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.
Only if there's a forest between the betting shop and the pub.
I have no idea who the DFLA's puppetmasters are but interestingly the EDL structure came out of the criminal gangs known as "football firms".
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).
He denied this in a recent interview. Wikipedia is not correct in that case. (He also says he was a Labour supporter when he worked for Keith Joseph).
"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."
It's a good point. I don't think you get so much of the brittle boasting either. Although tbf I sense much of that is not so much a national characteristic as a Johnson one.
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:
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:
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.
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)
I think it is arguable under both 5a and 5b. 5a does not specify "attached to the building before the list entry was created."
And I am not clear that a period in storage stops it being part of the site by interrupting continuity.
Also, there is an explicit provision for *exclusion* of items, which arguably creates a default that they are included.
London is full of things that were put in storage in the war and were returned after the listing system was created, though it would take some work to find an exact parallel of something returned after the *entry* was created.
Years of happy debating for Architectural Lawyers.
Meanwhile, someone definitely moved it *without public consultation* .
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.
Agreed. I understand how impatient people are to get shuttered parts of our economy up and running again, but the cost of another couple of weeks of patience pales into insignificance against the benefit of having the disease more or less under control.
Keeping it that way makes the possibility of eliminating it via vaccination a much closer prospect for the UK, too.
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.
Why doesn't the right start to take responsibility instead of blaming everything on other people. Who's been running the country for the last ten years? I always thought that after Brexit and without the EU to blame for everything they'd move onto the Enemy Within. But this is desperate stuff.
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
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.
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.
I think there are a large number of good literary works that are indeed filled with crass racist stereotypes, presented more or less uncritically. Decline and Fall, the Forsyte Saga, Trollope's political novels, The Jew of Malta, Oliver Twist etc.
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."
Not surprising really.
Lockdown is necessary if you have an epidemic getting out of hand, as happened back in March. It's a crude blunt instrument, but it's all we had then.
If you get in early enough, the virus can be controlled with fairly soft measures, and every country in Europe has got the testing infrastructure to do that now.
It's why that week or two back in March ought to be critical to unpick to understand what went wrong in the UK.
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...
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:
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
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.
There's nothing wrong with protesting about things happening in other countries, but it's not really acceptable to attack the police in the UK for something the police did in another country.
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.
Correct. Now that was always going to happen given the need to free up hospital beds, but the abruptness and complete lack of caution with which is was done was breathtaking. And makes a complete mockery of Hancock's claim: " So right from the start we’ve tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes."
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
Both are regularly boarded up before demonstrations anyway. That's happened since the May Day demonstrations of the early Nineties.
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.
Correct. Now that was always going to happen given the need to free up hospital beds, but the abruptness and complete lack of caution with which is was done was breathtaking. And makes a complete mockery of Hancock's claim: " So right from the start we’ve tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes."
I agree with you on Hancock's nonsense claim and I cannot understand why he makes it
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...
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:
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
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.
You can peacefully protest what happens on Mars for all I care. It's when the protesters turn violent, assault the police, and commit criminal damage that it becomes illicit - as is now clearly the case.
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
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'm guessing it was suspected that certain groups were planning on coming to London in order to "protect" the statues, and the authorities didn't want them to be able to do this. Therefore they decided to cover them up in this way.
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?
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:
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.
Why doesn't the right start to take responsibility instead of blaming everything on other people. Who's been running the country for the last ten years? I always thought that after Brexit and without the EU to blame for everything they'd move onto the Enemy Within. But this is desperate stuff.
Personally I think there are various things that do need to have responsibility taken for them - such as reforming the NUS and doing something about charity structures set up to avoid tax.
I'm really surprised no one has got around to swatting the NUS yet.
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
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.
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.
I think there are a large number of good literary works that are indeed filled with crass racist stereotypes, presented more or less uncritically. Decline and Fall, the Forsyte Saga, Trollope's political novels, The Jew of Malta, Oliver Twist etc.
You can add the James Bond novels to that.
If you go looking for something to offend, you will find it. As no doubt others will about us in the future.
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...
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:
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
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.
You can peacefully protest what happens on Mars for all I care. It's when the protesters turn violent, assault the police, and commit criminal damage that it becomes illicit - as is now clearly the case.
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
Again, you defame a protest movement by straw man accusations of something they have not done. Tell me - on what basis do you say that Black Lives Matter have done any of those things?
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.
Correct. Now that was always going to happen given the need to free up hospital beds, but the abruptness and complete lack of caution with which is was done was breathtaking. And makes a complete mockery of Hancock's claim: " So right from the start we’ve tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes."
No doubt this will form an important part of a future inquiry.
White Rabbit posted below to say that he/she works with the hosptal trusts and it is those trusts which "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".
Edit: sorry, I`ve just seen your links below - I`m reading them.
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:
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:
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.
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)
I think it is arguable under both 5a and 5b. 5a does not specify "attached to the building before the list entry was created."
And I am not clear that a period in storage stops it being part of the site by interrupting continuity.
Also, there is an explicit provision for *exclusion* of items, which arguably creates a default that they are included.
London is full of things that were put in storage in the war and were returned after the listing system was created, though it would take some work to find an exact parallel of something returned after the *entry* was created.
Years of happy debating for Architectural Lawyers.
Meanwhile, someone definitely moved it *without public consultation* .
