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  • Options
    RobDRobD Posts: 58,969
    .
    DougSeal said:

    RobD said:

    DougSeal said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    But it’s not the government, any government, doing it. Even in the US First Amendment protection does not extend to what companies choose to make available or publish on their platforms. It’s not censorship. These shows remain available. You want to watch Gone With the Wind today? Rent it off Apple TV or Amazon Prime for less than 4 quid. Want to watch Little Britain this evening? Still available to rent or buy on Google Play. Fawlty Towers? All episodes still available on Amazon Prime. This whole culture war blacklash from the right is utterly an utterly pathetic diversion.
    I don't think anyone is claiming a government is doing it.
    Not explicitly but people are saying it’s “impossible” to say anything anymore. Of course it’s not. You just have to expect to be roundly criticised.
    I don't think they've said that either!
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 40,930

    Johnson staying is very good news for Labour but very bad news for the country. Given that the next election is four years away, I hope the Tories put the country forst. We desperately need a government run by someone with a level of competence and diligence that Johnson does not possess. We also need a PM willing to put the best of the available talent in his or her cabinet. As we know, Johnson will not do that.

    The case for Boris staying is that he (and Cummings) are committed to investment whereas any successor might prefer cuts and austerity.
    The case for him staying is he's just won the biggest majority for about twenty years. It's not about what people who have deep hatred to him and unreasoned bias against him think, it's about the result of General Elections.
  • Options
    Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981
    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    First. Again.

    Let's go offtopic from the start. One of the better headlines of the lockdown I have seen:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-hampshire-52939812/coronavirus-people-harassed-by-rats-during-lockdown

    (There are these things called rat traps, and these other things called cats. Presumably Great Jumping Jolyon does it like Yogi.)

    And praise to Sandy for leaving me "first".

    I have two cats, and I also have mice in the house. This is probably because they are brought in by the cats who then let them go...
    Just having fun.

    You need a farm cat :-)
    Or an underfed one ;)
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Andy_JS said:
    Hopefully never. That's the role of Councils not Central Government.
    On the contrary [edit: in part, sorry]. Natural England, English Heritage, and so on.
    I thought they were ran independently and not by Central Government?

    What's been done so far that has anything to do with them anyway? The statues that have been debated so far are local government matters not central government matters.
    Historic England - to use the up to date term, my slip, sorry - has a major role to play in listing buildings and structures:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/

    And it's a central government agency - a quango as I suppose it used to be called. Debatable whether you call it a central gmt body but this does mean the matters it deals with are central government in a sense.
    In listed buildings yes, not in statues that are regularly moved anyway.

    As far as I know nobody has suggested pulling down buildings, despite the straw man that people are using about it.
    Well, IIRC fixings and fittings of buildings are part of them, so eg the Rhodes statue at Oxford would come under that.

    And listing is not just buildings but structures, gardens, etc. as well. And statues in isolation are listed - abundantly:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/results/?searchType=NHLE+Simple&search=statue
    Indeed but none of the statues that have come down [so far] are listed are they? Which makes them a local government matter.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226
    MaxPB said:

    Yes the point I'm making is that restaurants, pubs, bars, hairdressers etc... can't legally live by a 1m rule when the government is sticking with 2m. Day to day interactions are already living by 1m but keeping the regulation at 2m is going to destroy a lot of jobs. The government needs to get a handle on this by the end of next week and start pushing the 1m line so people get used to it before the pubs open.

    There used to be a common and unscrupulous practice in the City whereby a trader would be set a profit target (unlocking big bonus) and at the same time be given risk limits that made the target almost impossible to hit. Trader then had a choice. Forget the target (and accept lower remuneration) OR go for it and bust the risk limits where necessary and where the excesses could be disguised somehow.

    Worked great for the bosses. If the trader got away with it, everybody was happy. All made money. But if the limit breaking was discovered by compliance, the bosses could shrug and say "well rules are rules and he broke them." Trader duly sacked. Bosses hire another. Rinse and repeat.

    I'm reminded of this by the debate over the 2m rule. If the government stick with 2m knowing full well that businesses need 1m in order to make money, they are doing what those bosses in the City used to do. And many businesses will face the same unpalatable choice as the trader.
  • Options
    AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Unless it turns out that his illness has caused him to be permanently disabled, Boris isn't going anywhere, despite the wishful thinking of his opponents. Yes, Covid and its after-effects are going to make the next couple of years a nightmare across the Western world, but that’s unavoidable whoever the leader is, and there’s plenty of opportunity to get back to a semblance of good times by 2024.

    As for ephemeral polls, the current orgy of cultural vandalism has interrupted Labour’s rise as the public wakes up to what the fuck they may be voting into power, as yesterday’s Survation suggests...

    https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1271057897196306433

    One solitary statue of a mass murderer gets unlawfully taken down, the rightists of PB call it an “orgy of cultural vandalism” and imply the Labour Party is to blame. In the meantime, we will have around 60,000 excess deaths as a result of the Government’s muddled response, more than any comparable country on an aggregate or per capita basis, and the worst economic downturn in the industrialised world, but that’s “unavoidable whoever the leader is”. In the words of one commentator here “you couldn’t make it up”.
    One solitary statue taken down by a violent mob explicitly celebrated by Labour MP Nadia Whittome:

    https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1269732031128383490

    Note her exact words about a future Labour Government:

    'I celebrate these acts of resistance.'

    'We need a movement that will tear down systemic racism and the slave owner statues that symbolise it. And we need to win a government that will always be on the side of this movement.'

    The statue's vandals have published a hit list of dozens more across the country to destroy, and they've already defaced many more, including Churchill, Lincoln, and Gandhi.

    Meanwhile, Labour mayors and councils across the country are jumping at the opportunity to 'review' their local monuments, and in the case of Sadiq Khan, to just send in the JCBs as he did with Milligan.

    I'm afraid the facts speak for themselves about the left's intentions.
    And I’m afraid the numbers speak for themselves as to the number of people your party has negligently allowed to die these last three months. Are you on the side of living humans or statues? The impression you give is that you give more of a damn about chunks of metal celebrating mass murderers like Coulson and Milligan than the people of this country. But I am sure that is not the case.
    I'm sure the eventual public inquiry will establish exactly what occurred in this unprecendented global pandemic and the extent to which deaths could or could not have been avoided. Of course, you have all the answers now, thanks to your handy time machine.

    'Living humans or statues' isn't a mutually-exclusive choice, by the way. One can want to save as many lives as possible from the pandemic, as the Government is doing, while deploring the violence and cultural vandalism of the far left. People have noticed what they're about, and it doesn't look as though they like it...
    But you seem to have no interest in the lives avoidably lost and the appalling performance of this government in the pandemic as compared with other developed countries.

    It’s the sheer lack of curiosity of Conservatives about this atrocious failure that is most shocking. They would literally rather see the deaths of tens of thousands ignored rather than admit to any failings on the government’s part.
  • Options
    DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 24,407
    edited June 2020
    isam said:

    Johnson staying is very good news for Labour but very bad news for the country. Given that the next election is four years away, I hope the Tories put the country forst. We desperately need a government run by someone with a level of competence and diligence that Johnson does not possess. We also need a PM willing to put the best of the available talent in his or her cabinet. As we know, Johnson will not do that.

    The case for Boris staying is that he (and Cummings) are committed to investment whereas any successor might prefer cuts and austerity.
    The case for him staying is he's just won the biggest majority for about twenty years. It's not about what people who have deep hatred to him and unreasoned bias against him think, it's about the result of General Elections.
    You miss the point since the only people who can oust the Prime Minister are Conservative MPs and (in case of health or disenchantment with the job) Boris himself.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,011
    ClippP said:

    Johnson staying is very good news for Labour but very bad news for the country. Given that the next election is four years away, I hope the Tories put the country forst. We desperately need a government run by someone with a level of competence and diligence that Johnson does not possess. We also need a PM willing to put the best of the available talent in his or her cabinet. As we know, Johnson will not do that.

    The problem that the Conservatives have is finding somebody to replace Johnson. The sad reality is that they do not have anybody.

    The first quality they need, in m opinion, is to find somebody who is trustworthy. The present gang of cheats, chancers and short-term opportunists has contaminated the entire brand.

    So a question for the PB Tories.... Which Tory politician do you think the public actually trusts?
    Rishi Sunak but at most he could do a Major 1992 if Boris like Thatcher got really unpopular and Labour took a big poll lead
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,659
    Pulpstar said:

    Sean_F said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    There's probably an element of cynicism as well. Censor/temporarily ban something, and sales of that thing in other media will soar.
    I was thinking about that on my run this morning

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEBXuhqVSws

    Gone with the wind currently Amazon top selling DVD.
    A combination of Paul Morley's publicity skills and Trevor Horn's epic production.
  • Options
    Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981
    Nigelb said:


    The difference between 2m and 1m is probably also the difference between a location which is high risk for superspreading events and one which is not.
    I agree that the 2m distancing rule can't survive for long owing to economic necessity, but abandoning it too soon (and we're talking a matter of perhaps a couple of weeks) is an unnecessary risk.

    And it might need to be re-instituted later in the year. That would certainly be vastly preferable to a second lockdown, and with large scale testing now in place, along with track/trace/isolate, probably almost as effective.

    However, knowing our govts fine eye for detail, they will probably mandate that anyone eating in restaurants must wear a mask at all times... ;)
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,626
    People are going to have to get used to the idea of switching between 2m and 1m, perhaps more than once, I think.
    Quite obviously government will try to ease restriction as soon as they can - but might well have to re-impose them, if case numbers head upwards again at a later date.
    Anything but another lockdown.

    Uncertainty over 2-metre distancing rule in England 'causing chaos'
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/11/uncertainty-over-2-metre-distancing-rule-in-england-causing-chaos
    ...While retail groups say a 1-metre distance would be a boost for shops, they have expressed frustration at the lack of notice. Some council leaders, meanwhile, said confusion over the measure epitomised a chaotic central government approach to the pandemic.

    In the past few weeks, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has distributed grants from the £50m Reopening High Streets Safely Fund to councils across England, to be used on signage and barriers on streets and in shops.

    Tudor Evans, the Labour leader of Plymouth council, which has received £235,000 from the fund, said it had been used for large numbers of discs on street surfaces indicating 2-metre distances, and to help hundreds of shops prepare. These measures would need to be redone if the distance was reduced.

    “If it changes in the next few weeks it will make people angry,” Evans said. “A lot of people have sent a lot of time in the public sector, and in the private sector, to get things ready for opening up in accordance with government regulations. To have this uncertainty, this close to opening, is really an emblem for how chaotic the government’s handling has been.”

    Andrew Goodacre, the chief executive of the British Independent Retailers Association, which represents smaller shops, said any reduction would receive a mixed reception from members...
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,311
    Pulpstar said:

    Sean_F said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    There's probably an element of cynicism as well. Censor/temporarily ban something, and sales of that thing in other media will soar.
    I was thinking about that on my run this morning

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEBXuhqVSws

    Gone with the wind currently Amazon top selling DVD.
    The drummer in that vid saying: "Calm down, calm down" (in a Scouse accent).
  • Options
    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 25,197
    HYUFD said:
    Government popularity, that's the key. "IF" the government popularity figures continue to trend south the Conservatives will have a problem in 2024.
  • Options
    MattWMattW Posts: 18,567

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Andy_JS said:
    Hopefully never. That's the role of Councils not Central Government.
    On the contrary [edit: in part, sorry]. Natural England, English Heritage, and so on.
    I thought they were ran independently and not by Central Government?

    What's been done so far that has anything to do with them anyway? The statues that have been debated so far are local government matters not central government matters.
    Historic England - to use the up to date term, my slip, sorry - has a major role to play in listing buildings and structures:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/

    And it's a central government agency - a quango as I suppose it used to be called. Debatable whether you call it a central gmt body but this does mean the matters it deals with are central government in a sense.
    In listed buildings yes, not in statues that are regularly moved anyway.

    As far as I know nobody has suggested pulling down buildings, despite the straw man that people are using about it.
    Well, IIRC fixings and fittings of buildings are part of them, so eg the Rhodes statue at Oxford would come under that.

    And listing is not just buildings but structures, gardens, etc. as well. And statues in isolation are listed - abundantly:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/results/?searchType=NHLE+Simple&search=statue
    Indeed but none of the statues that have come down [so far] are listed are they? Which makes them a local government matter.
    Both the statues in Bristol and West India Quay were listed.

    I thought we'd done that one to death already.
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,141
    edited June 2020

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Unless it turns out that his illness has caused him to be permanently disabled, Boris isn't going anywhere, despite the wishful thinking of his opponents. Yes, Covid and its after-effects are going to make the next couple of years a nightmare across the Western world, but that’s unavoidable whoever the leader is, and there’s plenty of opportunity to get back to a semblance of good times by 2024.

