Beaver (Lab defence) on Ashford
Result: United Kingdom Independence Party 373 (42% +11%), Labour 243 (27% -4%), Conservative 240 (27% unchanged), Green Party 31 (3%, no candidate in 2015)
United Kingdom Independence Party GAIN from Labour with a majority of 130 (15%) on a swing of 7.5% from Labour to UKIP
Comments
Its a clever move now i think about it because plenty if people will be put off calling it out since they will be branded racist.
I do not hold out much hope for the movement achieving its stated aims as it stands. Linking this to the death of criminal figure mark duggan isn't going to get you far.
But then the real puppeteers dont really care about that.
Government information security planning always assumes the attackers are at least as smart as the defenders, possesses perfect information about networks, crypto-algorithms, software, has the resources of a state-actor and so forth. It's a useful stance.
It's callous but true that terrorism of the nature displayed since 9/11 is statistically insignificant. The worry is always that somewhere a really smart group will weaponise an NBC capability and deploy it against a major population centre.
It's very hard to convince decision makers to properly resource & sustain counter measures as the size of the threat is, almost by definition, hard to quantify (c.f. Donald Rumsfeld's epic quote).
https://twitter.com/theAlexHanson/status/760984876107468800?s=09
We're a long way from Peak PC. I'm trying to think of when that was at its worst - mid to late 2000s?
Trump floats Ivanka for Cabinet
Personally I don't really have an issue with people using these words because it reflects more on them as people than anything else.
What's worse than death?
By @TheEconomist
HT @Vilavaite https://t.co/U48h9qpDJA
Just for @Jonathan #SouthernRail
Giving us such joys as the McPherson Report, the Rotherham cover up etc. and the more absurd end of the spectrum rural organisations being asked why there aren't more black people roaming the countryside.
To be honest, if you brought forward in time an SWP nut from say 1976 to today, he/she would be thrilled and delighted with how deeply this agenda has become embedded in British public life.
Yes ....
Christopher Snowden
The best bit about this song is the way they have to ruin the rhyme to put in 'and women' so as not to be sexist. https://t.co/WhZJq2pLb6
https://youtu.be/aLa67mjm7hg
I'm sure future generations will lambast us for our monstrous slaughter of sapient creatures and our destruction of the environment.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-trumps-slump-deepens-in-polls/
Political Correctness has rightly changed what is acceptable to the mass of people. I go to PL regularly and I one game last season some idiot got up and started shouting racist abuse at an opposing player. Almost to a man the entire stand turned on him. Twenty years ago most people would have laughed.
My Mum was extremely disdainful of 'poofters' until one of her grandsons came out. When a particular part of society is seen as the 'Other', it can be mocked and despised. Once you realise you know some (say) gay people, it changes your views.
Eventually, governments catch up to society.
Clinton 81.7 .. Trump 18.3 - Polls Only
Clinton 75.4 .. Trump 24.6 - Polls Plus
Clinton 92.9 .. Trump 7.1 - Nowcast
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/#now
Even now here, in the space of a few short years. Gay marriage and the adoption of children by homosexual couples are now so considered to be the 'right thing', that to claim otherwise (and to tell your children otherwise) would put you on an extremist watch list. Indeed gay marriage is such a British Value (tm), that if your children dared to project a contrary position at school it would trigger safeguarding rules.
Cecilia Holland was one of the few historical novelists I've read that truly put people into their time. George MacDonald Fraser has the incomparable Flashman who is absolutely Victorian to a tee - and obnoxious by our standards.
Judging only by modern standards is, of course, foolish but I think blithely accepting contemporary 'norms' to measure historical figures gainst misses the opportunity for discovering the interesting and quixotic about them.
I love, for instance, that every cup of tea drunk by anti-slavery advocates in their meetings was purchased by the forced at gun point sale of opium to the Chinese.
What is also irritating is how films and TV show the past, whether fairly recent or long ago. All the good characters have values that any modern metropolitan liberal would consider to be right on and anyone possessing cultural values that are more representative of the time as bigoted.
Even now here, in the space of a few short years. Gay marriage and the adoption of children by homosexual couples are now so considered to be the 'right thing', that to claim otherwise (and to tell your children otherwise) would put you on an extremist watch list. Indeed gay marriage is such a British Value (tm), that if your children dared to project a contrary position at school it would trigger safeguarding rules.
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Exactly. Now if we think such attitudes are wrong, we should be arguing that from first principles and appealing to people's reason.
What is instead happening is that PC attitudes are being ingrained and enforced in the same way that religious dogmas used to be, as an unchallengeable truth. That is a form of oppression.
And people are sufficiently scared of appearing to transgress these new religious dogmas and be condemned by the PC priesthood, that they are willing to tolerate far worse things going on e.g. Rotherham, FGM etc.
Avon and Somerset Police say a human foot has been found in a garden in Bath, the third foot to be discovered in the area in recent weeks.
