Super Keir far from hiding this morning. Live on LBC taking tough questions from callers. Good enough for you @Big_G_NorthWales ?
Not really.
LBC just confirms his London centric view
Time to go on BBC or Sky
LBC is a national station nowadays - the days of it being London only disappeared well before Eddie Muir went there for a large sum of money.
And if he went on the BBC you would just use a different argument of left wing easy questions. LBC at least will have a random selection of questions from across the whole political spectrum.
Listening to the Mayor of Bristol interview with Sky was interesting - he's just a middle aged student politician.
All the soundbites .... "inequality is increasing" (no it isn't), "they don't feel represented" (we have 10% of BAME MPs in Parliament, compare with EU Parliament), "deaths in custody are increasing" (no they aren't) and so on.
'Do you support enforcing the law'?, circumlocution, circumlocution, circumlocution...
In today's media world, perception of issues is probably more important than reality - and if the police and home office isn't spending time changing that perception it's going to be a hard battle to win.
As for Bristol itself the mayor has the interesting issue of how do you complain about criminal damage when the removal of the statue was probably a blessing. And it's a shame as the expression and face of the statue is actually very good
I half-agree with you on the media point - the question then becomes how to encourage quality of media.
Will the writer who asked for a repeat-loop-and-comedy-music of that Police Woman being hospitalised get away scot free?
The problem with standing back from politics by destruction, is that such is thereby encouraged. As a point I have already made this morning, rewarding lawbreaking is to encourage it.
I think for Bristol itself it is blatantly obvious - there is a mayoral election due (has already been postponed), and this needs to be a key point of debate.
But the people destroying the statue don't really believe in either law or democracy when it doesn't do what they want. That is a repeat of a pattern, for example, of Occupy St Pauls, who were very keen on the judicial process until they lost, then they started warbling conspiracy theories.
On a wider issue this raises: Labour may be becoming electable for the first time in ages. To do so probably needs the votes of the sorts of people who approve of taking the law into their own hands as long as the issue is a reasonably woke one, like destroying slave trader statues, but not if it's an unwoke one, like scrawling pro-gay graffiti on a mosque. They also need the votes of people who prefer the rule of law to the promotion of culture wars.
I think that there is a lot more of the latter than the former and they are far more likely to vote. But SKS's approach, as reported on here, does not seem an unreasonable line to take.
Listening to the Mayor of Bristol interview with Sky was interesting - he's just a middle aged student politician.
All the soundbites .... "inequality is increasing" (no it isn't), "they don't feel represented" (we have 10% of BAME MPs in Parliament, compare with EU Parliament), "deaths in custody are increasing" (no they aren't) and so on.
'Do you support enforcing the law'?, circumlocution, circumlocution, circumlocution...
In today's media world, perception of issues is probably more important than reality - and if the police and home office isn't spending time changing that perception it's going to be a hard battle to win.
As for Bristol itself the mayor has the interesting issue of how do you complain about criminal damage when the removal of the statue was probably a blessing. And it's a shame as the expression and face of the statue is actually very good
I half-agree with you on the media point - the question then becomes how to encourage quality of media.
Will the writer who asked for a repeat-loop-and-comedy-music of that Police Woman being hospitalised get away scot free?
The problem with standing back from politics by destruction, is that such is thereby encouraged. As a point I have already made this morning, rewarding lawbreaking is to encourage it.
I think for Bristol itself it is blatantly obvious - there is a mayoral election due (has already been postponed), and this needs to be a key point of debate.
But the people destroying the statue don't really believe in either law or democracy when it doesn't do what they want. That is a repeat of a pattern, for example, of Occupy St Pauls, who were very keen on the judicial process until they lost, then they started warbling conspiracy theories.
In this case how do you conduct the debate:
Should it have been pulled down (well no) Should we put it back up (say yes and you've lost the election as you will be spending the next year explaining why you aren't racist and a slave sympathiser)
It should be retrieved, restored and then the people of Bristol should decide it's fate
We are not close to eliminating it. We had over 1.3k new cases yesterday. That's more than France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands combined.
And how many new cases were we having this time last month? Or two months ago?
1.3k cases is not many compared to what it was and the testing capacity and tracing capacity is much greater than what it was. Suppressing the virus domestically should be the ambition and once that's done new cases coming onto our island is what matters.
1.3k cases is a lot! It's roughly double what we found the day before lockdown. We are obviously not prioritizing suppressing the virus domestically since we are opening up schools, non-essential shops, home viewings to buy a house etc.
Apples and oranges.
We're doing more tests per day now than the cumulative total we had done from when the virus began until lockdown began.
You can't compare the positive test results in isolation without considering what proportion of positive cases were being identified successfully.
Super Keir far from hiding this morning. Live on LBC taking tough questions from callers. Good enough for you @Big_G_NorthWales ?
Not really.
LBC just confirms his London centric view
Time to go on BBC or Sky
LBC is a national station nowadays - the days of it being London only disappeared well before Eddie Muir went there for a large sum of money.
And if he went on the BBC you would just use a different argument of left wing easy questions. LBC at least will have a random selection of questions from across the whole political spectrum.
I doubt many north of the M25 and certainly in the red wall seats listen to LBC
Now 5 live is broadcast across the country and of course if he fielded questions across the UK on the BBC why would I object
Listening to the Mayor of Bristol interview with Sky was interesting - he's just a middle aged student politician.
All the soundbites .... "inequality is increasing" (no it isn't), "they don't feel represented" (we have 10% of BAME MPs in Parliament, compare with EU Parliament), "deaths in custody are increasing" (no they aren't) and so on.
'Do you support enforcing the law'?, circumlocution, circumlocution, circumlocution...
In today's media world, perception of issues is probably more important than reality - and if the police and home office isn't spending time changing that perception it's going to be a hard battle to win.
As for Bristol itself the mayor has the interesting issue of how do you complain about criminal damage when the removal of the statue was probably a blessing. And it's a shame as the expression and face of the statue is actually very good
I half-agree with you on the media point - the question then becomes how to encourage quality of media.
Will the writer who asked for a repeat-loop-and-comedy-music of that Police Woman being hospitalised get away scot free?
The problem with standing back from politics by destruction, is that such is thereby encouraged. As a point I have already made this morning, rewarding lawbreaking is to encourage it.
I think for Bristol itself it is blatantly obvious - there is a mayoral election due (has already been postponed), and this needs to be a key point of debate.
But the people destroying the statue don't really believe in either law or democracy when it doesn't do what they want. That is a repeat of a pattern, for example, of Occupy St Pauls, who were very keen on the judicial process until they lost, then they started warbling conspiracy theories.
In this case how do you conduct the debate:
Should it have been pulled down (well no) Should we put it back up (say yes and you've lost the election as you will be spending the next year explaining why you aren't racist and a slave sympathiser)
It should be retrieved, restored and then the people of Bristol should decide it's fate
It's been contentious for the last 8 years with various people throwing spanners into the works to avoid a second plaque being implemented.
Any sane mayor will now use the same inability to add that second plaque being added to avoid it being reinstalled.
No one is going to change their vote based on Cummings, what they will change their vote for is the idea that the Tories have a set of rules that they can ignore when it suits them. That narrative will build up over the next 4 years.
Why will that narrative build up? This story is fading from the news already.
If further incidents happen to build the narrative up then those further incidents also play a role in people changing their votes. Cummings alone won't have been the problem. If no further incidents occur then the narrative will move on to the news of the future.
Every time there is a minor or technical breach of some procedural rule it comes back to this. Ultimately the government made the wrong decision, whether or not you agree I know they did, I'm pretty sure they know they did but figure the political cost was worth it. I think you're probably the only person who is trying to legitimately argue that it wasn't.
Additionally, a poll lead of just 3 after the saga unfolded vs 10 before shows it is shifting votes.
Polls are ephemeral nonsense midterm. I don't believe them when HYUFD wields them as the gospel truth, nor do I believe them when anyone else does.
If you see me wielding polls as the gospel truth then feel free to call me a hypocrite but I don't, they're a snapshot they don't represent votes.
You don't need polls because your view of how everyone in the UK will vote is accurate, to 0.49%,
I never said that.
What percentage of the public do you think will vote differently in 2024 solely because of Cummings?
Jeez it really does need to be drummed into you.
I really enjoy discussing stuff with you because you are rigorous and relentless and that is good, in a Socratic way, it means people examine their own arguments because you won't let anything slip by.
But here you have got it wrong. As has been pointed out to you by several posters, and me at 9.12am, the point about Cummings is that he will feed the narrative of one law for them. That is toxic and yes, due to Cummings.
And as I said that narrative only works if its one story of many, in which case this one story in isolation isn't that significant - it could have happened without this story and with the other ones.
If similar doesn't occur in the future the narrative won't build, the topic will move on.
No one is going to change their vote based on Cummings, what they will change their vote for is the idea that the Tories have a set of rules that they can ignore when it suits them. That narrative will build up over the next 4 years.
Why will that narrative build up? This story is fading from the news already.
If further incidents happen to build the narrative up then those further incidents also play a role in people changing their votes. Cummings alone won't have been the problem. If no further incidents occur then the narrative will move on to the news of the future.
Every time there is a minor or technical breach of some procedural rule it comes back to this. Ultimately the government made the wrong decision, whether or not you agree I know they did, I'm pretty sure they know they did but figure the political cost was worth it. I think you're probably the only person who is trying to legitimately argue that it wasn't.
Additionally, a poll lead of just 3 after the saga unfolded vs 10 before shows it is shifting votes.
Polls are ephemeral nonsense midterm. I don't believe them when HYUFD wields them as the gospel truth, nor do I believe them when anyone else does.
If you see me wielding polls as the gospel truth then feel free to call me a hypocrite but I don't, they're a snapshot they don't represent votes.
You don't need polls because your view of how everyone in the UK will vote is accurate, to 0.49%,
I never said that.
What percentage of the public do you think will vote differently in 2024 solely because of Cummings?
Jeez it really does need to be drummed into you.
I really enjoy discussing stuff with you because you are rigorous and relentless and that is good, in a Socratic way, it means people examine their own arguments because you won't let anything slip by.
But here you have got it wrong. As has been pointed out to you by several posters, and me at 9.12am, the point about Cummings is that he will feed the narrative of one law for them. That is toxic and yes, due to Cummings.
And how's that different from the last 50 years ?
Politicians have always lectured the electorate on how to live while giving themselves a let. Your gripe seems to be its someone you don't like who has been caught out, but there is nothing new in this. .
It's picking at the scab. Any ammunition is useful for Lab wrt this attack line and Cummings has given them a pallet-load.
Listening to the Mayor of Bristol interview with Sky was interesting - he's just a middle aged student politician.
All the soundbites .... "inequality is increasing" (no it isn't), "they don't feel represented" (we have 10% of BAME MPs in Parliament, compare with EU Parliament), "deaths in custody are increasing" (no they aren't) and so on.
'Do you support enforcing the law'?, circumlocution, circumlocution, circumlocution...
In today's media world, perception of issues is probably more important than reality - and if the police and home office isn't spending time changing that perception it's going to be a hard battle to win.
As for Bristol itself the mayor has the interesting issue of how do you complain about criminal damage when the removal of the statue was probably a blessing. And it's a shame as the expression and face of the statue is actually very good
I half-agree with you on the media point - the question then becomes how to encourage quality of media.
Will the writer who asked for a repeat-loop-and-comedy-music of that Police Woman being hospitalised get away scot free?
The problem with standing back from politics by destruction, is that such is thereby encouraged. As a point I have already made this morning, rewarding lawbreaking is to encourage it.