    As for ephemeral polls, the current orgy of cultural vandalism has interrupted Labour’s rise as the public wakes up to what the fuck they may be voting into power, as yesterday’s Survation suggests...

    https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1271057897196306433

    One solitary statue of a mass murderer gets unlawfully taken down, the rightists of PB call it an “orgy of cultural vandalism” and imply the Labour Party is to blame. In the meantime, we will have around 60,000 excess deaths as a result of the Government’s muddled response, more than any comparable country on an aggregate or per capita basis, and the worst economic downturn in the industrialised world, but that’s “unavoidable whoever the leader is”. In the words of one commentator here “you couldn’t make it up”.
    One solitary statue taken down by a violent mob explicitly celebrated by Labour MP Nadia Whittome:

    https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1269732031128383490

    Note her exact words about a future Labour Government:

    'I celebrate these acts of resistance.'

    'We need a movement that will tear down systemic racism and the slave owner statues that symbolise it. And we need to win a government that will always be on the side of this movement.'

    The statue's vandals have published a hit list of dozens more across the country to destroy, and they've already defaced many more, including Churchill, Lincoln, and Gandhi.

    Meanwhile, Labour mayors and councils across the country are jumping at the opportunity to 'review' their local monuments, and in the case of Sadiq Khan, to just send in the JCBs as he did with Milligan.

    I'm afraid the facts speak for themselves about the left's intentions.
    And I’m afraid the numbers speak for themselves as to the number of people your party has negligently allowed to die these last three months. Are you on the side of living humans or statues? The impression you give is that you give more of a damn about chunks of metal celebrating mass murderers like Coulson and Milligan than the people of this country. But I am sure that is not the case.
    I'm sure the eventual public inquiry will establish exactly what occurred in this unprecendented global pandemic and the extent to which deaths could or could not have been avoided. Of course, you have all the answers now, thanks to your handy time machine.

    'Living humans or statues' isn't a mutually-exclusive choice, by the way. One can want to save as many lives as possible from the pandemic, as the Government is doing, while deploring the violence and cultural vandalism of the far left. People have noticed what they're about, and it doesn't look as though they like it...
    You base your entire paranoid polemic on one tweet from one Labour MP and a single Survation Poll that still shows your party’s support far more than halved in a month. As for “time machine” - you forget I borrowed yours, you know the one you use to predict elections? In the meantime the below tweets represent the actual views of the Labour Party - and most people in this country

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1269949806463668224

    https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1269919037426929664

  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    MattW said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Andy_JS said:
    Hopefully never. That's the role of Councils not Central Government.
    On the contrary [edit: in part, sorry]. Natural England, English Heritage, and so on.
    I thought they were ran independently and not by Central Government?

    What's been done so far that has anything to do with them anyway? The statues that have been debated so far are local government matters not central government matters.
    Historic England - to use the up to date term, my slip, sorry - has a major role to play in listing buildings and structures:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/

    And it's a central government agency - a quango as I suppose it used to be called. Debatable whether you call it a central gmt body but this does mean the matters it deals with are central government in a sense.
    In listed buildings yes, not in statues that are regularly moved anyway.

    As far as I know nobody has suggested pulling down buildings, despite the straw man that people are using about it.
    Well, IIRC fixings and fittings of buildings are part of them, so eg the Rhodes statue at Oxford would come under that.

    And listing is not just buildings but structures, gardens, etc. as well. And statues in isolation are listed - abundantly:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/results/?searchType=NHLE+Simple&search=statue
    Indeed but none of the statues that have come down [so far] are listed are they? Which makes them a local government matter.
    Both the statues in Bristol and West India Quay were listed.

    I thought we'd done that one to death already.
    The one in West India Quay had been moved repeatedly already so when was it listed from?
  • Options
    BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    edited June 2020

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Unless it turns out that his illness has caused him to be permanently disabled, Boris isn't going anywhere, despite the wishful thinking of his opponents. Yes, Covid and its after-effects are going to make the next couple of years a nightmare across the Western world, but that’s unavoidable whoever the leader is, and there’s plenty of opportunity to get back to a semblance of good times by 2024.

    As for ephemeral polls, the current orgy of cultural vandalism has interrupted Labour’s rise as the public wakes up to what the fuck they may be voting into power, as yesterday’s Survation suggests...

    https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1271057897196306433

    One solitary statue of a mass murderer gets unlawfully taken down, the rightists of PB call it an “orgy of cultural vandalism” and imply the Labour Party is to blame. In the meantime, we will have around 60,000 excess deaths as a result of the Government’s muddled response, more than any comparable country on an aggregate or per capita basis, and the worst economic downturn in the industrialised world, but that’s “unavoidable whoever the leader is”. In the words of one commentator here “you couldn’t make it up”.
    One solitary statue taken down by a violent mob explicitly celebrated by Labour MP Nadia Whittome:

    https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1269732031128383490

    Note her exact words about a future Labour Government:

    'I celebrate these acts of resistance.'

    'We need a movement that will tear down systemic racism and the slave owner statues that symbolise it. And we need to win a government that will always be on the side of this movement.'

    The statue's vandals have published a hit list of dozens more across the country to destroy, and they've already defaced many more, including Churchill, Lincoln, and Gandhi.

    Meanwhile, Labour mayors and councils across the country are jumping at the opportunity to 'review' their local monuments, and in the case of Sadiq Khan, to just send in the JCBs as he did with Milligan.

    I'm afraid the facts speak for themselves about the left's intentions.
    And I’m afraid the numbers speak for themselves as to the number of people your party has negligently allowed to die these last three months. Are you on the side of living humans or statues? The impression you give is that you give more of a damn about chunks of metal celebrating mass murderers like Coulson and Milligan than the people of this country. But I am sure that is not the case.
    I'm sure the eventual public inquiry will establish exactly what occurred in this unprecendented global pandemic and the extent to which deaths could or could not have been avoided. Of course, you have all the answers now, thanks to your handy time machine.

    'Living humans or statues' isn't a mutually-exclusive choice, by the way. One can want to save as many lives as possible from the pandemic, as the Government is doing, while deploring the violence and cultural vandalism of the far left. People have noticed what they're about, and it doesn't look as though they like it...
    But you seem to have no interest in the lives avoidably lost and the appalling performance of this government in the pandemic as compared with other developed countries.

    It’s the sheer lack of curiosity of Conservatives about this atrocious failure that is most shocking. They would literally rather see the deaths of tens of thousands ignored rather than admit to any failings on the government’s part.
    Ignored? Which bit of 'public inquiry' was unclear? That's where the truth will come out, as opposed to throwing every bit of shit at the government to see what sticks when we're still only months into the pandemic and basic scientific facts about e.g. how it spreads, who gets infected, how and why they do, what immunity is obtained, remain a mystery.

    In the meantime, I'm sure our scientists are absorbing all the new published literature and the progress of other countries and making recommendations to the government, which then decides how to act on them. That's literally all anyone can do.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,626
    A crowdfunding appeal for judicial review of the government's actions in discharging patients into care homes, from a bereaved daughter:

    Help me hold the government to account for Covid-19 care home deaths
    https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/care-home-deaths/

    Had government held its hands up to the mistake, I wouldn't bother, but given the circumstances, I shall be contributing.
  • Options
    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,680

    Zeroth, like the law of thermodynamics.

    Once depressingly summed up as:

    1) You have to play
    2) You can’t cheat
    3) You can’t break even
    4) You can’t get out of the game.
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,071
    Telegraph: Britain is a ship of fools heading for the rocks

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/06/12/britain-ship-fools-heading-rocks/
  • Options
    geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,169
    No self-respecting brexiteer should have adopted the 2-metre rule.
    That is to kow-tow to Napoleonic measurements. It should always have been the 2-arm's-length rule, in conformity with good old Anglo-Saxon measurement units based on body parts. Everyone would have understood that.
    I mean this seriously.
  • Options
    GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,079
    Pulpstar said:

    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:
    The "Red Wallers" won't exist after the next election. There will no longer be a reason for them to vote Tory now Corbyn is gone, and to a lesser extent, Brexit is "done" (and my, will a lot of them be "done" in a big way!).
    The "Red Wallers" are not unique and despite being a hardcore on economics Tory I'm more of a Red Waller than a Shire Tory.

    I found this article quite interesting. I would definitely 100% side with Liz Truss and the Lidl free marketeers over the Waitrose protectionists - the comparison with the Corn Laws was quite interesting too.

    Personally I think Liz Truss is one of the more impressive and underrated members of the Cabinet.
    The red wallers who switched to the Tories voted for Corbyn in 2017, for Boris in 2019.

    The reason they voted Tory was not to stop Corbyn, that was more southern Tory Remainers, it was to deliver Brexit and hard Brexit given most of them want to end free movement
    As always, you’re the expert on northern “red wallers” from your flat in Essex.
    Indeed. I'm actually a Northern Tory, you're a Northerner. HYUFD is . . . ignorable.
    I’m actually originally from the West Midlands but I’ve lived in the North East for 10 years now!
    Has your accent changed at all ?
    A little, however my Dad is from North Shields so my accent was never very Brummie...
  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,607

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    As you know the silent majority will stay silent until election day. We will have our revenge on this mob you seem to have joined.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,011

    Telegraph: Britain is a ship of fools heading for the rocks

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/06/12/britain-ship-fools-heading-rocks/

    The Telegraph wants lockdown ended asap, no surprise
  • Options
    TheWhiteRabbitTheWhiteRabbit Posts: 12,388
    Nigelb said:

    A crowdfunding appeal for judicial review of the government's actions in discharging patients into care homes, from a bereaved daughter:

    Help me hold the government to account for Covid-19 care home deaths
    https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/care-home-deaths/

    Had government held its hands up to the mistake, I wouldn't bother, but given the circumstances, I shall be contributing.

    What remedy is she seeking?
  • Options
    AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340
    geoffw said:

    No self-respecting brexiteer should have adopted the 2-metre rule.
    That is to kow-tow to Napoleonic measurements. It should always have been the 2-arm's-length rule, in conformity with good old Anglo-Saxon measurement units based on body parts. Everyone would have understood that.
    I mean this seriously.

    Should we have a biblical flood, would your ark need to be made from gopher wood?
  • Options
    GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,079
    HYUFD said:

    Telegraph: Britain is a ship of fools heading for the rocks

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/06/12/britain-ship-fools-heading-rocks/

    The Telegraph wants lockdown ended asap, no surprise
    You sound like a Corbynista - everyone and everything has a negative agenda against you.
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,141
    edited June 2020
    So the strategy of dividing communities by setting up straw men of “cultural vandalism” has worked as the right brings out their Freikorps

    https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1271370405522010114
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    As you know the silent majority will stay silent until election day. We will have our revenge on this mob you seem to have joined.
    You think putting a phrase like "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes" is the action of a mob?
  • Options
    MattWMattW Posts: 18,567
    edited June 2020

    MattW said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Andy_JS said:
    Hopefully never. That's the role of Councils not Central Government.
    On the contrary [edit: in part, sorry]. Natural England, English Heritage, and so on.
    I thought they were ran independently and not by Central Government?

    What's been done so far that has anything to do with them anyway? The statues that have been debated so far are local government matters not central government matters.
    Historic England - to use the up to date term, my slip, sorry - has a major role to play in listing buildings and structures:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/

    And it's a central government agency - a quango as I suppose it used to be called. Debatable whether you call it a central gmt body but this does mean the matters it deals with are central government in a sense.
    In listed buildings yes, not in statues that are regularly moved anyway.

    As far as I know nobody has suggested pulling down buildings, despite the straw man that people are using about it.
    Well, IIRC fixings and fittings of buildings are part of them, so eg the Rhodes statue at Oxford would come under that.

    And listing is not just buildings but structures, gardens, etc. as well. And statues in isolation are listed - abundantly:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/results/?searchType=NHLE+Simple&search=statue
    Indeed but none of the statues that have come down [so far] are listed are they? Which makes them a local government matter.
    Both the statues in Bristol and West India Quay were listed.

    I thought we'd done that one to death already.
    The one in West India Quay had been moved repeatedly already so when was it listed from?
    I think that's a non-question.

    It is (or was, until Tower Hamlets moved it) in its original position, and it is in the listing, and the law says that items included in a listing are listed.

    Clearly, since it is in the listing it was either in it since the list item was created, or the item has been edited 1997 (ish?) when the statue was returned.

    In either case it is included.
  • Options
    BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Unless it turns out that his illness has caused him to be permanently disabled, Boris isn't going anywhere, despite the wishful thinking of his opponents. Yes, Covid and its after-effects are going to make the next couple of years a nightmare across the Western world, but that’s unavoidable whoever the leader is, and there’s plenty of opportunity to get back to a semblance of good times by 2024.