Is it Jake the Peg?!
Oh no, Rolf is in the Clink
Britain decriminalised homosexuality long before the public was in favour of it.
What I do admire about the Victorians (I guess it falls into the Regency as well), is once we'd decided to abolish slavery, we had the arrogance to decide that it was banned for all, hence the West Africa squadron.
Are they all Left footers?
No. Osbo said taxes would have to rise and spending cut. You telling me that will happen in autumn statement?
Rupert Harrison @rbrharrison
@afneil 1st, he was making the (correct) argument that Brexit would hit the economy, 2nd, I'd advise waiting for the OBR's autumn forecast
(Andrew Neil @afneil 6h6 hours ago
Oh I don't know. Your mate Osbourne managed it when he threatened us with his punishment budget ...)
Better to hear worthless and offensive thought and comment, than people are restricted from expressing potentially worthy thought and comment through fear of being accused of causing offence.
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To be honest, if you brought forward in time an SWP nut from say 1976 to today, he/she would be thrilled and delighted with how deeply this agenda has become embedded in British public life.
Nick Palmer put up a superb post on here a couple of years back demonstrating just that. How many policies of the, then, radical left had become not only mainstream but in some cases actually adopted by the Conservative Party.
I'm still not convinced that governments are thought leaders.
My Mum was extremely disdainful of 'poofters' until one of her grandsons came out. When a particular part of society is seen as the 'Other', it can be mocked and despised. Once you realise you know some (say) gay people, it changes your views.
Eventually, governments catch up to society.
Obama coming out in favour of gay marriage had a dramatic effect on its approval amongst african-americans.
Britain decriminalised homosexuality long before the public was in favour of it.
I'm still not sure the UK is actively in favour of homosexuality. It's just not seen as salient.
What does it mean to be "actively in favour"?
I meant in favour of decriminalising.
I seem to recall the polling is very supportive now. I suspect the attitudes of several governments have had a part to play in this. Difficult to quantify of course. In my case in the late 60s the 1967 Act was something I felt to be very significant.
When we had that idiotic Rhodes Must Fall stuff, I suggested a compromise would be to put a plaque up against all images and statues of historical figures, which stated 'People in the past had different views than we do today - if they were not racist or sexist, chances are they were still arseholes. So get over it'.
Better to hear worthless and offensive thought and comment, than people are restricted from expressing potentially worthy thought and comment through fear of being accused of causing offence.
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Over in Iraq and Syria, of course, a group of nutters has indeed been engaged in trying to destroy all evidence of an 'inappropriate' past.
The Rhodes Must Fall tendency are pretty similar IMO.
Basic point. 16% supported gay marriage in 1975, 69% in 2014.
*edit* here's a snapshot of present day attitudes in general.
As they say, it is wrong to make gods out of men, but it is also wrong to make Devils out of men.
Where people think there is a lack of moral difficulty, I'd bet good money it's through ignorance of historical realities in that case.
I dislike this wimpish guilt-ridden bet-wetting view of history some have.
Every country has been full of bastards throughout history. It's just that ours were more competent than most. Feeling guilty because some blokes did bad stuff two centuries ago is deranged.
Olympic rambling:
http://thaddeusthesixth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/ancient-olympics.html
For me it's just another form of intolerance. Our empire builders, racist, sexist etc as they were, left us some wonderful legacies. We can deplore the former while enjoying and appreciating the latter.
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Morally difficult if one is built on the other.
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As just about everyone living before 1900 or perhaps even 1950 held views or engaged in practices that the modern PC priesthood would deem unacceptable, that line if reasoning suggests we should indeed be heading down the same road as ISIS in condemning and even destroying the past.
I'm sure that's not what you think David. But how do you strike a middle position? Do we say hurrah to things where we suspect there was a bit less racism, sexism, labour exploitation etc. and boo hiss to those where we suspect that maybe there was a bit more? How to we gauge that?
It's a nonsense.
They'd better put me on the list. I'm with the vast majority of the world's population who support, or are OK with, the authorities favouring the raising of children by a man and a woman and not letting gay couples adopt. Men and women are essentially different, as we all know. Never mind that a tiny percentage of people are in the grey area - that's no counterargument. Being raised by their parents, or, if that's not an option, at least by a man and a woman, is good for children and should be officially encouraged and not considered "equal" to being raised by a gay couple. For that reason, gay marriage should not be allowed. If two people of the same sex want to sign a contract whereby they inherit from each other, or whatever, let them. Now that I can believe.
The assumption things get better over time is plain wrong (the Dark Ages being better than Rome under Vespasian or Trajan would be an unorthodox view of improving conditions).
Debatable, I think.
Social pressures aren't inherently positive. It was social pressure that led to Athens killing almost its entire military leadership during the Peloponnesian War. There's social pressure from some to make it illegal to insult a 7th century foreigner because their delicate feelings can't take it.