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Apologising for the Liz Truss mishanter – politicalbetting.com

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  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 45,639
    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 78,081
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 14,641

    Sir John Curtice:

    Times Radio
    @TimesRadio

    “Reform has essentially taken the coalition of people who gave Boris Johnson his majority in 2019.”

    https://x.com/TimesRadio/status/1931346961321402512

    Boris got 44% in 2019. Reform UK are polling around 30-32%. They need a third of their support again to match Boris.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 10,134
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    Hong Kong became a city-state, really. The record of the British Empire in large territories where the original inhabitahts couldn't be extinguished wasn't too good.
    I suspect Britain would have left a poverty-stricken and chaotic China sometime in the late 20th Century.
    As opposed to it being poverty stricken and chaotic anyway in the late 20th century you mean?
    Indeed. It would probably have had to develop itself, like India is doing.
    Right so you are saying we shouldnt have taken it over because we would have left it poverty stricken and chaotic.....it did that anyway?

    I don't understand what your india reference has to do with it?

    Are you saying its our fault for not taking it over that it ended up poverty stricken and chaotic?
    I'm just responding to Casino's point that an imperial takeover would have aided our and its development.

    The experience of India, as another large territory where the natives were too many to be rid of, was that Britain's development benefitted, but India's, not as much at all, really.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 45,639
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    Nigelb said:

    Roger said:

    MaxPB said:

    Roger said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    We finished Clarkson's Farm this morning, definitely a step down from the first three seasons but absolutely brilliant anyway. Once again, you really get a sense of how up against it British farmers are (and I'm sure the story isn't particularly different across all of Europe). The government's betrayal of our family run farms will hopefully put Labour out of power for a generation and I hope both the Tories and Reform commit to reversing the tractor tax in their manifestos.

    Every time I think I might give Labour a chance I remember that they hate traditional British culture and the people. I can't see any way they will ever get my vote at this stage. This betrayal will ruin family run businesses for a generation all so we could give Mauritius £40bn and some territory. Absolute joke of a country.

    Yes, quite

    There’s a discussion above about “hating politicians”. I agree that hatred is a distressing emotion and generally negative for all, nevertheless if I had to describe my emotions about this government and its leader it would come uncomfortably close to “hatred”

    They are damaging and impoverishing us as a country, a people, and a culture - and they do it quite
    overtly. They barely try to hide it. They clearly despise us - and me - so I despise them right back
    Do you and Max prepare your Victor Meldrew/Alf Garnet posts before coming on here or do you just feed off each other? You've always been what you are but I'm sure there was a time when Max was civilised and with an impressive understanding of economics
    However much you suck up to the Hamas supporting flag wavers, you're still Jewish and gay, Roger. They will push you off the building to your death the same as those they killed without mercy on October 7th. Maybe you're so deluded or brainwashed that you think they'd spare you but they won't. I guess you'd walk up to the precipice having realised what you enabled but I'm not so sure.
    I am an Arabphile. I have worked with many from different countries in the Middle East. I did a hair commercial for a Procter and Gamble shampoo and as is their way when it was successful no other Director would do. So however long I kept them waiting or charged it had to be me.......

    I got to know them well and liked them a lot. Like a lot of ancient civilisations they have a very considered way of seeing things. They tell great stories and laugh a lot. The girls beg me to take them to Raymond's when we post produce in London and the girls laugh all the way through

    I've found them warm and humble. in many ways they're sympatico like some Jews but as the Jews i knosw are mainly English and American it's difficult to make comparisons but I can sense the similarities. They have a lot of the Italian in them another nationality I like a lot. I'm not gay but the English hairdresser I take with me is and the females are like giggling schoolgirls when they are around him. More so when he wears skirts. They know their restrictions and talk to you endlessly about them. But they love life and having fun.
    In any case isn’t the Hamas chucking gays off rooftops thing apocryphal, conflated with Isis nutter doing it in Iraq?
    Indeed. Claims of chucking people off rooves are false. That was ISIS. Male homosexuality does not attract the death penalty in Gaza, although it is semi-criminalised. (The law isn't clear, but female homosexuality is legal.) Hamas does execute people: mostly for claims of spying, sometimes because of factional infighting.
    Ironically Netanyahu now revealed to be funding an ISIS militia in Gaza. I’m sure he’s made stringent checks on their gay friendliness.
    Isn't that a bit like he did with Hamas way back when ?
    Netanyahu is one of the few politicians who does not possess a single redeeming feature. He is actively malevolent.
    Don't know if it is a redeeming feature, but Netanyahu was an exceptionally handsome young man. Like a Hollywood movie star

    https://www.newsweek.com/how-entebbe-changed-bibi-65191#slideshow/50953

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/saving-sergeant-netanyahu/
    He still is quite foxy. And that deep deep voice. Oh my word.
    Err, umm, OK.

    Are you a bit like Roger yourself?
    @kinabalu has indeed confessed to having certain *feelz* in that direction
    I was kidding ffs. Benjamin Netanyahu? No way. I prefer my men to abstain from genocide.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 31,060

    Today was new Tesla day. New Model Y so much better than the old one. And now that it’s actually on sale, we’re going to see sales figures that make the haters upset and confused

    What's going to make the haters upset and confused is not the replacement of a damn awful car but the Musk vs Trump hostilities that seem to have broken out.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924

    Pagan2 said:

    Stereodog said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Leon said:


    Now Clarkson has made another enormously successful and funny show about something entirely different - proving all along that he was The Talent - and Top Gear has quietly and sadly died

    The inexorable rise of automotive YouTube killed TG (and his stupid Amazon shit) not Jexit.

    Harry's Garage does reviews way better than TG ever did. Haggard Garage, etc. did the arsing about way better than TG ever did. Whatever your automotive niche fetish is, you can get a far more informed and in-depth version of it on YouTube. The remaining and dwindling audience for TG/GT was lightweight car enthusiasts who don't know what Instant Centre is and don't even own multiple piston ring compressors.

    Disclaimer: never seen a full episode of TG or the stupid Amazon shit but I can still authoritatively disclaim upon them.
    lol

    Top Gear with Clarkson & Co was literally the biggest TV show in the world. Not biggest car show on TV, biggest TV show of any kind. Bought by dozens of countries, with multiple international spin offs, it generated tens of millions for the BBC every year

    Why? Because it wasn’t a car show at all. It was a self satirising comedy about three middle aged men with hobbies and rivalries - and yet a friendship beneath it

    That’s why all the spin offs tried to copy it to the last old geezer detail

    "And on that bombshell, good night!"
    If the BBC wasn’t full of such pathetic Woke wankers, they could have kept Clarkson - and now they’d have a massive hit in Clarkson’s Farm

    But the BBC is full of woke wankers so they didn’t and they haven’t
    I refer the Honourable PBer to the answer given by Mr J Clarkson. The BBC wanted the production office to be based in Scotland. Bureaucracy rather than woke, perhaps.
    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3QCO0uNNpJk


    Public sector organisations are driven by public policy.
    No public sector organisations are driven by what they want to do and generally manage to find a way to twist the public policy to be what they wanted to do in the first place. This is because public policy is fairly woolly in the first place. For example a public policy could be "reduce inequality".....the two extremes of how to deal with that is from "Execute the bottom decile....to expropriate the wealth of top ten percent and jail them".....both satisfy the public policy.

    The last people that should be trusted to enact public policy is public sector organisations. It is part of why we are in this situation. Instead policy makes need to tell them this is what we want, these are acceptable ways to achieve it
    Your last sentence is entirely correct but you're ire is in the wrong place. I've worked around senior civil servants for years and in that time I'm utterly convinced that they carry out the wishes of ministers with diligence and competence. The problem is that ministers refuse to make decisions and choices because to make choices is to annoy a section of the electorate. Axing the Winter Fuel Allowance is a classic example. Axing it for anyone not in receipt of other benefits is a clear decision that Civil Servants can and did carry out efficiently. Reinstating but also telling the DWP that they still need to cut spending on pensioners whilst keeping the triple lock in place is a ministerial fudge that will yield bad results.
    I too have worked on projects for the civil service, the first I worked on was they wanted to show that public transport was both cheaper and took less time than using a car. DFT project, we were a private sector company they employed. They were told in the first meeting their project would show nothing of the kind. They still insisted it would despite us being experts and then spent 7 million to create a system that showed exactly what we suggested it would which was that mostly car travel was quicker and cheaper than public transport.

    If they had listened they would have saved 7 million, they were responding to the policy get more people using public transport.

