealth, ie money has been poured into Africa by the billions for the whole of my life and has all been squandered and they live mainly in poverty still. Bleeding hearts like you would give all our money away so that we are all inpoverty , mental. You cannot change teh past and the whingers and snowflakes need to waken up smell teh coffee and get on with making their own way in life rather than trying to blame something from 200 years ago for their fecklessness and woes.
I mean we can take a single family - the Cumberbatches. The Cumberbatches are independently wealthy, and live very nice lives as actors, having benefited from private schooling and good education and wealthy living in the UK. The Cumberbatch family also made a lot of its wealth due to a family member owning slaves who did labour for him and he made profit. You can see the direct line of wealth and comfort and privilege through the lineage of one family. Indeed, Benedict's mother even told him not to do slave films because the issue of the family money and reparations will come up (instead Benedict felt the need to be in multiple films that dealt with slavery).
The thing is, there is another Cumberbatch family who can trace their lineage back to the same ancestor - because they were given that surname when that man bought them. They can look back to the point where the labour their ancestors did labour, for the profit of the Cumberbatch family, against their will. And they can trace how emancipation was followed by further oppression and how they could not escape a generational cycle of poverty due to racism and the fact that emancipation didn't come with an acre and a mule, or any reparations to speak of.
So yeah, actually, we can show direct impact on literal individuals and families when it comes to slavery. And if you scale that up to the macro you get the impact on countries. It's not hard.
But you are only considering one factor in someone's history. In my family we lost several of my uncles in WW2. Should the Germans pay reparations to my family for the loss of income that might have devolved down from them? And the French - they nicked the country in 1066 - simply pushing out the previous owners of the land. How do you know that I am not descended from someone who would have owned half of Wiltshire but was displaced by a Norman knight? You don't. For all of us there is a backstory. At some point some wrong was done and the family was dispossessed, or perhaps were the dispossessors. We fixate on slavery as it is recent, but we seem to pick only one slave trade. Should Africans who descend from slaves in America and Britain not go after the African tribes who enslaved them to sell then on in the first place?
McDonald's is removing artificial intelligence (AI) powered ordering technology from its drive-through restaurants in the US, after customers shared its comical mishaps online.
A trial of the system - which uses voice recognition software to process orders - was announced in 2019.
It has not proved entirely reliable however - resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders. ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars worth of chicken nuggets.
McDonald's told franchisees it would remove the tech from the more than 100 restaurants it’s been testing it in by the end of July, according to a trade publication, external.
This is why I find Leon’s paranoia about AI so pointless, the current version of AI is in many sectors a complete dead-end because until it knows when it is hallucinating it can’t be trusted
We tried AI to spot fraudulent/AML transactions.
It flagged up 80% of legitimate transactions as dodgy and only flagged up 5% of fraudulent transactions as dodgy.
This doesn't surprise me at all, given my experience with banks and fraud alerts.
Finally some good policy from Rishi. A 'Buy British' policy will shore up the rural vote, the farming vote and even some of the Middle England vote for the Tories.
Post Brexit and Putin's invasion of Ukraine we cannot rely on most of our food coming from imports, we need to grow and produce more of our own. I would also hope he increases farm subsidies for food production too
It’s not a policy, is it?
Is he going to cancel the trade deals that secured cheaper imports of food?
The vast majority of Leave voters (except a handful of libertarians like Hannan, Richard Tyndall and Bart Roberts) did not vote for new trade deals, they voted to cut immigration and regain control of our laws and sovereignty. Farmers certainly didn't vote for any trade deals that see cheap foreign food imports filling our supermarkets, they voted for tighter controls on EU food imports and more support for British farms and food producers
People voted to have their cake and eat it. If you were worried about food standards, Brexit would raise them. If you were worried about prices, fear not because Brexit would cut them. Dissatisfied with your love life? Brexit would double the size of your wife's tits overnight.
Ultimately, the Remain campaign failed to nail that nonsense, and here we are. But I don't really buy that there was ever a strong degree of internal consistency - a lot of Brexit voters had inconsistent objectives (as did Remain voters, but at least they could look at the situation as it was at the time).
Another traitorous Reform candidate that shills for Putin.
Reform is the party of UK hating traitors.
No fucking way the Tory party merges with these roasters.
A candidate for Nigel Farage’s Reform party called the King “weak” and claimed he was under the control of global elites.
