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  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403

    TOPPING said:

    RoyalBlue said:



    So you think a democratic polity that doesn’t discriminate between nationals and non-nationals, and has no restrictions on the entrance of the latter, is sustainable?

    Good for you. Real world example in your own time. NB sustainable.

    Oh get over yourself.

    Of course we distinguish between nationals and non-nationals. We had decided to limit the restrictions on the entrance of some non-nationals (though there were still plenty of restrictions) and when given a chance to choose whether we liked this, we decided (because, you know, we're sovereign and all that) to impose still more restrictions.
    So non-national EU migrants can't claim welfare? They can't claim tax credits etc? They get charged to use the NHS? They're treated the same as non-European non-nationals?

    I'd have no problem with abolishing the cap on migration globally so long as those who arrive pay for the NHS usage and can't claim any welfare at all. They can come here, pay taxes and support themselves. After years of being law abiding residents they can claim citizenship at which point they would stop paying for the NHS etc
    What are you banging on about double degree boy?

    We have rules for non-EU immigrants and different rules for EU immigrants and the rules for EU immigrants was tightened up considerably as the link I provided explained.
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403
    edited August 2018
    John_M said:

    TOPPING said:

    John_M said:

    TOPPING said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    TOPPING said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    Anazina said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    Anazina said:

    Mortimer said:

    IanB2 said:

    It is depressing that Mr Palmer thinks that an agenda driven by identity politics is going to take us anywhere worthwhile or desirable. No wonder Labour is in trouble with many of its traditional supporters.

    +1, I'm afraid.
    I presume by using the awful '+1' meme you are claiming to oppose identity politics?

    If so, you are a raging hypocrite.

    Ys.

    Good afternoon, miseryguts.

    ‘Tiny majority’. Last time I checked that’s still bigger than a large minority. If people of different backgrounds hadn’t supported Brexit, it wouldn’t have won.
    I find the collective denial by the PB Leavers that Brexit is an identity-political event absolutely extraordinary, even by PB standards.
    Tell us: How is democratic politics meant to be legitimate without some sense of solidarity and common feeling amongst the electorate? At the moment, the U.K. relies on national identity. That is far more capacious than race or religion. Would you prefer that the state legitimate itself through confessional means a la Saudi, or blunt ethnicity a la Hungary?

    I campaigned for leave with immigrants and the children of immigrants from Europe and beyond. Step out of your bubble.
    Perfectly understandable that they'd want to pull the drawbridge up after them. Not necessarily an attractive trait, that said.

    Brexit was, in short, about not liking foreigners and people from foreign parts. Couldn't be more identity politics than that.
    No it wasn't, not on any view. The NHS bus was 10 times as effective as any other argument, and while it was wazzockry of the purest kind it was not anti-foreigner wazzockry.
    HYUFD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    https://thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/man-claims-hius-life-being-ruined-by-immigration-but-cant-explain-how-20170227122932
    Indeed. People should just get over these imaginary concerns and become well educated and wealthy like me, then everything would be just peachy. Hail Juncker!
    LOL textbook projection - so in your world: uneducated and poor = not liking foreigners.
  • Options
    surby said:

    Mr. Blue, the Conservatives have been incompetent at delivering an economic message since Osborne left.

    Hammond's star is stealthily rising !
    Osborne was words not actions.

    Hammond is actions not words.
  • Options
    OchEyeOchEye Posts: 1,469

    TOPPING said:

    It is sad that Nick Palmer has become an apologist for a violent, thuggish cult that has taken over a party that used to stand for a strand of opinion that was, while sometimes misguided, honourable and decent. The Tory party, through their throwing away of their trump card of economic competence by supporting Brexit, are allowing these economic imbeciles to inch toward power .

    Nick Palmer has always come across to me as a reasonable person. Admittedly he is tribal and paints whatever the current position of the Labour Party is in as good a light as possible, but there are many on this site who do the same for their ?
    Plenty on both sides are pretty critical of their own side as posts from PB will illustrate.

    What I find difficult to take with Nick's post is that it is, as has been pointed out on here already, turning a blind eye to some of the less attractive, not to say repugnant tendencies of the modern left. All well and good if they turned up to conference, put a stand up in a side corridor and hoped for a few visitors. But these people are running the Party.

    Jeremy Corbyn is probably not an anti-semite. Possibly. But it is unarguable that he has presided over a Labour Party within which anti-semites feel emboldened. It is plausible deniability.

    We all laughed at his supposed faux pas when asked about the cemetery, but it was more acute than we realised. Jeremy Corbyn's position on anti-semitism is the very definition of being involved but not present.
    I've referred to Corbyn as a 'passive anti-Semite', and I've see little evidence to change my view. He allows views that are anti-Semitic to be aired and promoted without challenge, even if he does not pronounce those views himself, yet would argue strongly against the airing or promotion of other forms of racism.

    He's also deaf to it: when his own MPs gave their experiences of the anti-Semitism they're experiencing in parliament, and he didn't bother to stay to listen.
    Repeat after me: Corbyn is anti zionism many more of the Jewish Faith are not Zionists, there are many people who are not Jewish who are Zionists. Zionism is a quasi religious political system created around 1860 or so, with a heavy dash of 1920's then fashionable fad of eugenics, the purity of the Jewish people and Ersatz Israel. That Zionism has been successfully conflated with the Jewish faith, with any critics being immediately condemned as anti semitic is one of the advertising success stories of the past 70 odd years
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,974
    OchEye said:

    TOPPING said:

    It is sad that Nick Palmer has become an apologist for a violent, thuggish cult that has taken over a party that used to stand for a strand of opinion that was, while sometimes misguided, honourable and decent. The Tory party, through their throwing away of their trump card of economic competence by supporting Brexit, are allowing these economic imbeciles to inch toward power .

    Nick Palmer has always come across to me as a reasonable person. Admittedly he is tribal and paints whatever the current position of the Labour Party is in as good a light as possible, but there are many on this site who do the same for their ?
    Plenty on both sides are pretty critical of their own side as posts from PB will illustrate.

    What I find difficult to take with Nick's post is that it is, as has been pointed out on here already, turning a blind eye to some of the less attractive, not to say repugnant tendencies of the modern left. All well and good if they turned up to conference, put a stand up in a side corridor and hoped for a few visitors. But these people are running the Party.

    Jeremy Corbyn is probably not an anti-semite. Possibly. But it is unarguable that he has presided over a Labour Party within which anti-semites feel emboldened. It is plausible deniability.

    We all laughed at his supposed faux pas when asked about the cemetery, but it was more acute than we realised. Jeremy Corbyn's position on anti-semitism is the very definition of being involved but not present.
    I've referred to Corbyn as a 'passive anti-Semite', and I've see little evidence to change my view. He allows views that are anti-Semitic to be aired and promoted without challenge, even if he does not pronounce those views himself, yet would argue strongly against the airing or promotion of other forms of racism.

    He's also deaf to it: when his own MPs gave their experiences of the anti-Semitism they're experiencing in parliament, and he didn't bother to stay to listen.
    That Zionism has been successfully conflated with the Jewish faith, with any critics being immediately condemned as anti semitic is one of the advertising success stories of the past 70 odd years
    If the cap fits, wear it.
  • Options
    John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    edited August 2018
    TOPPING said:

    John_M said:

    TOPPING said:

    John_M said:

    TOPPING said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    TOPPING said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    Anazina said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    Anazina said:

    Mortimer said:

    IanB2 said:

    It is depressing that Mr Palmer thinks that an agenda driven by identity politics is going to take us anywhere worthwhile or desirable. No wonder Labour is in trouble with many of its traditional supporters.

    +1, I'm afraid.
    I presume by using the awful '+1' meme you are claiming to oppose identity politics?

    If so, you are a raging hypocrite.

    Ys.

    Good afternoon, miseryguts.

    ‘Tiny majority’. Last time I checked that’s still bigger than a large minority. If people of different backgrounds hadn’t supported Brexit, it wouldn’t have won.
    I find the collective denial by the PB Leavers that Brexit is an identity-political event absolutely extraordinary, even by PB standards.
    Perfectly understandable that they'd want to pull the drawbridge up after them. Not necessarily an attractive trait, that said.

    Brexit was, in short, about not liking foreigners and people from foreign parts. Couldn't be more identity politics than that.
    HYUFD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    https://thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/man-claims-hius-life-being-ruined-by-immigration-but-cant-explain-how-20170227122932
    Indeed. People should just get over these imaginary concerns and become well educated and wealthy like me, then everything would be just peachy. Hail Juncker!
    LOL textbook projection - so in your world: uneducated and poor = not liking foreigners.
    Oh dear. You're the one who asserted, this very day, 'Brexit was, in short, about not liking foreigners and people from foreign parts', and given that it was the DEs who had the largest Leave/Remain split by some margin (per Ashcroft's post-ref polling), then I think I'm on reasonably solid ground.
  • Options
    surbysurby Posts: 1,227

    surby said:

    Mr. Blue, the Conservatives have been incompetent at delivering an economic message since Osborne left.

    Hammond's star is stealthily rising !
    Osborne was words not actions.

    Hammond is actions not words.
    Noticeably, whenever people talk of May's successor as Leader, no one mentions the obvious person.
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403
    John_M said:

    TOPPING said:

    John_M said:

    TOPPING said:

    John_M said:

    TOPPING said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    TOPPING said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    Anazina said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    Anazina said:

    Mortimer said:

    IanB2 said:

    It is depressing that Mr Palmer thinks that an agenda driven by identity politics is going to take us anywhere worthwhile or desirable. No wonder Labour is in trouble with many of its traditional supporters.

    +1, I'm afraid.
    I presume by using the awful '+1' meme you are claiming to oppose identity politics?

    If so, you are a raging hypocrite.

    Ys.

    Good afternoon, miseryguts.