I think for Bristol itself it is blatantly obvious - there is a mayoral election due (has already been postponed), and this needs to be a key point of debate.
But the people destroying the statue don't really believe in either law or democracy when it doesn't do what they want. That is a repeat of a pattern, for example, of Occupy St Pauls, who were very keen on the judicial process until they lost, then they started warbling conspiracy theories.
In this case how do you conduct the debate:
Should it have been pulled down (well no) Should we put it back up (say yes and you've lost the election as you will be spending the next year explaining why you aren't racist and a slave sympathiser)
It should be retrieved, restored and then the people of Bristol should decide it's fate
It's been contentious for the last 8 years with various people throwing spanners into the works to avoid a second plaque being implemented.
Any sane mayor will now use the same inability to add that second plaque being added to avoid it being reinstalled.
It should not go back on the plinth but to be honest, it is the people of Bristol to decide its fate
No one is going to change their vote based on Cummings, what they will change their vote for is the idea that the Tories have a set of rules that they can ignore when it suits them. That narrative will build up over the next 4 years.
Why will that narrative build up? This story is fading from the news already.
If further incidents happen to build the narrative up then those further incidents also play a role in people changing their votes. Cummings alone won't have been the problem. If no further incidents occur then the narrative will move on to the news of the future.
Every time there is a minor or technical breach of some procedural rule it comes back to this. Ultimately the government made the wrong decision, whether or not you agree I know they did, I'm pretty sure they know they did but figure the political cost was worth it. I think you're probably the only person who is trying to legitimately argue that it wasn't.
Additionally, a poll lead of just 3 after the saga unfolded vs 10 before shows it is shifting votes.
Polls are ephemeral nonsense midterm. I don't believe them when HYUFD wields them as the gospel truth, nor do I believe them when anyone else does.
If you see me wielding polls as the gospel truth then feel free to call me a hypocrite but I don't, they're a snapshot they don't represent votes.
You don't need polls because your view of how everyone in the UK will vote is accurate, to 0.49%,
I never said that.
What percentage of the public do you think will vote differently in 2024 solely because of Cummings?
Jeez it really does need to be drummed into you.
I really enjoy discussing stuff with you because you are rigorous and relentless and that is good, in a Socratic way, it means people examine their own arguments because you won't let anything slip by.
But here you have got it wrong. As has been pointed out to you by several posters, and me at 9.12am, the point about Cummings is that he will feed the narrative of one law for them. That is toxic and yes, due to Cummings.
And as I said that narrative only works if its one story of many, in which case this one story in isolation isn't that significant - it could have happened without this story and with the other ones.
If similar doesn't occur in the future the narrative won't build, the topic will move on.
There's no such thing as society a bad attack line that can be rolled out constantly and which rings true with people.
Super Keir far from hiding this morning. Live on LBC taking tough questions from callers. Good enough for you @Big_G_NorthWales ?
Not really.
LBC just confirms his London centric view
Time to go on BBC or Sky
LBC is a national station nowadays - the days of it being London only disappeared well before Eddie Muir went there for a large sum of money.
And if he went on the BBC you would just use a different argument of left wing easy questions. LBC at least will have a random selection of questions from across the whole political spectrum.
I doubt many north of the M25 and certainly in the red wall seats listen to LBC
Now 5 live is broadcast across the country and of course if he fielded questions across the UK on the BBC why would I object
He is not Corbyn
But you don't know that - when 30 seconds on google would give you the actual rajar figures.
I do find it remarkable how often the Tories on here post things without any evidence to back up their proposition / theory even when the evidence is available without any hassle.
Statue ethics - I'm probably not alone in having no idea who 95% of the statues that I see represent, so starting point is that I don't care. If someone is widely admired by some and hated by others (Lenin in Ukraine seems a good example, and arguably Thatcher is too, but not Churchill), it seems fair to move the statue to somewhere out of the way where people who were fond of them can go and see it without winding up the others - putting the statue in a derisive theme park is trolling, though. Where the statue commemorates people now universally seen as disreputable - Jimmy Saville's elaborate gravestone for instance - then removal seems best. Arguably a slaver who later gave money to charity is in the second category, not the first.
The issue of direct action vs democratic process is separate, and I'm usually not keen on the former, but I won't get worked up about a hunk of stone.
I don't get worked up about hunks of stone but I do about the rule of law. A campaign to remove a statue using democratic processes because with modern sensibilities the good that the person did was outweighed by the bad is absolutely fair enough. No problem with that at all. Just because a statue has been there over 100 years doesn't give it any rights. It is, ultimately, a hunk of stone. But mob rule and vandalism are very bad things whether directed at a hunk of stone, a shop, some politician or 10 Downing Street. It should not be tolerated.
I’m not a fan of mob rule. I’m also not a fan of apathetic majorities riding roughshod indefinitely over minorities. Majoritarianism usually has an ugly ending.
There are other examples of aggressive majoritarianism just now, I suspect, but the most obvious example is eluding me.
Majoritarianism is the weak point of democracy, I agree. There is an onus on the majority to find the least offensive or deleterious way of achieving what they want whilst respecting the views of the minority. If they do this there is a much better chance of the majority view becoming the basis of a new consensus on which society can move forward. If they don't then society is divided and weakened.
I wonder what current government activity that idea might usefully be applied to?
The lockdown, the winding down of the furlough scheme, the tracing App (if it ever works), taxation policies post the recession, social integration and multiculturalism and no doubt many other more trivial things as well.
Listening to the Mayor of Bristol interview with Sky was interesting - he's just a middle aged student politician.
All the soundbites .... "inequality is increasing" (no it isn't), "they don't feel represented" (we have 10% of BAME MPs in Parliament, compare with EU Parliament), "deaths in custody are increasing" (no they aren't) and so on.
'Do you support enforcing the law'?, circumlocution, circumlocution, circumlocution...
In today's media world, perception of issues is probably more important than reality - and if the police and home office isn't spending time changing that perception it's going to be a hard battle to win.
As for Bristol itself the mayor has the interesting issue of how do you complain about criminal damage when the removal of the statue was probably a blessing. And it's a shame as the expression and face of the statue is actually very good
I half-agree with you on the media point - the question then becomes how to encourage quality of media.
Will the writer who asked for a repeat-loop-and-comedy-music of that Police Woman being hospitalised get away scot free?
The problem with standing back from politics by destruction, is that such is thereby encouraged. As a point I have already made this morning, rewarding lawbreaking is to encourage it.
I think for Bristol itself it is blatantly obvious - there is a mayoral election due (has already been postponed), and this needs to be a key point of debate.
But the people destroying the statue don't really believe in either law or democracy when it doesn't do what they want. That is a repeat of a pattern, for example, of Occupy St Pauls, who were very keen on the judicial process until they lost, then they started warbling conspiracy theories.
In this case how do you conduct the debate:
Should it have been pulled down (well no) Should we put it back up (say yes and you've lost the election as you will be spending the next year explaining why you aren't racist and a slave sympathiser)
It should be retrieved, restored and then the people of Bristol should decide it's fate
It's been contentious for the last 8 years with various people throwing spanners into the works to avoid a second plaque being implemented.
Any sane mayor will now use the same inability to add that second plaque being added to avoid it being reinstalled.
It should not go back on the plinth but to be honest, it is the people of Bristol to decide its fate
But that's the opposite of what you stated just 1 post ago...
The article links to a page showing 40 "incidents" within the last 5 years during which firearms were used. There was more than one bullet per incident (espcially considering some of those incidents were terror attacks). But still the overall point is a very good one.
We are not close to eliminating it. We had over 1.3k new cases yesterday. That's more than France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands combined.
And how many new cases were we having this time last month? Or two months ago?
1.3k cases is not many compared to what it was and the testing capacity and tracing capacity is much greater than what it was. Suppressing the virus domestically should be the ambition and once that's done new cases coming onto our island is what matters.
1.3k cases is a lot! It's roughly double what we found the day before lockdown. We are obviously not prioritizing suppressing the virus domestically since we are opening up schools, non-essential shops, home viewings to buy a house etc.
But the context is how many we were testing on that day. Everyone who wants a test and has symptoms can now get one, That was not the case in March. Check out the estimates for how many new cases there were at the time of lockdown.
Listening to the Mayor of Bristol interview with Sky was interesting - he's just a middle aged student politician.
All the soundbites .... "inequality is increasing" (no it isn't), "they don't feel represented" (we have 10% of BAME MPs in Parliament, compare with EU Parliament), "deaths in custody are increasing" (no they aren't) and so on.
'Do you support enforcing the law'?, circumlocution, circumlocution, circumlocution...
In today's media world, perception of issues is probably more important than reality - and if the police and home office isn't spending time changing that perception it's going to be a hard battle to win.
As for Bristol itself the mayor has the interesting issue of how do you complain about criminal damage when the removal of the statue was probably a blessing. And it's a shame as the expression and face of the statue is actually very good
I half-agree with you on the media point - the question then becomes how to encourage quality of media.
Will the writer who asked for a repeat-loop-and-comedy-music of that Police Woman being hospitalised get away scot free?
The problem with standing back from politics by destruction, is that such is thereby encouraged. As a point I have already made this morning, rewarding lawbreaking is to encourage it.
I think for Bristol itself it is blatantly obvious - there is a mayoral election due (has already been postponed), and this needs to be a key point of debate.
But the people destroying the statue don't really believe in either law or democracy when it doesn't do what they want. That is a repeat of a pattern, for example, of Occupy St Pauls, who were very keen on the judicial process until they lost, then they started warbling conspiracy theories.
In this case how do you conduct the debate:
Should it have been pulled down (well no) Should we put it back up (say yes and you've lost the election as you will be spending the next year explaining why you aren't racist and a slave sympathiser)
It should be retrieved, restored and then the people of Bristol should decide it's fate
It's been contentious for the last 8 years with various people throwing spanners into the works to avoid a second plaque being implemented.
Any sane mayor will now use the same inability to add that second plaque being added to avoid it being reinstalled.
It should not go back on the plinth but to be honest, it is the people of Bristol to decide its fate
But that's the opposite of what you stated just 1 post ago...
With respect it is not
I said it should be retrieved, restored and then the people of Bristol should decide its fate Returning it to the plinth is not something I would expect to happen
Super Keir far from hiding this morning. Live on LBC taking tough questions from callers. Good enough for you @Big_G_NorthWales ?
Not really.
LBC just confirms his London centric view
Time to go on BBC or Sky
LBC is a national station nowadays - the days of it being London only disappeared well before Eddie Muir went there for a large sum of money.
And if he went on the BBC you would just use a different argument of left wing easy questions. LBC at least will have a random selection of questions from across the whole political spectrum.
I doubt many north of the M25 and certainly in the red wall seats listen to LBC
Now 5 live is broadcast across the country and of course if he fielded questions across the UK on the BBC why would I object
He is not Corbyn
But you don't know that - when 30 seconds on google would give you the actual rajar figures.
I do find it remarkable how often the Tories on here post things without any evidence to back up their proposition / theory even when the evidence is available without any hassle.
LBC have 8.4% market share so 91.6% do not listen to it
Edit: I see Malthouse was talking about the statue being pulled down. Boris/the govt are still fucking muppets, that said.
This is the correct response. Look how popular that tweet is on a predominently left wing platform. Starmer's sentiment I understand but it was a bit mealy mouthed. Boris knows the position of the decent majority.
On topic, the claim this all rests on is that the polling is a mess. Otherwise the things Mr Ed mentions should be showing up already.
But national polling in the US is pretty good, and it was good in 2016 too. State polling is always a mess, don't pay too much attention to it, just assume the bigger your lead, the higher the probability that you'll win the electoral college, and if you're ahead by like 4% nationally, you're going to win the electoral college unless something exceedingly weird happens.