    As for ephemeral polls, the current orgy of cultural vandalism has interrupted Labour’s rise as the public wakes up to what the fuck they may be voting into power, as yesterday’s Survation suggests...

    https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1271057897196306433

    One solitary statue of a mass murderer gets unlawfully taken down, the rightists of PB call it an “orgy of cultural vandalism” and imply the Labour Party is to blame. In the meantime, we will have around 60,000 excess deaths as a result of the Government’s muddled response, more than any comparable country on an aggregate or per capita basis, and the worst economic downturn in the industrialised world, but that’s “unavoidable whoever the leader is”. In the words of one commentator here “you couldn’t make it up”.
    One solitary statue taken down by a violent mob explicitly celebrated by Labour MP Nadia Whittome:

    https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1269732031128383490

    Note her exact words about a future Labour Government:

    'I celebrate these acts of resistance.'

    'We need a movement that will tear down systemic racism and the slave owner statues that symbolise it. And we need to win a government that will always be on the side of this movement.'

    The statue's vandals have published a hit list of dozens more across the country to destroy, and they've already defaced many more, including Churchill, Lincoln, and Gandhi.

    Meanwhile, Labour mayors and councils across the country are jumping at the opportunity to 'review' their local monuments, and in the case of Sadiq Khan, to just send in the JCBs as he did with Milligan.

    I'm afraid the facts speak for themselves about the left's intentions.
    And I’m afraid the numbers speak for themselves as to the number of people your party has negligently allowed to die these last three months. Are you on the side of living humans or statues? The impression you give is that you give more of a damn about chunks of metal celebrating mass murderers like Coulson and Milligan than the people of this country. But I am sure that is not the case.
    I'm sure the eventual public inquiry will establish exactly what occurred in this unprecendented global pandemic and the extent to which deaths could or could not have been avoided. Of course, you have all the answers now, thanks to your handy time machine.

    'Living humans or statues' isn't a mutually-exclusive choice, by the way. One can want to save as many lives as possible from the pandemic, as the Government is doing, while deploring the violence and cultural vandalism of the far left. People have noticed what they're about, and it doesn't look as though they like it...
    You base your entire paranoid polemic on one tweet from one Labour MP and a single Survation Poll that still shows your party’s support far more than halved in a month. As for “time machine” - you forget I borrowed yours, you know the one you use to predict elections? In the meantime the below tweets represent the actual views of the Labour Party - and most people in this country

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1269949806463668224

    https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1269919037426929664

    David Lammy has - to my amazement - won my respect on this occasion. He explicitly said that he doesn't condone violence and riots AND that he would not march with BLM because that would make him a hypocrite after criticizing Cummings.

    As for Starmer, on the other hand, actions speak louder than words. Two days after the illegal actions of that mob, he and dozens of Labour MPs put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the protesters.

    If they didn't mean to lend their implicit support to illegal acts of violence then literally kneeling before a movement that had perpetrated them very publicly a couple of days earlier was a funny way of showing it...
  • Options
    ClippPClippP Posts: 1,686
    edited June 2020
    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    Johnson staying is very good news for Labour but very bad news for the country. Given that the next election is four years away, I hope the Tories put the country forst. We desperately need a government run by someone with a level of competence and diligence that Johnson does not possess. We also need a PM willing to put the best of the available talent in his or her cabinet. As we know, Johnson will not do that.

    The problem that the Conservatives have is finding somebody to replace Johnson. The sad reality is that they do not have anybody.

    The first quality they need, in m opinion, is to find somebody who is trustworthy. The present gang of cheats, chancers and short-term opportunists has contaminated the entire brand.

    So a question for the PB Tories.... Which Tory politician do you think the public actually trusts?
    Rishi Sunak but at most he could do a Major 1992 if Boris like Thatcher got really unpopular and Labour took a big poll lead
    So far all he has done is to throw (other people´s) money around and be popular. And also to do whatever Cummings tells him to do. He has done nothing I can see to demonstrate any trustworthiness.

    To do this he surely needs to stand up for some principles, even though it is to his own personal disadvantage. Think of Churchill in the wilderness years.
  • Options
    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,190
    edited June 2020
    Scott_xP said:
    Of course, post-war Britain is now very much history. When I was doing GSCE history in 2001-03, we did up to Watergate. Arguably we could be teaching history up to and including the 1990s now, which could include the Stephen Lawrence case for example.
  • Options
    TheWhiteRabbitTheWhiteRabbit Posts: 12,388
    Sean_F said:

    tlg86 said:

    DougSeal said:

    tlg86 said:

    DougSeal said:

    tlg86 said:

    FPT:

    DougSeal said:

    tlg86 said:

    Should The Dam Busters be edited/removed?

    I've just watched the Major scene - it's fine in my opinion, but some people are sensitive to language.
    You could make a perfectly fine Dambusters movie without anyone addressing the dog by name. You don’t even have to rename it or edit it out. Just have everyone referring to it as “good boy” or “your lab”.
    Perhaps, but why should historical work be altered to fit with modern sensitivities? I think people should be able to choose to watch what they like, perhaps with a warning about content that some may find offensive.
    I was taking about a remake but historical works are often so edited. Bits are taken out of Shakespeare for performance all the time. Movies are often edited for TV and/or airline viewing. It’s not new.
    And it's wrong.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_Man#Qantas_and_airline_controversy
    The name of the dog in Dambusters is not key to the narrative of the whole movie. That’s the difference. You can edit it out with no ill effects. You don’t even have to take the dog or its death out, just its name. The decision of Quantas in that case removed a key scene. The equivalent in Dambusters would be taking out the scene in the theatre when he came up with the idea of measuring height using lamps. Editors exist for a reason.
    Whilst that's true, I'm uncomfortable with a blanket ban on words.

    To go back to Fawlty Towers, the use of the n word is part of the joke (on the Major, I might add) so that scene wouldn't really work without it. But I guess that's not enough to save it.
    I think Rising Damp is a good example of 'who is the butt of the joke?'. The answer is obviously Rigsby, whose racist assumptions are shown up as he is easily outwitted by Philip.

    But that does not mean that Philip's own characterisation of himself as the son of an African chief is not in many ways problematic. You do have to watch the series to get that, not just five minutes of it.
    While that is true, there is probably very little worthwhile art, literature, film, that is not "problematic" to a greater or lesser extent. Artists, writers, film-makers etc. all have their prejudices, and values change over time.
    I agree.

    Most art is transient. People stop watching things in time.

    Gone with the Wind only became prominent because of a failure to register the copyright. In time people won't watch it, not to Rising Damp, any more than Love Thy Neighbour, for which nobody is asking the box sets.

    Statues, if we are not prepared to remove them, are different. I do not like the idea that the dead should bind the living, indefinitely, in this way. We should have new statues, of people worthy of admiration.

    Why can't we have statues of Alan Turing or Stephen Hawking, of authors or poets? Why only a handful of entertainers?

  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,607

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    As you know the silent majority will stay silent until election day. We will have our revenge on this mob you seem to have joined.
    You think putting a phrase like "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes" is the action of a mob?
    I think needing to board up the Cenotaph is the action of the mob. People vandalising the monuments to Gandhi and Churchill are actions of the mob. This new wave of censorship will be defeated and those who defeat it will be called every insult under the sun by the mob when we do. Your mob failed to get change by the ballot box in 2019 and now you're taking it to the streets. It's just wrong.
  • Options
    AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Unless it turns out that his illness has caused him to be permanently disabled, Boris isn't going anywhere, despite the wishful thinking of his opponents. Yes, Covid and its after-effects are going to make the next couple of years a nightmare across the Western world, but that’s unavoidable whoever the leader is, and there’s plenty of opportunity to get back to a semblance of good times by 2024.

    As for ephemeral polls, the current orgy of cultural vandalism has interrupted Labour’s rise as the public wakes up to what the fuck they may be voting into power, as yesterday’s Survation suggests...

    https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1271057897196306433

    One solitary statue of a mass murderer gets unlawfully taken down, the rightists of PB call it an “orgy of cultural vandalism” and imply the Labour Party is to blame. In the meantime, we will have around 60,000 excess deaths as a result of the Government’s muddled response, more than any comparable country on an aggregate or per capita basis, and the worst economic downturn in the industrialised world, but that’s “unavoidable whoever the leader is”. In the words of one commentator here “you couldn’t make it up”.
    One solitary statue taken down by a violent mob explicitly celebrated by Labour MP Nadia Whittome:

    https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1269732031128383490

    Note her exact words about a future Labour Government:

    'I celebrate these acts of resistance.'

    'We need a movement that will tear down systemic racism and the slave owner statues that symbolise it. And we need to win a government that will always be on the side of this movement.'

    The statue's vandals have published a hit list of dozens more across the country to destroy, and they've already defaced many more, including Churchill, Lincoln, and Gandhi.

    Meanwhile, Labour mayors and councils across the country are jumping at the opportunity to 'review' their local monuments, and in the case of Sadiq Khan, to just send in the JCBs as he did with Milligan.

    I'm afraid the facts speak for themselves about the left's intentions.
    And I’m afraid the numbers speak for themselves as to the number of people your party has negligently allowed to die these last three months. Are you on the side of living humans or statues? The impression you give is that you give more of a damn about chunks of metal celebrating mass murderers like Coulson and Milligan than the people of this country. But I am sure that is not the case.
    I'm sure the eventual public inquiry will establish exactly what occurred in this unprecendented global pandemic and the extent to which deaths could or could not have been avoided. Of course, you have all the answers now, thanks to your handy time machine.

    'Living humans or statues' isn't a mutually-exclusive choice, by the way. One can want to save as many lives as possible from the pandemic, as the Government is doing, while deploring the violence and cultural vandalism of the far left. People have noticed what they're about, and it doesn't look as though they like it...
    But you seem to have no interest in the lives avoidably lost and the appalling performance of this government in the pandemic as compared with other developed countries.

    It’s the sheer lack of curiosity of Conservatives about this atrocious failure that is most shocking. They would literally rather see the deaths of tens of thousands ignored rather than admit to any failings on the government’s part.
    Ignored? Which bit of 'public inquiry' was unclear? That's where the truth will come out, as opposed to throwing every bit of shit at the government to see what sticks when we're still only months into the pandemic and basic scientific facts about e.g. how it spreads, who gets infected, how and why they do, what immunity is obtained, remain a mystery.

    In the meantime, I'm sure our scientists are absorbing all the new published literature and the progress of other countries and making recommendations to the government, which then decides how to act on them. That's literally all anyone can do.
    The government deserves every bit of shit that hits it. It has performed appallingly by international standards in this crisis, causing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.

    And you blindly support it.
  • Options
    BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Unless it turns out that his illness has caused him to be permanently disabled, Boris isn't going anywhere, despite the wishful thinking of his opponents. Yes, Covid and its after-effects are going to make the next couple of years a nightmare across the Western world, but that’s unavoidable whoever the leader is, and there’s plenty of opportunity to get back to a semblance of good times by 2024.

    As for ephemeral polls, the current orgy of cultural vandalism has interrupted Labour’s rise as the public wakes up to what the fuck they may be voting into power, as yesterday’s Survation suggests...

    https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1271057897196306433

    One solitary statue of a mass murderer gets unlawfully taken down, the rightists of PB call it an “orgy of cultural vandalism” and imply the Labour Party is to blame. In the meantime, we will have around 60,000 excess deaths as a result of the Government’s muddled response, more than any comparable country on an aggregate or per capita basis, and the worst economic downturn in the industrialised world, but that’s “unavoidable whoever the leader is”. In the words of one commentator here “you couldn’t make it up”.
    One solitary statue taken down by a violent mob explicitly celebrated by Labour MP Nadia Whittome:

    https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1269732031128383490

    Note her exact words about a future Labour Government:

    'I celebrate these acts of resistance.'

    'We need a movement that will tear down systemic racism and the slave owner statues that symbolise it. And we need to win a government that will always be on the side of this movement.'

    The statue's vandals have published a hit list of dozens more across the country to destroy, and they've already defaced many more, including Churchill, Lincoln, and Gandhi.

    Meanwhile, Labour mayors and councils across the country are jumping at the opportunity to 'review' their local monuments, and in the case of Sadiq Khan, to just send in the JCBs as he did with Milligan.

    I'm afraid the facts speak for themselves about the left's intentions.
    And I’m afraid the numbers speak for themselves as to the number of people your party has negligently allowed to die these last three months. Are you on the side of living humans or statues? The impression you give is that you give more of a damn about chunks of metal celebrating mass murderers like Coulson and Milligan than the people of this country. But I am sure that is not the case.
    I'm sure the eventual public inquiry will establish exactly what occurred in this unprecendented global pandemic and the extent to which deaths could or could not have been avoided. Of course, you have all the answers now, thanks to your handy time machine.