I think 50 years in storage is more than just "a period" in storage and as far as 5B is concerned it requires the item to have been there "since 1948" and by any reasonable definition it had only been there "since 1997" so it isn't included.
If the items being mentioned in the listing means its specifically included then obviously the 5b issue is moot.
If it wasn't listed, then the Mayor doesn't need a public consultation to exercise his powers.
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
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.
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.
I think there are a large number of good literary works that are indeed filled with crass racist stereotypes, presented more or less uncritically. Decline and Fall, the Forsyte Saga, Trollope's political novels, The Jew of Malta, Oliver Twist etc.
You can add the James Bond novels to that.
If you go looking for something to offend, you will find it. As no doubt others will about us in the future.
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:
An even bigger concern is what happens between November and January, should he not win. That will be the moment of maximum danger.
He will definitely litigate if he loses to try to overturn the result. Probably while simultaneously stoking armed insurrection. It's going to be far better for the US if he wins.
ONE of the police officers charged over the death of George Floyd isn't to blame because he didn't "have a real good view" of what was going on and bystanders should have intervened, according to his attorney.
Imagine you were a bystander and tried to intervene. You'd have been shooed away if you were white and probably shot if you were black ! I think its his coworkers job to get Chauvin off of Floyd's neck before any members of the public.
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...
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:
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
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.
You can peacefully protest what happens on Mars for all I care. It's when the protesters turn violent, assault the police, and commit criminal damage that it becomes illicit - as is now clearly the case.
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
Kneeling has been for years suggested as a non-violent form of protest.
I think that is something to 100% be approved of.
What you're doing is like saying that if a skinhead racist does violence in the name of the Union Flag that anyone who flies the Union Flag is suddenly and automatically a racist.
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...
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:
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
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...
"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.
You can peacefully protest what happens on Mars for all I care. It's when the protesters turn violent, assault the police, and commit criminal damage that it becomes illicit - as is now clearly the case.
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
Deaths at police hands are unusual in this country, and deaths at police hands where the police officers concerned have committed a crime are very unusual. The officer who killed Azelle Rodney was prosecuted for murder and acquitted. Having read about the case, I don't think the officer gunned the man down just because he was black.
In that Ipsos-Mori poll it would be interesting to see where the Labour votes are coming from given that the LibDem vote is pretty close to their GE number.
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
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.
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.
I think there are a large number of good literary works that are indeed filled with crass racist stereotypes, presented more or less uncritically. Decline and Fall, the Forsyte Saga, Trollope's political novels, The Jew of Malta, Oliver Twist etc.
You can add the James Bond novels to that.
If you go looking for something to offend, you will find it. As no doubt others will about us in the future.
I thought it interesting how M called out James Bond for his racism in Live and Let Die, but yes, there's a lot you could find to criticise in those stories.
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:
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:
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.
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)
I think it is arguable under both 5a and 5b. 5a does not specify "attached to the building before the list entry was created."
And I am not clear that a period in storage stops it being part of the site by interrupting continuity.
Also, there is an explicit provision for *exclusion* of items, which arguably creates a default that they are included.
London is full of things that were put in storage in the war and were returned after the listing system was created, though it would take some work to find an exact parallel of something returned after the *entry* was created.
Years of happy debating for Architectural Lawyers.
Meanwhile, someone definitely moved it *without public consultation* .
There is a quite reasonable justification of necessity, though. And the reality is that if the local authority leadership decides to something along these lines, there is no effective legal recourse. Particularly if they say they've put it into storage for its own protection.
FWIW, I think that approach quite sensible. The issue will get debated at great and tedious length (as it has been on here), passions will cool on both sides, eventually, and a reasonable accommodation will be arrived at.... eventually.
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...
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:
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
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...
For someone normally on Starmer's side, I thought the kneeling stunt looked crass and ridiculous.
Putting that into context, it would have looked even more ridiculous had he been caught stranded in mid air hanging from a zip wire. That would have been career ending for Starmer.
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...
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:
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
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.
You can peacefully protest what happens on Mars for all I care. It's when the protesters turn violent, assault the police, and commit criminal damage that it becomes illicit - as is now clearly the case.
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
Again, you defame a protest movement by straw man accusations of something they have not done. Tell me - on what basis do you say that Black Lives Matter have done any of those things?
'Baden-Powell is among those added to a growing “hit list” of nearly 80 statues across the UK, as anti-racism action grew following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May.'
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:
An even bigger concern is what happens between November and January, should he not win. That will be the moment of maximum danger.
No, I think that might come in November, depending on how effectively he attempts to fix the election. If it is a close-ish contest, the differential provision of polling stations, and denial of postal balloting could make a difference.
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...
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:
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
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.
You can peacefully protest what happens on Mars for all I care. It's when the protesters turn violent, assault the police, and commit criminal damage that it becomes illicit - as is now clearly the case.
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
Again, you defame a protest movement by straw man accusations of something they have not done. Tell me - on what basis do you say that Black Lives Matter have done any of those things?
'Baden-Powell is among those added to a growing “hit list” of nearly 80 statues across the UK, as anti-racism action grew following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May.'
Point me to where it says that BLM sanctioned it? The Guardian can, and does, get things wrong every day.
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:
An even bigger concern is what happens between November and January, should he not win. That will be the moment of maximum danger.