    ‘Tiny majority’. Last time I checked that’s still bigger than a large minority. If people of different backgrounds hadn’t supported Brexit, it wouldn’t have won.
    I find the collective denial by the PB Leavers that Brexit is an identity-political event absolutely extraordinary, even by PB standards.
    Perfectly understandable that they'd want to pull the drawbridge up after them. Not necessarily an attractive trait, that said.

    Brexit was, in short, about not liking foreigners and people from foreign parts. Couldn't be more identity politics than that.
    HYUFD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    https://thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/man-claims-hius-life-being-ruined-by-immigration-but-cant-explain-how-20170227122932
    Indeed. People should just get over these imaginary concerns and become well educated and wealthy like me, then everything would be just peachy. Hail Juncker!
    LOL textbook projection - so in your world: uneducated and poor = not liking foreigners.
    Oh dear. You're the one who asserted, this very day, 'Brexit was, in short, about not liking foreigners and people from foreign parts', and given that it was the DEs who had the largest Leave/Remain split by some margin (per Ashcroft's post-ref polling), then I think I'm on reasonably solid ground.
    okey cokey. I didn't mention the class of those people who don't like foreigners: my point was a lot of these people would go days before knowingly bumping into a foreigner, as described so acutely by the Daily Mash, and yours in response was that in order to not not like foreigners they needed to get an education and a good job.
  • Options
    NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,369
    edited August 2018



    I've always been a fan of PR - I grew up in Denmark where you can choose between a dozen shades of opinion, while being clear which coalition they will join. That works well because you can, for instance, support the Radical Liberals, who favour free markets, liberal social values and low defence spending, a mixture of nuances that doesn't really exist in Britain. Even better, you can vote for individuals out of a list, so weighing up the relative attractions of, say, Boris vs Gove or Umunna vs Thornberry, without harming your preferred party.

    If we had PR, both Tories and Labour would divide almost instantly and give some clear choices, maybe the LibDems too. The parties are all uneasy coalitions.

    Yeh, and the English Patriotic National Party, or whatever, would be on 20%.

    Sweden, Germany etc etc shows what can happen.

    I'm really SURE that the best way of combating extremism is not to construct an electoral system that prevents their representation. If 20% of voters are nationalist xenophobes, we need to address nationalist xenophobia, not rig the system so we don't need to lsiten to them.

    Sweden and Germany are both governed in a way that most people would regard as reasonably sensible and successful, but feel constrained by a substantial party representing people worried about immigration That seems to me a sensible democratic approach, whereas just making sure that Parliament doesn't have anyone representing such concerns does one of two things:
    (1) forces people with extreme views to join a major party and try to hijack it or
    (2) disillusions people with politics altogether and attracts them to non-parliamentary options.

    I even favour regular referenda like Switzerland. Sometimes they lead to things I don't like (the minaret ban), but then so do regular elections. But they give people with extreme views an option to influence politics by coming up with a good idea. Basel's Communist Party (total vote 0.5%) got a majority for a referendum not to build more multi-storey carparks in the centre (because they would draw in more traffic to the congested streets) - people thought hmm, yes, they're right about that, and they in turn had been drawn into constructive politics.

    I think the way to persuade my and other parties of this is to try it for local councils. Nobody reasonable thinks that councils with 80 members all from one party are a good idea.
  • Options
    Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981

    Ishmael_Z said:

    TOPPING said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    Anazina said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    Anazina said:

    Mortimer said:

    IanB2 said:

    It is depressing that Mr Palmer thinks that an agenda driven by identity politics is going to take us anywhere worthwhile or desirable. No wonder Labour is in trouble with many of its traditional supporters.

    +1, I'm afraid.
    I presume by using the awful '+1' meme you are claiming to oppose identity politics?

    If so, you are a raging hypocrite.

    You are on here frequently pushing the ultimate identity-political programme – Brexit – the tyranny of a tiny majority of provincial nationalists over metropolitan liberals. With your hectoring, paleoconservative affected fogeyish nostalgia, you are the personification of the patronising, moralising, traditionalist rightwing: the embodiment of village green identity politics.

    Good afternoon, miseryguts.

    ‘Tiny majority’. Last time I checked that’s still bigger than a large minority. If people of different backgrounds hadn’t supported Brexit, it wouldn’t have won.
    I find the collective denial by the PB Leavers that Brexit is an identity-political event absolutely extraordinary, even by PB standards.
    Tell us: How is democratic politics meant to be legitimate without some sense of solidarity and common feeling amongst the electorate? At the moment, the U.K. relies on national identity. That is far more capacious than race or religion. Would you prefer that the state legitimate itself through confessional means a la Saudi, or blunt ethnicity a la Hungary?

    I campaigned for leave with immigrants and the children of immigrants from Europe and beyond. Step out of your bubble.
    Perfectly understandable that they'd want to pull the drawbridge up after them. Not necessarily an attractive trait, that said.

    Brexit was, in short, about not liking foreigners and people from foreign parts. Couldn't be more identity politics than that.
    No it wasn't, not on any view. The NHS bus was 10 times as effective as any other argument, and while it was wazzockry of the purest kind it was not anti-foreigner wazzockry.
    As to whether it was wazzockry at all, perhaps we should wait until the end of this Parliament and see how much higher the NHS budget is per week versus at the time of that bus? £350m? Higher? Lower?
    No, let's look at the nation's finances overall. The wazzockry comes in specifying the NHS, with the implication "either you support this case, or you hate the kids in Great Ormond Street and want them all to die."
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,401
    surby said:

    surby said:

    Mr. Blue, the Conservatives have been incompetent at delivering an economic message since Osborne left.

    Hammond's star is stealthily rising !
    Osborne was words not actions.

    Hammond is actions not words.
    Noticeably, whenever people talk of May's successor as Leader, no one mentions the obvious person.
    The general impression is that he doesn't want the job. If he had, and he'd stood last time, I think he would have had a good chance of winning. That does however make him even more important as kingmaker because he is pretty well certain to be the only senior figure not standing.

    Of course, he may change his mind. It is allowed, even in politics.
  • Options
    surbysurby Posts: 1,227
    edited August 2018
    Why is it that the Dax, Cac40 are growing but the FTSE100 is so anemic , despite such good borrowing numbers ? Is it because it is coming from the consumption part of the GDP but manufacturing and exports doing badly.
  • Options
    surby said:

    Why is it that the Dax, Cac40 are growing but the FTSE100 is so anemic , despite such good borrowing numbers ? Is it because it is coming from the consumption part of the GDP but manufacturing and exports doing badly.

    Over what period?
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,453
    surby said:

    Why is it that the Dax, Cac40 are growing but the FTSE100 is so anemic , despite such good borrowing numbers ? Is it because it is coming from the consumption part of the GDP but manufacturing and exports doing badly.

    FTSE just does the opposite of whatever the £/$ is doing nowadays.
  • Options
    surbysurby Posts: 1,227
    ydoethur said:

    surby said:

    surby said:

    Mr. Blue, the Conservatives have been incompetent at delivering an economic message since Osborne left.

    Hammond's star is stealthily rising !
    Osborne was words not actions.

    Hammond is actions not words.
    Noticeably, whenever people talk of May's successor as Leader, no one mentions the obvious person.
    The general impression is that he doesn't want the job. If he had, and he'd stood last time, I think he would have had a good chance of winning. That does however make him even more important as kingmaker because he is pretty well certain to be the only senior figure not standing.

    Of course, he may change his mind. It is allowed, even in politics.
    He would be seen as a safe pair of hands. Osborne was always seen as too clever by half, therefore he was the face of the Cameroon purge !
  • Options
    surbysurby Posts: 1,227

    surby said:

    Why is it that the Dax, Cac40 are growing but the FTSE100 is so anemic , despite such good borrowing numbers ? Is it because it is coming from the consumption part of the GDP but manufacturing and exports doing badly.

    Over what period?
    Today or even the last 5 years.
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,146
    edited August 2018
    “What do you like most about Jeremy Corbyn?”

    https://twitter.com/mendelpol/status/1031894110976843777?s=21
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,453



    I've always been a fan of PR - I grew up in Denmark where you can choose between a dozen shades of opinion, while being clear which coalition they will join. That works well because you can, for instance, support the Radical Liberals, who favour free markets, liberal social values and low defence spending, a mixture of nuances that doesn't really exist in Britain. Even better, you can vote for individuals out of a list, so weighing up the relative attractions of, say, Boris vs Gove or Umunna vs Thornberry, without harming your preferred party.

    If we had PR, both Tories and Labour would divide almost instantly and give some clear choices, maybe the LibDems too. The parties are all uneasy coalitions.

    Yeh, and the English Patriotic National Party, or whatever, would be on 20%.

    Sweden, Germany etc etc shows what can happen.

    I'm really SURE that the best way of combating extremism is not to construct an electoral system that prevents their representation. If 20% of voters are nationalist xenophobes, we need to address nationalist xenophobia, not rig the system so we don't need to lsiten to them.

    Sweden and Germany are both governed in a way that most people would regard as reasonably sensible and successful, but feel constrained by a substantial party representing people worried about immigration That seems to me a sensible democratic approach, whereas just making sure that Parliament doesn't have anyone representing such concerns does one of two things:
    (1) forces people with extreme views to join a major party and try to hijack it or
    (2) disillusions people with politics altogether and attracts them to non-parliamentary options.

    I even favour regular referenda like Switzerland. Sometimes they lead to things I don't like (the minaret ban), but then so do regular elections. But they give people with extreme views an option to influence politics by coming up with a good idea. Basel's Communist Party (total vote 0.5%) got a majority for a referendum not to build more multi-storey carparks in the centre (because they would draw in more traffic to the congested streets) - people thought hmm, yes, they're right about that, and they in turn had been drawn into constructive politics.

    I think the way to persuade my and other parties of this is to try it for local councils. Nobody reasonable thinks that councils with 80 members all from one party are a good idea.
    lol I remember the lengths Labour went to in Newham to pressure the single LibDem to defect to them, which in the end he did, putting an end to any other-party opposition in that Borough.