    'Living humans or statues' isn't a mutually-exclusive choice, by the way. One can want to save as many lives as possible from the pandemic, as the Government is doing, while deploring the violence and cultural vandalism of the far left. People have noticed what they're about, and it doesn't look as though they like it...
    But you seem to have no interest in the lives avoidably lost and the appalling performance of this government in the pandemic as compared with other developed countries.

    It’s the sheer lack of curiosity of Conservatives about this atrocious failure that is most shocking. They would literally rather see the deaths of tens of thousands ignored rather than admit to any failings on the government’s part.
    Ignored? Which bit of 'public inquiry' was unclear? That's where the truth will come out, as opposed to throwing every bit of shit at the government to see what sticks when we're still only months into the pandemic and basic scientific facts about e.g. how it spreads, who gets infected, how and why they do, what immunity is obtained, remain a mystery.

    In the meantime, I'm sure our scientists are absorbing all the new published literature and the progress of other countries and making recommendations to the government, which then decides how to act on them. That's literally all anyone can do.
    The government deserves every bit of shit that hits it. It has performed appallingly by international standards in this crisis, causing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.

    And you blindly support it.
    Blindly? No. I can see the Opposition in the streets, and I'll vote against them with my eyes open come hell or high water.
  • Options
    geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,169

    geoffw said:

    No self-respecting brexiteer should have adopted the 2-metre rule.
    That is to kow-tow to Napoleonic measurements. It should always have been the 2-arm's-length rule, in conformity with good old Anglo-Saxon measurement units based on body parts. Everyone would have understood that.
    I mean this seriously.

    Should we have a biblical flood, would your ark need to be made from gopher wood?
    If you can touch someone's fingertips when both are outstretched, or imagine that, then you would know you are at the stipulated limit.
    But I think just one arm's-length should be the rule atm. Most schools, shops, restaurants and workplaces would cope with that.
  • Options
    Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,984
    Mr. Seal, if statues don't need protecting then why's Churchill's been hidden from view?
  • Options
    AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Unless it turns out that his illness has caused him to be permanently disabled, Boris isn't going anywhere, despite the wishful thinking of his opponents. Yes, Covid and its after-effects are going to make the next couple of years a nightmare across the Western world, but that’s unavoidable whoever the leader is, and there’s plenty of opportunity to get back to a semblance of good times by 2024.

    As for ephemeral polls, the current orgy of cultural vandalism has interrupted Labour’s rise as the public wakes up to what the fuck they may be voting into power, as yesterday’s Survation suggests...

    https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1271057897196306433

    One solitary statue of a mass murderer gets unlawfully taken down, the rightists of PB call it an “orgy of cultural vandalism” and imply the Labour Party is to blame. In the meantime, we will have around 60,000 excess deaths as a result of the Government’s muddled response, more than any comparable country on an aggregate or per capita basis, and the worst economic downturn in the industrialised world, but that’s “unavoidable whoever the leader is”. In the words of one commentator here “you couldn’t make it up”.
    One solitary statue taken down by a violent mob explicitly celebrated by Labour MP Nadia Whittome:

    https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1269732031128383490

    Note her exact words about a future Labour Government:

    'I celebrate these acts of resistance.'

    'We need a movement that will tear down systemic racism and the slave owner statues that symbolise it. And we need to win a government that will always be on the side of this movement.'

    The statue's vandals have published a hit list of dozens more across the country to destroy, and they've already defaced many more, including Churchill, Lincoln, and Gandhi.

    Meanwhile, Labour mayors and councils across the country are jumping at the opportunity to 'review' their local monuments, and in the case of Sadiq Khan, to just send in the JCBs as he did with Milligan.

    I'm afraid the facts speak for themselves about the left's intentions.
    And I’m afraid the numbers speak for themselves as to the number of people your party has negligently allowed to die these last three months. Are you on the side of living humans or statues? The impression you give is that you give more of a damn about chunks of metal celebrating mass murderers like Coulson and Milligan than the people of this country. But I am sure that is not the case.
    I'm sure the eventual public inquiry will establish exactly what occurred in this unprecendented global pandemic and the extent to which deaths could or could not have been avoided. Of course, you have all the answers now, thanks to your handy time machine.

    'Living humans or statues' isn't a mutually-exclusive choice, by the way. One can want to save as many lives as possible from the pandemic, as the Government is doing, while deploring the violence and cultural vandalism of the far left. People have noticed what they're about, and it doesn't look as though they like it...
    But you seem to have no interest in the lives avoidably lost and the appalling performance of this government in the pandemic as compared with other developed countries.

    It’s the sheer lack of curiosity of Conservatives about this atrocious failure that is most shocking. They would literally rather see the deaths of tens of thousands ignored rather than admit to any failings on the government’s part.
    Ignored? Which bit of 'public inquiry' was unclear? That's where the truth will come out, as opposed to throwing every bit of shit at the government to see what sticks when we're still only months into the pandemic and basic scientific facts about e.g. how it spreads, who gets infected, how and why they do, what immunity is obtained, remain a mystery.

    In the meantime, I'm sure our scientists are absorbing all the new published literature and the progress of other countries and making recommendations to the government, which then decides how to act on them. That's literally all anyone can do.
    The government deserves every bit of shit that hits it. It has performed appallingly by international standards in this crisis, causing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.

    And you blindly support it.
    Blindly? No. I can see the Opposition in the streets, and I'll vote against them with my eyes open come hell or high water.
    Blindly. You’re more concerned about having a culture war over statues than the enormous pile of corpses that your party is responsible for.
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,141

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Unless it turns out that his illness has caused him to be permanently disabled, Boris isn't going anywhere, despite the wishful thinking of his opponents. Yes, Covid and its after-effects are going to make the next couple of years a nightmare across the Western world, but that’s unavoidable whoever the leader is, and there’s plenty of opportunity to get back to a semblance of good times by 2024.

    As for ephemeral polls, the current orgy of cultural vandalism has interrupted Labour’s rise as the public wakes up to what the fuck they may be voting into power, as yesterday’s Survation suggests...

    https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1271057897196306433

    One solitary statue of a mass murderer gets unlawfully taken down, the rightists of PB call it an “orgy of cultural vandalism” and imply the Labour Party is to blame. In the meantime, we will have around 60,000 excess deaths as a result of the Government’s muddled response, more than any comparable country on an aggregate or per capita basis, and the worst economic downturn in the industrialised world, but that’s “unavoidable whoever the leader is”. In the words of one commentator here “you couldn’t make it up”.
    One solitary statue taken down by a violent mob explicitly celebrated by Labour MP Nadia Whittome:

    https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1269732031128383490

    Note her exact words about a future Labour Government:

    'I celebrate these acts of resistance.'

    'We need a movement that will tear down systemic racism and the slave owner statues that symbolise it. And we need to win a government that will always be on the side of this movement.'

    The statue's vandals have published a hit list of dozens more across the country to destroy, and they've already defaced many more, including Churchill, Lincoln, and Gandhi.

    Meanwhile, Labour mayors and councils across the country are jumping at the opportunity to 'review' their local monuments, and in the case of Sadiq Khan, to just send in the JCBs as he did with Milligan.

    I'm afraid the facts speak for themselves about the left's intentions.
    And I’m afraid the numbers speak for themselves as to the number of people your party has negligently allowed to die these last three months. Are you on the side of living humans or statues? The impression you give is that you give more of a damn about chunks of metal celebrating mass murderers like Coulson and Milligan than the people of this country. But I am sure that is not the case.
    I'm sure the eventual public inquiry will establish exactly what occurred in this unprecendented global pandemic and the extent to which deaths could or could not have been avoided. Of course, you have all the answers now, thanks to your handy time machine.

    'Living humans or statues' isn't a mutually-exclusive choice, by the way. One can want to save as many lives as possible from the pandemic, as the Government is doing, while deploring the violence and cultural vandalism of the far left. People have noticed what they're about, and it doesn't look as though they like it...
    You base your entire paranoid polemic on one tweet from one Labour MP and a single Survation Poll that still shows your party’s support far more than halved in a month. As for “time machine” - you forget I borrowed yours, you know the one you use to predict elections? In the meantime the below tweets represent the actual views of the Labour Party - and most people in this country

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1269949806463668224

    https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1269919037426929664

    David Lammy has - to my amazement - won my respect on this occasion. He explicitly said that he doesn't condone violence and riots AND that he would not march with BLM because that would make him a hypocrite after criticizing Cummings.

    As for Starmer, on the other hand, actions speak louder than words. Two days after the illegal actions of that mob, he and dozens of Labour MPs put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the protesters.

    If they didn't mean to lend their implicit support to illegal acts of violence then literally kneeling before a movement that had perpetrated them very publicly a couple of days earlier was a funny way of showing it...
    They were kneeling in support of a movement protesting the racist torture murder of a black civilian by the police of our closest ally. That is what the protests are about, not some imagined “cultural vandalism”, which is a straw man minor by product emphasised by people such as yourself to divert attention from the real issues that need highlighting. But of course you place an equivalence on preserving the memory of the dead enslavers of Black people rather than the actual lives of their living descendants.
  • Options
    Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 49,312
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:
    The "Red Wallers" won't exist after the next election. There will no longer be a reason for them to vote Tory now Corbyn is gone, and to a lesser extent, Brexit is "done" (and my, will a lot of them be "done" in a big way!).
    The "Red Wallers" are not unique and despite being a hardcore on economics Tory I'm more of a Red Waller than a Shire Tory.

    I found this article quite interesting. I would definitely 100% side with Liz Truss and the Lidl free marketeers over the Waitrose protectionists - the comparison with the Corn Laws was quite interesting too.

    Personally I think Liz Truss is one of the more impressive and underrated members of the Cabinet.
    The red wallers who switched to the Tories voted for Corbyn in 2017, for Boris in 2019.

    The reason they voted Tory was not to stop Corbyn, that was more southern Tory Remainers, it was to deliver Brexit and hard Brexit given most of them want to end free movement
    As always, you’re the expert on northern “red wallers” from your flat in Essex.
    Indeed. I'm actually a Northern Tory, you're a Northerner. HYUFD is . . . ignorable.
    You voted Tory in 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019.

    On no definition whatsoever are you a northern Red Wall swing voter who voted for Corbyn and Labour in 2017 but switched to Boris and the Tories in 2019
    HYUFD is a pinko socialist who voted REMAIN in 2016...
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,850
    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    As you know the silent majority will stay silent until election day. We will have our revenge on this mob you seem to have joined.
    You think putting a phrase like "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes" is the action of a mob?
    I think needing to board up the Cenotaph is the action of the mob. People vandalising the monuments to Gandhi and Churchill are actions of the mob. This new wave of censorship will be defeated and those who defeat it will be called every insult under the sun by the mob when we do. Your mob failed to get change by the ballot box in 2019 and now you're taking it to the streets. It's just wrong.
    Gandhi must fall. Admittedly, I wonder if how much of this just people trolling

    https://indianexpress.com/article/world/standoff-over-gandhi-statue-in-uk-city-of-leicester-6454499/
  • Options
    maaarshmaaarsh Posts: 3,391
    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    As you know the silent majority will stay silent until election day. We will have our revenge on this mob you seem to have joined.
    https://twitter.com/niall_gooch/status/1271377675584708608
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Andy_JS said:
    Hopefully never. That's the role of Councils not Central Government.
    On the contrary [edit: in part, sorry]. Natural England, English Heritage, and so on.
    I thought they were ran independently and not by Central Government?

    What's been done so far that has anything to do with them anyway? The statues that have been debated so far are local government matters not central government matters.
    Historic England - to use the up to date term, my slip, sorry - has a major role to play in listing buildings and structures:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/

    And it's a central government agency - a quango as I suppose it used to be called. Debatable whether you call it a central gmt body but this does mean the matters it deals with are central government in a sense.
    In listed buildings yes, not in statues that are regularly moved anyway.

    As far as I know nobody has suggested pulling down buildings, despite the straw man that people are using about it.
    Well, IIRC fixings and fittings of buildings are part of them, so eg the Rhodes statue at Oxford would come under that.

    And listing is not just buildings but structures, gardens, etc. as well. And statues in isolation are listed - abundantly:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/results/?searchType=NHLE+Simple&search=statue
    Indeed but none of the statues that have come down [so far] are listed are they? Which makes them a local government matter.
    Both the statues in Bristol and West India Quay were listed.

    I thought we'd done that one to death already.
    The one in West India Quay had been moved repeatedly already so when was it listed from?
    I think that's a non-question.

    It is (or was, until Tower Hamlets moved it) in its original position, and it is in the listing, and the law says that items included in a listing are listed.

    Clearly, since it is in the listing it was either in it since the list item was created, or the item has been edited 1997 (ish?) when the statue was returned.