I'm sure there will be unbelievable amounts of stealing but provided the margin is clear I think it'll be OK. The key is that with the exception of ICE, the agencies he's in charge of - particularly the military, which is quite never-Trumpy at the top and very diverse lower down - have shown they won't follow him if he tries to abuse his remaining power. There are a lot of *police* who would support him, but hardly any of them work for the federal government, and GOP states are going to be unwilling to stick their necks out for him if he's just lost them the election.
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:
An even bigger concern is what happens between November and January, should he not win. That will be the moment of maximum danger.
He will definitely litigate if he loses to try to overturn the result. Probably while simultaneously stoking armed insurrection. It's going to be far better for the US if he wins.
I don't believe he will legally challenge a defeat. Instead he will sign as many outrageously bad executive orders in those 3 months as he can.
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...
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:
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
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.
Some work is needed on those stats.
You need to take into account different age profiles amongst different ethnic groups. For example some ethnic groups have nearly twice as many people in the relevant age groups than others, yet comparisons are constantly made with over population shares.
The "deaths since 1990" average statistic hides that the numbers are very different between the 1990s, the 2000s, and the 2010s. I'm cynical enough to think that for some people this is deliberate.
I'll certainly concede that there is a problem that needs addressing, but there's more heat than light around it. But I don't know how big this is until eg our sawdust-brained media start counting properly and asking the right questions.
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...
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:
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
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.
You can peacefully protest what happens on Mars for all I care. It's when the protesters turn violent, assault the police, and commit criminal damage that it becomes illicit - as is now clearly the case.
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
Again, you defame a protest movement by straw man accusations of something they have not done. Tell me - on what basis do you say that Black Lives Matter have done any of those things?
'Baden-Powell is among those added to a growing “hit list” of nearly 80 statues across the UK, as anti-racism action grew following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May.'
Point me to where it says that BLM sanctioned it? The Guardian can, and does, get things wrong every day.
Or anyone did; or indeed what or where the 'list' is.
(edit) It is apparently a "crowdsourced map of UK statues and monuments that celebrate slavery and racism". I won't link to it.
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
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.
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.
I think there are a large number of good literary works that are indeed filled with crass racist stereotypes, presented more or less uncritically. Decline and Fall, the Forsyte Saga, Trollope's political novels, The Jew of Malta, Oliver Twist etc.
You can add the James Bond novels to that.
If you go looking for something to offend, you will find it. As no doubt others will about us in the future.
I thought it interesting how M called out James Bond for his racism in Live and Let Die, but yes, there's a lot you could find to criticise in those stories.
Yes, but that's something that would be of precisely zero interest to the cultural marxists.
On the subject of interpreting authors of the past and interpreting them using modern v outdated standards this is not a new idea and is something we've done as long as I recall. It can cut both ways too.
In my Literature classes in High School I studied Merchant of Venice and had to write an essay on Shylock's speech "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" - which looking at it from its era and in full context is far more complicated than superficially taking it as it first glance appears as to be an enlightened argument against antisemitism.
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...
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:
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
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.
You can peacefully protest what happens on Mars for all I care. It's when the protesters turn violent, assault the police, and commit criminal damage that it becomes illicit - as is now clearly the case.
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
Again, you defame a protest movement by straw man accusations of something they have not done. Tell me - on what basis do you say that Black Lives Matter have done any of those things?
'Baden-Powell is among those added to a growing “hit list” of nearly 80 statues across the UK, as anti-racism action grew following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May.'
Point me to where it says that BLM sanctioned it?
Point me to where they have explicitly said that they do not intend to destroy more monuments.
Or are you going to pretend that there is a magic curtain separating all the protesters and activists who want exactly that from BLM itself?
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
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.
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.
I think there are a large number of good literary works that are indeed filled with crass racist stereotypes, presented more or less uncritically. Decline and Fall, the Forsyte Saga, Trollope's political novels, The Jew of Malta, Oliver Twist etc.
You can add the James Bond novels to that.
If you go looking for something to offend, you will find it. As no doubt others will about us in the future.
Merchant of Venice.
These issues have always been with us.
It's possible future generations will criticise us (today) for fucking about with irrelevancies, policing each other's speech and viewing preferences, and weaponising racism as a tool of anti-racism, rather than dealing with the real issues and focussing on building a better future.
On the subject of interpreting authors of the past and interpreting them using modern v outdated standards this is not a new idea and is something we've done as long as I recall. It can cut both ways too.
In my Literature classes in High School I studied Merchant of Venice and had to write an essay on Shylock's speech "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" - which looking at it from its era and in full context is far more complicated than superficially taking it as it first glance appears as to be an enlightened argument against antisemitism.
Shakespeare was far more an even handed reporter of his time than polemicist of any kind. There was no 'message'. Plenty of polemics in his plays, but they are not his.
Once the idiotic precedent of cultural vandalism has been set, it's hardly a surprise that other idiotic vandals would respond in kind. I condemn them all, unequivocally.
Perhaps it would have been better not to have set the precedent in the first place, eh?
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:
An even bigger concern is what happens between November and January, should he not win. That will be the moment of maximum danger.
He will definitely litigate if he loses to try to overturn the result. Probably while simultaneously stoking armed insurrection. It's going to be far better for the US if he wins.
The best result imo is the one I think most likely - a landslide against him.
If it's in any sense close, I agree that it could get messy.
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
Kneeling has been around for decades! Here's Willy Brandt, then Chancellor of West Germany, kneeling at the Holocaust Memorial in Warsaw in 1970:
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
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.
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.