Angela Carter-Begbie questioned the King’s loyalty to Britain, saying it was “about time King Charles show where he truly lye” [sic], and said she was “not a fan”.
The candidate, who is standing for Reform in the new seat of Queen’s Park and Maida Vale in northwest London at the general election, wrote on her Twitter/X account on April 23 to say that he was “under the WEF”, referring to the World Economic Forum, which organises the annual meeting in Davos of world political and business leaders.
The conspiracy theory, which aligns itself with claims that a shadowy global elite control the world’s population, is one of several she had promoted online.
These include the conspiracy theories that the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers was an “inside job” and the Covid-19 vaccine rollout was “like the Holocaust”.
Carter-Begbie blamed the fathers of grooming-gang victims for the crimes of their predators and repeatedly posted in support of the far-right leader Tommy Robinson.
She also claimed the war in Ukraine was started by Nato.
The Tories should be roasting Farage for this. Proudly wrap us in the Ukrinian flag. It is a popular policy where this Government can rightly trumpet its support against Putin. Farage being so far up his rectum needs to be widely known by those who support Ukraine's struggle for freedom.
McDonald's is removing artificial intelligence (AI) powered ordering technology from its drive-through restaurants in the US, after customers shared its comical mishaps online.
A trial of the system - which uses voice recognition software to process orders - was announced in 2019.
It has not proved entirely reliable however - resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders. ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars worth of chicken nuggets.
McDonald's told franchisees it would remove the tech from the more than 100 restaurants it’s been testing it in by the end of July, according to a trade publication, external.
This is why I find Leon’s paranoia about AI so pointless, the current version of AI is in many sectors a complete dead-end because until it knows when it is hallucinating it can’t be trusted
And also because AI is covering a multitude of things (not unlike his other obsession - Lab Leak). He seems to be a true believer that generative AI (chatGPT etc) are somehow close to being sentient, when in fact they are pretty much just a much better version of computer programs I laboriously typed into a ZX Spectrum in 1986 - you could set it up to answer simple questions as if in conversation. There are already lots of cool uses of AI technology (3D protein folding from base sequence alone being one). But these are not displacing scientists, they are allowing scientists to do more things, and better.
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.
Slavery did have minimal economic contribution to the development of the UK, which is part of the reason why we abolished it...
That's simply ahistorical.
Its really not.
Slavery has existed all along, technology did not.
Historically our economic growth, and the reason we leaped ahead of other nations, is due to our significant advantage in education, technology and investment. Not slavery.
We did an AI driven project at work. It’s been such a disaster we’ve had to turn it off as it’s caused our renewals to drop 50% year on year, with most of them siting how bad the AI solution is.
McDonald's is removing artificial intelligence (AI) powered ordering technology from its drive-through restaurants in the US, after customers shared its comical mishaps online.
A trial of the system - which uses voice recognition software to process orders - was announced in 2019.
It has not proved entirely reliable however - resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders. ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars worth of chicken nuggets.
McDonald's told franchisees it would remove the tech from the more than 100 restaurants it’s been testing it in by the end of July, according to a trade publication, external.
This is why I find Leon’s paranoia about AI so pointless, the current version of AI is in many sectors a complete dead-end because until it knows when it is hallucinating it can’t be trusted
AI is good at doing boring things. There's a ton of useful development happening now of tedious tasks that humans can't do at the same scale because they can't be everywhere at once.
AI is not on the whole good at doing interesting things. People are interested in interesting things obviously. Hence the AI hype and disconnect.
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.
The thing people forget about prejudice and race is that, historically speaking, skin colour / race was not always the category for prejudicial thought. In the classical period, for example, there was no understanding of whiteness as we have it now - the Romans and Greeks felt they had more in common with the Persians and Egyptians than they did with the Gauls and Celts of Western Europe. To say that the Roman Empire was inclusive is to note that anyone regardless of skin colour, religion or origin of birth could be a Roman Citizen and eligible for the rights of that citizenship. Again - race as denoted by skin colour was not really a factor here. The divide was Civilised versus Barbarian. And lots of "white" people were in that Barbarian camp.