    You are certainly right that having the same voting system for local elections in England and Wales as is already used in Scotland and Northern Ireland makes a lot of sense.
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,401
    surby said:

    ydoethur said:

    surby said:

    surby said:

    Mr. Blue, the Conservatives have been incompetent at delivering an economic message since Osborne left.

    Hammond's star is stealthily rising !
    Osborne was words not actions.

    Hammond is actions not words.
    Noticeably, whenever people talk of May's successor as Leader, no one mentions the obvious person.
    The general impression is that he doesn't want the job. If he had, and he'd stood last time, I think he would have had a good chance of winning. That does however make him even more important as kingmaker because he is pretty well certain to be the only senior figure not standing.

    Of course, he may change his mind. It is allowed, even in politics.
    He would be seen as a safe pair of hands. Osborne was always seen as too clever by half, therefore he was the face of the Cameroon purge !
    Yes, and that might eventually tempt him especially if he's the man who steers the economy successfully through Brexit (if)! Certainly against Boris it would be an advantage.

    However, let's not get carried away. It's not that long since the NI screwup that was blamed on him (possibly unfairly). He's also getting on a bit at 62, although that wouldn't be so much of a problem against Corbyn.
  • Options
    John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    surby said:

    Why is it that the Dax, Cac40 are growing but the FTSE100 is so anemic , despite such good borrowing numbers ? Is it because it is coming from the consumption part of the GDP but manufacturing and exports doing badly.

    FTSE 100 is dominated by companies who dig holes. They get paid in foreign currency, which means a weak £ is good, but they're trading in commodities which is volatile, and therefore subject to Trumpian headwinds.
  • Options
    oxfordsimonoxfordsimon Posts: 5,831

    “What do you like most about Jeremy Corbyn?”

    https://twitter.com/mendelpol/status/1031894110976843777?s=21

    That is certainly one of the worst examples of recent days - in a very crowded field.
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,401

    “What do you like most about Jeremy Corbyn?”

    https://twitter.com/mendelpol/status/1031894110976843777?s=21

    For a dreadful moment I thought that was the former Shadow Foreign Secretary.

    Then I realised I was confusing him with Douglas Alexander.
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited August 2018
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    RoyalBlue said:



    So you think a democratic polity that doesn’t discriminate between nationals and non-nationals, and has no restrictions on the entrance of the latter, is sustainable?

    Good for you. Real world example in your own time. NB sustainable.

    Oh get over yourself.

    Of course we distinguish between nationals and non-nationals. We had decided to limit the restrictions on the entrance of some non-nationals (though there were still plenty of restrictions) and when given a chance to choose whether we liked this, we decided (because, you know, we're sovereign and all that) to impose still more restrictions.
    So non-national EU migrants can't claim welfare? They can't claim tax credits etc? They get charged to use the NHS? They're treated the same as non-European non-nationals?

    I'd have no problem with abolishing the cap on migration globally so long as those who arrive pay for the NHS usage and can't claim any welfare at all. They can come here, pay taxes and support themselves. After years of being law abiding residents they can claim citizenship at which point they would stop paying for the NHS etc
    What are you banging on about double degree boy?

    We have rules for non-EU immigrants and different rules for EU immigrants and the rules for EU immigrants was tightened up considerably as the link I provided explained.
    A couple of issues there.

    Firstly you edited in that link it wasn't there when I read your post.

    Secondly those restrictions aren't there. They never were. Those were restrictions that Cameron sought in his negotiations and if they'd been achieved that would have been good enough for me. But they weren't. The EU rejected those restrictions and instead agreed to a temporary and considerably reduced restriction instead.

    Instead of having no benefits for four years (reasonable) benefits would have been phased in over four years. That wouldn't have been permanent either it would have been a restriction only in place for 7 years which means by the next general election that restriction would have almost expired and we would be back to where we started.

    In other words utterly trite and meaningless.

    The fact you're claiming as reality reasonable restrictions that the EU rejected shows why Cameron's renegotiation was a failure. He didn't get what you showed off. Oops.
  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,144
    Ishmael_Z said:

    No, let's look at the nation's finances overall. The wazzockry comes in specifying the NHS, with the implication "either you support this case, or you hate the kids in Great Ormond Street and want them all to die."

    But the point is that people DID vote Leave to divert the EU payments to the NHS. I know plenty who voted Leave for that very reason.
  • Options
    John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    edited August 2018
    My favourite 'no-deal Brexit' headline today (so far!):

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/comment/vehicle-theft-will-get-worse-no-deal-brexit/

    You know, we should start a scrapbook.
  • Options
    surby said:

    surby said:

    Why is it that the Dax, Cac40 are growing but the FTSE100 is so anemic , despite such good borrowing numbers ? Is it because it is coming from the consumption part of the GDP but manufacturing and exports doing badly.

    Over what period?
    Today or even the last 5 years.
    Today the FTSE 100 is unchanged whilst the FTSE 250 is up a similar amout to the continent at +0,59%

    The FTSE 250 is mostly smaller UK companies dependent on the UK. The FTSE 100 includes a lot of multinational companies that have large US$ earnings and subject to international trade barrier uncertainty.

    Over the last five years the place to invest has been the USA not the UK or the continent. This is largely because of the performance of Amazon, Google(Alphabet), Facebook, Netflix, and other tech stocks loved by their customers and also the tax and other policies of the US President.
  • Options
    CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Mr. Blue, the Conservatives have been incompetent at delivering an economic message since Osborne left.

    Who can forget the Long Term Economic Plan? :p
    Theresa May clearly forgot or she’d have campaigned on George Osborne CH’s golden economic legacy during the last election.
    You ignore the advice of the most popular heir-to-a-baronetcy in the realm at your own peril!
    I didn't know TSE was getting one of those.
    Congrats!
    I turned it down.

    I want either a GCMG or a Royal Dukedom.
    Charlotte's a little young for you.
  • Options
    AnazinaAnazina Posts: 3,487
    edited August 2018
    surby said:

    ydoethur said:

    surby said:

    surby said:

    Mr. Blue, the Conservatives have been incompetent at delivering an economic message since Osborne left.

    Hammond's star is stealthily rising !
    Osborne was words not actions.

    Hammond is actions not words.
    Noticeably, whenever people talk of May's successor as Leader, no one mentions the obvious person.
    The general impression is that he doesn't want the job. If he had, and he'd stood last time, I think he would have had a good chance of winning. That does however make him even more important as kingmaker because he is pretty well certain to be the only senior figure not standing.

    Of course, he may change his mind. It is allowed, even in politics.
    He would be seen as a safe pair of hands. Osborne was always seen as too clever by half, therefore he was the face of the Cameroon purge !
    I would be pretty happy with Hambo as PM. He deserves enormous credit for keeping the economy in decent shape despite the best efforts of the Brexiteer wreckers. Also, he has avoided preaching to the choir with frothing Eurosceptica. He strikes me as a decent man, and an honest broker.
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    RoyalBlue said:



    So you think a democratic polity that doesn’t discriminate between nationals and non-nationals, and has no restrictions on the entrance of the latter, is sustainable?

    Good for you. Real world example in your own time. NB sustainable.

    Oh get over yourself.

    Of course we distinguish between natiol plenty of restrictions) and when given a chance to choose whether we liked this, we decided (because, you know, we're sovereign and all that) to impose still more restrictions.
    So non-national EU migrants can't claim welfare? They can't claim tax credits etc? They get charged to use the NHS? They're treated the same as non-European non-nationals?

    I'd have no problem with abolishing the cap on migration globally so long as those who arrive pay for the NHS usage and can't claim any welfare at all. They can come here, pay taxes and support themselves. After years of being law abiding residents they can claim citizenship at which point they would stop paying for the NHS etc
    What are you banging on about double degree boy?

    We have rules for non-EU immigrants and different rules for EU immigrants and the rules for EU immigrants was tightened up considerably as the link I provided explained.
    A couple of issues there.

    Firstly you edited in that link it wasn't there when I read your post.

    Secondly those restrictions aren't there. They never were. Those were restrictions that Cameron sought in his negotiations and if they'd been achieved that would have been good enough for me. But they weren't. The EU rejected those restrictions and instead agreed to a temporary and considerably reduced restriction instead.

    Instead of having no benefits for four years (reasonable) benefits would have been phased in over four years. That wouldn't have been permanent either it would have been a restriction only in place for 7 years which means by the next general election that restriction would have almost expired and we would be back to where we started.

    In other words utterly trite and meaningless.

    The fact you're claiming as reality reasonable restrictions that the EU rejected shows why Cameron's renegotiation was a failure. He didn't get what you showed off. Oops.
    You do make it difficult, sometimes. The link I provided in my reply to whoever it was explained that the benefits that EU immigrants could claim had been reduced and were contingent on status and some of which were subject to review after three months.

    It also included details of the emergency brake which is a separate issue.
  • Options
    OchEye said:

    TOPPING said:

    It is sad that Nick Palmer has become an apologist for a violent, thuggish cult that has taken over a party that used to stand for a strand of opinion that was, while sometimes misguided, honourable and decent. The Tory party, through their throwing away of their trump card of economic competence by supporting Brexit, are allowing these economic imbeciles to inch toward power .

    ir ?
    Plenty on both sides are pretty critical of their own side as posts from PB will illustrate.

    What I find difficult to take with Nick's post is that it is, as has been pointed out on here already, turning a blind eye to some of the less attractive, not to say repugnant tendencies of the modern left. All well and good if they turned up to conference, put a stand up in a side corridor and hoped for a few visitors. But these people are running the Party.

    Jeremy Corbyn is probably not an anti-semite. Possibly. But it is unarguable that he has presided over a Labour Party within which anti-semites feel emboldened. It is plausible deniability.