I think there are a large number of good literary works that are indeed filled with crass racist stereotypes, presented more or less uncritically. Decline and Fall, the Forsyte Saga, Trollope's political novels, The Jew of Malta, Oliver Twist etc.
You can add the James Bond novels to that.
If you go looking for something to offend, you will find it. As no doubt others will about us in the future.
Merchant of Venice.
These issues have always been with us.
It's possible future generations will criticise us (today) for fucking about with irrelevancies, policing each other's speech and viewing preferences, and weaponising racism as a tool of anti-racism, rather than dealing with the real issues and focussing on building a better future.
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...
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:
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
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.
You can peacefully protest what happens on Mars for all I care. It's when the protesters turn violent, assault the police, and commit criminal damage that it becomes illicit - as is now clearly the case.
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
Again, you defame a protest movement by straw man accusations of something they have not done. Tell me - on what basis do you say that Black Lives Matter have done any of those things?
'Baden-Powell is among those added to a growing “hit list” of nearly 80 statues across the UK, as anti-racism action grew following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May.'
Point me to where it says that BLM sanctioned it? The Guardian can, and does, get things wrong every day.
I feared that this would stir up the EDLs and Tommy Robinsons of this world, and lo and behold it has.
They might have caused trouble anyway (it's what they do) but defacing Churchill and the cenotaph is pouring fuel on the fire.
There's rarely one side to a culture war when someone is determined to start one.
For the record, these new acts in Bristol are despicable: I want the perpetrators prosecuted to the full extent of the law and that statue protected in future as well too.
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.
The woman in charge of the de Menezes "operation" is now Met Commissioner.
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:
An even bigger concern is what happens between November and January, should he not win. That will be the moment of maximum danger.
He will definitely litigate if he loses to try to overturn the result. Probably while simultaneously stoking armed insurrection. It's going to be far better for the US if he wins.
The best result imo is the one I think most likely - a landslide against him.
If it's in any sense close, I agree that it could get messy.
I thought that the election of 2016 was a big game changer for the the United States, but actually this one feels epochal.
On the subject of interpreting authors of the past and interpreting them using modern v outdated standards this is not a new idea and is something we've done as long as I recall. It can cut both ways too.
In my Literature classes in High School I studied Merchant of Venice and had to write an essay on Shylock's speech "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" - which looking at it from its era and in full context is far more complicated than superficially taking it as it first glance appears as to be an enlightened argument against antisemitism.
I thought it was from Star Trek VI - Christopher Plummer as General Chang!
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:
An even bigger concern is what happens between November and January, should he not win. That will be the moment of maximum danger.
No, I think that might come in November, depending on how effectively he attempts to fix the election. If it is a close-ish contest, the differential provision of polling stations, and denial of postal balloting could make a difference.
That is a fair point, however if the chicanery isn't enough to pull Trump over the line the Trump supporters will be called to arms before a Biden inauguration.
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:
An even bigger concern is what happens between November and January, should he not win. That will be the moment of maximum danger.
I'm sure there will be unbelievable amounts of stealing but provided the margin is clear I think it'll be OK. The key is that with the exception of ICE, the agencies he's in charge of - particularly the military, which is quite never-Trumpy at the top and very diverse lower down - have shown they won't follow him if he tries to abuse his remaining power. There are a lot of *police* who would support him, but hardly any of them work for the federal government, and GOP states are going to be unwilling to stick their necks out for him if he's just lost them the election.
It is Trump's private rabble army which concerns me most. They could be called to arms in a heartbeat.
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...
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:
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
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...
"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.
You can peacefully protest what happens on Mars for all I care. It's when the protesters turn violent, assault the police, and commit criminal damage that it becomes illicit - as is now clearly the case.
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
Deaths at police hands are unusual in this country, and deaths at police hands where the police officers concerned have committed a crime are very unusual. The officer who killed Azelle Rodney was prosecuted for murder and acquitted. Having read about the case, I don't think the officer gunned the man down just because he was black.
I wonder in ths same period how many black people under 25 have been killed by black people under 25. I am still struggling with the concept of the BLM movement when they never mention black people killing black people. The murders at the weekend were just ignored.
The silence from those Leavers on the site who angrily denounced me when I pointed out that the government was not going to let a mere pandemic delay its timetable is telling.
But I expect they’ve all rewritten their memories by now.
The silence from those Leavers on the site who angrily denounced me when I pointed out that the government was not going to let a mere pandemic delay its timetable is telling.
But I expect they’ve all rewritten their memories by now.
I'm not sure who those were, but nor should a mere pandemic delay its timetable.
On Meeks' statue line, the only one which I think was rightfully taken down (To a museum) was Leopold in Belgium. You're getting perilously close to asking "Why shouldn't statues of Hitler be allowed" if old Leopold is allowed to stay. Amazed the Belgiums had him up in the first place tbh with his genocide in the Congo.
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:
An even bigger concern is what happens between November and January, should he not win. That will be the moment of maximum danger.
I'm sure there will be unbelievable amounts of stealing but provided the margin is clear I think it'll be OK. The key is that with the exception of ICE, the agencies he's in charge of - particularly the military, which is quite never-Trumpy at the top and very diverse lower down - have shown they won't follow him if he tries to abuse his remaining power. There are a lot of *police* who would support him, but hardly any of them work for the federal government, and GOP states are going to be unwilling to stick their necks out for him if he's just lost them the election.