I tried to think of the sources of systematic error in the US national polls, and the main one I've come up with actually goes the other way: their "Likely Voters" grouping is largely (I understand) based on whether you voted last time. And Hilary turned a lot of voters off.
If you lean Democratic and didn't bother last time because you couldn't stand Hilary, but intend to vote this time, you'll be missed off of some polls. Obviously, if you lean Republican and didn't bother last time because you couldn't stand Trump but intend to vote this time, you'll be missed as well, but my feeling is that this group is considerably smaller.
Just an unscientific impression, but I had difficulty coming up with reasons in the other direction. However, should come with the warning that this supports what I want to happen, so could well be biased.
Statue ethics - I'm probably not alone in having no idea who 95% of the statues that I see represent, so starting point is that I don't care. If someone is widely admired by some and hated by others (Lenin in Ukraine seems a good example, and arguably Thatcher is too, but not Churchill), it seems fair to move the statue to somewhere out of the way where people who were fond of them can go and see it without winding up the others - putting the statue in a derisive theme park is trolling, though. Where the statue commemorates people now universally seen as disreputable - Jimmy Saville's elaborate gravestone for instance - then removal seems best. Arguably a slaver who later gave money to charity is in the second category, not the first.
The issue of direct action vs democratic process is separate, and I'm usually not keen on the former, but I won't get worked up about a hunk of stone.
I don't get worked up about hunks of stone but I do about the rule of law. A campaign to remove a statue using democratic processes because with modern sensibilities the good that the person did was outweighed by the bad is absolutely fair enough. No problem with that at all. Just because a statue has been there over 100 years doesn't give it any rights. It is, ultimately, a hunk of stone. But mob rule and vandalism are very bad things whether directed at a hunk of stone, a shop, some politician or 10 Downing Street. It should not be tolerated.
I’m not a fan of mob rule. I’m also not a fan of apathetic majorities riding roughshod indefinitely over minorities. Majoritarianism usually has an ugly ending.
There are other examples of aggressive majoritarianism just now, I suspect, but the most obvious example is eluding me.
Majoritarianism is the weak point of democracy, I agree. There is an onus on the majority to find the least offensive or deleterious way of achieving what they want whilst respecting the views of the minority. If they do this there is a much better chance of the majority view becoming the basis of a new consensus on which society can move forward. If they don't then society is divided and weakened.
Super Keir far from hiding this morning. Live on LBC taking tough questions from callers. Good enough for you @Big_G_NorthWales ?
Not really.
LBC just confirms his London centric view
Time to go on BBC or Sky
LBC is a national station nowadays - the days of it being London only disappeared well before Eddie Muir went there for a large sum of money.
And if he went on the BBC you would just use a different argument of left wing easy questions. LBC at least will have a random selection of questions from across the whole political spectrum.
I doubt many north of the M25 and certainly in the red wall seats listen to LBC
Now 5 live is broadcast across the country and of course if he fielded questions across the UK on the BBC why would I object
He is not Corbyn
But you don't know that - when 30 seconds on google would give you the actual rajar figures.
I do find it remarkable how often the Tories on here post things without any evidence to back up their proposition / theory even when the evidence is available without any hassle.
LBC have 8.4% market share so 91.6% do not listen to it
More than that don't listen to it - since market share isn't 100% of the public.
Is there anyone else who couldnt really care much about the statues? Im more surprised how strong people feel on both sides. It doesnt seem either particularly important or clear cut either way whether it is right or wrong.
You think it's going to stop at statues?
Bless.
Oh no!
First they came for the statues of slavers.
Wait what follows?
Then the came for the slavers? Then they demanded equality? Then they tackled racism?
Oh the horror!
This trendy vicar phase of yours is achingly embarrassing. Truly mind-numbing posts defending the indefensible.
Pulling down statues of people that should be regarded as criminals is entirely defensible.
Why anyone would care more about statues than violence against people is beyond me.
Even when it is a criminal act? They didn't get what they wanted through the democratic process, so took things into their own hands.
Yes non violent criminal protests have been part of civil protests throughout all of human history.
Were the Suffragettes wrong for their illegal protests? Was the Boston Tea Party the wrong thing to do because it was illegal? Was Rosa Parks in the wrong for refusing to obey Jim Crow laws. Was Ghandi wrong to break laws in resistance.
Just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong.
If a protest is illegal but you think it's the right thing to do then I think you should do what is right, even if it isn't legal. I am not a law and order obsessive I believe in what is right over what is legal.
If a majority is enforcing a bad law that you want to protest then do it. If the majority want to put the statue back up afterwards they can do so.
The difference is, we are a democracy with universal suffrage and a free media
To take your examples
1. The suffragettes were protesting for the vote, they did not have the vote, they had no choice 2. The Tea Party was literally a protest against Taxation minus Representation 3. The Jim Crow laws were overt discrimination by law 4. Gandhi was protesting an imperial conquest of his country
None of these examples have any relevance now. A campaign to get rid of the statue had many avenues to democratic success. Just one clever artwork might have done it. The resistance is feeble. He was a slaver.
Instead they tore it down in exultant anger and now we have the makings of a culture war. Well done. Moron
They're all relevant they're all illegal in their day but were part of changing the culture.
We still today have rampant discrimination and evil ongoing that matters far more than some civil disorder.
In a hundred years time pulling down statues of slavers may be viewed like Rosa Parks on a bus and the generations of the future will be confused why it took so long to remove slavers statues (which were only put up AFTER we knew slavery was wrong and it had been abolished).
Uh?
Which part went over your head or are you struggling with?
The part where you suddenly have the writing and reasoning capability of an averagely bright 7 year old.
Rosa Parks? Jeez. If she has any surviving family they should sue.
Rosa Parks acted illegally. So did those pulling down slavers statues.
The law is not the be all and end all. Never has been.
All the other things you mentioned achieved something tangible
What's going to change here apart from the statues not being there anymore?
Hopefully an end to the racism that they're symbolic of. That's what sparked these protests in the first place.
Absolutely no chance of that. It's made things 100% worse.
I doubt it. I think it's shining a spotlight on problems and will make the situation better. Pushing the Overton Window against systemic racism.
Turning a blind eye to problems doesn't make things better or make the problems go away.
Yeah maybe if students throw all the statues no one had heard of into the sea, racism will end.
It's no silver bullet. Neither was a young woman sitting on a different seat in a bus. Small measures can be meaningful.
The modern UK is nothing like the Jim Crow-era South.
Statue ethics - I'm probably not alone in having no idea who 95% of the statues that I see represent, so starting point is that I don't care. If someone is widely admired by some and hated by others (Lenin in Ukraine seems a good example, and arguably Thatcher is too, but not Churchill), it seems fair to move the statue to somewhere out of the way where people who were fond of them can go and see it without winding up the others - putting the statue in a derisive theme park is trolling, though. Where the statue commemorates people now universally seen as disreputable - Jimmy Saville's elaborate gravestone for instance - then removal seems best. Arguably a slaver who later gave money to charity is in the second category, not the first.
The issue of direct action vs democratic process is separate, and I'm usually not keen on the former, but I won't get worked up about a hunk of stone.
I don't get worked up about hunks of stone but I do about the rule of law. A campaign to remove a statue using democratic processes because with modern sensibilities the good that the person did was outweighed by the bad is absolutely fair enough. No problem with that at all. Just because a statue has been there over 100 years doesn't give it any rights. It is, ultimately, a hunk of stone. But mob rule and vandalism are very bad things whether directed at a hunk of stone, a shop, some politician or 10 Downing Street. It should not be tolerated.
I’m not a fan of mob rule. I’m also not a fan of apathetic majorities riding roughshod indefinitely over minorities. Majoritarianism usually has an ugly ending.
There are other examples of aggressive majoritarianism just now, I suspect, but the most obvious example is eluding me.
Majoritarianism is the weak point of democracy, I agree. There is an onus on the majority to find the least offensive or deleterious way of achieving what they want whilst respecting the views of the minority. If they do this there is a much better chance of the majority view becoming the basis of a new consensus on which society can move forward. If they don't then society is divided and weakened.
Is there anyone else who couldnt really care much about the statues? Im more surprised how strong people feel on both sides. It doesnt seem either particularly important or clear cut either way whether it is right or wrong.
You think it's going to stop at statues?
Bless.
Oh no!
First they came for the statues of slavers.
Wait what follows?
Then the came for the slavers? Then they demanded equality? Then they tackled racism?
Oh the horror!
This trendy vicar phase of yours is achingly embarrassing. Truly mind-numbing posts defending the indefensible.
Pulling down statues of people that should be regarded as criminals is entirely defensible.
Why anyone would care more about statues than violence against people is beyond me.
Even when it is a criminal act? They didn't get what they wanted through the democratic process, so took things into their own hands.
Yes non violent criminal protests have been part of civil protests throughout all of human history.
Were the Suffragettes wrong for their illegal protests? Was the Boston Tea Party the wrong thing to do because it was illegal? Was Rosa Parks in the wrong for refusing to obey Jim Crow laws. Was Ghandi wrong to break laws in resistance.
Just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong.
If a protest is illegal but you think it's the right thing to do then I think you should do what is right, even if it isn't legal. I am not a law and order obsessive I believe in what is right over what is legal.
If a majority is enforcing a bad law that you want to protest then do it. If the majority want to put the statue back up afterwards they can do so.
The difference is, we are a democracy with universal suffrage and a free media
To take your examples
1. The suffragettes were protesting for the vote, they did not have the vote, they had no choice 2. The Tea Party was literally a protest against Taxation minus Representation 3. The Jim Crow laws were overt discrimination by law 4. Gandhi was protesting an imperial conquest of his country
None of these examples have any relevance now. A campaign to get rid of the statue had many avenues to democratic success. Just one clever artwork might have done it. The resistance is feeble. He was a slaver.
Instead they tore it down in exultant anger and now we have the makings of a culture war. Well done. Moron
They're all relevant they're all illegal in their day but were part of changing the culture.
We still today have rampant discrimination and evil ongoing that matters far more than some civil disorder.
In a hundred years time pulling down statues of slavers may be viewed like Rosa Parks on a bus and the generations of the future will be confused why it took so long to remove slavers statues (which were only put up AFTER we knew slavery was wrong and it had been abolished).
Uh?
Which part went over your head or are you struggling with?
The part where you suddenly have the writing and reasoning capability of an averagely bright 7 year old.
Rosa Parks? Jeez. If she has any surviving family they should sue.
Rosa Parks acted illegally. So did those pulling down slavers statues.
The law is not the be all and end all. Never has been.
All the other things you mentioned achieved something tangible
What's going to change here apart from the statues not being there anymore?
Hopefully an end to the racism that they're symbolic of. That's what sparked these protests in the first place.
Absolutely no chance of that. It's made things 100% worse.
I doubt it. I think it's shining a spotlight on problems and will make the situation better. Pushing the Overton Window against systemic racism.
Turning a blind eye to problems doesn't make things better or make the problems go away.
Yeah maybe if students throw all the statues no one had heard of into the sea, racism will end.
It's no silver bullet. Neither was a young woman sitting on a different seat in a bus. Small measures can be meaningful.
The modern UK is nothing like the Jim Crow-era South.
Doesn't mean that all injustice or reasons to have civil disorder have gone.
Statue ethics - I'm probably not alone in having no idea who 95% of the statues that I see represent, so starting point is that I don't care. If someone is widely admired by some and hated by others (Lenin in Ukraine seems a good example, and arguably Thatcher is too, but not Churchill), it seems fair to move the statue to somewhere out of the way where people who were fond of them can go and see it without winding up the others - putting the statue in a derisive theme park is trolling, though. Where the statue commemorates people now universally seen as disreputable - Jimmy Saville's elaborate gravestone for instance - then removal seems best. Arguably a slaver who later gave money to charity is in the second category, not the first.