As for the shift to the construction of race and the slave trade; that seems mostly right - if a very broad brush / low level explanation. Again, during the middle ages the distinction of bigotry was more Christendom versus Heathens - which racialised Muslims and Jewish people but accepted converts and black Christians (mostly, obviously not always) - and shifted to skin based system with slavery. The construction of scientific racism also grew with empire - indeed, one of the first races deemed obviously inferior due to their obvious physical traits and natural inclinations were the Irish, arguably the first victims of British colonialism. Then race became much more of a feature as the transatlantic slave trade grew and scientific racism was needed to justify the enslavement of black Africans - especially amongst white liberationists, like Thomas Jefferson, who were great philosophers of freedom who constantly justified his own slave holding with the idea that black Africans were just too dumb to be left to their own devices and try and form a society. This was questioned at the time by many French revolutionaries, even with contemporaries pointing out how his slaves could do complex tasks in his nail manufacturing factories from a young age, so surely they can do skilled and complex labour and can be set free - and Jefferson just shrugging and then arguing about the problems of miscegenation.
I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest, as a quick overview video, that racism as we know it today was likely "invented" during the period of the transatlantic slave trade and empire. Would some people have been prejudice towards people due to skin colour prior to that, sure, but the systemic ideology underlying the stereotypes of race only came about during this period.
I'd argue it is unreasonable to do so; or, at least, a very partial viewing of history. Racism is not just about white towards black people; or white towards any other skin colour. Racism exists all around the world, and in all sorts of directions. It is also not a uniquely British, or even western, phenomenon.
But 148grss said racism “as we know it today”. The form racism takes in modern Western cultures is very tied up with the transatlantic slave trade and empire. That doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist in other places and times — it does/has — but the particular hierarchy and focuses of racism in places like the UK reflects our particular history.
The very notion of “race” is a product of slavery and empire. Lots of ethnic groups discriminate against other ethnic groups, but the construction of specific races (Caucasian etc.), based on particular physical features like skin colour, comes from that time. There is plenty of racism in China and in Japan, but it is often different in form. (That doesn’t make it any better or worse: it’s just different.) If you are going to counter racism in the UK, it helps to understand the details of racism in the UK.
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.
Slavery did have minimal economic contribution to the development of the UK, which is part of the reason why we abolished it.
Slavery has existed since time immemorial and yet Britain was the first and only dominant Empire to abolish it. Why?
Because the rise of Britain was not based upon, funded by or relying upon slavery. Instead we discovered the key to economic growth - investing in technology. Improving productivity. Something slave-based economies being over-reliant on cheap manual labour were typically* singularly lacking in.
It is investment, productivity and most of all education and technology that was behind the UK's economic rise. Its also what we need a return to and we're struggling now due to a lack of investment in productivity and an overreliance on cheap manual labour instead.
* The Romans being a notable exception who heavily invested as well as having slavery, which is why they came to dominate their era and were so successful for so long.
I think there is truth to the argument that the profits from slavery provided some of the capital that drove industrialisation. But, it's not, by any means, the whole of the story. And, in the long run, industrialisation benefitted the whole world, not just the UK.
There's also the point that the dramatic growth in the (previously almost non-existent) cotton trade in Britain would have been almost impossible with US slavery.
In 1760 we imported a bit over 2 million pounds of cotton; fifty million by 1800, and over six hundred million by 1850. Cotton goods were over half out exports by value in the first half of the 19th C, and accounted for around 8% of GDP.
That changed in the second half of the 19th C, but the cotton trade was an enormous part of the rise to economic dominance of the UK, and it's simply bad history to minimise it, whatever your views on our moral status.
Mildly terrifying. The UK only produces 60% of our food consumption...
What is he planning?
An end to obesity ?
Win/win...
IN the second world war we went from about 30% home produced food to nearly 90% (I think) by utilising more marginal farmland better and judicious use of other bits of land (parks etc).
We dug up the courts at Wimbledon. Remnant potatoes STILL appear on the courts there.
Comments
This proportion has been essentially unchanged since about 2005, which means that British agricultural production has managed to increase since then to keep pace with population growth of about 10%.
Is this part of an anti-obesity policy?
Win/win...
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/5-16-2048x1152.png
EDIT: It's already been done! Apparently we eat on average 300 excess calories a day - cutting that out gets us down about 13%. So 27% to find elsewhere. Mushrooms? Insects?
Post Brexit and Putin's invasion of Ukraine we cannot rely on most of our food coming from imports, we need to grow and produce more of our own. I would also hope he increases farm subsidies for food production too
Truss: "We import two-thirds of our cheese. That is a disgrace."