    We all laughed at his supposed faux pas when asked about the cemetery, but it was more acute than we realised. Jeremy Corbyn's position on anti-semitism is the very definition of being involved but not present.
    I've referred to Corbyn as a 'passive anti-Semite', and I've see little evidence to change my view. He allows views that are anti-Semitic to be aired and promoted without challenge, even if he does not pronounce those views himself, yet would argue strongly against the airing or promotion of other forms of racism.

    He's also deaf to it: when his own MPs gave their experiences of the anti-Semitism they're experiencing in parliament, and he didn't bother to stay to listen.
    Repeat after me: Corbyn is anti zionism many more of the Jewish Faith are not Zionists, there are many people who are not Jewish who are Zionists. Zionism is a quasi religious political system created around 1860 or so, with a heavy dash of 1920's then fashionable fad of eugenics, the purity of the Jewish people and Ersatz Israel. That Zionism has been successfully conflated with the Jewish faith, with any critics being immediately condemned as anti semitic is one of the advertising success stories of the past 70 odd years
    But why only criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories?
    Why not criticism of Indian policy in Kashmir?
    Or of Moroccan policy in Western Sahara?
    Or of Russian policy in Crimea?
    Or Turkish policy in Kurdistan?
    Or Armenian policy in Nagorno Karabakh?

    Why this tunnel vision re. Israel?
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,974

    OchEye said:

    TOPPING said:

    It is sad that Nick Palmer has become an apologist for a violent, thuggish cult that has taken over a party that used to stand for a strand of opinion that was, while sometimes misguided, honourable and decent. The Tory party, through their throwing away of their trump card of economic competence by supporting Brexit, are allowing these economic imbeciles to inch toward power .

    ir ?
    Plenty on both sides are pretty critical of their own side as posts from PB will illustrate.

    What I find difficult to take with Nick's post is that it is, as has been pointed out on here already, turning a blind eye to some of the less attractive, not to say repugnant tendencies of the modern left. All well and good if they turned up to conference, put a stand up in a side corridor and hoped for a few visitors. But these people are running the Party.

    Jeremy Corbyn is probably not an anti-semite. Possibly. But it is unarguable that he has presided over a Labour Party within which anti-semites feel emboldened. It is plausible deniability.

    We all laughed at his supposed faux pas when asked about the cemetery, but it was more acute than we realised. Jeremy Corbyn's position on anti-semitism is the very definition of being involved but not present.
    I've referred to Corbyn as a 'passive anti-Semite', and I've see little evidence to change my view. He allows views that are anti-Semitic to be aired and promoted without challenge, even if he does not pronounce those views himself, yet would argue strongly against the airing or promotion of other forms of racism.

    He's also deaf to it: when his own MPs gave their experiences of the anti-Semitism they're experiencing in parliament, and he didn't bother to stay to listen.
    Repeat after me: Corbyn is anti zionism many more of the Jewish Faith are not Zionists, there are many people who are not Jewish who are Zionists. Zionism is a quasi religious political system created around 1860 or so, with a heavy dash of 1920's then fashionable fad of eugenics, the purity of the Jewish people and Ersatz Israel. That Zionism has been successfully conflated with the Jewish faith, with any critics being immediately condemned as anti semitic is one of the advertising success stories of the past 70 odd years
    But why only criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories?
    Why not criticism of Indian policy in Kashmir?
    Or of Moroccan policy in Western Sahara?
    Or of Russian policy in Crimea?
    Or Turkish policy in Kurdistan?
    Or Armenian policy in Nagorno Karabakh?

    Why this tunnel vision re. Israel?
    They killed Christ?
  • Options

    “What do you like most about Jeremy Corbyn?”

    https://twitter.com/mendelpol/status/1031894110976843777?s=21


    In my best Mrs Merton voice:

    "What first attracted you to the anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn?"

    :lol:
  • Options
    David_EvershedDavid_Evershed Posts: 6,506
    edited August 2018
    Worcestershire are 572 for 7 Declared in reply to Yorkshire's 216.

    Daryl Michell (opener) scored 178 at a modest rate and Moeen Ali (in at number three) scored 219 at a brisk rate. Of the two I would prefer Mitchell to play for England and provide some solidity to the batting in place of Jennings.

  • Options
    Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,010
    Mr. F, point of order, it was the Romans who nailed him to the cross.

    And he didn't even stay dead.

    But your argument does remind me of Jurgen the German.
    "I love Christmas. Hooray, a Jew is born!"
    *slight pause*
    "And then you killed him!"

    Good afternoon, everyone.
  • Options
    Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    The FTSE100 is an almost totally useless index. I generally avoid FTSE100 trackers altogether, because the index serves no investment purpose. For a start it's not well diversified, with ten companies accounting for 40% of the total, and, even worse, it's heavily skewed to a small number of sectors (oil, minerals, banks). It doesn't represent the UK economy, with 70% of revenues coming from abroad, so it's not useful if you're trying to match assets against your (UK) sterling liabilities. It's essentially just a skewed jumble of international stocks which happen to be listed in the UK. Why would anyone want to track that?

    Having said that, I've just invested in a FTSE100 tracker for a relative. Why? Because I think that there's a curious anomaly at the moment. Because of concerns over Brexit, the UK-listed market is unfashionable. The FTSE100 P/E ratio is around 12.8, compared with 16.7 for the CAC40, 14.4 for the Dax 30, and 20.6 for the S&P 500.

    If Brexit goes well, confidence in the UK market will return. That will, I hope, lead to a re-rating. Conversely, if Brexit goes badly, sterling will tank - leading to an immediate increase in FTSE100 sterling-denominated earnings. So it's a natural hedge, IMO.

    (This is not investment advice, DYOR etc).
  • Options
    TOPPING said:



    You do make it difficult, sometimes. The link I provided in my reply to whoever it was explained that the benefits that EU immigrants could claim had been reduced and were contingent on status and some of which were subject to review after three months.

    It also included details of the emergency brake which is a separate issue.

    3 months isn't enough. I said in my post it should be years and you posted a link fallaciously saying it would be years (it wouldn't as the EU rejected that). If your link was true that would be good enough for me. 3 months is not.
  • Options
    FF43FF43 Posts: 15,792
    John_M said:

    Anazina said:

    Mortimer said:

    IanB2 said:

    It is depressing that Mr Palmer thinks that an agenda driven by identity politics is going to take us anywhere worthwhile or desirable. No wonder Labour is in trouble with many of its traditional supporters.

    +1, I'm afraid.
    I presume by using the awful '+1' meme you are claiming to oppose identity politics?

    If so, you are a raging hypocrite.

    You are on here frequently pushing the ultimate identity-political programme – Brexit – the tyranny of a tiny majority of provincial nationalists over metropolitan liberals. With your hectoring, paleoconservative affected fogeyish nostalgia, you are the personification of the patronising, moralising, traditionalist rightwing: the embodiment of village green identity politics.

    I'm a metropolitan liberal Brexiteer.

    By portraying Brexit as the preserve of provincials you are pushing a fallacious and identity based meme.

    Even in metropolitan areas a significant minority backed Brexit.
    The proletariat are quite resistant to parsing in simplistic ways. 43% of graduates voted for Brexit - a minority, but a reasonably substantial one. The same proportion of AB voters opted for Leave.

    Even on here, there are Tories and Tories - HYUFD and TSE don't appear to have much in common. I'm a TINO, partly through ennui and disillusionment, partly because I am very much not a Unionist. An independent Scotland and a united Ireland seem like positives to me (though of course your mileage may vary).
    Although I agree with your general point, both YouGov and Ipsos Mori reckon 32% of graduates voted Leave. Two thirds voted Remain.

    Links here; http://www.theweek.co.uk/89378/fact-check-did-uk-s-better-educated-vote-remain
  • Options
    AnorakAnorak Posts: 6,621

    But why only criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories?
    Why not criticism of Indian policy in Kashmir?
    Or of Moroccan policy in Western Sahara?
    Or of Russian policy in Crimea?
    Or Turkish policy in Kurdistan?
    Or Armenian policy in Nagorno Karabakh?

    Why this tunnel vision re. Israel?

    Excellent question. It's plain weird.
  • Options
    John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    edited August 2018
    FF43 said:

    John_M said:

    Anazina said:

    Mortimer said:

    IanB2 said:

    It is depressing that Mr Palmer thinks that an agenda driven by identity politics is going to take us anywhere worthwhile or desirable. No wonder Labour is in trouble with many of its traditional supporters.

    +1, I'm afraid.
    I presume by using the awful '+1' meme you are claiming to oppose identity politics?

    If so, you are a raging hypocrite.

    You are on here frequently pushing the ultimate identity-political programme – Brexit – the tyranny of a tiny majority of provincial nationalists over metropolitan liberals. With your hectoring, paleoconservative affected fogeyish nostalgia, you are the personification of the patronising, moralising, traditionalist rightwing: the embodiment of village green identity politics.

    I'm a metropolitan liberal Brexiteer.

    By portraying Brexit as the preserve of provincials you are pushing a fallacious and identity based meme.

    Even in metropolitan areas a significant minority backed Brexit.
    The proletariat are quite resistant to parsing in simplistic ways. 43% of graduates voted for Brexit - a minority, but a reasonably substantial one. The same proportion of AB voters opted for Leave.

    Even on here, there are Tories and Tories - HYUFD and TSE don't appear to have much in common. I'm a TINO, partly through ennui and disillusionment, partly because I am very much not a Unionist. An independent Scotland and a united Ireland seem like positives to me (though of course your mileage may vary).
    Although I agree with your general point, both YouGov and Ipsos Mori reckon 32% of graduates voted Leave. Two thirds voted Remain.

    Links here; http://www.theweek.co.uk/89378/fact-check-did-uk-s-better-educated-vote-remain
    I should have given my source - it was Lord Ashcroft's polling, FWIW.

    https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why/

    I don't think I'm particularly partisan but I do like his survey simply because it was a reasonably large sample (>12k) and taken on the day, so less likely for retconning to occur.