The issue of direct action vs democratic process is separate, and I'm usually not keen on the former, but I won't get worked up about a hunk of stone.
I don't get worked up about hunks of stone but I do about the rule of law. A campaign to remove a statue using democratic processes because with modern sensibilities the good that the person did was outweighed by the bad is absolutely fair enough. No problem with that at all. Just because a statue has been there over 100 years doesn't give it any rights. It is, ultimately, a hunk of stone. But mob rule and vandalism are very bad things whether directed at a hunk of stone, a shop, some politician or 10 Downing Street. It should not be tolerated.
I’m not a fan of mob rule. I’m also not a fan of apathetic majorities riding roughshod indefinitely over minorities. Majoritarianism usually has an ugly ending.
There are other examples of aggressive majoritarianism just now, I suspect, but the most obvious example is eluding me.
Majoritarianism is the weak point of democracy, I agree. There is an onus on the majority to find the least offensive or deleterious way of achieving what they want whilst respecting the views of the minority. If they do this there is a much better chance of the majority view becoming the basis of a new consensus on which society can move forward. If they don't then society is divided and weakened.
I look forward to Unionists being less offensive.
While we are on that subject maybe that applies to both sides
Perhaps I need to dust down my “This Is Not America” article again:
The US police seem to have a lot of exemptions for anything they do. They need to be made more responsible for their actions.
At the moment, they can seize your money, cars or destroy your property with total impunity. These days it seems that emptying the arsenal into a suspect can be added to the list.
We are not close to eliminating it. We had over 1.3k new cases yesterday. That's more than France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands combined.
And how many new cases were we having this time last month? Or two months ago?
1.3k cases is not many compared to what it was and the testing capacity and tracing capacity is much greater than what it was. Suppressing the virus domestically should be the ambition and once that's done new cases coming onto our island is what matters.
1.3k cases is a lot! It's roughly double what we found the day before lockdown. We are obviously not prioritizing suppressing the virus domestically since we are opening up schools, non-essential shops, home viewings to buy a house etc.
Apples and oranges.
We're doing more tests per day now than the cumulative total we had done from when the virus began until lockdown began.
You can't compare the positive test results in isolation without considering what proportion of positive cases were being identified successfully.
You're right that's not a very fair comparison, but it's clear we are not close to eliminating the virus. The govt thinks we have about 8,000 new cases a day and that R is very close to 1. The LSHTM modelling reckons our halving rate is 2 months. There is a long way to go.
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Listening to the Mayor of Bristol interview with Sky was interesting - he's just a middle aged student politician.
All the soundbites .... "inequality is increasing" (no it isn't), "they don't feel represented" (we have 10% of BAME MPs in Parliament, compare with EU Parliament), "deaths in custody are increasing" (no they aren't) and so on.
'Do you support enforcing the law'?, circumlocution, circumlocution, circumlocution...
In today's media world, perception of issues is probably more important than reality - and if the police and home office isn't spending time changing that perception it's going to be a hard battle to win.
As for Bristol itself the mayor has the interesting issue of how do you complain about criminal damage when the removal of the statue was probably a blessing. And it's a shame as the expression and face of the statue is actually very good
I half-agree with you on the media point - the question then becomes how to encourage quality of media.
Will the writer who asked for a repeat-loop-and-comedy-music of that Police Woman being hospitalised get away scot free?
The problem with standing back from politics by destruction, is that such is thereby encouraged. As a point I have already made this morning, rewarding lawbreaking is to encourage it.
I think for Bristol itself it is blatantly obvious - there is a mayoral election due (has already been postponed), and this needs to be a key point of debate.
But the people destroying the statue don't really believe in either law or democracy when it doesn't do what they want. That is a repeat of a pattern, for example, of Occupy St Pauls, who were very keen on the judicial process until they lost, then they started warbling conspiracy theories.
On a wider issue this raises: Labour may be becoming electable for the first time in ages. To do so probably needs the votes of the sorts of people who approve of taking the law into their own hands as long as the issue is a reasonably woke one, like destroying slave trader statues, but not if it's an unwoke one, like scrawling pro-gay graffiti on a mosque. They also need the votes of people who prefer the rule of law to the promotion of culture wars.
Interesting question.
Sir Keir has taken a stance against the lawbreaking. But his Corbynista wing has done the opposite at least in part eg Dawn Butler and Dick Burgon are celebrating.
And the Campaign Group went from 1 in 12 MPs to 1 in 6 MPs last time.
Oh Mr Woo, what will he do? Will it stay electable?
Statue ethics - I'm probably not alone in having no idea who 95% of the statues that I see represent, so starting point is that I don't care. If someone is widely admired by some and hated by others (Lenin in Ukraine seems a good example, and arguably Thatcher is too, but not Churchill), it seems fair to move the statue to somewhere out of the way where people who were fond of them can go and see it without winding up the others - putting the statue in a derisive theme park is trolling, though. Where the statue commemorates people now universally seen as disreputable - Jimmy Saville's elaborate gravestone for instance - then removal seems best. Arguably a slaver who later gave money to charity is in the second category, not the first.
The issue of direct action vs democratic process is separate, and I'm usually not keen on the former, but I won't get worked up about a hunk of stone.
I don't get worked up about hunks of stone but I do about the rule of law. A campaign to remove a statue using democratic processes because with modern sensibilities the good that the person did was outweighed by the bad is absolutely fair enough. No problem with that at all. Just because a statue has been there over 100 years doesn't give it any rights. It is, ultimately, a hunk of stone. But mob rule and vandalism are very bad things whether directed at a hunk of stone, a shop, some politician or 10 Downing Street. It should not be tolerated.
I’m not a fan of mob rule. I’m also not a fan of apathetic majorities riding roughshod indefinitely over minorities. Majoritarianism usually has an ugly ending.
There are other examples of aggressive majoritarianism just now, I suspect, but the most obvious example is eluding me.
Majoritarianism is the weak point of democracy, I agree. There is an onus on the majority to find the least offensive or deleterious way of achieving what they want whilst respecting the views of the minority. If they do this there is a much better chance of the majority view becoming the basis of a new consensus on which society can move forward. If they don't then society is divided and weakened.
I look forward to Unionists being less offensive.
I would welcome a Scottish government who accepted the majority consensus and focused on doing the best for Scotland in difficult times.
Statue ethics - I'm probably not alone in having no idea who 95% of the statues that I see represent, so starting point is that I don't care. If someone is widely admired by some and hated by others (Lenin in Ukraine seems a good example, and arguably Thatcher is too, but not Churchill), it seems fair to move the statue to somewhere out of the way where people who were fond of them can go and see it without winding up the others - putting the statue in a derisive theme park is trolling, though. Where the statue commemorates people now universally seen as disreputable - Jimmy Saville's elaborate gravestone for instance - then removal seems best. Arguably a slaver who later gave money to charity is in the second category, not the first.
The issue of direct action vs democratic process is separate, and I'm usually not keen on the former, but I won't get worked up about a hunk of stone.
I don't get worked up about hunks of stone but I do about the rule of law. A campaign to remove a statue using democratic processes because with modern sensibilities the good that the person did was outweighed by the bad is absolutely fair enough. No problem with that at all. Just because a statue has been there over 100 years doesn't give it any rights. It is, ultimately, a hunk of stone. But mob rule and vandalism are very bad things whether directed at a hunk of stone, a shop, some politician or 10 Downing Street. It should not be tolerated.
I’m not a fan of mob rule. I’m also not a fan of apathetic majorities riding roughshod indefinitely over minorities. Majoritarianism usually has an ugly ending.
There are other examples of aggressive majoritarianism just now, I suspect, but the most obvious example is eluding me.
Majoritarianism is the weak point of democracy, I agree. There is an onus on the majority to find the least offensive or deleterious way of achieving what they want whilst respecting the views of the minority. If they do this there is a much better chance of the majority view becoming the basis of a new consensus on which society can move forward. If they don't then society is divided and weakened.
I look forward to Unionists being less offensive.
and cybernats
Interesting. My comment was regarding Majoritarianism. So, I’m glad to see you acknowledge that pro-independence folk are the new majority 😃
We are not close to eliminating it. We had over 1.3k new cases yesterday. That's more than France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands combined.
And how many new cases were we having this time last month? Or two months ago?
1.3k cases is not many compared to what it was and the testing capacity and tracing capacity is much greater than what it was. Suppressing the virus domestically should be the ambition and once that's done new cases coming onto our island is what matters.
1.3k cases is a lot! It's roughly double what we found the day before lockdown. We are obviously not prioritizing suppressing the virus domestically since we are opening up schools, non-essential shops, home viewings to buy a house etc.
Apples and oranges.
We're doing more tests per day now than the cumulative total we had done from when the virus began until lockdown began.
You can't compare the positive test results in isolation without considering what proportion of positive cases were being identified successfully.
You're right that's not a very fair comparison, but it's clear we are not close to eliminating the virus. The govt thinks we have about 8,000 new cases a day and that R is very close to 1. The LSHTM modelling reckons our halving rate is 2 months. There is a long way to go.
The government also believes the number of active cases halved in the the last fortnight of last month, it should be even lower by now and by next week will be even lower still.
We were a couple of weeks behind continental Europe, by next month the virus could be contained in this country which makes bringing the virus back onto our island the greatest risk.
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Statue ethics - I'm probably not alone in having no idea who 95% of the statues that I see represent, so starting point is that I don't care. If someone is widely admired by some and hated by others (Lenin in Ukraine seems a good example, and arguably Thatcher is too, but not Churchill), it seems fair to move the statue to somewhere out of the way where people who were fond of them can go and see it without winding up the others - putting the statue in a derisive theme park is trolling, though. Where the statue commemorates people now universally seen as disreputable - Jimmy Saville's elaborate gravestone for instance - then removal seems best. Arguably a slaver who later gave money to charity is in the second category, not the first.
The issue of direct action vs democratic process is separate, and I'm usually not keen on the former, but I won't get worked up about a hunk of stone.
I don't get worked up about hunks of stone but I do about the rule of law. A campaign to remove a statue using democratic processes because with modern sensibilities the good that the person did was outweighed by the bad is absolutely fair enough. No problem with that at all. Just because a statue has been there over 100 years doesn't give it any rights. It is, ultimately, a hunk of stone. But mob rule and vandalism are very bad things whether directed at a hunk of stone, a shop, some politician or 10 Downing Street. It should not be tolerated.
I’m not a fan of mob rule. I’m also not a fan of apathetic majorities riding roughshod indefinitely over minorities. Majoritarianism usually has an ugly ending.
There are other examples of aggressive majoritarianism just now, I suspect, but the most obvious example is eluding me.
Majoritarianism is the weak point of democracy, I agree. There is an onus on the majority to find the least offensive or deleterious way of achieving what they want whilst respecting the views of the minority. If they do this there is a much better chance of the majority view becoming the basis of a new consensus on which society can move forward. If they don't then society is divided and weakened.
I look forward to Unionists being less offensive.
I would welcome a Scottish government who accepted the majority consensus and focused on doing the best for Scotland in difficult times.
Do you mean the majority in Scotland, one must inquire, please?
Perhaps these people actually believe that they're living under a tyranny.
To a degree I expect that they do believe that. I've said before that when people call almost anything that they dislike — be it immigration policies, Brexit, income tax, or limited overs cricket — words like racist or fascist then the words lose meaning. If everything is racist then nothing is racist. When you think like that it is probably dead easy to take the next step to "this is just like Nazi Germany".