Sunak: "We shouldn’t be reliant on foreign food. Buy British."
Is he going to cancel the trade deals that secured cheaper imports of food?
Farming (or buying) cheap shit like lots of potatoes and other carbs etc is driving an obesity epidemic but relatively cheap.
Getting good quality grass-fed meat etc is far healthier and results in fewer calories consumed by the end consumer but is more expensive and requires more calories in the chain.
We have good quality locally sourced meat of course, but if its more affordable then filling up on good quality beef etc from overseas gives you more protein and nutrition and less obesity than eating potato chips from English farms.
Owner tells Starmer business hasn’t been so good, but hopes the football will help.
https://x.com/JackElsom/status/1803026886785659212
Baso, Labour gain.
We managed to get that down to about 25% by the end of the war.
Rishi is clearly contemplating a far more serious national emergency,
I won't deny that I find quite a lot to admire about pagan Rome, but one can't gloss over its horrors, either.
Redfield and Techne consistently show all age groups with a lead for Lab but a rather flat age profile to VI curve and have for 2 to 3 months or more
The others generally have over 65s with a Con lead of varying degrees with occasional exceptions and steeper age/VI curves
Though given the size of the hole Sunak has dug for himself, victory seems very unlikely...
Rishi is seen as centrist though i doubt he is, so on top of natural leanings the more centrist candidate will lose as their wing is at fault for the loss.
Though perhaps half the members will jump to Reform post election if Tories drop to 50 seats.
Might be a good time to join, much better chance of being selected for the next election with less competition.
From a personal perspective, shelter, food and energy and the production and distribution of such should be the responsibility of the national government. I'm a protectionist. This one pleases me even if it's a pishy millionth of the impetus required
Feeling personally repulsive for any of it (including the good and noble bits) is bad.
We should only ever be judged on our current actions, and we shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying benefits from anything done in the past we wouldn’t do now.
Plus, the language of reparations is far more divisive than simply saying “who needs aid most today”.
What they voted for is what they got.
They were told before the vote this would happen.
Think about the “out of work, working age, but not seeking work” portion of the population.
We could reduced population to balance immigration, reduce imports, reduce benefits, ease house prices without building, reduce the pressure on the NHS, reduce pressure on infrastructure, reduce chavs….
“Eat the Poor. It’s Great for Britain. And OK for you.”
But for some reason he chose loser Isaac Levido to run it, why?
Like I said - I accept I am very privileged and, in many ways, lucky. Personally would prefer my mum didn't die when I was 11 and the trauma that caused compared to no rent now - I don't know if an economist or actuary could tell me which will be more economically valuable to me in the long term.
Slavery has existed since time immemorial and yet Britain was the first and only dominant Empire to abolish it. Why?
Because the rise of Britain was not based upon, funded by or relying upon slavery. Instead we discovered the key to economic growth - investing in technology. Improving productivity. Something slave-based economies being over-reliant on cheap manual labour were typically* singularly lacking in.
It is investment, productivity and most of all education and technology that was behind the UK's economic rise. Its also what we need a return to and we're struggling now due to a lack of investment in productivity and an overreliance on cheap manual labour instead.
* The Romans being a notable exception who heavily invested as well as having slavery, which is why they came to dominate their era and were so successful for so long.
McDonald's is removing artificial intelligence (AI) powered ordering technology from its drive-through restaurants in the US, after customers shared its comical mishaps online.
A trial of the system - which uses voice recognition software to process orders - was announced in 2019.
It has not proved entirely reliable however - resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders. ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars worth of chicken nuggets.
McDonald's told franchisees it would remove the tech from the more than 100 restaurants it’s been testing it in by the end of July, according to a trade publication, external.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c722gne7qngo
At the start of the election campaign, Rishi Sunak's personal rating was -37 compared to Keir Starmer's +7. In Deltapoll's latest survey, Starmer has risen to +14 while Sunak has fallen to a new all-time low of -45.
Now Leave voting farmers want tariffs on food imports and leave voting factory workers want tariffs on goods imports, much like Le Pen is promising to French farmers and blue collar workers and Trump is promising to US farmers and manufacturing workers.
Farage is much more pro border controls, more protectionist and anti free trade than Johnson was and has now regained control of the Brexit movement from Boris so is pushing the Tories to follow suit
In praise of Nigel Farage’s war on banks"
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-praise-of-nigel-farages-war-on-banks/
What's not to like?