It is Trump's private rabble army which concerns me most. They could be called to arms in a heartbeat.
I reckon the US military will be more than a match for the Boogaloo Cosplayers
The silence from those Leavers on the site who angrily denounced me when I pointed out that the government was not going to let a mere pandemic delay its timetable is telling.
But I expect they’ve all rewritten their memories by now.
I'm naively assuming that the main reason for not extending now is to avoid any liability for the EU coronavirus recovery fund.
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:
An even bigger concern is what happens between November and January, should he not win. That will be the moment of maximum danger.
I'm sure there will be unbelievable amounts of stealing but provided the margin is clear I think it'll be OK. The key is that with the exception of ICE, the agencies he's in charge of - particularly the military, which is quite never-Trumpy at the top and very diverse lower down - have shown they won't follow him if he tries to abuse his remaining power. There are a lot of *police* who would support him, but hardly any of them work for the federal government, and GOP states are going to be unwilling to stick their necks out for him if he's just lost them the election.
It is Trump's private rabble army which concerns me most. They could be called to arms in a heartbeat.
When one considers that the American left have never accepted the legitimacy of the the Trump presidency , why would they expect the right to accept the legitimacy of Bidens?
It occurs to me that if you wanted to frame BLM, and turn people against them, that's the kind of statue you would target.
I expect that will be the response of our resident nationalist posters as well.
It's not impossible of course. However so far we have far more evidence that these people are sincere.
Logic fail. If it wasn't BLM then the latter's sincertity is not relevant.
Bruce is not an obvious target - historically or in the stuff published recvently, e.g. the map of target statues (by the Stop Trump people?) which had some far more obvious targets in Scotland which were specific to the issues raised by BLM.
The silence from those Leavers on the site who angrily denounced me when I pointed out that the government was not going to let a mere pandemic delay its timetable is telling.
But I expect they’ve all rewritten their memories by now.
Not a leaver, but will hold my hand up to say I thought we would quietly agree an extension. Overall I'm starting to think I've seriously overestimated the competence of this government.
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.
Only if there's a forest between the betting shop and the pub.
I have no idea who the DFLA's puppetmasters are but interestingly the EDL structure came out of the criminal gangs known as "football firms".
Are the Millwall Bushwackers fundamentally opposed to all facets of Marxism?
Or do they feel that while it has some useful insights it is not a recipe for good government in a modern European nation or indeed anywhere else?
Have any Leavers on this site suggested recently there should be an extension?
I think in March when nobody was talking a few said they'd consider it if appropriate (myself included) but following the talks recently between Frost and Barnier I think the pretty unanimous opinion here amongst Leavers has been that there should not be one.
My apologies to any Leavers that have been calling for one that I forgot you.
If you frame this as the “don’t mention the war” episode but don’t quote the scene about “ni**ers” and “wogs” then it obviously seems absurd. If you call it the “ni**ers and wogs episode” it might make people think. https://t.co/EQAvEVBF0K
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...
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:
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
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.
You can peacefully protest what happens on Mars for all I care. It's when the protesters turn violent, assault the police, and commit criminal damage that it becomes illicit - as is now clearly the case.
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
Again, you defame a protest movement by straw man accusations of something they have not done. Tell me - on what basis do you say that Black Lives Matter have done any of those things?
'Baden-Powell is among those added to a growing “hit list” of nearly 80 statues across the UK, as anti-racism action grew following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May.'
Point me to where it says that BLM sanctioned it?
Point me to where they have explicitly said that they do not intend to destroy more monuments.
Or are you going to pretend that there is a magic curtain separating all the protesters and activists who want exactly that from BLM itself?
The Black Lives Matter movement have never called for the destruction of monuments -BLM agree with Tory business minister Nadhim Zahawi that statutes of slavers should be removed but not torn down. I have shown you a tweet from them where they deny such a thing and I can find nothing that suggests that they have ever done so.
As for your fatuous suggestion of a "magic curtain" I would never (as you invited me to do) equate the thugs of Britain First with the Eurosceptic Wing of the Tory party despite their sharing some of the same desires.
Indeed there has hardly been any "destruction" and the small amount that there has, notably the statue of Edward Coulson (which will be cleaned up and put in a museum) is counterproductive to the movement, as they accept. The East India Docks Statute was carefully removed by the GLA and Corporation of London. The constant harping on about the Bristol incident, and the attempts to tar the whole of BLM with the brush of the Stop Trump website map, which is not affiliated, is an attempt by the right to divide and conquer. There is no BLM "hit list" - it's made up.
BLM have cancelled their central London protest for the weekend because they fear violence. That is the mark of a responsible organisation. Any damage to monuments that takes place then will not be as a result of that organisation - anymore than violence committed by people who happen to support Brexit wass the responsibility of responsible Brexit supporting organisations.
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.
The Boris fans would rather talk about the weather than discuss the government's handling of the pandemic. Get them onto their "political correctness gone mad" comfort zone and they will bang on for days.
When the dust settles there won't be a film or a TV series you won't still be able to see that you could have seen before and half a dozen statues of slave traders will have been moved into museums.
That won't stop them whipping themselves up into a frenzy about what might happen even though the suggestions get ever more ludicrous and will never happen. Some spotty oik threatens to pull down a statue nobody has ever heard of and they are all clutching their pearls. It's what they love and, as I said, so much easier than trying to defend their government's pandemic performance.
Have any Leavers on this site suggested recently there should be an extension?