    I'm happy to use your figures though; it's clear that voters on both sides aren't as monolithic as some assert (and there are some genuine surprises, like the LD leavers or UKIP remainers).
  • Options
    AnazinaAnazina Posts: 3,487

    Ishmael_Z said:

    No, let's look at the nation's finances overall. The wazzockry comes in specifying the NHS, with the implication "either you support this case, or you hate the kids in Great Ormond Street and want them all to die."

    But the point is that people DID vote Leave to divert the EU payments to the NHS. I know plenty who voted Leave for that very reason.
    Is HYUFD taking a much needed day off today?
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    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,144
    Anazina said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    No, let's look at the nation's finances overall. The wazzockry comes in specifying the NHS, with the implication "either you support this case, or you hate the kids in Great Ormond Street and want them all to die."

    But the point is that people DID vote Leave to divert the EU payments to the NHS. I know plenty who voted Leave for that very reason.
    Is HYUFD taking a much needed day off today?
    Tag team.
  • Options
    John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    Anazina said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    No, let's look at the nation's finances overall. The wazzockry comes in specifying the NHS, with the implication "either you support this case, or you hate the kids in Great Ormond Street and want them all to die."

    But the point is that people DID vote Leave to divert the EU payments to the NHS. I know plenty who voted Leave for that very reason.
    Is HYUFD taking a much needed day off today?
    Topping is HYUFD's mild-mannered alter ego.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941

    Worcestershire are 572 for 7 Declared in reply to Yorkshire's 216.

    Daryl Michell (opener) scored 178 at a modest rate and Moeen Ali (in at number three) scored 219 at a brisk rate. Of the two I would prefer Mitchell to play for England and provide some solidity to the batting in place of Jennings.

    Yes, we need to take a serious look at our batsmen. Four of them out before lunch when we are supposed to be holding out for two days isn’t acceptable.

    Stokes and Buttler are showing how it’s done, but it’ll be too little too late for England, especially when we are a man down.
  • Options
    Anorak said:

    But why only criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories?
    Why not criticism of Indian policy in Kashmir?
    Or of Moroccan policy in Western Sahara?
    Or of Russian policy in Crimea?
    Or Turkish policy in Kurdistan?
    Or Armenian policy in Nagorno Karabakh?

    Why this tunnel vision re. Israel?

    Excellent question. It's plain weird.
    Probably for the same reason Vote Leave focussed on Turks and not other potential members.
  • Options
    Spare a thought for me.

    Today is one of the two days a year I have to be a good Muslim boy.

    All my mother’s friends are trying to marry me off today.
  • Options
    Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981

    Ishmael_Z said:

    No, let's look at the nation's finances overall. The wazzockry comes in specifying the NHS, with the implication "either you support this case, or you hate the kids in Great Ormond Street and want them all to die."

    But the point is that people DID vote Leave to divert the EU payments to the NHS. I know plenty who voted Leave for that very reason.
    I don't deny it, indeed I am sure you are right. So clever of the people who thought of it, I suppose, but not of the people who fell for it.
  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,144
    surby said:

    surby said:

    Mr. Blue, the Conservatives have been incompetent at delivering an economic message since Osborne left.

    Hammond's star is stealthily rising !
    Osborne was words not actions.

    Hammond is actions not words.
    Noticeably, whenever people talk of May's successor as Leader, no one mentions the obvious person.
    Especially the membership.....
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,401

    Spare a thought for me.

    Today is one of the two days a year I have to be a good Muslim boy.

    All my mother’s friends are trying to marry me off today.

    Surely they're a bit old for you?
  • Options
    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,205

    Anorak said:

    But why only criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories?
    Why not criticism of Indian policy in Kashmir?
    Or of Moroccan policy in Western Sahara?
    Or of Russian policy in Crimea?
    Or Turkish policy in Kurdistan?
    Or Armenian policy in Nagorno Karabakh?

    Why this tunnel vision re. Israel?

    Excellent question. It's plain weird.
    Probably for the same reason Vote Leave focussed on Turks and not other potential members.
    Size matters.
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,002

    Spare a thought for me.

    Today is one of the two days a year I have to be a good Muslim boy.

    All my mother’s friends are trying to marry me off today.

    My other half is delighted that the middle eastern offices of her firm are shut today.
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,075
    OchEye said:

    Repeat after me: Corbyn is anti zionism many more of the Jewish Faith are not Zionists, there are many people who are not Jewish who are Zionists. Zionism is a quasi religious political system created around 1860 or so, with a heavy dash of 1920's then fashionable fad of eugenics, the purity of the Jewish people and Ersatz Israel. That Zionism has been successfully conflated with the Jewish faith, with any critics being immediately condemned as anti semitic is one of the advertising success stories of the past 70 odd years

    I can repeat it if you like, but what you say is pretty irrelevant to what Corbyn's been doing and the stuff that's going on in the Labour Party.

    I agree that people can 'use' anti-Semitism to try to silence criticism of Israel. However likewise, people can use criticism of Israel to hide their anti-Semitism. And it's fairly clear (to me, at least) that too many people in Labour are going for the latter, in going beyond any reasonable criticism of Israel, with some even building on old anti-Semitic tropes.

    And Corbyn's been utterly ignoring it. Why?

    As for your last line: it's perfectly possible to criticise Israel - I have, and so have others. But too many Labourites are going too far into unreasonableness and fairly blatant anti-Semitism.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941

    Spare a thought for me.

    Today is one of the two days a year I have to be a good Muslim boy.

    All my mother’s friends are trying to marry me off today.

    Eid Mubarak!
  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,144
    Ishmael_Z said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    No, let's look at the nation's finances overall. The wazzockry comes in specifying the NHS, with the implication "either you support this case, or you hate the kids in Great Ormond Street and want them all to die."

    But the point is that people DID vote Leave to divert the EU payments to the NHS. I know plenty who voted Leave for that very reason.
    I don't deny it, indeed I am sure you are right. So clever of the people who thought of it, I suppose, but not of the people who fell for it.
    Or....all those Remainers who want more spent on the NHS were too stupid not to see how to bring it about.

    Not very endearing is it, calling that minority who voted to remain stupid?
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941
    Pulpstar said:

    Spare a thought for me.

    Today is one of the two days a year I have to be a good Muslim boy.

    All my mother’s friends are trying to marry me off today.

    My other half is delighted that the middle eastern offices of her firm are shut today.
    They’ll be shut all week, there’s three official holidays and many companies are giving Thursday off too.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,791



    I've always been a fan of PR - I grew up in Denmark where you can choose between a dozen shades of opinion, while being clear which coalition they will join. That works well because you can, for instance, support the Radical Liberals, who favour free markets, liberal social values and low defence spending, a mixture of nuances that doesn't really exist in Britain. Even better, you can vote for individuals out of a list, so weighing up the relative attractions of, say, Boris vs Gove or Umunna vs Thornberry, without harming your preferred party.

    If we had PR, both Tories and Labour would divide almost instantly and give some clear choices, maybe the LibDems too. The parties are all uneasy coalitions.

    Yeh, and the English Patriotic National Party, or whatever, would be on 20%.

    Sweden, Germany etc etc shows what can happen.

    I'm really SURE that the best way of combating extremism is not to construct an electoral system that prevents their representation. If 20% of voters are nationalist xenophobes, we need to address nationalist xenophobia, not rig the system so we don't need to lsiten to them.

    Sweden and Germany are both governed in a way that most people would regard as reasonably sensible and successful, but feel constrained by a substantial party representing people worried about immigration That seems to me a sensible democratic approach, whereas just making sure that Parliament doesn't have anyone representing such concerns does one of two things:
    (1) forces people with extreme views to join a major party and try to hijack it or
    (2) disillusions people with politics altogether and attracts them to non-parliamentary options.

    I even favour regular referenda like Switzerland. Sometimes they lead to things I don't like (the minaret ban), but then so do regular elections. But they give people with extreme views an option to influence politics by coming up with a good idea. Basel's Communist Party (total vote 0.5%) got a majority for a referendum not to build more multi-storey carparks in the centre (because they would draw in more traffic to the congested streets) - people thought hmm, yes, they're right about that, and they in turn had been drawn into constructive politics.

    I think the way to persuade my and other parties of this is to try it for local councils. Nobody reasonable thinks that councils with 80 members all from one party are a good idea.
    52% of our population are nationalistic xenophobes, or at least are prepared to vote for an agenda that is clearly orientated to that way of thinking
  • Options

    “What do you like most about Jeremy Corbyn?”

    https://twitter.com/mendelpol/status/1031894110976843777?s=21


    In my best Mrs Merton voice:

    "What first attracted you to the anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn?"

    :lol:
    :)

    You just beat me to the same post.
  • Options

    OchEye said:

    TOPPING said:



    ir ?

    Plenty on both sides are pretty critical of their own side as posts from PB will illustrate.

    What I find difficult to take with Nick's post is that it is, as has been pointed out on here already, turning a blind eye to some of the less attractive, not to say repugnant tendencies of the modern left. All well and good if they turned up to conference, put a stand up in a side corridor and hoped for a few visitors. But these people are running the Party.

    Jeremy Corbyn is probably not an anti-semite. Possibly. But it is unarguable that he has presided over a Labour Party within which anti-semites feel emboldened. It is plausible deniability.

    We all laughed at his supposed faux pas when asked about the cemetery, but it was more acute than we realised. Jeremy Corbyn's position on anti-semitism is the very definition of being involved but not present.
    I've referred to Corbyn as a 'passive anti-Semite', and I've see little evidence to change my view. He allows views that are anti-Semitic to be aired and promoted without challenge, even if he does not pronounce those views himself, yet would argue strongly against the airing or promotion of other forms of racism.