    Sorry the civil service needs a lot more oversight it wastes money in the same way sailors spend on dockside hookers
    I have also experienced government making its mind up at the start of an evaluation, but is that at the behest of the civil servants or because a politician has made that decision?
    In the case of the dft project I worked on the politician had no idea the project had been even commissioned. Apparently it fell under the policy of running a campaign to get people out of cars and on public transport
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 55,607
    Interesting. There's a boom in adults getting baptised in France.

    https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/05/26/frances-improbable-adult-baptism-boom
  • solarflaresolarflare Posts: 3,997
    Flouncing and returning 2 days later is what you do on an internet forum, rather than a political party aiming for government.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924
    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 45,639
    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    Why didn't you?
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924
    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    Your analalogy is more like I watch hundreds of animals killed of all different species....then a cat was killed so I posted a video "Cats matter".....yes thats bias to cats
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 9,077

    Sir John Curtice:

    Times Radio
    @TimesRadio

    “Reform has essentially taken the coalition of people who gave Boris Johnson his majority in 2019.”

    https://x.com/TimesRadio/status/1931346961321402512

    Boris got 44% in 2019. Reform UK are polling around 30-32%. They need a third of their support again to match Boris.
    Perhaps that's the way - Boris joins Reform and they do a reverse merger with the rump Tories to become the Reformatories aka borstal boys

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,923

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    Do you mean the Boxer Rebellion?

    If so, no dice. There were seven countries involved.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924
    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    Why didn't you?
    Because I have never claimed any lives matter
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 14,641

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,923
    Leon said:

    This is what I said earlier today - in reply to a heartfelt comment by @DavidL


    "I doubt anyone on here, of any perspective, would seriously disagree with this. Many asylum seekers are - by definition - genuinely desperate people seeking a better life instead of a terrible life

    But - it must be faced - an awful lot are liars. They destroy their own documents so we can’t truly identify and then deport them. Also, they don’t seek asylum in Greece or Belgium - they come all the way to Britain. Why? Because often they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers at all. True asylum seekers would claim asylum in the first safe country

    Then we have a very small minority who are actively hostile and malign. The relative numbers are tiny - but they exist and they seek to harm us

    It’s a mess. It is unsustainable. The answer is to abandon the outdated concept of asylum and withdraw from the ECHR. Make it illegal to cross the channel in small boats

    Then we choose as a country who we will protect. We can’t shelter the world so let’s stop pretending we can - it’s doing enormous damage to the UK

    We can still do good. We can, for instance, shelter Hong Kongers and Ukrainians. And others in the future"


    I am pleased to see the estimable Mr Syed agrees with me entirely, after his two day visit to Calais

    Do you mean, some of them might pretend to be flint knappers instead of travel writers?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 61,711
    geoffw said:

    Sir John Curtice:

    Times Radio
    @TimesRadio

    “Reform has essentially taken the coalition of people who gave Boris Johnson his majority in 2019.”

    https://x.com/TimesRadio/status/1931346961321402512

    Boris got 44% in 2019. Reform UK are polling around 30-32%. They need a third of their support again to match Boris.
    Perhaps that's the way - Boris joins Reform and they do a reverse merger with the rump Tories to become the Reformatories aka borstal boys

    @bondegezou is characteristically wrong. If the electoral field is fragmented as it is now, then 32% might do fine for Reform, under FPTP
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,531

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    Hong Kong became a city-state, really. The record of the British Empire in large territories where the original inhabitahts couldn't be extinguished wasn't too good.
    I suspect Britain would have left a poverty-stricken and chaotic China sometime in the late 20th Century.
    Has it escaped you that India is the world's largest democracy whereas China is not?
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,531
    Nigelb said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    No, we couldn't.

    The Japanese tried that.
    Messy for everyone.
    We are not the Japanese.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,531
    Nigelb said:

    .

    This is an interesting article about Fiona Hill and the defence review. It sounds like the defence review might actually be worth reading.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/06/russia-is-at-war-with-uk-and-us-no-longer-reliable-ally

    I've already read it, in full, and I agree.

    The issue is that it was asset stripped of specifics because Starmer didn't want to commit to the funding.

    But the strategy is sound.
    Specifics come later anyway.
    It's about setting a new mindset for the civil service / military procurement / heads of the armed forces. A lot of it might sound like waffle, but it matters.

    And yes, there's a large funding gap.
    Let's hope so.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,531
    ydoethur said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    Do you mean the Boxer Rebellion?

    If so, no dice. There were seven countries involved.
    No, I mean the Taiping rebellion - that left 20 to 30 million dead and is almost entirely unknown in the West:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,642

    Andy_JS said:

    That was quick.

    "Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf reverses decision to quit party

    Yusuf has reversed his decision to quit the party, saying "the mission is too important" and that he "cannot let people down". Instead, he said he will return in a new role, heading up an Elon Musk-inspired "UK DOGE team"."

    https://news.sky.com/story/reform-uk-chairman-zia-yusuf-reverses-decision-to-quit-party-13380464

    Elon Musk? He was the future once.
    I really think Reform need to abandon this DOGE stuff. In the coming months it's going to be exposed as an absolutely disaster in the US (if it hasn't been already). By the time of the next UK GE, Sir Keir a co. will be champing at the bit to hang the acronym around Nigel's neck like a noose. They don't need to be signing up to this thing. Why do it?
    DOGE and mortgage bombshell will be the Labour poster/social media post campaign.
    Marginally better than putting Starmer on the posters.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,531

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    Thanks for that!
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 14,641
    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    This is called whataboutery. There are many terrible things in the world, but where does it get us to react to any campaign to make something better by berating the campaigners about why they didn’t do something for another problem?
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 9,077

    Nigelb said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    No, we couldn't.

    The Japanese tried that.
    Messy for everyone.
    We are not the Japanese.
    But we are, in a way: island nations, monarchies, tea drinkers ...

  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,531

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    Hong Kong became a city-state, really. The record of the British Empire in large territories where the original inhabitahts couldn't be extinguished wasn't too good.
    I suspect Britain would have left a poverty-stricken and chaotic China sometime in the late 20th Century.
    As opposed to it being poverty stricken and chaotic anyway in the late 20th century you mean?
    Indeed. It would probably have had to develop itself, like India is doing.
    Right so you are saying we shouldnt have taken it over because we would have left it poverty stricken and chaotic.....it did that anyway?

    I don't understand what your india reference has to do with it?

    Are you saying its our fault for not taking it over that it ended up poverty stricken and chaotic?
    I'm just responding to Casino's point that an imperial takeover would have aided our and its development.

    The experience of India, as another large territory where the natives were too many to be rid of, was that Britain's development benefitted, but India's, not as much at all, really.
    India is in a much better state than it would have been had it never been under British rule, where it would have been fragmented, undemocratic and far more like central Asia today.

    The fact it is unfashionable to say this doesn't make it less true.

    The embarrassing part of the legacy is Pakistan and Bangladesh, where it is very difficult to point to improvements save, perhaps, irrigation and railways.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 31,060
    Leon said:

    This is what I said earlier today - in reply to a heartfelt comment by @DavidL


    "I doubt anyone on here, of any perspective, would seriously disagree with this. Many asylum seekers are - by definition - genuinely desperate people seeking a better life instead of a terrible life

    But - it must be faced - an awful lot are liars. They destroy their own documents so we can’t truly identify and then deport them. Also, they don’t seek asylum in Greece or Belgium - they come all the way to Britain. Why? Because often they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers at all. True asylum seekers would claim asylum in the first safe country

    Then we have a very small minority who are actively hostile and malign. The relative numbers are tiny - but they exist and they seek to harm us

    It’s a mess. It is unsustainable. The answer is to abandon the outdated concept of asylum and withdraw from the ECHR. Make it illegal to cross the channel in small boats

    Then we choose as a country who we will protect. We can’t shelter the world so let’s stop pretending we can - it’s doing enormous damage to the UK

    We can still do good. We can, for instance, shelter Hong Kongers and Ukrainians. And others in the future"


    I am pleased to see the estimable Mr Syed agrees with me entirely, after his two day visit to Calais

    And as I said the other day, what we need to do is end proxy wars and stabilise their home countries.

    Have you not noticed most of these small boat chappies are, well, chaps? Have you not channelled your inner Cyclefree and asked what is the difference between men and women that would make only the former seek asylum?

    It's not economics. It's war, or crime so bad it might as well be war. Men are fleeing being pressed into the army, militias or street gangs. And that's why the answer lies in pacifying large parts of Africa and not in ID cards for car-washers.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    This is called whataboutery. There are many terrible things in the world, but where does it get us to react to any campaign to make something better by berating the campaigners about why they didn’t do something for another problem?
    I am pointing out their hypocrisy...its not whataboutery....they only cared because it was fashionable to do so which is typical of the wokerati.....they don't give a shit till its a bandwagon to jump on so they can show their virtue....you lot are the pop fans that jump from band to band depending on who is popular.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 54,474
    geoffw said:

    Nigelb said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    No, we couldn't.

    The Japanese tried that.
    Messy for everyone.
    We are not the Japanese.
    But we are, in a way: island nations, monarchies, tea drinkers ...