    In either case it is included.
    Do you have a link to the listing? I thought it was said that the building was listed and some erroneously though that included the statue automatically which it doesn't.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226
    DougSeal said:

    So the strategy of dividing communities by setting up straw men of “cultural vandalism” has worked as the right brings out their Freikorps

    https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1271370405522010114

    The Democratic Football Lads Alliance?

    They do sound like a bunch of culture vultures.
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    As you know the silent majority will stay silent until election day. We will have our revenge on this mob you seem to have joined.
    You think putting a phrase like "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes" is the action of a mob?
    I think needing to board up the Cenotaph is the action of the mob. People vandalising the monuments to Gandhi and Churchill are actions of the mob. This new wave of censorship will be defeated and those who defeat it will be called every insult under the sun by the mob when we do. Your mob failed to get change by the ballot box in 2019 and now you're taking it to the streets. It's just wrong.
    I don't support actions against the Cenotaph, or Gandhi, or Churchill so why are you associating me with that? I've not supported that.

    I got what I voted for in 2019.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226
    Nigelb said:

    A crowdfunding appeal for judicial review of the government's actions in discharging patients into care homes, from a bereaved daughter:

    Help me hold the government to account for Covid-19 care home deaths
    https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/care-home-deaths/

    Had government held its hands up to the mistake, I wouldn't bother, but given the circumstances, I shall be contributing.

    Government need to be careful they do not stray into 'cover up worse than the crime' territory.
  • Options
    StockyStocky Posts: 9,719
    Nigelb said:

    A crowdfunding appeal for judicial review of the government's actions in discharging patients into care homes, from a bereaved daughter:

    Help me hold the government to account for Covid-19 care home deaths
    https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/care-home-deaths/

    Had government held its hands up to the mistake, I wouldn't bother, but given the circumstances, I shall be contributing.

    I`m not clear about the "discharging patients into care homes" thing. When elderly people go into care homes the most common route has always been via hospitals. Obvious really. It is a clinical decision made at the hospitals for each patient, nothing to do with the government.

    Was there a specific directive from government to discharge patients from hospitals to care homes as a general policy - rather than leaving it to doctors to assess each case as has always been the case?

    This is plausible, I guess, due to lack of capacity in the hospitals maybe? Is there evidence of this specific directive?

  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,607

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    As you know the silent majority will stay silent until election day. We will have our revenge on this mob you seem to have joined.
    You think putting a phrase like "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes" is the action of a mob?
    I think needing to board up the Cenotaph is the action of the mob. People vandalising the monuments to Gandhi and Churchill are actions of the mob. This new wave of censorship will be defeated and those who defeat it will be called every insult under the sun by the mob when we do. Your mob failed to get change by the ballot box in 2019 and now you're taking it to the streets. It's just wrong.
    I don't support actions against the Cenotaph, or Gandhi, or Churchill so why are you associating me with that? I've not supported that.

    I got what I voted for in 2019.
    It's all part and parcel. When I voted to leave I accepted the fact that I was siding with a lot of racists. I had to make peace with that before I voted and I think the societal change will be a huge net positive for the nation, obviously others disagree. You need to make peace with the fact that your mob won't stop until they have enacted their year zero bullshit. This is what you support.
  • Options
    BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    kinabalu said:

    DougSeal said:

    So the strategy of dividing communities by setting up straw men of “cultural vandalism” has worked as the right brings out their Freikorps

    https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1271370405522010114

    The Democratic Football Lads Alliance?

    They do sound like a bunch of culture vultures.
    Compared to the people who want to destroy monuments, their cultural sense is indeed infinitely superior.

    Well done, my lefty friends - you've managed to gift the moral high ground to the 'Democratic Football Lads Alliance', of all people!

    That's an own goal of impressive proportions.
  • Options
    TheWhiteRabbitTheWhiteRabbit Posts: 12,388
    Stocky said:

    Nigelb said:

    A crowdfunding appeal for judicial review of the government's actions in discharging patients into care homes, from a bereaved daughter:

    Help me hold the government to account for Covid-19 care home deaths
    https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/care-home-deaths/

    Had government held its hands up to the mistake, I wouldn't bother, but given the circumstances, I shall be contributing.

    I`m not clear about the "discharging patients into care homes" thing. When elderly people go into care homes the most common route has always been via hospitals. Obvious really. It is a clinical decision made at the hospitals for each patient, nothing to do with the government.

    Was there a specific directive from government to discharge patients from hospitals to care homes as a general policy - rather than leaving it to doctors to assess each case as has always been the case?

    This is plausible, I guess, due to lack of capacity in the hospitals maybe? Is there evidence of this specific directive?

    There is some discussion about the details to be had. However the Trusts I work with formed the view, based on their own assessment of capacity and the view provided to them by PHE and NHSE, and the DHSC, was that they should wherever possible look to discharge patients and free up beds.

  • Options
    nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483

    For all Scotts continuing doom and gloom (it has ever been thus) the stock market is up 1.29% as is the pound v the euro and dollar

    Only 2.5 cents lower than a month ago for £/€
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 40,930
    edited June 2020
    kinabalu said:

    DougSeal said:

    So the strategy of dividing communities by setting up straw men of “cultural vandalism” has worked as the right brings out their Freikorps

    https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1271370405522010114

    The Democratic Football Lads Alliance?

    They do sound like a bunch of culture vultures.
    Divide and conquer, it's the route to power. The marxists behind BLM know it well. The pawns are attacking each other
  • Options
    MattWMattW Posts: 18,567
    edited June 2020

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Andy_JS said:
    Hopefully never. That's the role of Councils not Central Government.
    On the contrary [edit: in part, sorry]. Natural England, English Heritage, and so on.
    I thought they were ran independently and not by Central Government?

    What's been done so far that has anything to do with them anyway? The statues that have been debated so far are local government matters not central government matters.
    Historic England - to use the up to date term, my slip, sorry - has a major role to play in listing buildings and structures:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/

    And it's a central government agency - a quango as I suppose it used to be called. Debatable whether you call it a central gmt body but this does mean the matters it deals with are central government in a sense.
    In listed buildings yes, not in statues that are regularly moved anyway.

    As far as I know nobody has suggested pulling down buildings, despite the straw man that people are using about it.
    Well, IIRC fixings and fittings of buildings are part of them, so eg the Rhodes statue at Oxford would come under that.

    And listing is not just buildings but structures, gardens, etc. as well. And statues in isolation are listed - abundantly:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/results/?searchType=NHLE+Simple&search=statue
    Indeed but none of the statues that have come down [so far] are listed are they? Which makes them a local government matter.
    Both the statues in Bristol and West India Quay were listed.

    I thought we'd done that one to death already.
    The one in West India Quay had been moved repeatedly already so when was it listed from?
    I think that's a non-question.

    It is (or was, until Tower Hamlets moved it) in its original position, and it is in the listing, and the law says that items included in a listing are listed.

    Clearly, since it is in the listing it was either in it since the list item was created, or the item has been edited 1997 (ish?) when the statue was returned.

    In either case it is included.
    Do you have a link to the listing? I thought it was said that the building was listed and some erroneously though that included the statue automatically which it doesn't.
    List Entry is here:
    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1242440

    Law defining inclusion is here:
    http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/9/section/1

    Quote of whole of sub-section 5 (you being a detail man), I don't see too much doubt here, but others may differ. IIRC there is some case law around the meaning of "fixed to" and "part of the land". If something is temporarily removed in 1943 (presumably for protection from the Germans !) and restored to to the same position some time later, is that still "part of the land"?
    --------------------------

    (5)In this Act “listed building” means a building which is for the time being included in a list compiled or approved by the Secretary of State under this section; and for the purposes of this Act—

    (a) any object or structure fixed to the building;

    (b) any object or structure within the curtilage of the building which, although not fixed to the building, forms part of the land and has done so since before lst July 1948,shall [F4, subject to subsection (5A)(a),] be treated as part of the building.

    [F5(5A)In a list compiled or approved under this section, an entry for a building situated in England may provide—

    (a) that an object or structure mentioned in subsection (5)(a) or (b) is not to be treated as part of the building for the purposes of this Act;

    (b) that any part or feature of the building is not of special architectural or historic interest.]

    (6) Schedule 1 shall have effect for the purpose of making provision as to the treatment as listed buildings of certain buildings formerly subject to building preservation orders.
    -------------

    It's tempting to report the offence to the authorities, just to get some more clarity.
  • Options
    Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 49,312
    edited June 2020
    MaxPB said:


    I think needing to board up the Cenotaph is the action of the mob. People vandalising the monuments to Gandhi and Churchill are actions of the mob.

    Or mabe they object to Gandhi's vegetarianism and pacificism?
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,311

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    As you know the silent majority will stay silent until election day. We will have our revenge on this mob you seem to have joined.
    You think putting a phrase like "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes" is the action of a mob?
    I think needing to board up the Cenotaph is the action of the mob. People vandalising the monuments to Gandhi and Churchill are actions of the mob. This new wave of censorship will be defeated and those who defeat it will be called every insult under the sun by the mob when we do. Your mob failed to get change by the ballot box in 2019 and now you're taking it to the streets. It's just wrong.
    I don't support actions against the Cenotaph, or Gandhi, or Churchill so why are you associating me with that? I've not supported that.

    I got what I voted for in 2019.
    A government subservient to their EU masters. As we are beginning to see today.
  • Options
    BannedinnParisBannedinnParis Posts: 1,884
    edited June 2020
    The one thing I noticed with opposition leader scores is that once you drop, you pretty much stay dropped.

    From memory, there's two recent historical exceptions and they are explicable by the same rationale.

    Cameron dropped during the Brown bounce/floods, but as both a new leader bounce and bad weather were always ever going to be transient, he recovered. Corbyn bounced post-2017 but, again, as that was unrelated to anything fundamental, back down he went.

    In fact, the data is here:

    NEW: Keir Starmer scores the highest satisfaction ratings *ever* of an opposition leader on record, equalling Blair's record of +31 in Dec 1994.

    Labour goes from the opposition leader with the worst ever ratings to one with tied best ratings! pic.twitter.com/xQmO1RHGkw

    — Dylan Spielman (@DylanSpielman) June 12, 2020
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226
    Sean_F said:

    tlg86 said:

    DougSeal said:

    tlg86 said:

    DougSeal said:

    tlg86 said:

    FPT:

    DougSeal said:

    tlg86 said:

    Should The Dam Busters be edited/removed?

    I've just watched the Major scene - it's fine in my opinion, but some people are sensitive to language.
    You could make a perfectly fine Dambusters movie without anyone addressing the dog by name. You don’t even have to rename it or edit it out. Just have everyone referring to it as “good boy” or “your lab”.
    Perhaps, but why should historical work be altered to fit with modern sensitivities? I think people should be able to choose to watch what they like, perhaps with a warning about content that some may find offensive.
    I was taking about a remake but historical works are often so edited. Bits are taken out of Shakespeare for performance all the time. Movies are often edited for TV and/or airline viewing. It’s not new.
    And it's wrong.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_Man#Qantas_and_airline_controversy
    The name of the dog in Dambusters is not key to the narrative of the whole movie. That’s the difference. You can edit it out with no ill effects. You don’t even have to take the dog or its death out, just its name. The decision of Quantas in that case removed a key scene. The equivalent in Dambusters would be taking out the scene in the theatre when he came up with the idea of measuring height using lamps. Editors exist for a reason.
    Whilst that's true, I'm uncomfortable with a blanket ban on words.

    To go back to Fawlty Towers, the use of the n word is part of the joke (on the Major, I might add) so that scene wouldn't really work without it. But I guess that's not enough to save it.
    I think Rising Damp is a good example of 'who is the butt of the joke?'. The answer is obviously Rigsby, whose racist assumptions are shown up as he is easily outwitted by Philip.

    But that does not mean that Philip's own characterisation of himself as the son of an African chief is not in many ways problematic. You do have to watch the series to get that, not just five minutes of it.
    While that is true, there is probably very little worthwhile art, literature, film, that is not "problematic" to a greater or lesser extent. Artists, writers, film-makers etc. all have their prejudices, and values change over time.
    This is probably true if "problematic" means not fully in line with today's prevailing mores. However if challenged to come up with a list of great artistic works which feature crass racist stereotypes presented uncritically, I think it would be a short one. Or perhaps I should say I hope it would be, since I have never tried to do it.
  • Options
    I think some people are getting ahead of themselves in writing off Boris. The government has had a rough patch but so have other governments in the past such as Thatcher over Westland and Blair over Dr David Kelly.

    This crisis has been going on for months now and it must be exhausting for those in charge before you add in the fact that Boris and Hancock have been ill and Boris has a new baby.

    If the crisis starts to abate over the summer then I hope Boris will take his paternity leave and the Government can come back with renewed vigour in the autumn.