    He's also deaf to it: when his own MPs gave their experiences of the anti-Semitism they're experiencing in parliament, and he didn't bother to stay to listen.
    Repeat after me: Corbyn is anti zionism many more of the Jewish Faith are not Zionists, there are many people who are not Jewish who are Zionists. Zionism is a quasi religious political system created around 1860 or so, with a heavy dash of 1920's then fashionable fad of eugenics, the purity of the Jewish people and Ersatz Israel. That Zionism has been successfully conflated with the Jewish faith, with any critics being immediately condemned as anti semitic is one of the advertising success stories of the past 70 odd years
    But why only criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories?
    Why not criticism of Indian policy in Kashmir?
    Or of Moroccan policy in Western Sahara?
    Or of Russian policy in Crimea?
    Or Turkish policy in Kurdistan?
    Or Armenian policy in Nagorno Karabakh?

    Why this tunnel vision re. Israel?
    Largely because few people attempt to defend the actions of these particular aggressors, I imagine. You need two sides to have an argument.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941



    I've always been a fan of PR - I grew up in Denmark where you can choose between a dozen shades of opinion, while being clear which coalition they will join. That works well because you can, for instance, support the Radical Liberals, who favour free markets, liberal social values and low defence spending, a mixture of nuances that doesn't really exist in Britain. Even better, you can vote for individuals out of a list, so weighing up the relative attractions of, say, Boris vs Gove or Umunna vs Thornberry, without harming your preferred party.

    If we had PR, both Tories and Labour would divide almost instantly and give some clear choices, maybe the LibDems too. The parties are all uneasy coalitions.

    Yeh, and the English Patriotic National Party, or whatever, would be on 20%.

    Sweden, Germany etc etc shows what can happen.

    I'm really SURE that the best way of combating extremism is not to construct an electoral system that prevents their representation. If 20% of voters are nationalist xenophobes, we need to address nationalist xenophobia, not rig the system so we don't need to lsiten to them.

    Sweden and Germany are both governed in a way that most people would regard as reasonably sensible and successful, but feel constrained by a substantial party representing people worried about immigration That seems to me a sensible democratic approach, whereas just making sure that Parliament doesn't have anyone representing such concerns does one of two things:
    (1) forces people with extreme views to join a major party and try to hijack it or
    (2) disillusions people with politics altogether and attracts them to non-parliamentary options.

    I even favour regular referenda like Switzerland. Sometimes they lead to things I don't like (the minaret ban), but then so do regular elections. But they give people with extreme views an option to influence politics by coming up with a good idea. Basel's Communist Party (total vote 0.5%) got a majority for a referendum not to build more multi-storey carparks in the centre (because they would draw in more traffic to the congested streets) - people thought hmm, yes, they're right about that, and they in turn had been drawn into constructive politics.

    I think the way to persuade my and other parties of this is to try it for local councils. Nobody reasonable thinks that councils with 80 members all from one party are a good idea.
    52% of our population are nationalistic xenophobes, or at least are prepared to vote for an agenda that is clearly orientated to that way of thinking
    Half of me would quite like to see a second EU referendum, if only to see the arguments the Remain side think will change minds.
  • Options
    John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    edited August 2018
    Sandpit said:



    I've always been a fan of PR - I grew up in Denmark where you can choose between a dozen shades of opinion, while being clear which coalition they will join. That works well because you can, for instance, support the Radical Liberals, who favour free markets, liberal social values and low defence spending, a mixture of nuances that doesn't really exist in Britain. Even better, you can vote for individuals out of a list, so weighing up the relative attractions of, say, Boris vs Gove or Umunna vs Thornberry, without harming your preferred party.

    If we had PR, both Tories and Labour would divide almost instantly and give some clear choices, maybe the LibDems too. The parties are all uneasy coalitions.

    Yeh, and the English Patriotic National Party, or whatever, would be on 20%.

    Sweden, Germany etc etc shows what can happen.

    I'm really SURE that the best way of combating extremism is not to construct an electoral system that prevents their representation. If 20% of voters are nationalist xenophobes, we need to address nationalist xenophobia, not rig the system so we don't need to lsiten to them.

    Sweden and Germany are both governed in a way that most people would regard as reasonably sensible and successful, but feel constrained by a substantial party representing people worried about immigration That seems to me a sensible democratic approach, whereas just making sure that Parliament doesn't have anyone representing such concerns does one of two things:
    (1) forces people with extreme views to join a major party and try to hijack it or
    (2) disillusions people with politics altogether and attracts them to non-parliamentary options.



    I think the way to persuade my and other parties of this is to try it for local councils. Nobody reasonable thinks that councils with 80 members all from one party are a good idea.
    52% of our population are nationalistic xenophobes, or at least are prepared to vote for an agenda that is clearly orientated to that way of thinking
    Half of me would quite like to see a second EU referendum, if only to see the arguments the Remain side think will change minds.
    Indeed, they'd better hope they're the better class of xenophobe - rational and open to arguments that include being called stupid racists by the dumb c*nts running EUref II.
  • Options
    Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,010
    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.
  • Options
    AndrewAndrew Posts: 2,900

    Spare a thought for me.

    Today is one of the two days a year I have to be a good Muslim boy.

    On the other hand, that gives you 363 days/year to be sinful - a workable ratio to my mind.
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403
    edited August 2018
    John_M said:

    Anazina said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    No, let's look at the nation's finances overall. The wazzockry comes in specifying the NHS, with the implication "either you support this case, or you hate the kids in Great Ormond Street and want them all to die."

    But the point is that people DID vote Leave to divert the EU payments to the NHS. I know plenty who voted Leave for that very reason.
    Is HYUFD taking a much needed day off today?
    Topping is HYUFD's mild-mannered alter ego.
    HYUFD is a blunt but effective weapon against people who threw their lot in with the xenophobic Brexiters yet maintain that they really wanted to reclaim the sovereignty - that we had all along - in order not to be bossed around by Johnny Foreigner when it comes to widget safety specifications.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,791

    John_M said:

    Anazina said:

    Mortimer said:

    IanB2 said:

    It is depressing that Mr Palmer thinks that an agenda driven by identity politics is going to take us anywhere worthwhile or desirable. No wonder Labour is in trouble with many of its traditional supporters.

    +1, I'm afraid.
    I presume by using the awful '+1' meme you are claiming to oppose identity politics?

    If so, you are a raging hypocrite.

    You are on here frequently pushing the ultimate identity-political programme – Brexit – the tyranny of a tiny majority of provincial nationalists over metropolitan liberals. With your hectoring, paleoconservative affected fogeyish nostalgia, you are the personification of the patronising, moralising, traditionalist rightwing: the embodiment of village green identity politics.

    I'm a metropolitan liberal Brexiteer.

    By portraying Brexit as the preserve of provincials you are pushing a fallacious and identity based meme.

    Even in metropolitan areas a significant minority backed Brexit.
    The proletariat are quite resistant to parsing in simplistic ways. 43% of graduates voted for Brexit - a minority, but a reasonably substantial one. The same proportion of AB voters opted for Leave.

    Even on here, there are Tories and Tories - HYUFD and TSE don't appear to have much in common. I'm a TINO, partly through ennui and disillusionment, partly because I am very much not a Unionist. An independent Scotland and a united Ireland seem like positives to me (though of course your mileage may vary).
    Indeed I'm in that 43%. In fact I'm not just a graduate but have a postgraduate degree too. Which makes the claim that only the uneducated voted for Brexit ring rather hollow. The reality is far more complex than that
    Your Mummy must be very proud of you!

    It has been amply proven that the less well educated tended to fall for the Brexit propaganda, and why shouldn't they, it appeals to people's most base of instincts; the dislike or mistrust of the foreigner, the precursor to racism. More intelligent people (not always necessarily with postgrad degrees) normally curb such instincts as they recognise the benefits of diversity and the limitations of prejudice. That said, I am sure not all people who voted Leave did it for prejudiced reasons, though I think that it is a reasonable assumption that the vast majority did. Many are not ashamed .
  • Options

    OchEye said:

    TOPPING said:

    It is sad that Nick Palmer has become an apologist for a violent, thuggish cult that has taken over a party that used to stand for a strand of opinion that was, while sometimes misguided, honourable and decent. The Tory party, through their throwing away of their trump card of economic competence by supporting Brexit, are allowing these economic imbeciles to inch toward power .

    ir ?
    Plenty on both sides are pretty critical of their own side as posts from PB will illustrate.

    What I find difficult to take with Nick's post is that it is, as has been pointed out on here already, turning a blind eye to some of the less attractive, not to say repugnant tendencies of the modern left. All well and good if they turned up to conference, put a stand up in a side corridor and hoped for a few visitors. But these people are running the Party.

    I've referred to Corbyn as a 'passive anti-Semite', and I've see little evidence to change my view. He allows views that are anti-Semitic to be aired and promoted without challenge, even if he does not pronounce those views himself, yet would argue strongly against the airing or promotion of other forms of racism.

    He's also deaf to it: when his own MPs gave their experiences of the anti-Semitism they're experiencing in parliament, and he didn't bother to stay to listen.
    Repeat after me: Corbyn is anti zionism many more of the Jewish Faith are not Zionists, there are many people who are not Jewish who are Zionists. Zionism is a quasi religious political system created around 1860 or so, with a heavy dash of 1920's then fashionable fad of eugenics, the purity of the Jewish people and Ersatz Israel. That Zionism has been successfully conflated with the Jewish faith, with any critics being immediately condemned as anti semitic is one of the advertising success stories of the past 70 odd years
    But why only criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories?
    Why not criticism of Indian policy in Kashmir?
    Or of Moroccan policy in Western Sahara?
    Or of Russian policy in Crimea?
    Or Turkish policy in Kurdistan?
    Or Armenian policy in Nagorno Karabakh?

    Why this tunnel vision re. Israel?

    But Corbyn does stand up against British policy in the Falkland Islands.

