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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Another reason why Cameron shouldn’t hold the referendum next June
Since the second world war, the greatest general election upset was not 2015 nor 1992, but Harold Wilson’s surprise loss in 1970. Most of the polls and the commentariat expected Labour to win a majority comfortably yet the Ted Heath’s Tories won a majority.
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She's very right-wing tbh; probably the Right's answer to Polly Toynbee.
And that will be too much for some. It will be too much for many of those who have expressed in millions of personal ways their own horror at the events of Friday night.
Which is fine. Until the next time. When we will again fashion our hashtags, and illuminate our buildings.
An perhaps next time it will be the Union flag that defiantly cuts through the night. And the rallying cry “Je suis Londres” that unites the world in solidarity.
Really? It'll be interesting to know the figures, but most people I know'll be actively trying to avoid the football.
Watching a corrupt sport where overpaid idiots act like prima donnas? No thanks.
I've got F1 for that.
Har, har, har. With this kind of affection, it's impossible to see why Scots think they should have their own country.
She can be very rightwing in ways that I don't get, but that doesn't make everything she says wrong. I'd stick her in the Katie Hopkins with brains segment. Being married to Joshua Rosenberg never fails to impress me.
No casual gossipy conversation in that household...
@Plato_Says I think every household needs causal gossip. Life is way too intense without some light relief!
I started watching F1 in the late 1970s, when I was knee high to a grassshopper. (I used to get dragged out to rally stages at a similar age, to stand in mud for hours to watch a few cars come whizzing past for a few minutes). I'm surprised I became a fan after that!
My slightly sarcastic point is that there is a tendency for the football fanatics to believe that everyone is interested in football. From memory, the figures show that the majority are not.
Yet we have to suffer the constant media blitz inn-season, and during tournaments it's terrible. The problem is you cannot avoid it: heck, even CBeebies has a footie show now.
Thousands a season from those I follow, I really am not interested. I tend to avoid Twitter on Saturday's entirely.
Dan was a stuck record on Ed Is Crap, but a) he was right and b) he made astute observations without wandering into Tories Eat Babies territory which Polly rolls in.
He never brought politics into it and it would be very difficult to judge his own politics even today.
The fact that he is married to Melanie Phillips does not say much. Many Jewish people are Labour - albeit less so than 50 years ago. The Milibands are Jewish. Gerald Kaufman is Jewish. Miliband's mother Marion Kozak set up the Jews for Justice in Palestine.
Melanie Phillips is not necessarily instinctively right wing. She views everything through the prism called "Israel". Once in QT, she admitted that when England played Israel in football. she'd support Israel.
I've never thought that most people actively follow football in the sense of watching every match, and following the careers of the top 50 footballers. However, in relative to other sports, in my experience it's the most popular. It's always the sport you see young boys (and increasingly young girls) playing in the playground. It's also a sport where people are likely to take a causal interest, for patriotic purposes during the World Cup, or Euro 2016 for example.
Whereas I barley I know anyone my age who is interested in F1. Rugby, is a different matter though, but I've never really been interested in Rugby.
Halal food has nothing to do with terrorists it's the right for us to make an informed choice. Something taken away from us that have lived here for generations, it's a typical left wing slant to gather it all up together as Surbiton has so clearly demonstrated throughout last thread. I mentioned the school children forced to eat Halal on the thread last night. What choice do they have. None.
Most of us do not think like you say in your post and I find it utterly odious that you and the left wing always try and portray the masses in that way in the same way that you have just accused others of false association for Muslims. It's that one sided argument that creates further division in our society.
Typical though and not unexpected. It's why you are no longer an MP and the left wing and Labour is becoming utterly irrelevant to mainstream sensible thinking people.