    Drives on the left! I propose to "invite" any country that drives on the left to join the Commonwealth (who isn't already in it).
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 9,077
    Do Starmer and Rayner still take the knee? Or was that just performative, for the camera?
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 14,641
    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 14,641

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    Thanks for that!
    No problem, Casino! Always good to catch up with you! Keep in touch.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 9,077

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    Thanks for that!
    No problem, Casino! Always good to catch up with you! Keep in touch.
    You sound like Claude

  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 65,649
    Good evening

    Seems the England fans were chanting uncomplimentary words to our Prime Minister tonight
  • solarflaresolarflare Posts: 3,997

    Good evening

    Seems the England fans were chanting uncomplimentary words to our Prime Minister tonight

    Was he playing centre forward?
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924

    Good evening

    Seems the England fans were chanting uncomplimentary words to our Prime Minister tonight

    Was he playing centre forward?
    Surely he was playing on the left wing
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 65,649

    Good evening

    Seems the England fans were chanting uncomplimentary words to our Prime Minister tonight

    Was he playing centre forward?
    Judging by the player ratings he may well have been !!!!
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 6,401
    Pagan2 said:

    Good evening

    Seems the England fans were chanting uncomplimentary words to our Prime Minister tonight

    Was he playing centre forward?
    Surely he was playing on the left wing
    Not swapping wings every minute?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,923

    ydoethur said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    Do you mean the Boxer Rebellion?

    If so, no dice. There were seven countries involved.
    No, I mean the Taiping rebellion - that left 20 to 30 million dead and is almost entirely unknown in the West:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
    Yes, I know about the Taiping rebellion but I'm not clear about the link to the British Empire?

    Our invasions of China were the two Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 14,641
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    This is called whataboutery. There are many terrible things in the world, but where does it get us to react to any campaign to make something better by berating the campaigners about why they didn’t do something for another problem?
    I am pointing out their hypocrisy...its not whataboutery....they only cared because it was fashionable to do so which is typical of the wokerati.....they don't give a shit till its a bandwagon to jump on so they can show their virtue....you lot are the pop fans that jump from band to band depending on who is popular.
    Some people are like that. Some have more honest and noble aspirations.

    Do you remember the ice bucket challenge? It became a huge bandwagon. Lots of celebrities got involved. Most of them were just following a trend. And yet it did still raise lots of money for research on motor neuron disease that has led to a real breakthrough. So, sure, point out the hypocrisy if you see it, but equally don’t turn a blind eye to real problems that need attention or the good that can be done.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,642

    Leon said:

    This is what I said earlier today - in reply to a heartfelt comment by @DavidL


    "I doubt anyone on here, of any perspective, would seriously disagree with this. Many asylum seekers are - by definition - genuinely desperate people seeking a better life instead of a terrible life

    But - it must be faced - an awful lot are liars. They destroy their own documents so we can’t truly identify and then deport them. Also, they don’t seek asylum in Greece or Belgium - they come all the way to Britain. Why? Because often they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers at all. True asylum seekers would claim asylum in the first safe country

    Then we have a very small minority who are actively hostile and malign. The relative numbers are tiny - but they exist and they seek to harm us

    It’s a mess. It is unsustainable. The answer is to abandon the outdated concept of asylum and withdraw from the ECHR. Make it illegal to cross the channel in small boats

    Then we choose as a country who we will protect. We can’t shelter the world so let’s stop pretending we can - it’s doing enormous damage to the UK

    We can still do good. We can, for instance, shelter Hong Kongers and Ukrainians. And others in the future"


    I am pleased to see the estimable Mr Syed agrees with me entirely, after his two day visit to Calais

    And as I said the other day, what we need to do is end proxy wars and stabilise their home countries.

    Have you not noticed most of these small boat chappies are, well, chaps? Have you not channelled your inner Cyclefree and asked what is the difference between men and women that would make only the former seek asylum?

    It's not economics. It's war, or crime so bad it might as well be war. Men are fleeing being pressed into the army, militias or street gangs. And that's why the answer lies in pacifying large parts of Africa and not in ID cards for car-washers.
    This is a laudable sentiment, and yes, we (the West - the UK isn't up to much these days) should stop interfering in the Middle East, but I don't believe even a tenth of these men are fleeing war. The Home Office grants asylum because they don't care, are ideologically in favour of immigration, and know they probably won't be able to deport the failed ones.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    This is called whataboutery. There are many terrible things in the world, but where does it get us to react to any campaign to make something better by berating the campaigners about why they didn’t do something for another problem?
    I am pointing out their hypocrisy...its not whataboutery....they only cared because it was fashionable to do so which is typical of the wokerati.....they don't give a shit till its a bandwagon to jump on so they can show their virtue....you lot are the pop fans that jump from band to band depending on who is popular.
    Some people are like that. Some have more honest and noble aspirations.

    Do you remember the ice bucket challenge? It became a huge bandwagon. Lots of celebrities got involved. Most of them were just following a trend. And yet it did still raise lots of money for research on motor neuron disease that has led to a real breakthrough. So, sure, point out the hypocrisy if you see it, but equally don’t turn a blind eye to real problems that need attention or the good that can be done.
    The ice bucket challenge however wasn't implying somethings matter more than others where as blm was definitely implying black lives were worth more
  • LeonLeon Posts: 61,711

    Leon said:

    This is what I said earlier today - in reply to a heartfelt comment by @DavidL


    "I doubt anyone on here, of any perspective, would seriously disagree with this. Many asylum seekers are - by definition - genuinely desperate people seeking a better life instead of a terrible life

    But - it must be faced - an awful lot are liars. They destroy their own documents so we can’t truly identify and then deport them. Also, they don’t seek asylum in Greece or Belgium - they come all the way to Britain. Why? Because often they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers at all. True asylum seekers would claim asylum in the first safe country

    Then we have a very small minority who are actively hostile and malign. The relative numbers are tiny - but they exist and they seek to harm us

    It’s a mess. It is unsustainable. The answer is to abandon the outdated concept of asylum and withdraw from the ECHR. Make it illegal to cross the channel in small boats

    Then we choose as a country who we will protect. We can’t shelter the world so let’s stop pretending we can - it’s doing enormous damage to the UK

    We can still do good. We can, for instance, shelter Hong Kongers and Ukrainians. And others in the future"


    I am pleased to see the estimable Mr Syed agrees with me entirely, after his two day visit to Calais

    And as I said the other day, what we need to do is end proxy wars and stabilise their home countries.

    Have you not noticed most of these small boat chappies are, well, chaps? Have you not channelled your inner Cyclefree and asked what is the difference between men and women that would make only the former seek asylum?

    It's not economics. It's war, or crime so bad it might as well be war. Men are fleeing being pressed into the army, militias or street gangs. And that's why the answer lies in pacifying large parts of Africa and not in ID cards for car-washers.
    Yeah. Stabilise Africa, Islam and the MENA. No biggie. Should take, what, couple weeks?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 54,474
    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    Do you mean the Boxer Rebellion?

    If so, no dice. There were seven countries involved.
    No, I mean the Taiping rebellion - that left 20 to 30 million dead and is almost entirely unknown in the West:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
    Yes, I know about the Taiping rebellion but I'm not clear about the link to the British Empire?

    Our invasions of China were the two Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion.
    And the Younghusband invasion of Tibet.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,531
    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    Do you mean the Boxer Rebellion?

    If so, no dice. There were seven countries involved.
    No, I mean the Taiping rebellion - that left 20 to 30 million dead and is almost entirely unknown in the West:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
    Yes, I know about the Taiping rebellion but I'm not clear about the link to the British Empire?

    Our invasions of China were the two Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion.
    It led to the second opium war, which lead to the Chinese emperor making a number of concessions to Britain. That same conflict led to Russia getting Outer Manchuria. And Vladivostok.

    Discussions about making parts of China a protectorate took place at the time.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 78,081

    Nigelb said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    No, we couldn't.

    The Japanese tried that.
    Messy for everyone.
    We are not the Japanese.
    That seems to me like a colonialist delusion.
    We didn't have the resources to subjugate China in the 19thC - and certainly not in the 20th.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,923

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    Do you mean the Boxer Rebellion?

    If so, no dice. There were seven countries involved.
    No, I mean the Taiping rebellion - that left 20 to 30 million dead and is almost entirely unknown in the West:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
    Yes, I know about the Taiping rebellion but I'm not clear about the link to the British Empire?