    See https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/24/jeremy-corbyn-power-sharing-deal-falkland-islands-argentina
  • Options
    PClippPClipp Posts: 2,138

    I've always been a fan of PR - I grew up in Denmark where you can choose between a dozen shades of opinion, while being clear which coalition they will join. That works well because you can, for instance, support the Radical Liberals, who favour free markets, liberal social values and low defence spending, a mixture of nuances that doesn't really exist in Britain. Even better, you can vote for individuals out of a list, so weighing up the relative attractions of, say, Boris vs Gove or Umunna vs Thornberry, without harming your preferred party.

    If we had PR, both Tories and Labour would divide almost instantly and give some clear choices, maybe the LibDems too. The parties are all uneasy coalitions.

    If only the die-hards in the Labour Party had the same enlightened views, Nick! Unfortunately, they still hold to the view that anybody who dislikes the Tories has to sign up for the whole Corbyn-Socialist agenda - which I most certainly do not support. So there is no way you could win over my support. Labour is destined to be a minority choice.

    If we had a system of STV in multi-member constituencies, it would be the death of party whips and party control, and the beginning of permanent coalition forming around single issues - real democracy!

    But vested interests and buggins turn continue to hold fast to their privileged position.

  • Options
    Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    No, let's look at the nation's finances overall. The wazzockry comes in specifying the NHS, with the implication "either you support this case, or you hate the kids in Great Ormond Street and want them all to die."

    But the point is that people DID vote Leave to divert the EU payments to the NHS. I know plenty who voted Leave for that very reason.
    I don't deny it, indeed I am sure you are right. So clever of the people who thought of it, I suppose, but not of the people who fell for it.
    Or....all those Remainers who want more spent on the NHS were too stupid not to see how to bring it about.

    Not very endearing is it, calling that minority who voted to remain stupid?
    You have lost me now. Surely it is uncontroversial that "more money for the country..." is a valid brexit question while "...to spend on the NHS" is merely emotive?
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,401

    But Corbyn does stand up against British policy in the Falkland Islands.

    See https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/24/jeremy-corbyn-power-sharing-deal-falkland-islands-argentina

    It would be puzzling that he supports self-determination for Palestinians and opposes it for other groups if we didn't know it wasn't really about self-determination and more about his personal determination to be as Lord Blake and before him W S Gilbert said, a friend of every country but his own.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,791

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,791
    TOPPING said:

    John_M said:

    Anazina said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    No, let's look at the nation's finances overall. The wazzockry comes in specifying the NHS, with the implication "either you support this case, or you hate the kids in Great Ormond Street and want them all to die."

    But the point is that people DID vote Leave to divert the EU payments to the NHS. I know plenty who voted Leave for that very reason.
    Is HYUFD taking a much needed day off today?
    Topping is HYUFD's mild-mannered alter ego.
    HYUFD is a blunt but effective weapon against people who threw their lot in with the xenophobic Brexiters yet maintain that they really wanted to reclaim the sovereignty - that we had all along - in order not to be bossed around by Johnny Foreigner when it comes to widget safety specifications.
    I love it!
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403
    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    Majority?
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,974

    John_M said:

    Anazina said:

    Mortimer said:

    IanB2 said:

    It is depressing that Mr Palmer thinks that an agenda driven by identity politics is going to take us anywhere worthwhile or desirable. No wonder Labour is in trouble with many of its traditional supporters.

    +1, I'm afraid.
    I presume by using the awful '+1' meme you are claiming to oppose identity politics?

    If so, you are a raging hypocrite.

    You are on here frequently pushing the ultimate identity-political programme – Brexit – the tyranny of a tiny majority of provincial nationalists over metropolitan liberals. With your hectoring, paleoconservative affected fogeyish nostalgia, you are the personification of the patronising, moralising, traditionalist rightwing: the embodiment of village green identity politics.

    I'm a metropolitan liberal Brexiteer.

    By portraying Brexit as the preserve of provincials you are pushing a fallacious and identity based meme.

    Even in metropolitan areas a significant minority backed Brexit.
    The proletariat are quite resistant to parsing in simplistic ways. 43% of graduates voted for Brexit - a minority, but a reasonably substantial one. The same proportion of AB voters opted for Leave.

    Even on here, there are Tories and Tories - HYUFD and TSE don't appear to have much in common. I'm a TINO, partly through ennui and disillusionment, partly because I am very much not a Unionist. An independent Scotland and a united Ireland seem like positives to me (though of course your mileage may vary).
    Indeed I'm in that 43%. In fact I'm not just a graduate but have a postgraduate degree too. Which makes the claim that only the uneducated voted for Brexit ring rather hollow. The reality is far more complex than that
    Your Mummy must be very proud of you!

    It has been amply proven that the less well educated tended to fall for the Brexit propaganda, and why shouldn't they, it appeals to people's most base of instincts; the dislike or mistrust of the foreigner, the precursor to racism. More intelligent people (not always necessarily with postgrad degrees) normally curb such instincts as they recognise the benefits of diversity and the limitations of prejudice. That said, I am sure not all people who voted Leave did it for prejudiced reasons, though I think that it is a reasonable assumption that the vast majority did. Many are not ashamed .

    Alternatively, people who do well out of the status quo tend to vote for the status quo and as an added bonus, they can claim to be more virtuous than those who don't.

  • Options
    John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    I think that's considerably overstating the case, to put it mildly.
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,401
    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    For a moment there I thought you meant 'a majority of lawmakers,' which seemed a rather oblique way of criticising the House of Lords, but made sense all right.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,791
    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    Other than the first three words, wrong on all fronts. You are the editor of The Daily Express and I claim my £5
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941
    TOPPING said:

    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    Majority?
    The last vice-President of the Commission reckoned it was 70%.
    https://fullfact.org/news/does-brussels-influence-70-uk-law/
  • Options
    John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    I could post social research results which tend to support the idea that the UK is a tolerant, relaxed and liberal country, but that would just spoil things for our bien pensant, more-disappointed-than-angry Remainers who are just so, so horrified that seemingly decent folk are in fact raging xenophobes.

    Oh, go on then, just one.

    http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/19/western-europeans-vary-in-their-nationalist-anti-immigrant-and-anti-religious-minority-attitudes/

    We're unexceptional members of the Western European democracies. Less tolerant than the Scandis. More tolerant than the Iberians. About the same as Germany, Spain and Ireland. Oh, the horror.
  • Options
    TykejohnnoTykejohnno Posts: 7,362

    John_M said:

    Anazina said:

    Mortimer said:

    IanB2 said:

    It is depressing that Mr Palmer thinks that an agenda driven by identity politics is going to take us anywhere worthwhile or desirable. No wonder Labour is in trouble with many of its traditional supporters.

    +1, I'm afraid.
    I presume by using the awful '+1' meme you are claiming to oppose identity politics?

    If so, you are a raging hypocrite.

    You are on here frequently pushing the ultimate identity-political programme – Brexit – the tyranny of a tiny majority of provincial nationalists over metropolitan liberals. With your hectoring, paleoconservative affected fogeyish nostalgia, you are the personification of the patronising, moralising, traditionalist rightwing: the embodiment of village green identity politics.

    I'm a metropolitan liberal Brexiteer.

    By portraying Brexit as the preserve of provincials you are pushing a fallacious and identity based meme.

    Even in metropolitan areas a significant minority backed Brexit.
    The proletariat are quite resistant to parsing in simplistic ways. 43% of graduates voted for Brexit - a minority, but a reasonably substantial one. The same proportion of AB voters opted for Leave.

    Even on here, there are Tories and Tories - HYUFD and TSE don't appear to have much in common. I'm a TINO, partly through ennui and disillusionment, partly because I am very much not a Unionist. An independent Scotland and a united Ireland seem like positives to me (though of course your mileage may vary).
    Indeed I'm in that 43%. In fact I'm not just a graduate but have a postgraduate degree too. Which makes the claim that only the uneducated voted for Brexit ring rather hollow. The reality is far more complex than that
    Your Mummy must be very proud of you!

    It has been amply proven that the less well educated tended to fall for the Brexit propaganda, and why shouldn't they, it appeals to people's most base of instincts; the dislike or mistrust of the foreigner, the precursor to racism. More intelligent people (not always necessarily with postgrad degrees) normally curb such instincts as they recognise the benefits of diversity and the limitations of prejudice. That said, I am sure not all people who voted Leave did it for prejudiced reasons, though I think that it is a reasonable assumption that the vast majority did. Many are not ashamed .
    Nigel is a great name by the way.

    Keep it up lad, people like you make me know I was right to vote leave.

    You f-ing snob.

  • Options
    John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    Sandpit said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    Majority?
    The last vice-President of the Commission reckoned it was 70%.
    https://fullfact.org/news/does-brussels-influence-70-uk-law/
    But as Topping rightly points out, most of this is regulatory administrivia. The length of aubergines, the colour of fire extinguishers, how many beans make five and so forth.
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,146
    Sean_F said:

    Alternatively, people who do well out of the status quo tend to vote for the status quo and as an added bonus, they can claim to be more virtuous than those who don't.

    And yet most of the virtue signalling seems to come from the prosecco populists who claim that they alone are able to channel the views of the benighted masses.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,791
    Sandpit said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    Majority?
    The last vice-President of the Commission reckoned it was 70%.
    https://fullfact.org/news/does-brussels-influence-70-uk-law/
    You really should check the veracity of your sources. Anyone who believes FauxFacts will definitely be a Brexit supporter, and whether they have fists full of degrees, undergraduate or post, they will definitely be described as gullible

    https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/faux-facts-disturbing-truth-about-fullfactorg
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,974

    Sean_F said:

    Alternatively, people who do well out of the status quo tend to vote for the status quo and as an added bonus, they can claim to be more virtuous than those who don't.

    And yet most of the virtue signalling seems to come from the prosecco populists who claim that they alone are able to channel the views of the benighted masses.
    There are Just Pharisees on the side of Leave, as well as on the side of Remain.
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403
    Sandpit said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    Majority?
    The last vice-President of the Commission reckoned it was 70%.
    https://fullfact.org/news/does-brussels-influence-70-uk-law/
    Jesus f*****g Christ even in that very article it says it's not the right figure.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941
    John_M said:

    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    I think that's considerably overstating the case, to put it mildly.
    So how can we get rid of Mr Junker? One of the fundamentals of democracy is that those in charge remain servants of the people rather than masters of them. The EU are firmly in the latter category.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,791
    TykeJohnno:

    "Nigel is a great name by the way.