    As for an enquiry, I'm sure there will be one, which will take years to report (certainly past the next election).

    I also think people are getting ahead of themselves over Trump. If the election was tomorrow then I have no doubt Biden would win. However, the election is still 5 months away and a lot can change in that time.
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited June 2020
    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    As you know the silent majority will stay silent until election day. We will have our revenge on this mob you seem to have joined.
    You think putting a phrase like "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes" is the action of a mob?
    I think needing to board up the Cenotaph is the action of the mob. People vandalising the monuments to Gandhi and Churchill are actions of the mob. This new wave of censorship will be defeated and those who defeat it will be called every insult under the sun by the mob when we do. Your mob failed to get change by the ballot box in 2019 and now you're taking it to the streets. It's just wrong.
    I don't support actions against the Cenotaph, or Gandhi, or Churchill so why are you associating me with that? I've not supported that.

    I got what I voted for in 2019.
    It's all part and parcel. When I voted to leave I accepted the fact that I was siding with a lot of racists. I had to make peace with that before I voted and I think the societal change will be a huge net positive for the nation, obviously others disagree. You need to make peace with the fact that your mob won't stop until they have enacted their year zero bullshit. This is what you support.
    I disagree. I have never accepted Guilt by Association.

    When I voted to Leave I didn't accept or make peace that I was siding with racists. I was doing what I thought was right and if for completely different reasons racists did the same thing then so be it. I was not siding with them.

    Same here. I support the removal of slave traders. I supported the removal of slave traders before this erupted so was I supposed to change my mind on that?

    I don't support mob violence, I don't support attacks against the Cenotaph or Gandhi or Churchill. I don't support attacks against the Police.

    What you are suggesting is like saying that if I see someone I dislike stop their car at a pedestrian crossing while a mother is pushing a baby then I should drive through it or I'd be doing the same as those I dislike.

    The right thing to do is still the right thing to do even if the wrong people support it.
  • Options
    BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    edited June 2020
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Unless it turns out that his illness has caused him to be permanently disabled, Boris isn't going anywhere, despite the wishful thinking of his opponents. Yes, Covid and its after-effects are going to make the next couple of years a nightmare across the Western world, but that’s unavoidable whoever the leader is, and there’s plenty of opportunity to get back to a semblance of good times by 2024.

    As for ephemeral polls, the current orgy of cultural vandalism has interrupted Labour’s rise as the public wakes up to what the fuck they may be voting into power, as yesterday’s Survation suggests...

    https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1271057897196306433

    One solitary statue of a mass murderer gets unlawfully taken down, the rightists of PB call it an “orgy of cultural vandalism” and imply the Labour Party is to blame. In the meantime, we will have around 60,000 excess deaths as a result of the Government’s muddled response, more than any comparable country on an aggregate or per capita basis, and the worst economic downturn in the industrialised world, but that’s “unavoidable whoever the leader is”. In the words of one commentator here “you couldn’t make it up”.
    One solitary statue taken down by a violent mob explicitly celebrated by Labour MP Nadia Whittome:

    https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1269732031128383490

    Note her exact words about a future Labour Government:

    'I celebrate these acts of resistance.'

    'We need a movement that will tear down systemic racism and the slave owner statues that symbolise it. And we need to win a government that will always be on the side of this movement.'

    The statue's vandals have published a hit list of dozens more across the country to destroy, and they've already defaced many more, including Churchill, Lincoln, and Gandhi.

    Meanwhile, Labour mayors and councils across the country are jumping at the opportunity to 'review' their local monuments, and in the case of Sadiq Khan, to just send in the JCBs as he did with Milligan.

    I'm afraid the facts speak for themselves about the left's intentions.
    And I’m afraid the numbers speak for themselves as to the number of people your party has negligently allowed to die these last three months. Are you on the side of living humans or statues? The impression you give is that you give more of a damn about chunks of metal celebrating mass murderers like Coulson and Milligan than the people of this country. But I am sure that is not the case.
    I'm sure the eventual public inquiry will establish exactly what occurred in this unprecendented global pandemic and the extent to which deaths could or could not have been avoided. Of course, you have all the answers now, thanks to your handy time machine.

    'Living humans or statues' isn't a mutually-exclusive choice, by the way. One can want to save as many lives as possible from the pandemic, as the Government is doing, while deploring the violence and cultural vandalism of the far left. People have noticed what they're about, and it doesn't look as though they like it...
    You base your entire paranoid polemic on one tweet from one Labour MP and a single Survation Poll that still shows your party’s support far more than halved in a month. As for “time machine” - you forget I borrowed yours, you know the one you use to predict elections? In the meantime the below tweets represent the actual views of the Labour Party - and most people in this country

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1269949806463668224

    https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1269919037426929664

    David Lammy has - to my amazement - won my respect on this occasion. He explicitly said that he doesn't condone violence and riots AND that he would not march with BLM because that would make him a hypocrite after criticizing Cummings.

    As for Starmer, on the other hand, actions speak louder than words. Two days after the illegal actions of that mob, he and dozens of Labour MPs put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the protesters.

    If they didn't mean to lend their implicit support to illegal acts of violence then literally kneeling before a movement that had perpetrated them very publicly a couple of days earlier was a funny way of showing it...
    They were kneeling in support of a movement protesting the racist torture murder of a black civilian by the police of our closest ally. That is what the protests are about, not some imagined “cultural vandalism”, which is a straw man minor by product emphasised by people such as yourself to divert attention from the real issues that need highlighting. But of course you place an equivalence on preserving the memory of the dead enslavers of Black people rather than the actual lives of their living descendants.
    There is literally no comparison between the US and UK on this score, so importing the context of their racial conflicts to this country makes absolutely no sense. Here are the figures to prove it:

    Since 1870, police forces in Great Britain have killed 220 people. Three of them were in 2019, and one in 2018.

    In the US, in 2019, 1,098 people were killed by police. That's 5x as many deaths caused by police in 2019 as in the last 150 years in the UK!

    Funny how the USA is suddenly our 'closest ally' for lefties when they want to import their cultural conflicts, but they want absolutely nothing to do with them at any other time...
  • Options
    MattWMattW Posts: 18,567
    Sean_F said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    As you know the silent majority will stay silent until election day. We will have our revenge on this mob you seem to have joined.
    You think putting a phrase like "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes" is the action of a mob?
    I think needing to board up the Cenotaph is the action of the mob. People vandalising the monuments to Gandhi and Churchill are actions of the mob. This new wave of censorship will be defeated and those who defeat it will be called every insult under the sun by the mob when we do. Your mob failed to get change by the ballot box in 2019 and now you're taking it to the streets. It's just wrong.
    Gandhi must fall. Admittedly, I wonder if how much of this just people trolling

    https://indianexpress.com/article/world/standoff-over-gandhi-statue-in-uk-city-of-leicester-6454499/
    Gandhi has already been removed from various Universities in Africa. This one in Ghana had been unveiled in 2016 by the PM of India.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-46552614
  • Options
    Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 49,312
    kinabalu said:

    DougSeal said:

    So the strategy of dividing communities by setting up straw men of “cultural vandalism” has worked as the right brings out their Freikorps

    https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1271370405522010114

    The Democratic Football Lads Alliance?

    They do sound like a bunch of culture vultures.
    Alliance of Democratic Football Lads!

    Democratic Football Lads Alliance :lol:
  • Options
    Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,305
    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    tlg86 said:

    Should The Dam Busters be edited/removed?

    I've just watched the Major scene - it's fine in my opinion, but some people are sensitive to language.
    If you refer to "N*gg*r" the dog, the last time I watched it that was dubbed out.

    Gibson walks along jauntily, the dog scampers up and he grins and goes "Hello there beep," - just like when a swear word is beeped out on pre-watershed TV. The c word for example. Happens all the time. Did not ruin the film for me.

    OTOH, when Kanye West perfomed "All Day N*gg*r" at the Brits a few years back, and they bleeped out every time the word featured, that did spoil it. The song was stripped of its power.
    Sometimes when songs get censored it can lead to amusing outcomes.

    I was at University when the Eminem released his song Stan and I remember being in the JCR of my Halls with MTV on and a censored version of Stan came on - with the censored words and phrases silenced. I found it funny and laughed at it towards the end as Stan is driving drunk in the car and pretty much half the song of it was just silenced out. I got some filthy looks shot at me for laughing at it by a couple of girls, I don't think they understood what I'd found funny.
    There's a very long list of censored Eminem songs, especially on radio and TV. My favourite beeped out words being "King" and "Head". Possibly the greatest lyrical genius of the past 20 years.
    A curious one is 'Gay Bar' by Electric Six. The radio edit preserves the lyric 'I've got something to put in you' but blanks out 'Start a nuclear war'. Why?
  • Options
    NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,347
    Interesting comment from Ireland:

    The Republic of Ireland will not enter full lockdown again even if there is a second wave of the virus, the country’s chief medical officer says - despite EU health experts warning that further lockdowns could be needed.

    Dr Tony Holohan says that as the country knows more about Covid-19 than it did in March, when restrictions were first introduced, it will be able to take a different course.

    “I wouldn’t be anticipating at this point in time that we would move back to blanket closures in the way we did in March,” he told Irish state broadcaster RTE.

    “People understand more about the disease, the risks and how they can protect themselves when it comes to hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette.

    “If a resurgence of the disease happened or a second wave, we would know what specific measures to take, having done our work proactively."
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Andy_JS said:
    Hopefully never. That's the role of Councils not Central Government.
    On the contrary [edit: in part, sorry]. Natural England, English Heritage, and so on.
    I thought they were ran independently and not by Central Government?

    What's been done so far that has anything to do with them anyway? The statues that have been debated so far are local government matters not central government matters.
    Historic England - to use the up to date term, my slip, sorry - has a major role to play in listing buildings and structures:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/

    And it's a central government agency - a quango as I suppose it used to be called. Debatable whether you call it a central gmt body but this does mean the matters it deals with are central government in a sense.
    In listed buildings yes, not in statues that are regularly moved anyway.

    As far as I know nobody has suggested pulling down buildings, despite the straw man that people are using about it.
    Well, IIRC fixings and fittings of buildings are part of them, so eg the Rhodes statue at Oxford would come under that.

    And listing is not just buildings but structures, gardens, etc. as well. And statues in isolation are listed - abundantly:

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/results/?searchType=NHLE+Simple&search=statue
    Indeed but none of the statues that have come down [so far] are listed are they? Which makes them a local government matter.
    Both the statues in Bristol and West India Quay were listed.

    I thought we'd done that one to death already.
    The one in West India Quay had been moved repeatedly already so when was it listed from?
    I think that's a non-question.

    It is (or was, until Tower Hamlets moved it) in its original position, and it is in the listing, and the law says that items included in a listing are listed.

    Clearly, since it is in the listing it was either in it since the list item was created, or the item has been edited 1997 (ish?) when the statue was returned.

    In either case it is included.
    Do you have a link to the listing? I thought it was said that the building was listed and some erroneously though that included the statue automatically which it doesn't.
    List Entry is here:
    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1242440

    Law defining inclusion is here:
    http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/9/section/1

    Quote of whole of sub-section 5 (you being a detail man), I don't see too much doubt here, but others may differ. IIRC there is some case law around the meaning of "fixed to" and "part of the land". If something is temporarily removed in 1943 (presumably for protection from the Germans !) and restored to to the same position some time later, is that still "part of the land"?
    --------------------------

    (5)In this Act “listed building” means a building which is for the time being included in a list compiled or approved by the Secretary of State under this section; and for the purposes of this Act—

    (a) any object or structure fixed to the building;

    (b) any object or structure within the curtilage of the building which, although not fixed to the building, forms part of the land and has done so since before lst July 1948,shall [F4, subject to subsection (5A)(a),] be treated as part of the building.

    [F5(5A)In a list compiled or approved under this section, an entry for a building situated in England may provide—

    (a) that an object or structure mentioned in subsection (5)(a) or (b) is not to be treated as part of the building for the purposes of this Act;

    (b) that any part or feature of the building is not of special architectural or historic interest.]

    (6) Schedule 1 shall have effect for the purpose of making provision as to the treatment as listed buildings of certain buildings formerly subject to building preservation orders.
    -------------

    It's tempting to report the offence to the authorities, just to get some more clarity.
    Under 5b the statue wouldn't be covered since it's not been there continually since 1948. However it appears the listing was amended in 2007 and does specifically refer to the statue. That's news to me, people were previously saying that simply the building being listed was sufficient (it isn't)
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    tlg86 said:

    Should The Dam Busters be edited/removed?

    I've just watched the Major scene - it's fine in my opinion, but some people are sensitive to language.
    If you refer to "N*gg*r" the dog, the last time I watched it that was dubbed out.