    Our invasions of China were the two Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion.
    And the Younghusband invasion of Tibet.
    Greetings, Chairman Mao.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is what I said earlier today - in reply to a heartfelt comment by @DavidL


    "I doubt anyone on here, of any perspective, would seriously disagree with this. Many asylum seekers are - by definition - genuinely desperate people seeking a better life instead of a terrible life

    But - it must be faced - an awful lot are liars. They destroy their own documents so we can’t truly identify and then deport them. Also, they don’t seek asylum in Greece or Belgium - they come all the way to Britain. Why? Because often they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers at all. True asylum seekers would claim asylum in the first safe country

    Then we have a very small minority who are actively hostile and malign. The relative numbers are tiny - but they exist and they seek to harm us

    It’s a mess. It is unsustainable. The answer is to abandon the outdated concept of asylum and withdraw from the ECHR. Make it illegal to cross the channel in small boats

    Then we choose as a country who we will protect. We can’t shelter the world so let’s stop pretending we can - it’s doing enormous damage to the UK

    We can still do good. We can, for instance, shelter Hong Kongers and Ukrainians. And others in the future"


    I am pleased to see the estimable Mr Syed agrees with me entirely, after his two day visit to Calais

    And as I said the other day, what we need to do is end proxy wars and stabilise their home countries.

    Have you not noticed most of these small boat chappies are, well, chaps? Have you not channelled your inner Cyclefree and asked what is the difference between men and women that would make only the former seek asylum?

    It's not economics. It's war, or crime so bad it might as well be war. Men are fleeing being pressed into the army, militias or street gangs. And that's why the answer lies in pacifying large parts of Africa and not in ID cards for car-washers.
    Yeah. Stabilise Africa, Islam and the MENA. No biggie. Should take, what, couple weeks?
    Donald can do it in a day probably
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,642

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    No there aren't.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 14,641
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    This is called whataboutery. There are many terrible things in the world, but where does it get us to react to any campaign to make something better by berating the campaigners about why they didn’t do something for another problem?
    I am pointing out their hypocrisy...its not whataboutery....they only cared because it was fashionable to do so which is typical of the wokerati.....they don't give a shit till its a bandwagon to jump on so they can show their virtue....you lot are the pop fans that jump from band to band depending on who is popular.
    Some people are like that. Some have more honest and noble aspirations.

    Do you remember the ice bucket challenge? It became a huge bandwagon. Lots of celebrities got involved. Most of them were just following a trend. And yet it did still raise lots of money for research on motor neuron disease that has led to a real breakthrough. So, sure, point out the hypocrisy if you see it, but equally don’t turn a blind eye to real problems that need attention or the good that can be done.
    The ice bucket challenge however wasn't implying somethings matter more than others where as blm was definitely implying black lives were worth more
    BLM never implied black lives matter more than others. Racists in the US inferred that to rubbish the movement. You take a cynical eye to “black lives matter”, but you swallow the manufactured critique of it by MAGA uncritically.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    This is called whataboutery. There are many terrible things in the world, but where does it get us to react to any campaign to make something better by berating the campaigners about why they didn’t do something for another problem?
    I am pointing out their hypocrisy...its not whataboutery....they only cared because it was fashionable to do so which is typical of the wokerati.....they don't give a shit till its a bandwagon to jump on so they can show their virtue....you lot are the pop fans that jump from band to band depending on who is popular.
    Some people are like that. Some have more honest and noble aspirations.

    Do you remember the ice bucket challenge? It became a huge bandwagon. Lots of celebrities got involved. Most of them were just following a trend. And yet it did still raise lots of money for research on motor neuron disease that has led to a real breakthrough. So, sure, point out the hypocrisy if you see it, but equally don’t turn a blind eye to real problems that need attention or the good that can be done.
    The ice bucket challenge however wasn't implying somethings matter more than others where as blm was definitely implying black lives were worth more
    BLM never implied black lives matter more than others. Racists in the US inferred that to rubbish the movement. You take a cynical eye to “black lives matter”, but you swallow the manufactured critique of it by MAGA uncritically.
    If they didn't imply that why were so many blm people furious about some people posting all lives matter?
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 9,077
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is what I said earlier today - in reply to a heartfelt comment by @DavidL


    "I doubt anyone on here, of any perspective, would seriously disagree with this. Many asylum seekers are - by definition - genuinely desperate people seeking a better life instead of a terrible life

    But - it must be faced - an awful lot are liars. They destroy their own documents so we can’t truly identify and then deport them. Also, they don’t seek asylum in Greece or Belgium - they come all the way to Britain. Why? Because often they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers at all. True asylum seekers would claim asylum in the first safe country

    Then we have a very small minority who are actively hostile and malign. The relative numbers are tiny - but they exist and they seek to harm us

    It’s a mess. It is unsustainable. The answer is to abandon the outdated concept of asylum and withdraw from the ECHR. Make it illegal to cross the channel in small boats

    Then we choose as a country who we will protect. We can’t shelter the world so let’s stop pretending we can - it’s doing enormous damage to the UK

    We can still do good. We can, for instance, shelter Hong Kongers and Ukrainians. And others in the future"


    I am pleased to see the estimable Mr Syed agrees with me entirely, after his two day visit to Calais

    And as I said the other day, what we need to do is end proxy wars and stabilise their home countries.

    Have you not noticed most of these small boat chappies are, well, chaps? Have you not channelled your inner Cyclefree and asked what is the difference between men and women that would make only the former seek asylum?

    It's not economics. It's war, or crime so bad it might as well be war. Men are fleeing being pressed into the army, militias or street gangs. And that's why the answer lies in pacifying large parts of Africa and not in ID cards for car-washers.
    Yeah. Stabilise Africa, Islam and the MENA. No biggie. Should take, what, couple weeks?
    There really is only one way - that is to eliminate the pull factors, and the wretched Tories were groping towards that end with the Rwanda policy, only to be reversed by Starmer just because

  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 31,060

    Leon said:

    This is what I said earlier today - in reply to a heartfelt comment by @DavidL


    "I doubt anyone on here, of any perspective, would seriously disagree with this. Many asylum seekers are - by definition - genuinely desperate people seeking a better life instead of a terrible life

    But - it must be faced - an awful lot are liars. They destroy their own documents so we can’t truly identify and then deport them. Also, they don’t seek asylum in Greece or Belgium - they come all the way to Britain. Why? Because often they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers at all. True asylum seekers would claim asylum in the first safe country

    Then we have a very small minority who are actively hostile and malign. The relative numbers are tiny - but they exist and they seek to harm us

    It’s a mess. It is unsustainable. The answer is to abandon the outdated concept of asylum and withdraw from the ECHR. Make it illegal to cross the channel in small boats

    Then we choose as a country who we will protect. We can’t shelter the world so let’s stop pretending we can - it’s doing enormous damage to the UK

    We can still do good. We can, for instance, shelter Hong Kongers and Ukrainians. And others in the future"


    I am pleased to see the estimable Mr Syed agrees with me entirely, after his two day visit to Calais

    And as I said the other day, what we need to do is end proxy wars and stabilise their home countries.

    Have you not noticed most of these small boat chappies are, well, chaps? Have you not channelled your inner Cyclefree and asked what is the difference between men and women that would make only the former seek asylum?

    It's not economics. It's war, or crime so bad it might as well be war. Men are fleeing being pressed into the army, militias or street gangs. And that's why the answer lies in pacifying large parts of Africa and not in ID cards for car-washers.
    This is a laudable sentiment, and yes, we (the West - the UK isn't up to much these days) should stop interfering in the Middle East, but I don't believe even a tenth of these men are fleeing war. The Home Office grants asylum because they don't care, are ideologically in favour of immigration, and know they probably won't be able to deport the failed ones.
    So where are the lady refugees? Violence explains men-only (or men-mainly): economics does not.
  • BurgessianBurgessian Posts: 3,029
    Leon said:

    geoffw said:

    Sir John Curtice:

    Times Radio
    @TimesRadio

    “Reform has essentially taken the coalition of people who gave Boris Johnson his majority in 2019.”

    https://x.com/TimesRadio/status/1931346961321402512

    Boris got 44% in 2019. Reform UK are polling around 30-32%. They need a third of their support again to match Boris.
    Perhaps that's the way - Boris joins Reform and they do a reverse merger with the rump Tories to become the Reformatories aka borstal boys

    @bondegezou is characteristically wrong. If the electoral field is fragmented as it is now, then 32% might do fine for Reform, under FPTP
    Tactical voting might do for Nige though, especially if his ceiling is 30% or so. He will have to tread carefully, which he's not well known for. The attack on Sarwar in the Scottish by-election backfired, encouraged Labour's vote to turn out, and delivered an unexpected victory for Labour.

    People certainly do want immigration tackled, but they are squeamish about voting for obvious bad 'uns who are playing them - this is not the USofA.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 78,081
    geoffw said:

    Nigelb said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    No, we couldn't.

    The Japanese tried that.
    Messy for everyone.
    We are not the Japanese.
    But we are, in a way: island nations, monarchies, tea drinkers ...

    Battered fish...
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,642
    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    No, we couldn't.

    The Japanese tried that.
    Messy for everyone.
    We are not the Japanese.
    That seems to me like a colonialist delusion.
    We didn't have the resources to subjugate China in the 19thC - and certainly not in the 20th.
    I agree. We were a seaborne power. We knew that and it was a source of strength. Britannia rule the waves, not the land - that was incidental.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 9,077

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    Do you mean the Boxer Rebellion?