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Brexit is done. His “Remainer” / Metropolitan lefty base has other concerns.
On topic, the claim this all rests on is that the polling is a mess. Otherwise the things Mr Ed mentions should be showing up already.
But national polling in the US is pretty good, and it was good in 2016 too. State polling is always a mess, don't pay too much attention to it, just assume the bigger your lead, the higher the probability that you'll win the electoral college, and if you're ahead by like 4% nationally, you're going to win the electoral college unless something exceedingly weird happens.
I tried to think of the sources of systematic error in the US national polls, and the main one I've come up with actually goes the other way: their "Likely Voters" grouping is largely (I understand) based on whether you voted last time. And Hilary turned a lot of voters off.
If you lean Democratic and didn't bother last time because you couldn't stand Hilary, but intend to vote this time, you'll be missed off of some polls. Obviously, if you lean Republican and didn't bother last time because you couldn't stand Trump but intend to vote this time, you'll be missed as well, but my feeling is that this group is considerably smaller.
Just an unscientific impression, but I had difficulty coming up with reasons in the other direction. However, should come with the warning that this supports what I want to happen, so could well be biased.
I think the other way for the polls to be wrong is with the standard shy Trump voters: Conservative voters who find Trump an embarrassment and don't want to encourage him, but they like tax cuts and right-wing judges, and the campaign pits standard left-wing arguments against standard right-wing arguments, so once exposed to that they go back to ticking the box with an R next to it.
Take the 7% lead, erode it to 4% without much happening, lose another 2% on the day, nothing much changes from last time in the electoral college, and boom.
Organising a test and trace system from scratch is a huge logistical challenge but my perception is that we should have been looking to build the capacity at least 2 months before we did and spent time and effort building a consensus about how this was to be done. It seems another vestige of the herd immunity/inevitability thinking that resulted in the first version being abandoned before it even got going during phase 1 and the resistance to quarantining arrivals from abroad.
God I hare people who look down on the common person.
There’s a vignette about Prince Andrew’s childhood in this new book by the journalist Nigel Cawthorne that seems telling. The royal family were watching Coronation Street and as the barmaid Bet Lynch had an argument, Andrew cried: “Oh God, look at all those common people.” This two-tiered view of humanity was not something he shed as he aged, the book implies: there’s royalty and the plebs; his daughters and the girls abused by his paedophile friend.
In Prince Andrew, Epstein and the Palace, Cawthorne charts Andrew’s descent from the “royal who could do no wrong” to the “pariah prince”. This is not a book teeming with revelations or even fresh interviews; instead it relies heavily on newspaper reports. However, seeing the scandal laid out in what will be excruciating detail for the palace still hits hard. Even a fervent royalist would be left thinking that Andrew is an egotistical oaf who chose not to see his friend’s abuse, and there are many who feel that the allegations against him should still be tested in court. What a fall from grace for a prince who was once the poster boy for the monarchy, a regal Harry Styles.
No one is going to change their vote based on Cummings, what they will change their vote for is the idea that the Tories have a set of rules that they can ignore when it suits them. That narrative will build up over the next 4 years.
Why will that narrative build up? This story is fading from the news already.
If further incidents happen to build the narrative up then those further incidents also play a role in people changing their votes. Cummings alone won't have been the problem. If no further incidents occur then the narrative will move on to the news of the future.
Do you think SKS will let the narrative move on?
Given that most of his party is having a collective orgasm over a destructive mob roaming around the country with zero social distancing, I think he'd be brave to go on Cummings again.
It won’t be “Cummings again” it will be “One law for them, another one for us”.
Who do we think will be the first minister found breaking the 14 day post holiday quarantine law?
What nobody realised is that by 'One law for them, another for us' it meant if you're Cummings, and you drive somewhere with your family, you get doorstepped for over a week, slammed by the BBC, and non-stop calls for you to be sacked, whereas if you join a raucous protest for days, you get congratulated for your 'largely peaceful' participation.
There is no way back for Labour (or the BBC) on respecting the lockdown now, or indeed expressing any concern over tightening the regulations. In this they are very different to Nicola Sturgeon, who has shown real leadership in asking people to stay at home, and has thus at least partially shielded herself from any actions the imbeciles may take in Scotland.
Perhaps these people actually believe that they're living under a tyranny.
To a degree I expect that they do believe that. I've said before that when people call almost anything that they dislike — be it immigration policies, Brexit, income tax, or limited overs cricket — words like racist or fascist then the words lose meaning. If everything is racist then nothing is racist. When you think like that it is probably dead easy to take the next step to "this is just like Nazi Germany".
Or you can consider that maybe we have moved on and we don't need things to be as bad as Nazi Germany to act?
Maybe we can take for granted the injustices of the past that have been sorted and prioritise in fixing the injustices of the present?
We don't need to rest on our laurels just because we're better than the Nazis. We are better than the past, we can can be better still. In the future there are things we're doing now that are viewed as wrong - I'd hope those are fixed in the future and not just ignored because we're better than the past.
Listening to the Mayor of Bristol interview with Sky was interesting - he's just a middle aged student politician.
All the soundbites .... "inequality is increasing" (no it isn't), "they don't feel represented" (we have 10% of BAME MPs in Parliament, compare with EU Parliament), "deaths in custody are increasing" (no they aren't) and so on.
'Do you support enforcing the law'?, circumlocution, circumlocution, circumlocution...
In today's media world, perception of issues is probably more important than reality - and if the police and home office isn't spending time changing that perception it's going to be a hard battle to win.
As for Bristol itself the mayor has the interesting issue of how do you complain about criminal damage when the removal of the statue was probably a blessing. And it's a shame as the expression and face of the statue is actually very good
I half-agree with you on the media point - the question then becomes how to encourage quality of media.
Will the writer who asked for a repeat-loop-and-comedy-music of that Police Woman being hospitalised get away scot free?
The problem with standing back from politics by destruction, is that such is thereby encouraged. As a point I have already made this morning, rewarding lawbreaking is to encourage it.
I think for Bristol itself it is blatantly obvious - there is a mayoral election due (has already been postponed), and this needs to be a key point of debate.
But the people destroying the statue don't really believe in either law or democracy when it doesn't do what they want. That is a repeat of a pattern, for example, of Occupy St Pauls, who were very keen on the judicial process until they lost, then they started warbling conspiracy theories.
On a wider issue this raises: Labour may be becoming electable for the first time in ages. To do so probably needs the votes of the sorts of people who approve of taking the law into their own hands as long as the issue is a reasonably woke one, like destroying slave trader statues, but not if it's an unwoke one, like scrawling pro-gay graffiti on a mosque. They also need the votes of people who prefer the rule of law to the promotion of culture wars.
Interesting question.
Sir Keir has taken a stance against the lawbreaking. But his Corbynista wing has done the opposite at least in part eg Dawn Butler and Dick Burgon are celebrating.
And the Campaign Group went from 1 in 12 MPs to 1 in 6 MPs last time.
Oh Mr Woo, what will he do? Will it stay electable?
And what will the impact of the EHCR report be. The Campaign Group is not short of casual racists - how will Sir K play it?
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Brexit is done. His “Remainer” / Metropolitan lefty base has other concerns.
I am sure Scott, Alastair and other remainers will be delighted Starmer is not going to stop Brexit
For right or wrong Starmer is now unable to criticise the government in a way that calls back to Cummings, because he would have to call on the BLM protestors to stay home.
We have got ourselves into a right old pickle as a country and I'm not seeing anyone with the leadership capability to pilot a safe course out of it.
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Well I was a staunch Remainer and Labour voter but am happy to see Starmer moving on from the toxic debate around the EU.
I expect if he became PM he’d push for a closer relationship with the EU in areas that aren’t so polarizing .
Good riddance to that statue. By all means prosecute people for criminal damage if appropriate, presumably protesters were willing to risk that for their principles.
But if you find yourself making slippery slope arguments it's usually a sign you don't have any good or relevant arguments to make (see "We can't allow same-sex marriages otherwise we'll also have to allow people to marry their goldfish" etc). There have been some really really silly slippery slope arguments here today. "If people topple a statue of a slave trader then we also have to burn down libraries/knock down people's houses/ drop a nuclear bomb on Bristol"
Statue ethics - I'm probably not alone in having no idea who 95% of the statues that I see represent, so starting point is that I don't care. If someone is widely admired by some and hated by others (Lenin in Ukraine seems a good example, and arguably Thatcher is too, but not Churchill), it seems fair to move the statue to somewhere out of the way where people who were fond of them can go and see it without winding up the others - putting the statue in a derisive theme park is trolling, though. Where the statue commemorates people now universally seen as disreputable - Jimmy Saville's elaborate gravestone for instance - then removal seems best. Arguably a slaver who later gave money to charity is in the second category, not the first.
The issue of direct action vs democratic process is separate, and I'm usually not keen on the former, but I won't get worked up about a hunk of stone.
I don't get worked up about hunks of stone but I do about the rule of law. A campaign to remove a statue using democratic processes because with modern sensibilities the good that the person did was outweighed by the bad is absolutely fair enough. No problem with that at all. Just because a statue has been there over 100 years doesn't give it any rights. It is, ultimately, a hunk of stone. But mob rule and vandalism are very bad things whether directed at a hunk of stone, a shop, some politician or 10 Downing Street. It should not be tolerated.
I’m not a fan of mob rule. I’m also not a fan of apathetic majorities riding roughshod indefinitely over minorities. Majoritarianism usually has an ugly ending.
There are other examples of aggressive majoritarianism just now, I suspect, but the most obvious example is eluding me.
Majoritarianism is the weak point of democracy, I agree. There is an onus on the majority to find the least offensive or deleterious way of achieving what they want whilst respecting the views of the minority. If they do this there is a much better chance of the majority view becoming the basis of a new consensus on which society can move forward. If they don't then society is divided and weakened.
I look forward to Unionists being less offensive.
I would welcome a Scottish government who accepted the majority consensus and focused on doing the best for Scotland in difficult times.
Do you mean the majority in Scotland, one must inquire, please?
Yes, as determined by a once in a generation referendum where the issues were exhaustively and exhaustingly discussed to the exclusion of the consideration of pressing needs for 2 years.
Penultimate day before I go onto Furlough for the rest of the month. Doing a fair bit of reading around the Third Way and the Radical Centre, with more books being lined up for my free time. Instead of pogoing around I need to Stop and Think. There were good reasons I joined the LibDems (and an element of rebound), and as for my bouncing out of the party and attempted rejoin of Labour to whup the left lets just say that I was struggling mentally at the time.
So, not affiliated to anyone at the moment. Lets try to understand where my political views really sit at the moment. I posted some stuff on here about wanting to bridge across the old political divides and take ideas (and people!) from across the spectrum and that still feels like the right approach.
On topic if only the DNC had someone Third Wayey like Bill Clinton to rescue them...
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Brexit is done. His “Remainer” / Metropolitan lefty base has other concerns.
There's plenty of evidence that the Brexit divide remains a major electoral faultline that at least correlates with political attitudes on all sorts of topics, including ones that have no direct bearing on Brexit itself. But to stick with Brexit for a moment - there is still a large electoral pool of Remainers / Rejoiners who trusted Starmer as 'one of them'.
Now they still want what they want, but he doesn't - at some point that may affect their willingness to stick with Labour.
God I hare people who look down on the common person.
There’s a vignette about Prince Andrew’s childhood in this new book by the journalist Nigel Cawthorne that seems telling. The royal family were watching Coronation Street and as the barmaid Bet Lynch had an argument, Andrew cried: “Oh God, look at all those common people.” This two-tiered view of humanity was not something he shed as he aged, the book implies: there’s royalty and the plebs; his daughters and the girls abused by his paedophile friend.