    Keep it up lad, people like you make me know I was right to vote leave.

    You f-ing snob."



    ...and your ineloquent and moronic attempt at a response further proved my point, thank you.
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403
    John_M said:

    I could post social research results which tend to support the idea that the UK is a tolerant, relaxed and liberal country, but that would just spoil things for our bien pensant, more-disappointed-than-angry Remainers who are just so, so horrified that seemingly decent folk are in fact raging xenophobes.

    Oh, go on then, just one.

    http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/19/western-europeans-vary-in-their-nationalist-anti-immigrant-and-anti-religious-minority-attitudes/

    We're unexceptional members of the Western European democracies. Less tolerant than the Scandis. More tolerant than the Iberians. About the same as Germany, Spain and Ireland. Oh, the horror.

    You prove the point - no one is saying that the entire country is xenophobic. There is a strong case to be made (is HYUFD busy having a back, sack, and crack wax or what?) that many perhaps most Leavers however are. Which would be consistent with the Pew Research.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941

    Sandpit said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    Majority?
    The last vice-President of the Commission reckoned it was 70%.
    https://fullfact.org/news/does-brussels-influence-70-uk-law/
    You really should check the veracity of your sources. Anyone who believes FauxFacts will definitely be a Brexit supporter, and whether they have fists full of degrees, undergraduate or post, they will definitely be described as gullible

    https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/faux-facts-disturbing-truth-about-fullfactorg
    Are you denying what Ms Reding said, on camera?
    http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/player.cfm?ref=I079969
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    John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    Sandpit said:

    John_M said:

    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    I think that's considerably overstating the case, to put it mildly.
    So how can we get rid of Mr Junker? One of the fundamentals of democracy is that those in charge remain servants of the people rather than masters of them. The EU are firmly in the latter category.
    The argument is that 'tis the EC who nominate (say) Juncker via QMV, and the EP who either confirm or veto his appointment. The EC are democratically elected, as are MEPs.

    Juncker is a public servant, like (say) Olly Robbins, and you didn't get to elect Robbins either.
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    Hunt currently speaking in Washington.

    Statesmanlike speech about international unity and economic growth.

    All very proper - and boring. Not going to get much news coverage.
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    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,791
    Sandpit said:

    John_M said:

    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    I think that's considerably overstating the case, to put it mildly.
    So how can we get rid of Mr Junker? One of the fundamentals of democracy is that those in charge remain servants of the people rather than masters of them. The EU are firmly in the latter category.
    Mr Junker is more "removable" than The Monarch, the House of Lords and many of our MPs who are in safe seats, not to mention the numerous QUANGO heads. He is also as removable as the head of NATO and the UN.
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    PClippPClipp Posts: 2,138
    Sandpit said:

    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.

    If you change "elected" to "properly and honestly elected", that describes our present Conservative Government to a T. We definitely need to change the system, and take back control over these Tory politicians.
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    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,392
    edited August 2018
    Sandpit said:

    Worcestershire are 572 for 7 Declared in reply to Yorkshire's 216.

    Daryl Michell (opener) scored 178 at a modest rate and Moeen Ali (in at number three) scored 219 at a brisk rate. Of the two I would prefer Mitchell to play for England and provide some solidity to the batting in place of Jennings.

    Yes, we need to take a serious look at our batsmen. Four of them out before lunch when we are supposed to be holding out for two days isn’t acceptable.

    Stokes and Buttler are showing how it’s done, but it’ll be too little too late for England, especially when we are a man down.
    According to Cricinfo Bairstow is padded up.
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    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,791

    Hunt currently speaking in Washington.

    Statesmanlike speech about international unity and economic growth.

    All very proper - and boring. Not going to get much news coverage.

    Mr Hunt is proper and boring, and probably exactly what the country needs
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,146

    Hunt currently speaking in Washington.

    Statesmanlike speech about international unity and economic growth.

    All very proper - and boring. Not going to get much news coverage.

    Mr Hunt is proper and boring, and probably exactly what the country needs
    And he was one of the very first to say we needed a second referendum on the Brexit deal. Political reality has just been slow to catch up with political logic.
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    John_M said:

    Anazina said:

    Mortimer said:

    IanB2 said:

    It is depressing that Mr Palmer thinks that an agenda driven by identity politics is going to take us anywhere worthwhile or desirable. No wonder Labour is in trouble with many of its traditional supporters.

    +1, I'm afraid.
    I presume by using the awful '+1' meme you are claiming to oppose identity politics?

    If so, you are a raging hypocrite.

    You are on here frequently pushing the ultimate identity-political programme – Brexit – the tyranny of a tiny majority of provincial nationalists over metropolitan liberals. With your hectoring, paleoconservative affected fogeyish nostalgia, you are the personification of the patronising, moralising, traditionalist rightwing: the embodiment of village green identity politics.

    I'm a metropolitan liberal Brexiteer.

    By portraying Brexit as the preserve of provincials you are pushing a fallacious and identity based meme.

    Even in metropolitan areas a significant minority backed Brexit.
    The proletariat are quite resistant to parsing in simplistic ways. 43% of graduates voted for Brexit - a minority, but a reasonably substantial one. The same proportion of AB voters opted for Leave.

    Even on here, there are Tories and Tories - HYUFD and TSE don't appear to have much in common. I'm a TINO, partly through ennui and disillusionment, partly because I am very much not a Unionist. An independent Scotland and a united Ireland seem like positives to me (though of course your mileage may vary).
    Indeed I'm in that 43%. In fact I'm not just a graduate but have a postgraduate degree too. Which makes the claim that only the uneducated voted for Brexit ring rather hollow. The reality is far more complex than that
    Your Mummy must be very proud of you!

    It has been amply proven that the less well educated tended to fall for the Brexit propaganda, and why shouldn't they, it appeals to people's most base of instincts; the dislike or mistrust of the foreigner, the precursor to racism. More intelligent people (not always necessarily with postgrad degrees) normally curb such instincts as they recognise the benefits of diversity and the limitations of prejudice. That said, I am sure not all people who voted Leave did it for prejudiced reasons, though I think that it is a reasonable assumption that the vast majority did. Many are not ashamed .
    How many ignorant stereotypes can you fall for and squeeze into one post?
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    Hunt currently speaking in Washington.

    Statesmanlike speech about international unity and economic growth.

    All very proper - and boring. Not going to get much news coverage.

    Mr Hunt is proper and boring, and probably exactly what the country needs
    And he was one of the very first to say we needed a second referendum on the Brexit deal. Political reality has just been slow to catch up with political logic.
    Where did Hunt say that? Source please.
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    Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,819
    Sandpit said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sandpit said:

    Mr. Sandpit, but what would the options be?

    Mr. Foremain, Cameron's Little Englander comments and Clinton's basket of deplorables suggests insulting the electorate isn't the most persuasive technique available.

    I would agree Mr. Dancer, but I no longer have aspirations to appeal to any particular constituency. Prejudice and xenophobia repulse me, and while I do recognise the fact that there are many fundamentally decent people who voted Leave (including members of my own family and friends), I cannot feel anything less than disappointment that said decent people didn't realise that voting for Brexit sent a very clear message to the world that Britain is not a tolerant country
    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.
    Majority?
    The last vice-President of the Commission reckoned it was 70%.
    https://fullfact.org/news/does-brussels-influence-70-uk-law/
    Ah - you do realise she wasn't talking about UK laws, right?

    From your own link:
    "We contacted Ms Reding's press office to find out what source she was basing this on. In fact, the percentage was actually referring to something entirely different — where the European Parliament (consisting of elected representatives for each EU country) has an equal say to the European Council (made up of the governments of all EU countries) on EU laws, not UK laws."

    Sort of a crucial bit, really...

  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,146

    Hunt currently speaking in Washington.

    Statesmanlike speech about international unity and economic growth.

    All very proper - and boring. Not going to get much news coverage.

    Mr Hunt is proper and boring, and probably exactly what the country needs
    And he was one of the very first to say we needed a second referendum on the Brexit deal. Political reality has just been slow to catch up with political logic.
    Where did Hunt say that? Source please.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36647948

    People should have their say on the terms of the UK's exit deal with the EU, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said.

    Mr Hunt, who said he was "seriously considering" a bid for the Conservative leadership, said this should be either through a general election or a second referendum.
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    PClipp said:

    Sandpit said:

    Britain is not tolerant of a situation whereby those who make the majority of laws are unelected, unaccountable, unsackable and often seek to harm Britain’s interest while continually claiming more powers for themselves.

    If you change "elected" to "properly and honestly elected", that describes our present Conservative Government to a T. We definitely need to change the system, and take back control over these Tory politicians.
    They were properly and honestly elected winning the most votes by some margin across the country. Just because you lost the election doesn't mean you need to change the system, just appeal for more votes next time.
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited August 2018

    Hunt currently speaking in Washington.

    Statesmanlike speech about international unity and economic growth.

    All very proper - and boring. Not going to get much news coverage.

    Mr Hunt is proper and boring, and probably exactly what the country needs
    And he was one of the very first to say we needed a second referendum on the Brexit deal. Political reality has just been slow to catch up with political logic.
    Where did Hunt say that? Source please.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36647948

    People should have their say on the terms of the UK's exit deal with the EU, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said.

    Mr Hunt, who said he was "seriously considering" a bid for the Conservative leadership, said this should be either through a general election or a second referendum.
    2 years ago says after the referendum and before the leadership contest. He's not saying it now and I don't think that counts towards political reality catching up with anything.

    Oh and he said that could be in the form of a general election and there has been one of those since!
This discussion has been closed.