    If so, no dice. There were seven countries involved.
    No, I mean the Taiping rebellion - that left 20 to 30 million dead and is almost entirely unknown in the West:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
    Yes, I know about the Taiping rebellion but I'm not clear about the link to the British Empire?

    Our invasions of China were the two Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion.
    And the Younghusband invasion of Tibet.
    It wasn't China (then)

  • LeonLeon Posts: 61,711
    geoffw said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is what I said earlier today - in reply to a heartfelt comment by @DavidL


    "I doubt anyone on here, of any perspective, would seriously disagree with this. Many asylum seekers are - by definition - genuinely desperate people seeking a better life instead of a terrible life

    But - it must be faced - an awful lot are liars. They destroy their own documents so we can’t truly identify and then deport them. Also, they don’t seek asylum in Greece or Belgium - they come all the way to Britain. Why? Because often they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers at all. True asylum seekers would claim asylum in the first safe country

    Then we have a very small minority who are actively hostile and malign. The relative numbers are tiny - but they exist and they seek to harm us

    It’s a mess. It is unsustainable. The answer is to abandon the outdated concept of asylum and withdraw from the ECHR. Make it illegal to cross the channel in small boats

    Then we choose as a country who we will protect. We can’t shelter the world so let’s stop pretending we can - it’s doing enormous damage to the UK

    We can still do good. We can, for instance, shelter Hong Kongers and Ukrainians. And others in the future"


    I am pleased to see the estimable Mr Syed agrees with me entirely, after his two day visit to Calais

    And as I said the other day, what we need to do is end proxy wars and stabilise their home countries.

    Have you not noticed most of these small boat chappies are, well, chaps? Have you not channelled your inner Cyclefree and asked what is the difference between men and women that would make only the former seek asylum?

    It's not economics. It's war, or crime so bad it might as well be war. Men are fleeing being pressed into the army, militias or street gangs. And that's why the answer lies in pacifying large parts of Africa and not in ID cards for car-washers.
    Yeah. Stabilise Africa, Islam and the MENA. No biggie. Should take, what, couple weeks?
    There really is only one way - that is to eliminate the pull factors, and the wretched Tories were groping towards that end with the Rwanda policy, only to be reversed by Starmer just because

    Yup. Which means Starmer will never do what is needed, so this will only get worse and that takes us own a very dark road indeed
  • TresTres Posts: 2,864
    edited June 7
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    This is called whataboutery. There are many terrible things in the world, but where does it get us to react to any campaign to make something better by berating the campaigners about why they didn’t do something for another problem?
    I am pointing out their hypocrisy...its not whataboutery....they only cared because it was fashionable to do so which is typical of the wokerati.....they don't give a shit till its a bandwagon to jump on so they can show their virtue....you lot are the pop fans that jump from band to band depending on who is popular.
    Some people are like that. Some have more honest and noble aspirations.

    Do you remember the ice bucket challenge? It became a huge bandwagon. Lots of celebrities got involved. Most of them were just following a trend. And yet it did still raise lots of money for research on motor neuron disease that has led to a real breakthrough. So, sure, point out the hypocrisy if you see it, but equally don’t turn a blind eye to real problems that need attention or the good that can be done.
    The ice bucket challenge however wasn't implying somethings matter more than others where as blm was definitely implying black lives were worth more
    BLM never implied black lives matter more than others. Racists in the US inferred that to rubbish the movement. You take a cynical eye to “black lives matter”, but you swallow the manufactured critique of it by MAGA uncritically.
    If they didn't imply that why were so many blm people furious about some people posting all lives matter?
    it's a classic dog whistel innit, if you know, you know, like the use of the number 88 in usernames
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 10,918
    edited June 7

    Leon said:

    This is what I said earlier today - in reply to a heartfelt comment by @DavidL


    "I doubt anyone on here, of any perspective, would seriously disagree with this. Many asylum seekers are - by definition - genuinely desperate people seeking a better life instead of a terrible life

    But - it must be faced - an awful lot are liars. They destroy their own documents so we can’t truly identify and then deport them. Also, they don’t seek asylum in Greece or Belgium - they come all the way to Britain. Why? Because often they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers at all. True asylum seekers would claim asylum in the first safe country

    Then we have a very small minority who are actively hostile and malign. The relative numbers are tiny - but they exist and they seek to harm us

    It’s a mess. It is unsustainable. The answer is to abandon the outdated concept of asylum and withdraw from the ECHR. Make it illegal to cross the channel in small boats

    Then we choose as a country who we will protect. We can’t shelter the world so let’s stop pretending we can - it’s doing enormous damage to the UK

    We can still do good. We can, for instance, shelter Hong Kongers and Ukrainians. And others in the future"


    I am pleased to see the estimable Mr Syed agrees with me entirely, after his two day visit to Calais

    And as I said the other day, what we need to do is end proxy wars and stabilise their home countries.

    Have you not noticed most of these small boat chappies are, well, chaps? Have you not channelled your inner Cyclefree and asked what is the difference between men and women that would make only the former seek asylum?

    It's not economics. It's war, or crime so bad it might as well be war. Men are fleeing being pressed into the army, militias or street gangs. And that's why the answer lies in pacifying large parts of Africa and not in ID cards for car-washers.
    This is a laudable sentiment, and yes, we (the West - the UK isn't up to much these days) should stop interfering in the Middle East, but I don't believe even a tenth of these men are fleeing war. The Home Office grants asylum because they don't care, are ideologically in favour of immigration, and know they probably won't be able to deport the failed ones.
    The nationalities in the small boats do not correlate to GDP per capita, nor to proximity to Europe. They are Iran, Albania (2022 mainly), Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

    It might not be war as such, but it's certainly linked to disruption of some kind, whether economic or conflict. The pull factor of the UK's generosity isn't enough for most Africans, as an example.

    I think all of the following are required: 1) Some sort of disruption 2) A known route to the UK/Northern France 3) Very high risk-tolerance (hence the gender balance)
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924
    Tres said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    This is called whataboutery. There are many terrible things in the world, but where does it get us to react to any campaign to make something better by berating the campaigners about why they didn’t do something for another problem?
    I am pointing out their hypocrisy...its not whataboutery....they only cared because it was fashionable to do so which is typical of the wokerati.....they don't give a shit till its a bandwagon to jump on so they can show their virtue....you lot are the pop fans that jump from band to band depending on who is popular.
    Some people are like that. Some have more honest and noble aspirations.

    Do you remember the ice bucket challenge? It became a huge bandwagon. Lots of celebrities got involved. Most of them were just following a trend. And yet it did still raise lots of money for research on motor neuron disease that has led to a real breakthrough. So, sure, point out the hypocrisy if you see it, but equally don’t turn a blind eye to real problems that need attention or the good that can be done.
    The ice bucket challenge however wasn't implying somethings matter more than others where as blm was definitely implying black lives were worth more
    BLM never implied black lives matter more than others. Racists in the US inferred that to rubbish the movement. You take a cynical eye to “black lives matter”, but you swallow the manufactured critique of it by MAGA uncritically.
    If they didn't imply that why were so many blm people furious about some people posting all lives matter?
    it's a classic dog whistel innit, if you know, you know
    Only to you thankfully you don't matter
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 6,401
    Even thinking as a mathematician, Christopher Hitchens was more than one hundred percent right about the i word
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 78,081

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    Hong Kong became a city-state, really. The record of the British Empire in large territories where the original inhabitahts couldn't be extinguished wasn't too good.
    I suspect Britain would have left a poverty-stricken and chaotic China sometime in the late 20th Century.
    As opposed to it being poverty stricken and chaotic anyway in the late 20th century you mean?
    Indeed. It would probably have had to develop itself, like India is doing.
    Right so you are saying we shouldnt have taken it over because we would have left it poverty stricken and chaotic.....it did that anyway?

    I don't understand what your india reference has to do with it?

    Are you saying its our fault for not taking it over that it ended up poverty stricken and chaotic?
    I'm just responding to Casino's point that an imperial takeover would have aided our and its development.

    The experience of India, as another large territory where the natives were too many to be rid of, was that Britain's development benefitted, but India's, not as much at all, really.
    India is in a much better state than it would have been had it never been under British rule, where it would have been fragmented, undemocratic and far more like central Asia today.

    The fact it is unfashionable to say this doesn't make it less true.

    The embarrassing part of the legacy is Pakistan and Bangladesh, where it is very difficult to point to improvements save, perhaps, irrigation and railways.
    How India might have turned out in that scenario is pretty unknowable.
    But given the colonial competition at the time, it's fairly unlikely it would have remained a collection of independent states.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 14,641
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    This is called whataboutery. There are many terrible things in the world, but where does it get us to react to any campaign to make something better by berating the campaigners about why they didn’t do something for another problem?
    I am pointing out their hypocrisy...its not whataboutery....they only cared because it was fashionable to do so which is typical of the wokerati.....they don't give a shit till its a bandwagon to jump on so they can show their virtue....you lot are the pop fans that jump from band to band depending on who is popular.
    Some people are like that. Some have more honest and noble aspirations.