In Prince Andrew, Epstein and the Palace, Cawthorne charts Andrew’s descent from the “royal who could do no wrong” to the “pariah prince”. This is not a book teeming with revelations or even fresh interviews; instead it relies heavily on newspaper reports. However, seeing the scandal laid out in what will be excruciating detail for the palace still hits hard. Even a fervent royalist would be left thinking that Andrew is an egotistical oaf who chose not to see his friend’s abuse, and there are many who feel that the allegations against him should still be tested in court. What a fall from grace for a prince who was once the poster boy for the monarchy, a regal Harry Styles.
In my (admittedly extremely limited) understanding of the British upper class, using the word 'common' to describe those who are 'of the people' is considered rather, um, common. Vulgar being the preferred term.
Listening to the Mayor of Bristol interview with Sky was interesting - he's just a middle aged student politician.
All the soundbites .... "inequality is increasing" (no it isn't), "they don't feel represented" (we have 10% of BAME MPs in Parliament, compare with EU Parliament), "deaths in custody are increasing" (no they aren't) and so on.
'Do you support enforcing the law'?, circumlocution, circumlocution, circumlocution...
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Brexit is done. His “Remainer” / Metropolitan lefty base has other concerns.
I am sure Scott, Alastair and other remainers will be delighted Starmer is not going to stop Brexit
Since I have never wanted Brexit stopped, that post says much more about your Stockholm syndrome than it does about me.
Listening to the Mayor of Bristol interview with Sky was interesting - he's just a middle aged student politician.
All the soundbites .... "inequality is increasing" (no it isn't), "they don't feel represented" (we have 10% of BAME MPs in Parliament, compare with EU Parliament), "deaths in custody are increasing" (no they aren't) and so on.
'Do you support enforcing the law'?, circumlocution, circumlocution, circumlocution...
In today's media world, perception of issues is probably more important than reality - and if the police and home office isn't spending time changing that perception it's going to be a hard battle to win.
As for Bristol itself the mayor has the interesting issue of how do you complain about criminal damage when the removal of the statue was probably a blessing. And it's a shame as the expression and face of the statue is actually very good
I half-agree with you on the media point - the question then becomes how to encourage quality of media.
Will the writer who asked for a repeat-loop-and-comedy-music of that Police Woman being hospitalised get away scot free?
The problem with standing back from politics by destruction, is that such is thereby encouraged. As a point I have already made this morning, rewarding lawbreaking is to encourage it.
I think for Bristol itself it is blatantly obvious - there is a mayoral election due (has already been postponed), and this needs to be a key point of debate.
But the people destroying the statue don't really believe in either law or democracy when it doesn't do what they want. That is a repeat of a pattern, for example, of Occupy St Pauls, who were very keen on the judicial process until they lost, then they started warbling conspiracy theories.
In this case how do you conduct the debate:
Should it have been pulled down (well no) Should we put it back up (say yes and you've lost the election as you will be spending the next year explaining why you aren't racist and a slave sympathiser)
It should be retrieved, restored and then the people of Bristol should decide it's fate
It should be retrieved, then how where or whether it is restored should be up to the people of Bristol. I don’t know why they don’t just rename Colston Avenue “Slave Trade Avenue” - or perhaps their embracement of Bristol’s past sins is not as heartfelt as that?
For right or wrong Starmer is now unable to criticise the government in a way that calls back to Cummings, because he would have to call on the BLM protestors to stay home.
We have got ourselves into a right old pickle as a country and I'm not seeing anyone with the leadership capability to pilot a safe course out of it.
A writer living in Paris writes about how bad things are in the US and that applies to the UK?????
Starmer will not worry about that article and he can easily state that whilst he understands the desire to protest, social distancing must be observed.
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Brexit is done. His “Remainer” / Metropolitan lefty base has other concerns.
I am sure Scott, Alastair and other remainers will be delighted Starmer is not going to stop Brexit
Since I have never wanted Brexit stopped, that post says much more about your Stockholm syndrome than it does about me.
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Brexit is done. His “Remainer” / Metropolitan lefty base has other concerns.
I am sure Scott, Alastair and other remainers will be delighted Starmer is not going to stop Brexit
Since I have never wanted Brexit stopped, that post says much more about your Stockholm syndrome than it does about me.
Great to hear you are a leaver
Your reading comprehension skills are declining. Perhaps you should take your head out of the Conservative party’s arse, then you might be able to see more clearly.
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Brexit is done. His “Remainer” / Metropolitan lefty base has other concerns.
I am sure Scott, Alastair and other remainers will be delighted Starmer is not going to stop Brexit
Since I have never wanted Brexit stopped, that post says much more about your Stockholm syndrome than it does about me.
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Brexit is done. His “Remainer” / Metropolitan lefty base has other concerns.
I am sure Scott, Alastair and other remainers will be delighted Starmer is not going to stop Brexit
We know he is not going to stop it, just as we know that Boris will make it worse than it needs to be.
God I hare people who look down on the common person.
There’s a vignette about Prince Andrew’s childhood in this new book by the journalist Nigel Cawthorne that seems telling. The royal family were watching Coronation Street and as the barmaid Bet Lynch had an argument, Andrew cried: “Oh God, look at all those common people.” This two-tiered view of humanity was not something he shed as he aged, the book implies: there’s royalty and the plebs; his daughters and the girls abused by his paedophile friend.
In Prince Andrew, Epstein and the Palace, Cawthorne charts Andrew’s descent from the “royal who could do no wrong” to the “pariah prince”. This is not a book teeming with revelations or even fresh interviews; instead it relies heavily on newspaper reports. However, seeing the scandal laid out in what will be excruciating detail for the palace still hits hard. Even a fervent royalist would be left thinking that Andrew is an egotistical oaf who chose not to see his friend’s abuse, and there are many who feel that the allegations against him should still be tested in court. What a fall from grace for a prince who was once the poster boy for the monarchy, a regal Harry Styles.
In my (admittedly extremely limited) understanding of the British upper class, using the word 'common' to describe those who are 'of the people' is considered rather, um, common. Vulgar being the preferred term.
No one is going to change their vote based on Cummings, what they will change their vote for is the idea that the Tories have a set of rules that they can ignore when it suits them. That narrative will build up over the next 4 years.
Why will that narrative build up? This story is fading from the news already.
If further incidents happen to build the narrative up then those further incidents also play a role in people changing their votes. Cummings alone won't have been the problem. If no further incidents occur then the narrative will move on to the news of the future.
Every time there is a minor or technical breach of some procedural rule it comes back to this. Ultimately the government made the wrong decision, whether or not you agree I know they did, I'm pretty sure they know they did but figure the political cost was worth it. I think you're probably the only person who is trying to legitimately argue that it wasn't.
Additionally, a poll lead of just 3 after the saga unfolded vs 10 before shows it is shifting votes.
Polls are ephemeral nonsense midterm. I don't believe them when HYUFD wields them as the gospel truth, nor do I believe them when anyone else does.
If you see me wielding polls as the gospel truth then feel free to call me a hypocrite but I don't, they're a snapshot they don't represent votes.
You don't need polls because your view of how everyone in the UK will vote is accurate, to 0.49%,
I never said that.
What percentage of the public do you think will vote differently in 2024 solely because of Cummings?
Jeez it really does need to be drummed into you.
I really enjoy discussing stuff with you because you are rigorous and relentless and that is good, in a Socratic way, it means people examine their own arguments because you won't let anything slip by.
But here you have got it wrong. As has been pointed out to you by several posters, and me at 9.12am, the point about Cummings is that he will feed the narrative of one law for them. That is toxic and yes, due to Cummings.
And as I said that narrative only works if its one story of many, in which case this one story in isolation isn't that significant - it could have happened without this story and with the other ones.
If similar doesn't occur in the future the narrative won't build, the topic will move on.
That is a perennial and ridiculous hare and tortoise type fallacy which is forever cropping up on pb. You think the answer is "none" and then you say "Gotcha! I win the argument! But that is wrong. There are possibly people who would otherwise have voted tory but vote against them despite loving all their policies, solely because of Cummings. A tiny if non-nil set, and you think its tininess wins you the argument. But there are also millions of votes which might at this stage go either way which are influenced by more events than just Cummings. They aren't however influenced by many events (we know this because of polls asking people what current political stories they are aware of) so let's say two million votes switch for Cummings and two other reasons. No rational accounting system differentiates between the Cummings cost of 1/3 * 2m or 666,666 votes and the hypothetical case where 666,666 voters switch purely because of Cummings and nothing else. The cost is identical.
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Brexit is done. His “Remainer” / Metropolitan lefty base has other concerns.
I am sure Scott, Alastair and other remainers will be delighted Starmer is not going to stop Brexit
Since I have never wanted Brexit stopped, that post says much more about your Stockholm syndrome than it does about me.
Great to hear you are a leaver
Your reading comprehension skills are declining. Perhaps you should take your head out of the Conservative party’s arse, then you might be able to see more clearly.
The government also believes the number of active cases halved in the the last fortnight of last month, it should be even lower by now and by next week will be even lower still.
We were a couple of weeks behind continental Europe, by next month the virus could be contained in this country which makes bringing the virus back onto our island the greatest risk.
0.7-0.9 is the latest estimate for UK, going up to 0.7-1.0 for England is my understanding.
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Brexit is done. His “Remainer” / Metropolitan lefty base has other concerns.
I am sure Scott, Alastair and other remainers will be delighted Starmer is not going to stop Brexit
It's just accepting reality. Which after Corbyn vs Johnson is a nice change, even if it's confusing for some.
It's also reasonably bright politics. If Johnson's post-Brexit plan is a roaring success, it's smart to have acquiesced. If it's a fiasco (and there's little evidence that it won't be) then Starmer walks the next election anyway.
I'm not Scott or Alastair, but I do wish that we weren't doing this damn silly (but necessary) thing in quite such a damn silly way. But we are where we are. The Vote Leave approach won, and now they have to get over it.
God I hare people who look down on the common person.
There’s a vignette about Prince Andrew’s childhood in this new book by the journalist Nigel Cawthorne that seems telling. The royal family were watching Coronation Street and as the barmaid Bet Lynch had an argument, Andrew cried: “Oh God, look at all those common people.” This two-tiered view of humanity was not something he shed as he aged, the book implies: there’s royalty and the plebs; his daughters and the girls abused by his paedophile friend.
In Prince Andrew, Epstein and the Palace, Cawthorne charts Andrew’s descent from the “royal who could do no wrong” to the “pariah prince”. This is not a book teeming with revelations or even fresh interviews; instead it relies heavily on newspaper reports. However, seeing the scandal laid out in what will be excruciating detail for the palace still hits hard. Even a fervent royalist would be left thinking that Andrew is an egotistical oaf who chose not to see his friend’s abuse, and there are many who feel that the allegations against him should still be tested in court. What a fall from grace for a prince who was once the poster boy for the monarchy, a regal Harry Styles.
Didn't you get the PB Tory memo? It's only people on the left like Polly Toynbee (wrote a book about experience working undercover in a series of precarious jobs to highlight low pay and poor working conditions) and Owen Jones (wrote a book attacking demonisation of the white working class) who look down on working class people. Do keep up!
We are not close to eliminating it. We had over 1.3k new cases yesterday. That's more than France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands combined.
And how many new cases were we having this time last month? Or two months ago?
1.3k cases is not many compared to what it was and the testing capacity and tracing capacity is much greater than what it was. Suppressing the virus domestically should be the ambition and once that's done new cases coming onto our island is what matters.