I think in March when nobody was talking a few said they'd consider it if appropriate (myself included) but following the talks recently between Frost and Barnier I think the pretty unanimous opinion here amongst Leavers has been that there should not be one.
My apologies to any Leavers that have been calling for one that I forgot you.
Yes, Leavers have self-radicalised. Again.
The heat with which I was denounced when pointing out the zealotry of the government was formidable. The silence with which they’ve slithered away from their own self-proclaimed moderation was typical.
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:
An even bigger concern is what happens between November and January, should he not win. That will be the moment of maximum danger.
I'm sure there will be unbelievable amounts of stealing but provided the margin is clear I think it'll be OK. The key is that with the exception of ICE, the agencies he's in charge of - particularly the military, which is quite never-Trumpy at the top and very diverse lower down - have shown they won't follow him if he tries to abuse his remaining power. There are a lot of *police* who would support him, but hardly any of them work for the federal government, and GOP states are going to be unwilling to stick their necks out for him if he's just lost them the election.
It is Trump's private rabble army which concerns me most. They could be called to arms in a heartbeat.
When one considers that the American left have never accepted the legitimacy of the the Trump presidency , why would they expect the right to accept the legitimacy of Bidens?
They set this trend in motion.
American left? Trump's conspiratorial tweets suggest he never quite accepted the legitimacy of the Trump Presidency.
The silence from those Leavers on the site who angrily denounced me when I pointed out that the government was not going to let a mere pandemic delay its timetable is telling.
But I expect they’ve all rewritten their memories by now.
I'm naively assuming that the main reason for not extending now is to avoid any liability for the EU coronavirus recovery fund.
If we are not liable for it now, why would continuing the status quo make any difference?
The silence from those Leavers on the site who angrily denounced me when I pointed out that the government was not going to let a mere pandemic delay its timetable is telling.
But I expect they’ve all rewritten their memories by now.
Not a leaver, but will hold my hand up to say I thought we would quietly agree an extension. Overall I'm starting to think I've seriously overestimated the competence of this government.
In developments that won't shock anybody at all, it turns out the government is more worried about the threat from a revived brexit party than it is from what is left of remain.
Have any Leavers on this site suggested recently there should be an extension?
I think in March when nobody was talking a few said they'd consider it if appropriate (myself included) but following the talks recently between Frost and Barnier I think the pretty unanimous opinion here amongst Leavers has been that there should not be one.
My apologies to any Leavers that have been calling for one that I forgot you.
Yes, Leavers have self-radicalised. Again.
The heat with which I was denounced when pointing out the zealotry of the government was formidable. The silence with which they’ve slithered away from their own self-proclaimed moderation was typical.
I don't think that's fair.
I think the general response then (myself included) was that it was pointless to extend now and that if there was a reason to extend then that could be quietly addressed in June.
Fast forward to June and there's no reason to extend. So we're not doing so.
Had Frost and Barnier not been able to engage in their talks yet I'd have supported a short extension due to the virus. But that's not the case, they have been able to do so and its revealed there is no reason to extend.
On the subject of interpreting authors of the past and interpreting them using modern v outdated standards this is not a new idea and is something we've done as long as I recall. It can cut both ways too.
In my Literature classes in High School I studied Merchant of Venice and had to write an essay on Shylock's speech "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" - which looking at it from its era and in full context is far more complicated than superficially taking it as it first glance appears as to be an enlightened argument against antisemitism.
I thought it was from Star Trek VI - Christopher Plummer as General Chang!
You've not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon
The silence from those Leavers on the site who angrily denounced me when I pointed out that the government was not going to let a mere pandemic delay its timetable is telling.
But I expect they’ve all rewritten their memories by now.
I'm naively assuming that the main reason for not extending now is to avoid any liability for the EU coronavirus recovery fund.
If we are not liable for it now, why would continuing the status quo make any difference?
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:
An even bigger concern is what happens between November and January, should he not win. That will be the moment of maximum danger.
I'm sure there will be unbelievable amounts of stealing but provided the margin is clear I think it'll be OK. The key is that with the exception of ICE, the agencies he's in charge of - particularly the military, which is quite never-Trumpy at the top and very diverse lower down - have shown they won't follow him if he tries to abuse his remaining power. There are a lot of *police* who would support him, but hardly any of them work for the federal government, and GOP states are going to be unwilling to stick their necks out for him if he's just lost them the election.
It is Trump's private rabble army which concerns me most. They could be called to arms in a heartbeat.
I reckon the US military will be more than a match for the Boogaloo Cosplayers
It's track record against insurgencies isn't great and, frankly, there are a hell of a lot more competent firearm owners in the US than Iraq.
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...
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:
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
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.
You can peacefully protest what happens on Mars for all I care. It's when the protesters turn violent, assault the police, and commit criminal damage that it becomes illicit - as is now clearly the case.
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
Again, you defame a protest movement by straw man accusations of something they have not done. Tell me - on what basis do you say that Black Lives Matter have done any of those things?
'Baden-Powell is among those added to a growing “hit list” of nearly 80 statues across the UK, as anti-racism action grew following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May.'
Point me to where it says that BLM sanctioned it?
Point me to where they have explicitly said that they do not intend to destroy more monuments.
Or are you going to pretend that there is a magic curtain separating all the protesters and activists who want exactly that from BLM itself?