    Do you remember the ice bucket challenge? It became a huge bandwagon. Lots of celebrities got involved. Most of them were just following a trend. And yet it did still raise lots of money for research on motor neuron disease that has led to a real breakthrough. So, sure, point out the hypocrisy if you see it, but equally don’t turn a blind eye to real problems that need attention or the good that can be done.
    The ice bucket challenge however wasn't implying somethings matter more than others where as blm was definitely implying black lives were worth more
    BLM never implied black lives matter more than others. Racists in the US inferred that to rubbish the movement. You take a cynical eye to “black lives matter”, but you swallow the manufactured critique of it by MAGA uncritically.
    If they didn't imply that why were so many blm people furious about some people posting all lives matter?
    Because “all live matters” was performative. It was a rebuttal invented by the far right in the US.

    You can see that “black lives matter” was sometimes performative and done cynically. Why can’t you see that “all lives matter” was just as much a politicised slogan, also used performativley? It’s not some neutral observation. It was created to deny the critique of systematic violence against black lives in the US.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 14,641
    edited June 7

    Leon said:

    geoffw said:

    Sir John Curtice:

    Times Radio
    @TimesRadio

    “Reform has essentially taken the coalition of people who gave Boris Johnson his majority in 2019.”

    https://x.com/TimesRadio/status/1931346961321402512

    Boris got 44% in 2019. Reform UK are polling around 30-32%. They need a third of their support again to match Boris.
    Perhaps that's the way - Boris joins Reform and they do a reverse merger with the rump Tories to become the Reformatories aka borstal boys

    @bondegezou is characteristically wrong. If the electoral field is fragmented as it is now, then 32% might do fine for Reform, under FPTP
    Tactical voting might do for Nige though, especially if his ceiling is 30% or so. He will have to tread carefully, which he's not well known for. The attack on Sarwar in the Scottish by-election backfired, encouraged Labour's vote to turn out, and delivered an unexpected victory for Labour.

    People certainly do want immigration tackled, but they are squeamish about voting for obvious bad 'uns who are playing them - this is not the USofA.
    FPTP is a terrible system, so Reform UK might win a majority on 30%. 30%, nevertheless, remains only three quarters of what Boris got.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 54,474
    geoffw said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    Do you mean the Boxer Rebellion?

    If so, no dice. There were seven countries involved.
    No, I mean the Taiping rebellion - that left 20 to 30 million dead and is almost entirely unknown in the West:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
    Yes, I know about the Taiping rebellion but I'm not clear about the link to the British Empire?

    Our invasions of China were the two Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion.
    And the Younghusband invasion of Tibet.
    It wasn't China (then)

    Technically, it was.
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 4,883
    Nigelb said:

    geoffw said:

    Nigelb said:

    Part of me wonders if the trouble with the British Empire was that we didn't go far enough.

    Maybe we should have annexed the whole Chinese Empire following the Taiping rebellion.

    Could have Hong Konged the whole place, much to our long-term benefit and the world's.

    No, we couldn't.

    The Japanese tried that.
    Messy for everyone.
    We are not the Japanese.
    But we are, in a way: island nations, monarchies, tea drinkers ...

    Battered fish...
    We can blame the Portuguese for that one.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    This is called whataboutery. There are many terrible things in the world, but where does it get us to react to any campaign to make something better by berating the campaigners about why they didn’t do something for another problem?
    I am pointing out their hypocrisy...its not whataboutery....they only cared because it was fashionable to do so which is typical of the wokerati.....they don't give a shit till its a bandwagon to jump on so they can show their virtue....you lot are the pop fans that jump from band to band depending on who is popular.
    Some people are like that. Some have more honest and noble aspirations.

    Do you remember the ice bucket challenge? It became a huge bandwagon. Lots of celebrities got involved. Most of them were just following a trend. And yet it did still raise lots of money for research on motor neuron disease that has led to a real breakthrough. So, sure, point out the hypocrisy if you see it, but equally don’t turn a blind eye to real problems that need attention or the good that can be done.
    The ice bucket challenge however wasn't implying somethings matter more than others where as blm was definitely implying black lives were worth more
    BLM never implied black lives matter more than others. Racists in the US inferred that to rubbish the movement. You take a cynical eye to “black lives matter”, but you swallow the manufactured critique of it by MAGA uncritically.
    If they didn't imply that why were so many blm people furious about some people posting all lives matter?
    Because “all live matters” was performative. It was a rebuttal invented by the far right in the US.

    You can see that “black lives matter” was sometimes performative and done cynically. Why can’t you see that “all lives matter” was just as much a politicised slogan, also used performativley? It’s not some neutral observation. It was created to deny the critique of systematic violence against black lives in the US.
    Are we in america? No we aren't
    Is anything we do here remotely important to most americans? No it isn't
    Is it therefore performative nonsense designed to do know more than polish virtuous halos of the otherwise worthless? Yes....yes it is
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 6,401
    edited June 7
    Is England's win against Andorra like a Premier League team beating a non league team 1 - 0 ?
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 4,883
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
    But he had his earnest face on. Personally, I'm pretty sure this image alone stopped most racism in its tracks.

    image
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924
    ohnotnow said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
    But he had his earnest face on. Personally, I'm pretty sure this image alone stopped most racism in its tracks.

    image
    It makes me hate white people and I am one
  • TresTres Posts: 2,864
    Pagan2 said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
    But he had his earnest face on. Personally, I'm pretty sure this image alone stopped most racism in its tracks.

    image
    It makes me hate white people and I am one
    seems to me like hate is all you got :(
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 14,641
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    This is called whataboutery. There are many terrible things in the world, but where does it get us to react to any campaign to make something better by berating the campaigners about why they didn’t do something for another problem?
    I am pointing out their hypocrisy...its not whataboutery....they only cared because it was fashionable to do so which is typical of the wokerati.....they don't give a shit till its a bandwagon to jump on so they can show their virtue....you lot are the pop fans that jump from band to band depending on who is popular.
    Some people are like that. Some have more honest and noble aspirations.

    Do you remember the ice bucket challenge? It became a huge bandwagon. Lots of celebrities got involved. Most of them were just following a trend. And yet it did still raise lots of money for research on motor neuron disease that has led to a real breakthrough. So, sure, point out the hypocrisy if you see it, but equally don’t turn a blind eye to real problems that need attention or the good that can be done.
    The ice bucket challenge however wasn't implying somethings matter more than others where as blm was definitely implying black lives were worth more
    BLM never implied black lives matter more than others. Racists in the US inferred that to rubbish the movement. You take a cynical eye to “black lives matter”, but you swallow the manufactured critique of it by MAGA uncritically.
    If they didn't imply that why were so many blm people furious about some people posting all lives matter?
    Because “all live matters” was performative. It was a rebuttal invented by the far right in the US.

    You can see that “black lives matter” was sometimes performative and done cynically. Why can’t you see that “all lives matter” was just as much a politicised slogan, also used performativley? It’s not some neutral observation. It was created to deny the critique of systematic violence against black lives in the US.
    Are we in america? No we aren't
    Is anything we do here remotely important to most americans? No it isn't
    Is it therefore performative nonsense designed to do know more than polish virtuous halos of the otherwise worthless? Yes....yes it is
    And what about performative nonsense to dogwhistle racism? Is that also worthless? Why don’t you criticise that as well? You appear not to be engaging in the problems around “all lives matter”.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 31,060
    ohnotnow said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
    But he had his earnest face on. Personally, I'm pretty sure this image alone stopped most racism in its tracks.

    image
    Never mind knees, what's happening with the shelves behind him?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 38,743
    Elon Musk's new profile pic


  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    It might do if we were the US where yes killing black people seems to be a police past time, though if you look at police killings in the us the more commonality seems to be poor people.

    Here not so much so the sub text doesn't work here its just a racist exposition
    It has more resonance in America, I'd agree with that. But it's not totally inappropriate here. Anti-black racism isn't a 'sorted' issue.
    Neither is anti white racism nor anti asian racism and both happen here as well. Your argument therefore is null and void....factor in also our police kill very few people compared to american police
    You're overthinking it. One last go.

    I see a person kicking a cat, ok. It's a cruel and nasty spectacle and it upsets me. So I intervene. I stop the abuse and then I protest to the guy who did it. I look him in the eye and I go ...

    "Cats matter, you no good so and so. CATS MATTER!"

    I put the footage on the internet with that slogan.