You sound like Johnson, proud of what he's done over the past three months. 1300 people with what can be a fatal illness! And you think that's OK!!!
Yes, I think its progress.
People die, its a fact of life. I don't expect the deathcount to be zero on any day, everyone dies in the end. We have to do our best in the situation we face realistically and if we're eliminating the virus then that is progress.
The final death tally will be higher than most bad flu seasons but better than some eg Hong Kong flu. Considering the nature of the virus yes that's OK. Not good, just OK. Worse than it could have been, better than it could have been.
You're assuming that we're past as bad as it gets. We're a long way from being out of the woods, I fear.
I think the government's scorecard can be graded as being the worst possible performance without being either (a) actively harmful (as in Brazil), or, (b) administratively incapable (as in Ecuador).
Is there anyone else who couldnt really care much about the statues? Im more surprised how strong people feel on both sides. It doesnt seem either particularly important or clear cut either way whether it is right or wrong.
You think it's going to stop at statues?
Bless.
Oh no!
First they came for the statues of slavers.
Wait what follows?
Then the came for the slavers? Then they demanded equality? Then they tackled racism?
Oh the horror!
This trendy vicar phase of yours is achingly embarrassing. Truly mind-numbing posts defending the indefensible.
Pulling down statues of people that should be regarded as criminals is entirely defensible.
Why anyone would care more about statues than violence against people is beyond me.
Even when it is a criminal act? They didn't get what they wanted through the democratic process, so took things into their own hands.
Yes non violent criminal protests have been part of civil protests throughout all of human history.
Were the Suffragettes wrong for their illegal protests? Was the Boston Tea Party the wrong thing to do because it was illegal? Was Rosa Parks in the wrong for refusing to obey Jim Crow laws. Was Ghandi wrong to break laws in resistance.
Just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong.
If a protest is illegal but you think it's the right thing to do then I think you should do what is right, even if it isn't legal. I am not a law and order obsessive I believe in what is right over what is legal.
If a majority is enforcing a bad law that you want to protest then do it. If the majority want to put the statue back up afterwards they can do so.
The difference is, we are a democracy with universal suffrage and a free media
To take your examples
1. The suffragettes were protesting for the vote, they did not have the vote, they had no choice 2. The Tea Party was literally a protest against Taxation minus Representation 3. The Jim Crow laws were overt discrimination by law 4. Gandhi was protesting an imperial conquest of his country
None of these examples have any relevance now. A campaign to get rid of the statue had many avenues to democratic success. Just one clever artwork might have done it. The resistance is feeble. He was a slaver.
Instead they tore it down in exultant anger and now we have the makings of a culture war. Well done. Moron
They're all relevant they're all illegal in their day but were part of changing the culture.
We still today have rampant discrimination and evil ongoing that matters far more than some civil disorder.
In a hundred years time pulling down statues of slavers may be viewed like Rosa Parks on a bus and the generations of the future will be confused why it took so long to remove slavers statues (which were only put up AFTER we knew slavery was wrong and it had been abolished).
Uh?
Which part went over your head or are you struggling with?
The part where you suddenly have the writing and reasoning capability of an averagely bright 7 year old.
Rosa Parks? Jeez. If she has any surviving family they should sue.
Rosa Parks acted illegally. So did those pulling down slavers statues.
The law is not the be all and end all. Never has been.
All the other things you mentioned achieved something tangible
What's going to change here apart from the statues not being there anymore?
Hopefully an end to the racism that they're symbolic of. That's what sparked these protests in the first place.
Absolutely no chance of that. It's made things 100% worse.
I doubt it. I think it's shining a spotlight on problems and will make the situation better. Pushing the Overton Window against systemic racism.
Turning a blind eye to problems doesn't make things better or make the problems go away.
Yeah maybe if students throw all the statues no one had heard of into the sea, racism will end.
It's no silver bullet. Neither was a young woman sitting on a different seat in a bus. Small measures can be meaningful.
The modern UK is nothing like the Jim Crow-era South.
Doesn't mean that all injustice or reasons to have civil disorder have gone.
Starmer steering well clear of wasting political capital on pushing for an extension to the transition period.
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Interesting how enthusiastically Starmer seems to be dumping his Remainer / metropolitan lefty base. It's the correct electoral strategy overall, but losing your base can be dangerous if they start asking 'Wait, what's in it for me now?'
Brexit is done. His “Remainer” / Metropolitan lefty base has other concerns.
I am sure Scott, Alastair and other remainers will be delighted Starmer is not going to stop Brexit
Since I have never wanted Brexit stopped, that post says much more about your Stockholm syndrome than it does about me.
Great to hear you are a leaver
It's like you're trying to score points in a game nobody else is playing.
No one is going to change their vote based on Cummings, what they will change their vote for is the idea that the Tories have a set of rules that they can ignore when it suits them. That narrative will build up over the next 4 years.
Why will that narrative build up? This story is fading from the news already.
If further incidents happen to build the narrative up then those further incidents also play a role in people changing their votes. Cummings alone won't have been the problem. If no further incidents occur then the narrative will move on to the news of the future.
Every time there is a minor or technical breach of some procedural rule it comes back to this. Ultimately the government made the wrong decision, whether or not you agree I know they did, I'm pretty sure they know they did but figure the political cost was worth it. I think you're probably the only person who is trying to legitimately argue that it wasn't.
Additionally, a poll lead of just 3 after the saga unfolded vs 10 before shows it is shifting votes.
Polls are ephemeral nonsense midterm. I don't believe them when HYUFD wields them as the gospel truth, nor do I believe them when anyone else does.
If you see me wielding polls as the gospel truth then feel free to call me a hypocrite but I don't, they're a snapshot they don't represent votes.
You don't need polls because your view of how everyone in the UK will vote is accurate, to 0.49%,
I never said that.
What percentage of the public do you think will vote differently in 2024 solely because of Cummings?
Jeez it really does need to be drummed into you.
I really enjoy discussing stuff with you because you are rigorous and relentless and that is good, in a Socratic way, it means people examine their own arguments because you won't let anything slip by.
But here you have got it wrong. As has been pointed out to you by several posters, and me at 9.12am, the point about Cummings is that he will feed the narrative of one law for them. That is toxic and yes, due to Cummings.
And as I said that narrative only works if its one story of many, in which case this one story in isolation isn't that significant - it could have happened without this story and with the other ones.
If similar doesn't occur in the future the narrative won't build, the topic will move on.
That is a perennial and ridiculous hare and tortoise type fallacy which is forever cropping up on pb. You think the answer is "none" and then you say "Gotcha! I win the argument! But that is wrong. There are possibly people who would otherwise have voted tory but vote against them despite loving all their policies, solely because of Cummings. A tiny if non-nil set, and you think its tininess wins you the argument. But there are also millions of votes which might at this stage go either way which are influenced by more events than just Cummings. They aren't however influenced by many events (we know this because of polls asking pe grople what current political stories they are aware of) so let's say two million votes switch for Cummings and two other reasons. No rational accounting system differentiates between the Cummings cost of 1/3 * 2m or 666,666 votes and the hypothetical case where 666,666 voters switch purely because of Cummings and nothing else. The cost is identical.
I don't believe for one second millions are going to change their votes because of Cummings.
In 4 years time Cummings driving will be ancient history. How the government deals with the next 4 years, with the economic costs of post-COVID19, how the end to the Brexit transition plays out, the state of the economy, the state of the NHS etc, etc, etc are what is going to shape the next election.
No one is going to change their vote based on Cummings, what they will change their vote for is the idea that the Tories have a set of rules that they can ignore when it suits them. That narrative will build up over the next 4 years.
Why will that narrative build up? This story is fading from the news already.
If further incidents happen to build the narrative up then those further incidents also play a role in people changing their votes. Cummings alone won't have been the problem. If no further incidents occur then the narrative will move on to the news of the future.
Do you think SKS will let the narrative move on?
Given that most of his party is having a collective orgasm over a destructive mob roaming around the country with zero social distancing, I think he'd be brave to go on Cummings again.
It won’t be “Cummings again” it will be “One law for them, another one for us”.
Who do we think will be the first minister found breaking the 14 day post holiday quarantine law?
What nobody realised is that by 'One law for them, another for us' it meant if you're Cummings, and you drive somewhere with your family, you get doorstepped for over a week, slammed by the BBC, and non-stop calls for you to be sacked, whereas if you join a raucous protest for days, you get congratulated for your 'largely peaceful' participation.
There is no way back for Labour (or the BBC) on respecting the lockdown now, or indeed expressing any concern over tightening the regulations. In this they are very different to Nicola Sturgeon, who has shown real leadership in asking people to stay at home, and has thus at least partially shielded herself from any actions the imbeciles may take in Scotland.
Excellent point - one law for lefty protesters (who get applauded and feted), one law for Tory advisers (who get the thick end of the biggest national witch-hunt in history)!
Statue ethics - I'm probably not alone in having no idea who 95% of the statues that I see represent, so starting point is that I don't care. If someone is widely admired by some and hated by others (Lenin in Ukraine seems a good example, and arguably Thatcher is too, but not Churchill), it seems fair to move the statue to somewhere out of the way where people who were fond of them can go and see it without winding up the others - putting the statue in a derisive theme park is trolling, though. Where the statue commemorates people now universally seen as disreputable - Jimmy Saville's elaborate gravestone for instance - then removal seems best. Arguably a slaver who later gave money to charity is in the second category, not the first.
The issue of direct action vs democratic process is separate, and I'm usually not keen on the former, but I won't get worked up about a hunk of stone.
I don't get worked up about hunks of stone but I do about the rule of law. A campaign to remove a statue using democratic processes because with modern sensibilities the good that the person did was outweighed by the bad is absolutely fair enough. No problem with that at all. Just because a statue has been there over 100 years doesn't give it any rights. It is, ultimately, a hunk of stone. But mob rule and vandalism are very bad things whether directed at a hunk of stone, a shop, some politician or 10 Downing Street. It should not be tolerated.
I’m not a fan of mob rule. I’m also not a fan of apathetic majorities riding roughshod indefinitely over minorities. Majoritarianism usually has an ugly ending.
There are other examples of aggressive majoritarianism just now, I suspect, but the most obvious example is eluding me.
Majoritarianism is the weak point of democracy, I agree. There is an onus on the majority to find the least offensive or deleterious way of achieving what they want whilst respecting the views of the minority. If they do this there is a much better chance of the majority view becoming the basis of a new consensus on which society can move forward. If they don't then society is divided and weakened.
We don't even have majoritarianism in the UK. Under FPTP we have pluralitarianism. The majority were against Thatcher. The majority were against Blair. And in Scotland the majority are against the SNP.
Is there anyone else who couldnt really care much about the statues? Im more surprised how strong people feel on both sides. It doesnt seem either particularly important or clear cut either way whether it is right or wrong.
You think it's going to stop at statues?
Bless.
Oh no!
First they came for the statues of slavers.
Wait what follows?
Then the came for the slavers? Then they demanded equality? Then they tackled racism?
Oh the horror!
This trendy vicar phase of yours is achingly embarrassing. Truly mind-numbing posts defending the indefensible.
Pulling down statues of people that should be regarded as criminals is entirely defensible.
Why anyone would care more about statues than violence against people is beyond me.
Even when it is a criminal act? They didn't get what they wanted through the democratic process, so took things into their own hands.
Yes non violent criminal protests have been part of civil protests throughout all of human history.
Were the Suffragettes wrong for their illegal protests? Was the Boston Tea Party the wrong thing to do because it was illegal? Was Rosa Parks in the wrong for refusing to obey Jim Crow laws. Was Ghandi wrong to break laws in resistance.
Just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong.