Precisely what we should have more of. 👍
So that your cheap Australian food going
If mega New Zealand or Aussie farm are more efficient, then why should we have autarky?
Our farmers should invest to become more productive so they can compete, which boosts our economy, and/or consumers should have access to good quality, affordable food. And we should invest economically more into that which we have a competitive advantage in.
Win/win.
I am out supporting Danielle @DunfieldPrayero.
We are working hard across this three-way marginal to keep #Wimbledon blue.
Yeah but no mate, it's going Lib Dem.
The cheap Australian food is a good thing and a good win for the consumers in this country.
https://www.politico.eu/article/france-president-emmanuel-macron-finance-minister-bruno-le-maire-elysee-french-election/
Reform is the party of UK hating traitors.
No fucking way the Tory party merges with these roasters.
A candidate for Nigel Farage’s Reform party called the King “weak” and claimed he was under the control of global elites.
Angela Carter-Begbie questioned the King’s loyalty to Britain, saying it was “about time King Charles show where he truly lye” [sic], and said she was “not a fan”.
The candidate, who is standing for Reform in the new seat of Queen’s Park and Maida Vale in northwest London at the general election, wrote on her Twitter/X account on April 23 to say that he was “under the WEF”, referring to the World Economic Forum, which organises the annual meeting in Davos of world political and business leaders.
The conspiracy theory, which aligns itself with claims that a shadowy global elite control the world’s population, is one of several she had promoted online.
These include the conspiracy theories that the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers was an “inside job” and the Covid-19 vaccine rollout was “like the Holocaust”.
Carter-Begbie blamed the fathers of grooming-gang victims for the crimes of their predators and repeatedly posted in support of the far-right leader Tommy Robinson.
She also claimed the war in Ukraine was started by Nato.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-uk-angela-carter-begbie-king-charles-220fnsgb9
The thing is, there is another Cumberbatch family who can trace their lineage back to the same ancestor - because they were given that surname when that man bought them. They can look back to the point where the labour their ancestors did labour, for the profit of the Cumberbatch family, against their will. And they can trace how emancipation was followed by further oppression and how they could not escape a generational cycle of poverty due to racism and the fact that emancipation didn't come with an acre and a mule, or any reparations to speak of.
So yeah, actually, we can show direct impact on literal individuals and families when it comes to slavery. And if you scale that up to the macro you get the impact on countries. It's not hard.
CleggismReformismIt flagged up 80% of legitimate transactions as dodgy and only flagged up 5% of fraudulent transactions as dodgy.
@TheSun
‘If the EU gives you something it wants something back,’ former Brexit minister Lord Frost blasts Euro leaders on #NeverMindTheBallots.
Lots of Lib Dem signs up when I went a couple of weeks back.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68129595
Ultimately, the Remain campaign failed to nail that nonsense, and here we are. But I don't really buy that there was ever a strong degree of internal consistency - a lot of Brexit voters had inconsistent objectives (as did Remain voters, but at least they could look at the situation as it was at the time).
There are already lots of cool uses of AI technology (3D protein folding from base sequence alone being one). But these are not displacing scientists, they are allowing scientists to do more things, and better.
Slavery has existed all along, technology did not.
Historically our economic growth, and the reason we leaped ahead of other nations, is due to our significant advantage in education, technology and investment. Not slavery.
(I’ve since left the company)
AI is not on the whole good at doing interesting things. People are interested in interesting things obviously. Hence the AI hype and disconnect.
The very notion of “race” is a product of slavery and empire. Lots of ethnic groups discriminate against other ethnic groups, but the construction of specific races (Caucasian etc.), based on particular physical features like skin colour, comes from that time. There is plenty of racism in China and in Japan, but it is often different in form. (That doesn’t make it any better or worse: it’s just different.) If you are going to counter racism in the UK, it helps to understand the details of racism in the UK.
In 1760 we imported a bit over 2 million pounds of cotton; fifty million by 1800, and over six hundred million by 1850.
Cotton goods were over half out exports by value in the first half of the 19th C, and accounted for around 8% of GDP.
That changed in the second half of the 19th C, but the cotton trade was an enormous part of the rise to economic dominance of the UK, and it's simply bad history to minimise it, whatever your views on our moral status.
Like all good PBers, I voted tactically, i.e., in accordance with my betting portfolio.