The Black Lives Matter movement have never called for the destruction of monuments -BLM agree with Tory business minister Nadhim Zahawi that statutes of slavers should be removed but not torn down. I have shown you a tweet from them where they deny such a thing and I can find nothing that suggests that they have ever done so.
As for your fatuous suggestion of a "magic curtain" I would never (as you invited me to do) equate the thugs of Britain First with the Eurosceptic Wing of the Tory party despite their sharing some of the same desires.
Indeed there has hardly been any "destruction" and the small amount that there has, notably the statue of Edward Coulson (which will be cleaned up and put in a museum) is counterproductive to the movement, as they accept. The East India Docks Statute was carefully removed by the GLA and Corporation of London. The constant harping on about the Bristol incident, and the attempts to tar the whole of BLM with the brush of the Stop Trump website map, which is not affiliated, is an attempt by the right to divide and conquer. There is no BLM "hit list" - it's made up.
BLM have cancelled their central London protest for the weekend because they fear violence. That is the mark of a responsible organisation. Any damage to monuments that takes place then will not be as a result of that organisation - anymore than violence committed by people who happen to support Brexit wass the responsibility of responsible Brexit supporting organisations.
How incredibly convenient - they get to sit back and pretend they have nothing to do with violence, having revved their supporters up to such a pitch that violence and vandalism are all but inevitable.
I suspect the organisers of BLM just realized their potential liability to a whole host of criminal charges and shat themselves.
'What, us? Statues? Never heard of them! Nothing to do with us, honest!'
Comments
I have no idea who the DFLA's puppetmasters are but interestingly the EDL structure came out of the criminal gangs known as "football firms".
17 mins 30 secs:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08fjy9j
And I am not clear that a period in storage stops it being part of the site by interrupting continuity.
Also, there is an explicit provision for *exclusion* of items, which arguably creates a default that they are included.
London is full of things that were put in storage in the war and were returned after the listing system was created, though it would take some work to find an exact parallel of something returned after the *entry* was created.
Years of happy debating for Architectural Lawyers.
Meanwhile, someone definitely moved it *without public consultation* .
I understand how impatient people are to get shuttered parts of our economy up and running again, but the cost of another couple of weeks of patience pales into insignificance against the benefit of having the disease more or less under control.
Keeping it that way makes the possibility of eliminating it via vaccination a much closer prospect for the UK, too.
https://indianexpress.com/article/world/standoff-over-gandhi-statue-in-uk-city-of-leicester-6454499/ I think there are a large number of good literary works that are indeed filled with crass racist stereotypes, presented more or less uncritically. Decline and Fall, the Forsyte Saga, Trollope's political novels, The Jew of Malta, Oliver Twist etc.
Lockdown is necessary if you have an epidemic getting out of hand, as happened back in March. It's a crude blunt instrument, but it's all we had then.
If you get in early enough, the virus can be controlled with fairly soft measures, and every country in Europe has got the testing infrastructure to do that now.
It's why that week or two back in March ought to be critical to unpick to understand what went wrong in the UK.
Now that was always going to happen given the need to free up hospital beds, but the abruptness and complete lack of caution with which is was done was breathtaking.
And makes a complete mockery of Hancock's claim: " So right from the start we’ve tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes."
https://twitter.com/ukblm/status/1271099670559948804
https://twitter.com/fayebrownjourno/status/1271119162727895046
'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%'
Otherwise known as fewer than 3 individuals per year in the latter group. There should be obviously be as few deaths in police custody as possible, but those figures are no reason for nationwide unrest.
'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'
That's some heroic spin indeed. Tell me, if a mob of Brexiteers had destroyed an EU monument - and put out a list of dozens more targets they intended to destroy - and then Boris and dozens of Conservative MPs had put out photos of themselves kneeling in support of the Brexiteers, would your interpretation be as generous?
Somehow I think not.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/880288/COVID-19_hospital_discharge_service_requirements.pdf
Note the details in Annex B.
For a narrative account the transcript of the BBC File on 4 report is worth a read, too:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/fileon4/PG02_Care_Homes_Catastrophe.pdf
I'm really surprised no one has got around to swatting the NUS yet.
If you go looking for something to offend, you will find it. As no doubt others will about us in the future.
https://twitter.com/ukblm/status/1271099670559948804
White Rabbit posted below to say that he/she works with the hosptal trusts and it is those trusts which "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".
Edit: sorry, I`ve just seen your links below - I`m reading them.
If the items being mentioned in the listing means its specifically included then obviously the 5b issue is moot.
If it wasn't listed, then the Mayor doesn't need a public consultation to exercise his powers.
These issues have always been with us.
ONE of the police officers charged over the death of George Floyd isn't to blame because he didn't "have a real good view" of what was going on and bystanders should have intervened, according to his attorney.
Imagine you were a bystander and tried to intervene. You'd have been shooed away if you were white and probably shot if you were black !
I think its his coworkers job to get Chauvin off of Floyd's neck before any members of the public.
I think that is something to 100% be approved of.
What you're doing is like saying that if a skinhead racist does violence in the name of the Union Flag that anyone who flies the Union Flag is suddenly and automatically a racist.
https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1271353077375938560
And the reality is that if the local authority leadership decides to something along these lines, there is no effective legal recourse. Particularly if they say they've put it into storage for its own protection.