    Have I done wrong? Should I have stressed that lots of other things matter too?
    So why did they not do a similar campaign when the lorry driver was beheaded by islamists?
    This is called whataboutery. There are many terrible things in the world, but where does it get us to react to any campaign to make something better by berating the campaigners about why they didn’t do something for another problem?
    I am pointing out their hypocrisy...its not whataboutery....they only cared because it was fashionable to do so which is typical of the wokerati.....they don't give a shit till its a bandwagon to jump on so they can show their virtue....you lot are the pop fans that jump from band to band depending on who is popular.
    Some people are like that. Some have more honest and noble aspirations.

    Do you remember the ice bucket challenge? It became a huge bandwagon. Lots of celebrities got involved. Most of them were just following a trend. And yet it did still raise lots of money for research on motor neuron disease that has led to a real breakthrough. So, sure, point out the hypocrisy if you see it, but equally don’t turn a blind eye to real problems that need attention or the good that can be done.
    The ice bucket challenge however wasn't implying somethings matter more than others where as blm was definitely implying black lives were worth more
    BLM never implied black lives matter more than others. Racists in the US inferred that to rubbish the movement. You take a cynical eye to “black lives matter”, but you swallow the manufactured critique of it by MAGA uncritically.
    If they didn't imply that why were so many blm people furious about some people posting all lives matter?
    Because “all live matters” was performative. It was a rebuttal invented by the far right in the US.

    You can see that “black lives matter” was sometimes performative and done cynically. Why can’t you see that “all lives matter” was just as much a politicised slogan, also used performativley? It’s not some neutral observation. It was created to deny the critique of systematic violence against black lives in the US.
    Are we in america? No we aren't
    Is anything we do here remotely important to most americans? No it isn't
    Is it therefore performative nonsense designed to do know more than polish virtuous halos of the otherwise worthless? Yes....yes it is
    And what about performative nonsense to dogwhistle racism? Is that also worthless? Why don’t you criticise that as well? You appear not to be engaging in the problems around “all lives matter”.
    All performative stuff is shit whether pro or anti especially when its around an issue in another country frankly
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 6,401
    ohnotnow said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
    But he had his earnest face on. Personally, I'm pretty sure this image alone stopped most racism in its tracks.

    image
    He's so earnestly insincere
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924
    Tres said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
    But he had his earnest face on. Personally, I'm pretty sure this image alone stopped most racism in its tracks.

    image
    It makes me hate white people and I am one
    seems to me like hate is all you got :(
    Even if true it would still mean my life isn't as empty as yours
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 18,882
    edited June 7

    Leon said:

    geoffw said:

    Sir John Curtice:

    Times Radio
    @TimesRadio

    “Reform has essentially taken the coalition of people who gave Boris Johnson his majority in 2019.”

    https://x.com/TimesRadio/status/1931346961321402512

    Boris got 44% in 2019. Reform UK are polling around 30-32%. They need a third of their support again to match Boris.
    Perhaps that's the way - Boris joins Reform and they do a reverse merger with the rump Tories to become the Reformatories aka borstal boys

    @bondegezou is characteristically wrong. If the electoral field is fragmented as it is now, then 32% might do fine for Reform, under FPTP
    Tactical voting might do for Nige though, especially if his ceiling is 30% or so. He will have to tread carefully, which he's not well known for. The attack on Sarwar in the Scottish by-election backfired, encouraged Labour's vote to turn out, and delivered an unexpected victory for Labour.

    People certainly do want immigration tackled, but they are squeamish about voting for obvious bad 'uns who are playing them - this is not the USofA.
    FPTP is a terrible system, so Reform UK might win a majority on 30%. 30%, nevertheless, remains only three quarters of what Boris got.
    Whilst one should be very very cautious about contradicting the Curtice, there's an important slice of the Boris 2019 vote missing from the Reform coalition.

    That's the "I may not like Boris, but I am terrified at the prospect of Corbyn" voters. They may not be fans of Starmer. To save us all some time, I'll point out that approximately nobody is a fan of Starmer. But if the choice resolves into Nigel vs. not-Nigel, not-Nigel wins.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924

    ohnotnow said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
    But he had his earnest face on. Personally, I'm pretty sure this image alone stopped most racism in its tracks.

    image
    He's so earnestly insincere
    I hope that isn't the super expensive suit he was gifted because it looks like it came from a charity shop
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 9,077

    ohnotnow said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
    But he had his earnest face on. Personally, I'm pretty sure this image alone stopped most racism in its tracks.

    image
    Never mind knees, what's happening with the shelves behind him?
    Can't reach the top one, obvs

  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 43,856
    Pagan2 said:

    Good evening

    Seems the England fans were chanting uncomplimentary words to our Prime Minister tonight

    Was he playing centre forward?
    Surely he was playing on the left wing
    Unconvincingly for a natural defensive midfielder.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 78,081
    There's chatter that Trump is considering a pardon.

    The end of federal oversight and calls to pardon George Floyd’s convicted killer could undermine police reforms, Minneapolis leaders warn
    https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/05/21/us/george-floyd-minneapolis-chauvin-pardon-reform
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924

    Pagan2 said:

    Good evening

    Seems the England fans were chanting uncomplimentary words to our Prime Minister tonight

    Was he playing centre forward?
    Surely he was playing on the left wing
    Unconvincingly for a natural defensive midfielder.
    I understand all those words and still have no idea what it means
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 9,077
    Scott_xP said:
    Taco Belle nd*

    * nd
    medical, specialized
    written abbreviation for nondistended (= not swollen and large): often used when talking about a patient's abdomen
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 14,570

    Leon said:

    geoffw said:

    Sir John Curtice:

    Times Radio
    @TimesRadio

    “Reform has essentially taken the coalition of people who gave Boris Johnson his majority in 2019.”

    https://x.com/TimesRadio/status/1931346961321402512

    Boris got 44% in 2019. Reform UK are polling around 30-32%. They need a third of their support again to match Boris.
    Perhaps that's the way - Boris joins Reform and they do a reverse merger with the rump Tories to become the Reformatories aka borstal boys

    @bondegezou is characteristically wrong. If the electoral field is fragmented as it is now, then 32% might do fine for Reform, under FPTP
    Tactical voting might do for Nige though, especially if his ceiling is 30% or so. He will have to tread carefully, which he's not well known for. The attack on Sarwar in the Scottish by-election backfired, encouraged Labour's vote to turn out, and delivered an unexpected victory for Labour.

    People certainly do want immigration tackled, but they are squeamish about voting for obvious bad 'uns who are playing them - this is not the USofA.
    Effective tactical voting would certainly stop Reform getting a majority, unless the zeitgeist shifts. But following the last election, a simple formula for tactical voting may be unavailable, as too many seats are sensibly claimable by more than one party other than Reform. It would be simple if the Tories have ceased to count by then, but that's unlikely.

    Take the six seats in Cumbria, all except Farron's currently Labour. In 2019 they were all Tory. All now projected to be Reform. Is Labour or Tory the tactical vote?

    Be all that as it may, two racing certainties for 2029 election: Tactical voting with be a key issue; and never will there be a manifesto as closely examined, talked about and costed by critics as Reform's in 2029. (It will be a nationalist social democratic welfarist document).
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 35,573
    geoffw said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is what I said earlier today - in reply to a heartfelt comment by @DavidL


    "I doubt anyone on here, of any perspective, would seriously disagree with this. Many asylum seekers are - by definition - genuinely desperate people seeking a better life instead of a terrible life

    But - it must be faced - an awful lot are liars. They destroy their own documents so we can’t truly identify and then deport them. Also, they don’t seek asylum in Greece or Belgium - they come all the way to Britain. Why? Because often they are economic migrants, not asylum seekers at all. True asylum seekers would claim asylum in the first safe country

    Then we have a very small minority who are actively hostile and malign. The relative numbers are tiny - but they exist and they seek to harm us

    It’s a mess. It is unsustainable. The answer is to abandon the outdated concept of asylum and withdraw from the ECHR. Make it illegal to cross the channel in small boats

    Then we choose as a country who we will protect. We can’t shelter the world so let’s stop pretending we can - it’s doing enormous damage to the UK

    We can still do good. We can, for instance, shelter Hong Kongers and Ukrainians. And others in the future"


    I am pleased to see the estimable Mr Syed agrees with me entirely, after his two day visit to Calais

    And as I said the other day, what we need to do is end proxy wars and stabilise their home countries.

    Have you not noticed most of these small boat chappies are, well, chaps? Have you not channelled your inner Cyclefree and asked what is the difference between men and women that would make only the former seek asylum?

    It's not economics. It's war, or crime so bad it might as well be war. Men are fleeing being pressed into the army, militias or street gangs. And that's why the answer lies in pacifying large parts of Africa and not in ID cards for car-washers.
    Yeah. Stabilise Africa, Islam and the MENA. No biggie. Should take, what, couple weeks?
    There really is only one way - that is to eliminate the pull factors, and the wretched Tories were groping towards that end with the Rwanda policy, only to be reversed by Starmer just because

    The pull factor would still exist even with the remote threat posed by an implemented Rwanda (which ad a capacity of how many 100s max?)