Part One
I give a talk to bankers and one of the topics is the duty to speak up about wrongdoing. What I say is this:-
“A trader sees a pile of shit near him. And he goes “Well, it’s not mine.” And walks away. And others do the same. And yet others see the pile and think it’s fine for it to be there and so they add to it. And eventually the pile becomes so big and smelly that people can’t move far enough away and it has to be cleaned up. That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is LIBOR and the FX scandal and every scandal there has ever been in banking. No-one saw anything, no-one heard anything. No-one said anything. They moved away and held a hankie to their nose and pretended it had nothing to do with them. But it’s not good enough to say “I am not a rogue trader. I don’t manipulate markets or insider deal or cheat my clients.” That may all be true. But when an industry has as many problems over such a long period in pretty much every organization and in every part of those organizations, saying that isn’t good enough.
That shit sticks to your shoe. That smell hangs around you. We are all tainted in this industry by what the bad guys do. Just as bad money drives out, so bad guys drive out the good. And it’s time – long past the time, frankly – for the good people to drive out the bad. And that’s why we all have to speak up. Because if you don’t, it’s your hard work, it’s your professional reputation, it’s your integrity, it’s your good name which is tainted. People will see you – however unfairly – as the same as the bad guys.”
Why am I sharing this?
Substitute the words “Muslim” for “trader” and “terrorist” for “rogue trader” and this describes the position we are in now with the terrorists and the wider Muslim community. Those people who committed fraud were not proper bankers, were not proper traders but they still ruined an industry’s reputation. And it took far too long for the banking industry to realize that the culture in banking which permitted and did not stop those people doing what they did was also part of the problem and needed to be changed. Which is why every bank has been embarking on extensive culture change programmes, why the regulators are focusing on it .
It pains me to say this but focusing endlessly on making sure Muslims don’t feel picked on – while understandable and right on a personal level – is on a community level giving that community an unjustified free pass. It resembles nothing so much as all those City bigwigs endlessly talking about “rotten apples” even when it was obvious to the rest of us that this was much more widespread and systemic and needed some hard work to root out. It was nauseating to see bankers respond to fresh evidence of wrongdoing with pathetic excuses which were not equal to the problem, with references to the money they brought in or with the insulting “The time for apologies is over” statement made by Bob Diamond when most of us thought the time for apologies had not even begun.
The more thoughtful Muslim commentators, like Majiid Nawaz, understand this. We need to give these people a helping hand. Not pretend that there is no problem which does not need addressing.
Because you’re honest. And right.
Muslims frequently appear to feel superior to the rest of us and look down on those who are more socially liberal and tolerant - and in the same breath claim to be victims.
Sorry, you can't be both superior and victims. It's that pandering to victimhood - especially fostered by Lefties that has led us to this parlous state. Righties are too scared still to correct this as they'll be called racists, Islamophobes, compared to Hitler and all the rest of this pathetic identity politicking.
And the media with its liberal Left leanings aren't helping anyone at all. They've skewed the whole debate - just look at the mawkishness over a single drowned child, and the immigration free-for-all they encouraged. The Paris attacks were aided by them before the fact.
So many world champions for a country of your size. Another benefit of the union!
Excuse me? I find that statement astonishing. It is the left which is so keen on putting people into categories: gays/women/ethnic minorities/the Sikhs (as in Ed Milliband's gauche statement during the election), the "whites" (as in getting them angry( etc., etc., and now they are all individuals when it comes to harassment.
Well, I don't think individuals should be harassed for something they haven't done. But for a former Labour MP to praise treating people as individuals when it is his party, more than any other, which has done so much to foster "identity" category politics takes some chutzpah, I must say.
http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2015/11/lord-feldman-should-not-raise-money-for-the-remain-campaign.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3318379/Hunt-Isis-killers-Syrian-passport-body-suicide-bomber-Stade-France.html
Thus the Tories are playing media games...
The station said three men were stopped by police on the French-Belgian border on Saturday night, but since their names were not on any wanted list they were allowed to continue – presumably to Molenbeek, the Brussels suburb where eight people have have been arrested since Saturday, including five this morning.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/nov/15/paris-attacker-named-investigation-continues-live-updates#block-56489338e4b0ced428cb2a61
Somebody is in big big do do...