FWIW, I think that approach quite sensible. The issue will get debated at great and tedious length (as it has been on here), passions will cool on both sides, eventually, and a reasonable accommodation will be arrived at.... eventually.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=my ends
Putting that into context, it would have looked even more ridiculous had he been caught stranded in mid air hanging from a zip wire. That would have been career ending for Starmer.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/11/fears-of-violence-stop-london-racism-protest-as-statue-attacks-continue
'Baden-Powell is among those added to a growing “hit list” of nearly 80 statues across the UK, as anti-racism action grew following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May.'
No, my point is about authenticity. Or rather lack of.
https://twitter.com/STVSophie/status/1271395157074685952?s=19
You need to take into account different age profiles amongst different ethnic groups. For example some ethnic groups have nearly twice as many people in the relevant age groups than others, yet comparisons are constantly made with over population shares.
The "deaths since 1990" average statistic hides that the numbers are very different between the 1990s, the 2000s, and the 2010s. I'm cynical enough to think that for some people this is deliberate.
I'll certainly concede that there is a problem that needs addressing, but there's more heat than light around it. But I don't know how big this is until eg our sawdust-brained media start counting properly and asking the right questions.
(unless you are ordinary kid in Britain).
(edit)
It is apparently a "crowdsourced map of UK statues and monuments that celebrate slavery and racism".
I won't link to it.
In my Literature classes in High School I studied Merchant of Venice and had to write an essay on Shylock's speech "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" - which looking at it from its era and in full context is far more complicated than superficially taking it as it first glance appears as to be an enlightened argument against antisemitism.
https://lincolnshirereporter.co.uk/2019/05/idiotic-brexiteers-vandalise-town-sculptures/
"Vandals scrawled pro Brexit messages on metal sculptures in Boston.
They sprayed the words “WTO Brexit Now” on the shepherd and his entire flock in the town.
Local residents made the discovery on Thursday, May 2 and were shocked that the sculptures had been hit by political vandals."
Or are you going to pretend that there is a magic curtain separating all the protesters and activists who want exactly that from BLM itself?
Plenty of polemics in his plays, but they are not his.
Perhaps it would have been better not to have set the precedent in the first place, eh?
If it's in any sense close, I agree that it could get messy.
Fair play to them too if they do.
They might have caused trouble anyway (it's what they do) but defacing Churchill and the cenotaph is pouring fuel on the fire.
There's rarely one side to a culture war when someone is determined to start one.
For the record, these new acts in Bristol are despicable: I want the perpetrators prosecuted to the full extent of the law and that statue protected in future as well too.
Go figure!
It's not impossible of course. However so far we have far more evidence that these people are sincere.
UK cops are not remotely comparable to US ones and anyone that says so is a pathetic moron.
But I expect they’ve all rewritten their memories by now.
Amazed the Belgiums had him up in the first place tbh with his genocide in the Congo.
They set this trend in motion.
Bruce is not an obvious target - historically or in the stuff published recvently, e.g. the map of target statues (by the Stop Trump people?) which had some far more obvious targets in Scotland which were specific to the issues raised by BLM.
Or do they feel that while it has some useful insights it is not a recipe for good government in a modern European nation or indeed anywhere else?
This is what I want to know.
I think in March when nobody was talking a few said they'd consider it if appropriate (myself included) but following the talks recently between Frost and Barnier I think the pretty unanimous opinion here amongst Leavers has been that there should not be one.
My apologies to any Leavers that have been calling for one that I forgot you.
As for your fatuous suggestion of a "magic curtain" I would never (as you invited me to do) equate the thugs of Britain First with the Eurosceptic Wing of the Tory party despite their sharing some of the same desires.
Indeed there has hardly been any "destruction" and the small amount that there has, notably the statue of Edward Coulson (which will be cleaned up and put in a museum) is counterproductive to the movement, as they accept. The East India Docks Statute was carefully removed by the GLA and Corporation of London. The constant harping on about the Bristol incident, and the attempts to tar the whole of BLM with the brush of the Stop Trump website map, which is not affiliated, is an attempt by the right to divide and conquer. There is no BLM "hit list" - it's made up.
BLM have cancelled their central London protest for the weekend because they fear violence. That is the mark of a responsible organisation. Any damage to monuments that takes place then will not be as a result of that organisation - anymore than violence committed by people who happen to support Brexit wass the responsibility of responsible Brexit supporting organisations.
When the dust settles there won't be a film or a TV series you won't still be able to see that you could have seen before and half a dozen statues of slave traders will have been moved into museums.
That won't stop them whipping themselves up into a frenzy about what might happen even though the suggestions get ever more ludicrous and will never happen. Some spotty oik threatens to pull down a statue nobody has ever heard of and they are all clutching their pearls. It's what they love and, as I said, so much easier than trying to defend their government's pandemic performance.
Precisely why an extension would be an awful idea.
The heat with which I was denounced when pointing out the zealotry of the government was formidable. The silence with which they’ve slithered away from their own self-proclaimed moderation was typical.
I think the general response then (myself included) was that it was pointless to extend now and that if there was a reason to extend then that could be quietly addressed in June.
Fast forward to June and there's no reason to extend. So we're not doing so.
Had Frost and Barnier not been able to engage in their talks yet I'd have supported a short extension due to the virus. But that's not the case, they have been able to do so and its revealed there is no reason to extend.
I suspect the organisers of BLM just realized their potential liability to a whole host of criminal charges and shat themselves.
'What, us? Statues? Never heard of them! Nothing to do with us, honest!'