    Gibson walks along jauntily, the dog scampers up and he grins and goes "Hello there beep," - just like when a swear word is beeped out on pre-watershed TV. The c word for example. Happens all the time. Did not ruin the film for me.

    OTOH, when Kanye West perfomed "All Day N*gg*r" at the Brits a few years back, and they bleeped out every time the word featured, that did spoil it. The song was stripped of its power.
    Sometimes when songs get censored it can lead to amusing outcomes.

    I was at University when the Eminem released his song Stan and I remember being in the JCR of my Halls with MTV on and a censored version of Stan came on - with the censored words and phrases silenced. I found it funny and laughed at it towards the end as Stan is driving drunk in the car and pretty much half the song of it was just silenced out. I got some filthy looks shot at me for laughing at it by a couple of girls, I don't think they understood what I'd found funny.
    There's a very long list of censored Eminem songs, especially on radio and TV. My favourite beeped out words being "King" and "Head". Possibly the greatest lyrical genius of the past 20 years.
    A curious one is 'Gay Bar' by Electric Six. The radio edit preserves the lyric 'I've got something to put in you' but blanks out 'Start a nuclear war'. Why?
    I don't think radio lyrics are permitted to promote violence. That's an overly literal interpretation.

    Across the Pond it might be different. They are far more bothered by sex than violence.
  • Options
    SurreySurrey Posts: 190
    In a sign of what may be to come if Trump remains in office:

    https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1271252020473638912

    The price of a Trump win has drifted to 2.45. His unity speech is now planned for 19 June, "Juneteenth", in Tulsa, Oklahoma. How the Democrats must have punched the air with joy when they heard that. Seriously, how can it go right? The greatest unity candidate the world has ever seen has already hugged and kissed the Union flag, so if he doesn't want to be biased he's got one more to go:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOSaJhRDCDI#t=17s


  • Options
    MattWMattW Posts: 18,567
    edited June 2020
    MattW said:

    Sean_F said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    As you know the silent majority will stay silent until election day. We will have our revenge on this mob you seem to have joined.
    You think putting a phrase like "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes" is the action of a mob?
    I think needing to board up the Cenotaph is the action of the mob. People vandalising the monuments to Gandhi and Churchill are actions of the mob. This new wave of censorship will be defeated and those who defeat it will be called every insult under the sun by the mob when we do. Your mob failed to get change by the ballot box in 2019 and now you're taking it to the streets. It's just wrong.
    Gandhi must fall. Admittedly, I wonder if how much of this just people trolling

    https://indianexpress.com/article/world/standoff-over-gandhi-statue-in-uk-city-of-leicester-6454499/
    Gandhi has already been removed from various Universities in Africa. This one in Ghana had been unveiled in 2016 by the PM of India.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-46552614

    Another tempting one is to submit Paddington Bear to the offence map, because "Darkest Peru" is obviously a colonial and racist sentiment, coined in the 1950s.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226

    kinabalu said:

    DougSeal said:

    So the strategy of dividing communities by setting up straw men of “cultural vandalism” has worked as the right brings out their Freikorps

    https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1271370405522010114

    The Democratic Football Lads Alliance?

    They do sound like a bunch of culture vultures.
    Compared to the people who want to destroy monuments, their cultural sense is indeed infinitely superior.

    Well done, my lefty friends - you've managed to gift the moral high ground to the 'Democratic Football Lads Alliance', of all people!

    That's an own goal of impressive proportions.
    Something tells me I am slightly more likely to go on a BLM demo than you are to get down and dirty with the Democratic Football Lads Alliance.

    And this should tell you something, I think.
  • Options
    kingbongokingbongo Posts: 393
    tlg86 said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Of course, post-war Britain is now very much history. When I was doing GSCE history in 2001-03, we did up to Watergate. Arguably we could be teaching history up to and including the 1990s now, which could include the Stephen Lawrence case for example.
    but that's not really history - when I did A level History we were taught that for any proper perspective to be taken events needed to be at least a hundred years in the past. I think that holds - the 2nd World War for example has already been recast numerous times since by historians - it is only as it drifts towards the 100 year mark are the passions of the events being set aside.

    Teaching postwar development, civics and the importance of a working social contract should obviously be a core part of the national curriculum. Whenever this is attempted though it ends up as a 1 hour sesion which nobody thinks is very important.
  • Options
    BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    edited June 2020
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DougSeal said:

    So the strategy of dividing communities by setting up straw men of “cultural vandalism” has worked as the right brings out their Freikorps

    https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1271370405522010114

    The Democratic Football Lads Alliance?

    They do sound like a bunch of culture vultures.
    Compared to the people who want to destroy monuments, their cultural sense is indeed infinitely superior.

    Well done, my lefty friends - you've managed to gift the moral high ground to the 'Democratic Football Lads Alliance', of all people!

    That's an own goal of impressive proportions.
    Something tells me I am slightly more likely to go on a BLM demo than you are to get down and dirty with the Democratic Football Lads Alliance.

    And this should tell you something, I think.
    That I don't like football?
  • Options
    OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,121
    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    DougSeal said:

    So the strategy of dividing communities by setting up straw men of “cultural vandalism” has worked as the right brings out their Freikorps

    https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1271370405522010114

    The Democratic Football Lads Alliance?

    They do sound like a bunch of culture vultures.
    Divide and conquer, it's the route to power. The marxists behind BLM know it well. The pawns are attacking each other
    Didn't Marx say Workers of the World Unite? Strikes me that "Marxist" has come to mean "person I disagree with" for people on the right.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 40,930
    edited June 2020

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    DougSeal said:

    So the strategy of dividing communities by setting up straw men of “cultural vandalism” has worked as the right brings out their Freikorps

    https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1271370405522010114

    The Democratic Football Lads Alliance?

    They do sound like a bunch of culture vultures.
    Divide and conquer, it's the route to power. The marxists behind BLM know it well. The pawns are attacking each other
    Didn't Marx say Workers of the World Unite? Strikes me that "Marxist" has come to mean "person I disagree with" for people on the right.
    Maybe I meant communists, sorry.

    The BLM mission statement is very similar to the 1920 outline of communism & the family on Marxist.org though.

    https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

    https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm
  • Options
    StereotomyStereotomy Posts: 4,092


    Under 5b the statue wouldn't be covered since it's not been there continually since 1948. However it appears the listing was amended in 2007 and does specifically refer to the statue. That's news to me, people were previously saying that simply the building being listed was sufficient (it isn't)

    Yep, I was arguing, based on the above, that curtilage listing doesn't apply to the statue, which I still believe is true.

    Afterwards, somebody mentioned that the statue is actually explicitly mentionined in the listing- I checked https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1242440 and indeed, under the "HISTORY" section, which describes the history of the listed building, it says: "A bronze statue of Robert Milligan (c1746-1809, statue 1812), original promoter of the Docks, stands on the North Quay outside the entrance to No. 1 Warehouse, the Museum in Docklands."

    I have no idea whether that actually means the statue is included in the listing or whether the mention is just for historical context. Obviously if it is included then the curtilage argument becomes academic.
  • Options
    nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483
    edited June 2020
    I see our right wing posters are still trying to distract everybody from the real issues of the pandemic and the end of transition by talking statues and left wing revolution. Ignore them arguing with them plays right into their hands.
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826


    Under 5b the statue wouldn't be covered since it's not been there continually since 1948. However it appears the listing was amended in 2007 and does specifically refer to the statue. That's news to me, people were previously saying that simply the building being listed was sufficient (it isn't)

    Yep, I was arguing, based on the above, that curtilage listing doesn't apply to the statue, which I still believe is true.

    Afterwards, somebody mentioned that the statue is actually explicitly mentionined in the listing- I checked https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1242440 and indeed, under the "HISTORY" section, which describes the history of the listed building, it says: "A bronze statue of Robert Milligan (c1746-1809, statue 1812), original promoter of the Docks, stands on the North Quay outside the entrance to No. 1 Warehouse, the Museum in Docklands."

    I have no idea whether that actually means the statue is included in the listing or whether the mention is just for historical context. Obviously if it is included then the curtilage argument becomes academic.
    Agreed.
  • Options
    StockyStocky Posts: 9,719

    Stocky said:

    Nigelb said:

    A crowdfunding appeal for judicial review of the government's actions in discharging patients into care homes, from a bereaved daughter:

    Help me hold the government to account for Covid-19 care home deaths
    https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/care-home-deaths/

    Had government held its hands up to the mistake, I wouldn't bother, but given the circumstances, I shall be contributing.

    I`m not clear about the "discharging patients into care homes" thing. When elderly people go into care homes the most common route has always been via hospitals. Obvious really. It is a clinical decision made at the hospitals for each patient, nothing to do with the government.

    Was there a specific directive from government to discharge patients from hospitals to care homes as a general policy - rather than leaving it to doctors to assess each case as has always been the case?

    This is plausible, I guess, due to lack of capacity in the hospitals maybe? Is there evidence of this specific directive?

    There is some discussion about the details to be had. However the Trusts I work with formed the view, based on their own assessment of capacity and the view provided to them by PHE and NHSE, and the DHSC, was that they should wherever possible look to discharge patients and free up beds.

    Ok, so a speed up of patient discharges in general. Some to care homes and some back home.

    The care home discharges would have been going to care homes anyway, right?

    This doesn`t seem to be anything to do with the government, or am I missing something? If there was a specific instruction to discharge patients to care homes to free up beds, and some of these discharges wouldn`t normally have been placed in a care home, then this would be the meat of any criticism of the government surely. This is what the media are implying, and it may be true, but where is the evidence?
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,659
    edited June 2020
    isam said:
    Quote from the Sumption article:

    "What is a fanatic? The question occurred to me as I tuned in to another performance by Matt Hancock at the No. 10 daily briefing. Whether one agrees with the lockdown or not, the government’s presentation has been lamentable. With his hectoring manner, authoritarian assumptions and snarling threats, Mr Hancock has resembled nothing so much as the petulant headmaster of a third-rate school. You don’t hear the leaders of Germany, France or the Netherlands addressing their fellow citizens like that."
  • Options
    Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 49,312
    Sean_F said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Streaming services like Netflix taking down/editing/consulting on potentially racist comedy and tv shows is an interesting phenomenon.

    It's important to note that governments are *NOT* telling them to do this.
    This is private businesses deciding to do it for themselves.

    Very small state approach which presumably will be welcomed by conservatives ;)

    They're being bullied into it by a relatively tiny number of activists on social media.
    Free speech in action. The other side of the debate can speak freely if they're unhappy too.

    The logical compromise is to do what Disney have done with Dumbo. They say at the end of the description before you press play: "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes." Then the film is 100% as originally recorded, unaltered. Job done.
    As you know the silent majority will stay silent until election day. We will have our revenge on this mob you seem to have joined.
    You think putting a phrase like "This film is as originally recorded. It may contain cultural stereotypes" is the action of a mob?
    I think needing to board up the Cenotaph is the action of the mob. People vandalising the monuments to Gandhi and Churchill are actions of the mob. This new wave of censorship will be defeated and those who defeat it will be called every insult under the sun by the mob when we do. Your mob failed to get change by the ballot box in 2019 and now you're taking it to the streets. It's just wrong.
    Gandhi must fall. Admittedly, I wonder if how much of this just people trolling

    https://indianexpress.com/article/world/standoff-over-gandhi-statue-in-uk-city-of-leicester-6454499/
    Could be subtle anti-Asian racism by the mob?
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,202
    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Debating what Cummings said or didn't say is a distraction (I wasn't one of those who obsessed about his private arrangements either). One needs to look at Government policy as it actually emerged. It looks as though the late lockdown was a tragic error (notably, Johnson hasn't denied it, just said it's too soon to judge).

    The situation was undeniably difficult, and there was lots of conflicting advice. I expect that despite the thousands of deaths apparently arising, many people might forgive a mistake. What they would not forgive is doing the same thing *again* by over-hasty opening up for political reasons. We are really quite close to bringing the pandemic right down. It would be quite mad to put that at risk so that people can mingle freely in July rather than September. If that difference means that otherwise healthy businesses would go under, then help the businesses directly - don't extend the pandemic so that the Dog & Duck can have 100 customers.

    I agree Nick but do we give all the protest marches a free pass

    It is impossible to enforce social distancing but I have no idea just how these marches will reflect in the R rate over the next three weeks

    If R remains below 1 by the end of the month I expect Boris will reduce the 2 metre rule by mid July and open the leisure industry including pubs, restaurants, hotels, caravan parks etc
    It might be too late by then for a lot of businesses.
    I am sure you are right but allowing the summer to pass the leisue industry by will be the ultimate disaster
    I'm suggesting we do the opposite and get everything open now. Put a 1m rule in place and get on with it.
    In reality there's little real world perceivable difference between saying 1m and 2m.