I still haven't got a handle on Gulen. He's either the biggest charlatan in existence or a potential moderate way forward for Islam.
The problem is that an "innocent person" is an innocent Muslim. Kafir do not count as human. They can be killed, raped, brutalised with utter umpunity for there is no punishment under Sharia for anything done to a Kafir.
Against kuffars make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war to strike terror into the (hearts of) the Enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others beside, whom you may not know, but whom Allah does know. Whatever you shall spend in the Cause of Allah, shall be repaid to you, and you shall not be treated unjustly. (Qur'an: 8:60)
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As I said about the snoopers charter, even low level idiot wannabe jihadis are smart enough not to just access the net without some what of thought that the security services are probably watching / listening.
I'm all for getting more women in F1 - whether it's designing the cars, working in the pits or as drivers. The problem mostly lies in the lower tiers of the sport, and karting is trying to do something about that.
It'd have been good for Wolff to get a race or two, just to see how she did. But she wasn't good enough for a regular drive.
The problem is multi-faceted to be sure, but a key component that our politicians complicitly and deliberately ignore is that the central authorities of both main branches of Islam - Mecca for Sunnis and Teheran for Shi'a - are simply not moderate. They both promote murder of homosexuals, women adulterers, anyone who insults the prophet or religious authorities, apostates and atheists. Moderate Islam simply is not the mainstream Islam our politicians pretend it to be - at least not in the sense as the stream of Islam which holds most sway.
Until we attack the doctrinal problems in Mecca and Teheran, angry young muslim men will see that they have a license to murder in the name of Islam, and then will extend that license as they see fit.
On a day where we are still discussing the malevolent cancer that is religion in our society - the way in which it lowers intellects, then surely the idea that football might have any relevance to anything other than suicide rates is surely misplaced.
Most of the country will not be focusing on football, nor ever will!
If PSN is being used like this, I full expect Sony will co-operate with the authorities, we did back then IIRC.
Ouch..... Yup that's probably one of the worse puns ever on PB but could be right all the same.
Ephemeral channels (from burners to public Teamspeak servers) are really hard to deal with, especially when targets use multiple channels at once (e.g. using IRC to back up a Skype session).
However, the real challenge is when they just drop off the grid altogether (Body of Lies, while not a great film, summarises the issue really well).
Maybe EICIPM is a terrorist codeword?
My brother in Durham did the same. I'd be amazed if he knows a single Frenchman. It's meaningless in the main.
It's less of an effort than signing a petition. I've still got Je Suis Charlie Lib Dems in my timeline that didn't do anything than add a Twibbon.
https://twitter.com/montie/status/665525044911710208
Should Scotland be an Independent Country.
Yes 49%
No 51%
And fun for Scottish Labour who can't seem to get anything right.
Do you feel that you personally understand Labour’s position on Trident?
ALL VOTERS
Yes, I understand – they OPPOSE renewing it: 12%
Yes, I understand – they SUPPORT renewing it: 18%
No, I don’t understand what their position is: 70%
LABOUR VOTERS ONLY
Yes, I understand – they OPPOSE renewing it: 18%
Yes, I understand – they SUPPORT renewing it: 21%
No, I don’t understand what their position is: 61%
Failed "businesswoman" Michelle Mone is popular as ever
The Scottish businesswoman Michelle Mone – now Lady Mone of Mayfair – was recently made a member of the House Of Lords, and can now vote on acts of Parliament for life. Do you agree with this decision?
Yes: 15%
No: 57%
Don’t know: 28%
The Lords needs to go as well
The SNP is the only major party in Scotland which has no representatives in the UK House Of Lords, because it believes the Lords should be abolished and it chooses to boycott it for that reason. Which of the following is closest to your view?