    The pull factor is the black economy - that's what we should be closing down.
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 4,883

    ohnotnow said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
    But he had his earnest face on. Personally, I'm pretty sure this image alone stopped most racism in its tracks.

    image
    Never mind knees, what's happening with the shelves behind him?
    I wondered exactly the same thing when I dug out the picture. Apart from just... wut? Who has a spare top shelf with nothing to fill it? Apart from Keir's Labour Party.

    Oh.

    Maybe it was a cry for help?
  • solarflaresolarflare Posts: 3,997
    ohnotnow said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
    But he had his earnest face on. Personally, I'm pretty sure this image alone stopped most racism in its tracks.

    image
    KNEEL BEFORE ZOD
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924
    ohnotnow said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
    But he had his earnest face on. Personally, I'm pretty sure this image alone stopped most racism in its tracks.

    image
    Never mind knees, what's happening with the shelves behind him?
    I wondered exactly the same thing when I dug out the picture. Apart from just... wut? Who has a spare top shelf with nothing to fill it? Apart from Keir's Labour Party.

    Oh.

    Maybe it was a cry for help?
    The top shelf contains the labour plans for government
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 78,081
    Bessent never struck me as a fisticuffs type guy. Props to him...

    “Scott said, ‘You’re a fraud. You’re a total fraud' ... Musk then rammed his shoulder into Bessent’s rib cage 'like a rugby player,' Bannon said, and Bessent hit him back."
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1931365338987291029
  • Peter_the_PunterPeter_the_Punter Posts: 14,742

    Is England's win against Andorra like a Premier League team beating a non league team 1 - 0 ?

    Kind of, but I got into an argument when I said to a friend that there were pub sides in the UK that could give Andorra a decent game. I meant it.

    Do you think that was going too far?
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 14,570

    Leon said:

    geoffw said:

    Sir John Curtice:

    Times Radio
    @TimesRadio

    “Reform has essentially taken the coalition of people who gave Boris Johnson his majority in 2019.”

    https://x.com/TimesRadio/status/1931346961321402512

    Boris got 44% in 2019. Reform UK are polling around 30-32%. They need a third of their support again to match Boris.
    Perhaps that's the way - Boris joins Reform and they do a reverse merger with the rump Tories to become the Reformatories aka borstal boys

    @bondegezou is characteristically wrong. If the electoral field is fragmented as it is now, then 32% might do fine for Reform, under FPTP
    Tactical voting might do for Nige though, especially if his ceiling is 30% or so. He will have to tread carefully, which he's not well known for. The attack on Sarwar in the Scottish by-election backfired, encouraged Labour's vote to turn out, and delivered an unexpected victory for Labour.

    People certainly do want immigration tackled, but they are squeamish about voting for obvious bad 'uns who are playing them - this is not the USofA.
    FPTP is a terrible system, so Reform UK might win a majority on 30%. 30%, nevertheless, remains only three quarters of what Boris got.
    Whilst one should be very very cautious about contradicting the Curtice, there's an important slice of the Boris 2019 vote missing from the Reform coalition.

    That's the "I may not like Boris, but I am terrified at the prospect of Corbyn" voters. They may not be fans of Starmer. To save us all some time, I'll point out that approximately nobody is a fan of Starmer. But if the choice resolves into Nigel vs. not-Nigel, not-Nigel wins.
    Yes. There was no possibility for me of voting anything other than Tory in 2019 simply because of the Jezza factor. There were no good options, only bad and worse ones, WRT forming a government. By the same token I was only going to vote Labour in 2024 because they were the only decent option for government and we had to have one. That is still true. Unless the Tories do something sane like appoint Hunt as leader the same will apply in 2029.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 11,924
    algarkirk said:

    Leon said:

    geoffw said:

    Sir John Curtice:

    Times Radio
    @TimesRadio

    “Reform has essentially taken the coalition of people who gave Boris Johnson his majority in 2019.”

    https://x.com/TimesRadio/status/1931346961321402512

    Boris got 44% in 2019. Reform UK are polling around 30-32%. They need a third of their support again to match Boris.
    Perhaps that's the way - Boris joins Reform and they do a reverse merger with the rump Tories to become the Reformatories aka borstal boys

    @bondegezou is characteristically wrong. If the electoral field is fragmented as it is now, then 32% might do fine for Reform, under FPTP
    Tactical voting might do for Nige though, especially if his ceiling is 30% or so. He will have to tread carefully, which he's not well known for. The attack on Sarwar in the Scottish by-election backfired, encouraged Labour's vote to turn out, and delivered an unexpected victory for Labour.

    People certainly do want immigration tackled, but they are squeamish about voting for obvious bad 'uns who are playing them - this is not the USofA.
    FPTP is a terrible system, so Reform UK might win a majority on 30%. 30%, nevertheless, remains only three quarters of what Boris got.
    Whilst one should be very very cautious about contradicting the Curtice, there's an important slice of the Boris 2019 vote missing from the Reform coalition.

    That's the "I may not like Boris, but I am terrified at the prospect of Corbyn" voters. They may not be fans of Starmer. To save us all some time, I'll point out that approximately nobody is a fan of Starmer. But if the choice resolves into Nigel vs. not-Nigel, not-Nigel wins.
    Yes. There was no possibility for me of voting anything other than Tory in 2019 simply because of the Jezza factor. There were no good options, only bad and worse ones, WRT forming a government. By the same token I was only going to vote Labour in 2024 because they were the only decent option for government and we had to have one. That is still true. Unless the Tories do something sane like appoint Hunt as leader the same will apply in 2029.
    "The chances of politicians doing anything sane are a million to one he said" sung to the war of the world musical song
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 78,081
    Pagan2 said:

    ohnotnow said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kinabalu said:

    Ha, just ripped through the Andorra defence there. One nil!

    hmm country where 1 in 7300 citizens are in the football team against country where we have a choice of 6.2 million for each position and we are celebrating being 1 up....now either andorrans are all natural born footballers or just our team is crap
    We have a team of world-beating superstars who should be capable of winning every tournament. Problem is their insipid Lefty manager Gareth Southgate is drowning the players ambition and potential in a sea of woke. Once he finally goes the magic will commence.
    Are they still taking the bleedin' knee?
    I'm pleased to say they do.
    You are pleased they are still racist
    Que?
    If you take the knee because black lives matter you are implying by inference those lives are more important than asian lives or white lives. Sorry if you can't see that
    The slogan has the subtext that far too often it seems that black lives matter less or not at all.

    If it helps imagine a 'too' at the end or a 'just as much as others'.
    From all reality the message is black lives matter more than any others, methinks yiu are getting a bit mixed up.
    BLM is also massively damaging for the Left, as the ultra-Wokery makes them look mad

    4 years after George Floyd died and it went tits up, Trump won a comprehensive victory, better than 2016. There is a through line here
    George Floyd. God, I remember that.

    Yes, he was murdered in real-time on camera, despicably, and then he became a Saint, and then the world went completely mad.
    He came to stand for the many other African Americans who were murdered in real-time, but it wasn’t caught on camera.
    See the key word there is "American"....their problem not ours, peformative assholery here changes nothing is merely virtue signalling while being racist. If you look at police killings in america and control for poverty you will find the who is killed stats a lot more in line with the ethnic demography in any case.
    Yes, BLM began as an American movement in reaction to an American history of racism. But there are some commonalities wind connections with ourselves, the history of the British Empire, and ongoing racism in our society. I don’t see that trying to do something about that is a bad thing.

    Sure, some actions taken were performative, but I’d rather someone be performatively anti-racist than, say, being performatively anti-Muslim (which is at least 5% of posts on PB). I would prefer to target my cynicism a bit more than you do!
    Anything performative is by its very nature total bollocks, you only do it if you have an audience to see you do it. It is about acruing woke virtue points and nothing else.
    But he had his earnest face on. Personally, I'm pretty sure this image alone stopped most racism in its tracks.

    image
    Never mind knees, what's happening with the shelves behind him?
    I wondered exactly the same thing when I dug out the picture. Apart from just... wut? Who has a spare top shelf with nothing to fill it? Apart from Keir's Labour Party.

    Oh.

    Maybe it was a cry for help?
    The top shelf contains the labour plans for government
    Where's the vase ?
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 6,266
    IanB2 said:

    Despite Brexit, the UK is still following EU law on new car models, all of which have to deliver extremely annoying visual and audio warnings whenever the car thinks you are driving faster than the speed limit.

    Not quite: the UK is not following this law. It's just unlikely most manufacturers will bother removing it for us. Some may, though.

    The general vehicle safety laws we follow are these, also followed by the EU (and many countries with the notable exception of the USA):

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Forum_for_Harmonization_of_Vehicle_Regulations
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