    How many people have got a tape measure out and marked out 2 metres? Maybe in checkout queues but for the rest of the time in normal life it just means to people "keep a gap" - and that gap is very frequently under 2 metres already.
    The difference is between pubs, restaurants, cafés and bars being able to run at 70-80% capacity and 30% capacity. Loads would survive with 1m distancing, almost all will go bankrupt with 2m distancing. In practical terms you're right the difference is not perceptible, but for the specific regulation it's a huge deal for the hospitality sector.
    If you're anally obsessive and mark it out sure. If you trust the public to use common sense, no.

    I very frequently find people coming within 2 metres of me while I'm walking on the street or shopping etc - and I have no doubt it'd be the same in bars. If you say two metres people may stand a metre apart, if you say a metre people will get closer.

    Restaurants with laid out tables to be fair it probably does make more of a real world difference since they're pre spaced out.

    Since the virus spreads more when you're face-to-face but the only people face-to-face at a restaurant table will be those sharing the same table (and thus not distancing) it would make a lot of sense to put tables 1 metre apart side-to-side.
    Yes the point I'm making is that restaurants, pubs, bars, hairdressers etc... can't legally live by a 1m rule when the government is sticking with 2m. Day to day interactions are already living by 1m but keeping the regulation at 2m is going to destroy a lot of jobs. The government needs to get a handle on this by the end of next week and start pushing the 1m line so people get used to it before the pubs open.
    The difference between 2m and 1m is probably also the difference between a location which is high risk for superspreading events and one which is not.
    I agree that the 2m distancing rule can't survive for long owing to economic necessity, but abandoning it too soon (and we're talking a matter of perhaps a couple of weeks) is an unnecessary risk.

    And it might need to be re-instituted later in the year. That would certainly be vastly preferable to a second lockdown, and with large scale testing now in place, along with track/trace/isolate, probably almost as effective.
    A couple more weeks (maybe up to July 4th say) should get the community infection levels significantly down (see ONS prevalence survey today - down 50 % on the previous week). Well worth it. Hopefully 2-3 more weeks to get the track and trace (and Ap) working well.

    Definitely worth waiting just a bit longer.
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    StockyStocky Posts: 9,719
    nichomar said:

    I see our right wing posters are still trying to distract everybody from the real issues of the pandemic and the end of transition by talking statues and left wing revolution. Ignore them arguing with them plays right into their hands.

    Well - it was BLM protesters (vandals) who were/are "trying to distract everybody from the real issues of the pandemic and the end of transition by talking statues and left wing revolution".
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    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,309
    Sturgeon and Drakesford write joint letter to Boris demanding an extension to transistion

    Sturgeon is consistent but Drakesford ignoring Wales vote to leave is brave
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    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226
    edited June 2020
    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    DougSeal said:

    So the strategy of dividing communities by setting up straw men of “cultural vandalism” has worked as the right brings out their Freikorps

    https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1271370405522010114

    The Democratic Football Lads Alliance?

    They do sound like a bunch of culture vultures.
    Divide and conquer, it's the route to power. The marxists behind BLM know it well. The pawns are attacking each other
    But who are the puppet masters pulling the strings of the DFLA* and what political philosophy do they espouse?

    * The acronym confers a little more gravitas, I feel, so I'm awarding them it for balance viz a vis BLM. "The DFLA" smacks of living rough in the forests of England, tooled up and waiting for the call. Serious business.
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    OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,121
    isam said:
    He used to work for Keith Joseph, so I assume he is a Tory or at least used to be. He helped to write Joseph's infamous Edgbaston speech (in which Joseph warned about letting the poor breed).
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    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,626
    edited June 2020
    Stocky said:

    Nigelb said:

    A crowdfunding appeal for judicial review of the government's actions in discharging patients into care homes, from a bereaved daughter:

    Help me hold the government to account for Covid-19 care home deaths
    https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/care-home-deaths/

    Had government held its hands up to the mistake, I wouldn't bother, but given the circumstances, I shall be contributing.

    I`m not clear about the "discharging patients into care homes" thing. When elderly people go into care homes the most common route has always been via hospitals. Obvious really. It is a clinical decision made at the hospitals for each patient, nothing to do with the government.

    Was there a specific directive from government to discharge patients from hospitals to care homes as a general policy - rather than leaving it to doctors to assess each case as has always been the case?

    This is plausible, I guess, due to lack of capacity in the hospitals maybe? Is there evidence of this specific directive?

    Yes.
    It included patients who were or might be infected, but were not seriously ill.
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    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,141
    edited June 2020

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Unless it turns out that his illness has caused him to be permanently disabled, Boris isn't going anywhere, despite the wishful thinking of his opponents. Yes, Covid and its after-effects are going to make the next couple of years a nightmare across the Western world, but that’s unavoidable whoever the leader is, and there’s plenty of opportunity to get back to a semblance of good times by 2024.

    As for ephemeral polls, the current orgy of cultural vandalism has interrupted Labour’s rise as the public wakes up to what the fuck they may be voting into power, as yesterday’s Survation suggests...

    https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1271057897196306433

    One solitary statue of a mass murderer gets unlawfully taken down, the rightists of PB call it an “orgy of cultural vandalism” and imply the Labour Party is to blame. In the meantime, we will have around 60,000 excess deaths as a result of the Government’s muddled response, more than any comparable country on an aggregate or per capita basis, and the worst economic downturn in the industrialised world, but that’s “unavoidable whoever the leader is”. In the words of one commentator here “you couldn’t make it up”.
    One solitary statue taken down by a violent mob explicitly celebrated by Labour MP Nadia Whittome:

    https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1269732031128383490

    Note her exact words about a future Labour Government:

    'I celebrate these acts of resistance.'

    'We need a movement that will tear down systemic racism and the slave owner statues that symbolise it. And we need to win a government that will always be on the side of this movement.'

    The statue's vandals have published a hit list of dozens more across the country to destroy, and they've already defaced many more, including Churchill, Lincoln, and Gandhi.

    Meanwhile, Labour mayors and councils across the country are jumping at the opportunity to 'review' their local monuments, and in the case of Sadiq Khan, to just send in the JCBs as he did with Milligan.

    I'm afraid the facts speak for themselves about the left's intentions.
    And I’m afraid the numbers speak for themselves as to the number of people your party has negligently allowed to die these last three months. Are you on the side of living humans or statues? The impression you give is that you give more of a damn about chunks of metal celebrating mass murderers like Coulson and Milligan than the people of this country. But I am sure that is not the case.
    I'm sure the eventual public inquiry will establish exactly what occurred in this unprecendented global pandemic and the extent to which deaths could or could not have been avoided. Of course, you have all the answers now, thanks to your handy time machine.

    'Living humans or statues' isn't a mutually-exclusive choice, by the way. One can want to save as many lives as possible from the pandemic, as the Government is doing, while deploring the violence and cultural vandalism of the far left. People have noticed what they're about, and it doesn't look as though they like it...
    You base your entire paranoid polemic on one tweet from one Labour MP and a single Survation Poll that still shows your party’s support far more than halved in a month. As for “time machine” - you forget I borrowed yours, you know the one you use to predict elections? In the meantime the below tweets represent the actual views of the Labour Party - and most people in this country

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1269949806463668224

    https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1269919037426929664

    David Lammy has - to my amazement - won my respect on this occasion. He explicitly said that he doesn't condone violence and riots AND that he would not march with BLM because that would make him a hypocrite after criticizing Cummings.

    As for Starmer, on the other hand, actions speak louder than words. Two days after the illegal actions of that mob, he and dozens of Labour MPs put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the protesters.

    If they didn't mean to lend their implicit support to illegal acts of violence then literally kneeling before a movement that had perpetrated them very publicly a couple of days earlier was a funny way of showing it...
    They were kneeling in support of a movement protesting the racist torture murder of a black civilian by the police of our closest ally. That is what the protests are about, not some imagined “cultural vandalism”, which is a straw man minor by product emphasised by people such as yourself to divert attention from the real issues that need highlighting. But of course you place an equivalence on preserving the memory of the dead enslavers of Black people rather than the actual lives of their living descendants.
    There is literally no comparison between the US and UK on this score, so importing the context of their racial conflicts to this country makes absolutely no sense. Here are the figures to prove it:

    Since 1870, police forces in Great Britain have killed 220 people. Three of them were in 2019, and one in 2018.

    In the US, in 2019, 1,098 people were killed by police. That's 5x as many deaths caused by police in 2019 as in the last 150 years in the UK!

    Funny how the USA is suddenly our 'closest ally' for lefties when they want to import their cultural conflicts, but they want absolutely nothing to do with them at any other time...
    So protesting what happens in other countries is not permissible? Black people should only care about what happens here? As for the UK, you are more than selective.

    Azelle Rodney and Jean Charles de Menezes were killed because of how they looked, the colour of their skin, the latter because he fitted the profile of a "terrorist" in the minds of our boys in blue, simply because he was a little darker in complexion than they liked.

    A massively disproportionate number of people of colour also die in police custody here - between 1990 and 2014 380 deaths in police custody in England and Wales (or as a result of contact with the police) were reported, 69 were from BME communities – 18%. In comparison with white people, black people are six times more likely to be stopped and searched while Asian people are twice as likely to be.

    "Taking the knee" is an alternative to violent protest. The fact that Colin Kaepernick tried it and lost his career means that some people have gone further because, clearly, it didn't work. The actions of Starmer et al are, if anything, an attempt to encourage people to undertake less violent forms of protest by going back to an earlier stage.
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    StockyStocky Posts: 9,719
    edited June 2020
    Nigelb said:

    Stocky said:

    Nigelb said:

    A crowdfunding appeal for judicial review of the government's actions in discharging patients into care homes, from a bereaved daughter:

    Help me hold the government to account for Covid-19 care home deaths
    https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/care-home-deaths/

    Had government held its hands up to the mistake, I wouldn't bother, but given the circumstances, I shall be contributing.

    I`m not clear about the "discharging patients into care homes" thing. When elderly people go into care homes the most common route has always been via hospitals. Obvious really. It is a clinical decision made at the hospitals for each patient, nothing to do with the government.

    Was there a specific directive from government to discharge patients from hospitals to care homes as a general policy - rather than leaving it to doctors to assess each case as has always been the case?

    This is plausible, I guess, due to lack of capacity in the hospitals maybe? Is there evidence of this specific directive?

    Yes.
    it included patients who were or might be infected, but were not seriously ill.
    I assumed that there must be. Can you provide a link?
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    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,141
    edited June 2020
    Deleted
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    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Sturgeon and Drakesford write joint letter to Boris demanding an extension to transistion

    Sturgeon is consistent but Drakesford ignoring Wales vote to leave is brave

    Johnson should reply perhaps in a politer form than Arkell v Pressdram but to the same effect.
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    Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,002

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    DougSeal said:

    So the strategy of dividing communities by setting up straw men of “cultural vandalism” has worked as the right brings out their Freikorps

    https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1271370405522010114

    The Democratic Football Lads Alliance?

    They do sound like a bunch of culture vultures.
    Divide and conquer, it's the route to power. The marxists behind BLM know it well. The pawns are attacking each other
    Didn't Marx say Workers of the World Unite? Strikes me that "Marxist" has come to mean "person I disagree with" for people on the right.
    The Communist Manifesto (which should be mandatory study in all schools) says "Proletarier aller Lander vereinigt Euch" so proletarians rather than workers but you are correct about the contemporary defintion of Marxist. It's just an all purpose pejorative for hard-of-thinking gammons.
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    StockyStocky Posts: 9,719
    Nigelb said:

    Stocky said:

    Nigelb said:

    A crowdfunding appeal for judicial review of the government's actions in discharging patients into care homes, from a bereaved daughter:

    Help me hold the government to account for Covid-19 care home deaths
    https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/care-home-deaths/

    Had government held its hands up to the mistake, I wouldn't bother, but given the circumstances, I shall be contributing.

    I`m not clear about the "discharging patients into care homes" thing. When elderly people go into care homes the most common route has always been via hospitals. Obvious really. It is a clinical decision made at the hospitals for each patient, nothing to do with the government.

    Was there a specific directive from government to discharge patients from hospitals to care homes as a general policy - rather than leaving it to doctors to assess each case as has always been the case?

    This is plausible, I guess, due to lack of capacity in the hospitals maybe? Is there evidence of this specific directive?

    Yes.
    It included patients who were or might be infected, but were not seriously ill.
    So, care homes were used as "hospital overflows". Hmm.
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    Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,309
    nichomar said:

    I see our right wing posters are still trying to distract everybody from the real issues of the pandemic and the end of transition by talking statues and left wing revolution. Ignore them arguing with them plays right into their hands.

    No need to play into anyones hands.

    The public can read and see and will come to their own conclusion about Churchill and the Cenotaph being boarded up and violence directed towards the police
This discussion has been closed.