ALL VOTERS
– it should stay, and the SNP should send peers to it: 28%
– it should stay, but the SNP should continue to boycott it: 9%
– it should be abolished, but while it exists the SNP should send peers to it: 29%
– it should be abolished and the SNP should continue to boycott it: 34%
SNP VOTERS ONLY
– it should stay, and the SNP should send peers to it: 15%
– it should stay, but the SNP should continue to boycott it: 5%
– it should be abolished, but while it exists the SNP should send peers to it: 33%
– it should be abolished and the SNP should continue to boycott it: 47%
The Labour Party has been pledging to abolish the House Of Lords for over 100 years, but has not yet done so when in power and currently has over 200 peers in the chamber. Which of the following is closest to your view?
ALL VOTERS
– Labour should keep their peers and continue working towards abolition: 28%
– Labour should keep their peers and abandon attempts at abolition: 26%
– Labour should withdraw all their peers in an attempt to force abolition, because it would then be too one-sided to be politically defensible: 46%
LABOUR VOTERS ONLY
– Labour should keep their peers and continue working towards abolition: 43%
– Labour should keep their peers and abandon attempts at abolition: 38%
– Labour should withdraw all their peers in an attempt to force abolition, because it would then be too one-sided to be politically defensible: 19%
Labour's hypocrisy over the Lords has to be having an effect on them in Scotland. At least elsewhere in the UK they are not facing a party which actually sticks to its principles over the Lords but in Scotland they do and it hurts.
Any "blood and soil" form of nationalism mixes triumphalism with victimhood and Self-pity
The piccies were a wall of remembrance to do with the former, not the latter. I think there's a conference about road safety in Brazil next week.
But it's a bit like expressing condolences to someone when a person they love dies or giving them a hug. It may not do anything but the gesture is appreciated. It makes someone feel, perhaps, a little less alone. It may be very little in the grand scheme of things. But it is not nothing.
Kindness - even electronically mediated kindness - is a virtue and is worthwhile, at a time when we have so much hatred.
They are genuine friends too, beyond Facebook.
"French president François Hollande called the attacks cowardly, but if there was one thing the attackers were not (alas, if only they had been), it was cowardly. They were evil, their ideas were deeply stupid, and they were brutal: but a man who knows that he is going to die in committing an act, no matter how atrocious, is not a coward. With the accuracy of a drone, the president honed in on the one vice that the attackers did not manifest. This establishes that bravery is not by itself a virtue, that in order for it to be a virtue it has to be exercised in pursuit of a worthwhile goal. To quote an eminent countryman of the president, Pascal: Travaillons, donc, à bien penser: voilà le principe de la morale. Let us labor, then, to think clearly: that is the principle of morality."
http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon1115td.html
@election_data: Oldham West is closer than 1/12 Labour
This is why we call him #JihadiJez https://t.co/XuVzvayOih
French media and AFP news agency report that three brothers were involved in the attacks and one may remain at large."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11996678/Paris-terror-attacks-victims-isil-suspects-Syria-arrests-live.html
It is interesting that the Manichean view - if you're not with us you're against us - is held by IS, even though it is an accusation all too often hurled at those who would do something about IS and their supporters.
Whereas in January you pretty soon got people explaining why the cartoonists had it coming, why Jews were picked and, in some cases, those explanations pretty soon morphed into justifications and victim-blaming.
He knows his data, and he's also from that part of the world.
It just isn't on by any party.
I can't see a pattern bar frightening all sections of society. As a terrorist aim, randomness works perfectly as a target.
The offensive bit is the way that such people then claim that anyone who doesn't share their vision on "Multiculturalism" as multi-way-apartheid is a mono-cultural racist.
See R v Rowe ex p Mainwaring ( 1992 ) AELR 821
It would be quite amusing were UKIP to win the by election only for them to be disqualified as per Woolas . Having said that in order for the disqualification to succeed Labour would have to produce witnesses stating that their vote was influenced by said leaflets .