If a protest is illegal but you think it's the right thing to do then I think you should do what is right, even if it isn't legal. I am not a law and order obsessive I believe in what is right over what is legal.
If a majority is enforcing a bad law that you want to protest then do it. If the majority want to put the statue back up afterwards they can do so.
The difference is, we are a democracy with universal suffrage and a free media
To take your examples
1. The suffragettes were protesting for the vote, they did not have the vote, they had no choice 2. The Tea Party was literally a protest against Taxation minus Representation 3. The Jim Crow laws were overt discrimination by law 4. Gandhi was protesting an imperial conquest of his country
None of these examples have any relevance now. A campaign to get rid of the statue had many avenues to democratic success. Just one clever artwork might have done it. The resistance is feeble. He was a slaver.
Instead they tore it down in exultant anger and now we have the makings of a culture war. Well done. Moron
They're all relevant they're all illegal in their day but were part of changing the culture.
We still today have rampant discrimination and evil ongoing that matters far more than some civil disorder.
In a hundred years time pulling down statues of slavers may be viewed like Rosa Parks on a bus and the generations of the future will be confused why it took so long to remove slavers statues (which were only put up AFTER we knew slavery was wrong and it had been abolished).
Uh?
Which part went over your head or are you struggling with?
The part where you suddenly have the writing and reasoning capability of an averagely bright 7 year old.
Rosa Parks? Jeez. If she has any surviving family they should sue.
Rosa Parks acted illegally. So did those pulling down slavers statues.
The law is not the be all and end all. Never has been.
All the other things you mentioned achieved something tangible
What's going to change here apart from the statues not being there anymore?
Hopefully an end to the racism that they're symbolic of. That's what sparked these protests in the first place.
Absolutely no chance of that. It's made things 100% worse.
I doubt it. I think it's shining a spotlight on problems and will make the situation better. Pushing the Overton Window against systemic racism.
Turning a blind eye to problems doesn't make things better or make the problems go away.
Yeah maybe if students throw all the statues no one had heard of into the sea, racism will end.
It's no silver bullet. Neither was a young woman sitting on a different seat in a bus. Small measures can be meaningful.
The modern UK is nothing like the Jim Crow-era South.
Doesn't mean that all injustice or reasons to have civil disorder have gone.
You've dug yourself into a very deep hole.
I'd advise you to stop digging.
What hole?
I have always believed people should do what they think is the right thing. If the right thing is against the law then the law is an ass and if people are prepared to pay the price for breaking the law then so be it.
There is a time and place for civil disorder and something simply being against the law is not a reason to stop it.
The government also believes the number of active cases halved in the the last fortnight of last month, it should be even lower by now and by next week will be even lower still.
We were a couple of weeks behind continental Europe, by next month the virus could be contained in this country which makes bringing the virus back onto our island the greatest risk.
0.7-0.9 is the latest estimate for UK, going up to 0.7-1.0 for England is my understanding.
I am having trouble reconciling that estimate with the clear trend for the best part of 6 weeks now of falling deaths and fewer cases. If R was near 1 then the number of new cases should not be falling. But it is. Unless we see a plateau over the next fortnight (which I accept is possible) there is something not adding up.
The government also believes the number of active cases halved in the the last fortnight of last month, it should be even lower by now and by next week will be even lower still.
We were a couple of weeks behind continental Europe, by next month the virus could be contained in this country which makes bringing the virus back onto our island the greatest risk.
0.7-0.9 is the latest estimate for UK, going up to 0.7-1.0 for England is my understanding.
I am having trouble reconciling that estimate with the clear trend for the best part of 6 weeks now of falling deaths and fewer cases. If R was near 1 then the number of new cases should not be falling. But it is. Unless we see a plateau over the next fortnight (which I accept is possible) there is something not adding up.
I think the scientists and/or the government are erring on the side of precaution and saying a higher R than it really is. R is clearly lower.
Whether R stays low after the events of this weekend is another matter.
When was the last predominantly white protests that turned violent, student ones. They were condemned by the government in similar terms. And those pulling down the statue were white. Nice of the BBC bod to try to inflame things with some race baiting.
When was the last predominantly white protests that turned violent, student ones. They were condemned by the government in similar terms. And those pulling down the statue were white. Nice of the BBC bod to try to inflame things with some race baiting.
The BBC needs to have its charter reformed with extreme prejudice. Why in the holy hell should we pay the licence fee for its presenters to pump out wall-to-wall anti-Tory propaganda?
Comments
And if he went on the BBC you would just use a different argument of left wing easy questions. LBC at least will have a random selection of questions from across the whole political spectrum.
We're doing more tests per day now than the cumulative total we had done from when the virus began until lockdown began.
You can't compare the positive test results in isolation without considering what proportion of positive cases were being identified successfully.
Now 5 live is broadcast across the country and of course if he fielded questions across the UK on the BBC why would I object
He is not Corbyn
Any sane mayor will now use the same inability to add that second plaque being added to avoid it being reinstalled.
If similar doesn't occur in the future the narrative won't build, the topic will move on.
societya bad attack line that can be rolled out constantly and which rings true with people.I do find it remarkable how often the Tories on here post things without any evidence to back up their proposition / theory even when the evidence is available without any hassle.
I try to post my honest opinions and am not locked in some loyalty dance as many on here are
The article links to a page showing 40 "incidents" within the last 5 years during which firearms were used. There was more than one bullet per incident (espcially considering some of those incidents were terror attacks). But still the overall point is a very good one.
https://twitter.com/FlorenceHRS/status/1269918946846801925
https://twitter.com/yrlobster/status/1269902352250781697
https://twitter.com/LReford/status/1269914495704608773
https://twitter.com/yassin_politics/status/1269914338376265730
I said it should be retrieved, restored and then the people of Bristol should decide its fate
Returning it to the plinth is not something I would expect to happen
https://twitter.com/danhollandnews/status/1269920445765160960?s=21
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
If you lean Democratic and didn't bother last time because you couldn't stand Hilary, but intend to vote this time, you'll be missed off of some polls.
Obviously, if you lean Republican and didn't bother last time because you couldn't stand Trump but intend to vote this time, you'll be missed as well, but my feeling is that this group is considerably smaller.
Just an unscientific impression, but I had difficulty coming up with reasons in the other direction. However, should come with the warning that this supports what I want to happen, so could well be biased.
At the moment, they can seize your money, cars or destroy your property with total impunity. These days it seems that emptying the arsenal into a suspect can be added to the list.
Power corrupts....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/05/covid-19-infections-fell-sharply-in-england-in-late-may-ons-finds
He seems determined to move on from the Remain v Leave debate which is a good thing . I think the vast majority of Labours remain voters understand that although Starmer might push for a closer relationship with the EU if he was PM there will be no talk of rejoining and any closer ties won’t include FOM .
Sir Keir has taken a stance against the lawbreaking. But his Corbynista wing has done the opposite at least in part eg Dawn Butler and Dick Burgon are celebrating.
And the Campaign Group went from 1 in 12 MPs to 1 in 6 MPs last time.
Oh Mr Woo, what will he do? Will it stay electable?
The government also believes the number of active cases halved in the the last fortnight of last month, it should be even lower by now and by next week will be even lower still.
We were a couple of weeks behind continental Europe, by next month the virus could be contained in this country which makes bringing the virus back onto our island the greatest risk.
Take the 7% lead, erode it to 4% without much happening, lose another 2% on the day, nothing much changes from last time in the electoral college, and boom.
There’s a vignette about Prince Andrew’s childhood in this new book by the journalist Nigel Cawthorne that seems telling. The royal family were watching Coronation Street and as the barmaid Bet Lynch had an argument, Andrew cried: “Oh God, look at all those common people.” This two-tiered view of humanity was not something he shed as he aged, the book implies: there’s royalty and the plebs; his daughters and the girls abused by his paedophile friend.
In Prince Andrew, Epstein and the Palace, Cawthorne charts Andrew’s descent from the “royal who could do no wrong” to the “pariah prince”. This is not a book teeming with revelations or even fresh interviews; instead it relies heavily on newspaper reports. However, seeing the scandal laid out in what will be excruciating detail for the palace still hits hard. Even a fervent royalist would be left thinking that Andrew is an egotistical oaf who chose not to see his friend’s abuse, and there are many who feel that the allegations against him should still be tested in court. What a fall from grace for a prince who was once the poster boy for the monarchy, a regal Harry Styles.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/culture/prince-andrew-epstein-and-the-palace-by-nigel-cawthorne-review-the-royal-pariah-b0x0kq0cc
There is no way back for Labour (or the BBC) on respecting the lockdown now, or indeed expressing any concern over tightening the regulations. In this they are very different to Nicola Sturgeon, who has shown real leadership in asking people to stay at home, and has thus at least partially shielded herself from any actions the imbeciles may take in Scotland.
Maybe we can take for granted the injustices of the past that have been sorted and prioritise in fixing the injustices of the present?
We don't need to rest on our laurels just because we're better than the Nazis. We are better than the past, we can can be better still. In the future there are things we're doing now that are viewed as wrong - I'd hope those are fixed in the future and not just ignored because we're better than the past.
Its never too late to do the right thing.
We have got ourselves into a right old pickle as a country and I'm not seeing anyone with the leadership capability to pilot a safe course out of it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/08/we-often-accuse-the-right-of-distorting-science-but-the-left-changed-the-coronavirus-narrative-overnight
Fingers crossed we are lucky with the vaccine.
I expect if he became PM he’d push for a closer relationship with the EU in areas that aren’t so polarizing .
But if you find yourself making slippery slope arguments it's usually a sign you don't have any good or relevant arguments to make (see "We can't allow same-sex marriages otherwise we'll also have to allow people to marry their goldfish" etc). There have been some really really silly slippery slope arguments here today. "If people topple a statue of a slave trader then we also have to burn down libraries/knock down people's houses/ drop a nuclear bomb on Bristol"
So, not affiliated to anyone at the moment. Lets try to understand where my political views really sit at the moment. I posted some stuff on here about wanting to bridge across the old political divides and take ideas (and people!) from across the spectrum and that still feels like the right approach.
On topic if only the DNC had someone Third Wayey like Bill Clinton to rescue them...
Now they still want what they want, but he doesn't - at some point that may affect their willingness to stick with Labour.
Starmer will not worry about that article and he can easily state that whilst he understands the desire to protest, social distancing must be observed.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2237475-covid-19-news-estimated-coronavirus-infections-have-fallen-in-england/
It's also reasonably bright politics. If Johnson's post-Brexit plan is a roaring success, it's smart to have acquiesced. If it's a fiasco (and there's little evidence that it won't be) then Starmer walks the next election anyway.
I'm not Scott or Alastair, but I do wish that we weren't doing this damn silly (but necessary) thing in quite such a damn silly way. But we are where we are. The Vote Leave approach won, and now they have to get over it.
I think the government's scorecard can be graded as being the worst possible performance without being either (a) actively harmful (as in Brazil), or, (b) administratively incapable (as in Ecuador).
It's been very, very poor.
I'd advise you to stop digging.
In 4 years time Cummings driving will be ancient history. How the government deals with the next 4 years, with the economic costs of post-COVID19, how the end to the Brexit transition plays out, the state of the economy, the state of the NHS etc, etc, etc are what is going to shape the next election.
That's the real 'them and us' divide here.
I have always believed people should do what they think is the right thing. If the right thing is against the law then the law is an ass and if people are prepared to pay the price for breaking the law then so be it.
There is a time and place for civil disorder and something simply being against the law is not a reason to stop it.
Whether R stays low after the events of this weekend is another matter.
Tomorrow we will examine "Bibliopole"
NEW THREAD.