Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
Yes, that looks like pretty naked racism. I can't work out whether he's drunk and misspoke, or he's trying (and failing) to do his provocative shtick, or its just real racism emerging in some peculiarly offhand way.
I fear the last.
Mr Grimes needs to distance himself, in short order
A generous interpretation is that he placed his 'damn' in the wrong place when blurting out his sentence. Had he said '... otherwise, damn, there wouldn't be ..' then he'd be cursing a particular notion be believes foolish instead of a subset of humanity. Dunno.
That is generous. Perhaps it is the truth. I doubt he will get the benefit of the doubt, for the reasons theuniondivvie offers: the entire argument was off-colour and phrased offensively.
I am not entirely sure that is true, the government were managing very well until Cummings. Granted, a disaster ever since.
Or is this a parallel universe where Corbyn won on December 12th?
Except the large elephant in the room is the ten days in March- the gap between the collapse of the initial testing system and the lockdown. That made no sense at the time (lockdown is what you do when you lose control of a situation), makes even less with hindsight (at least two doublings, maybe more happened in that gap), and doesn't even work from a behavioural "they'll get bored" sense (the worse you let things get, the more effort is needed to bring them back under control).
Pretty much all the bad stuff follows from that delay, because that's what exponential growth does.
At the time, my impression was that they wanted everyone to get it, but in a controlled manner. So the lockdown was planned to be instituted when the predicted maximum case load was just under NHS capacity.
Which is more or less what happened.
And turned out to be a bad idea.
That was my impression too- I've got memories of government outriders doing graphs pointing out that Italy et al would have two waves, and the UK would only have one, and wouldn't we look clever then?
Also, a lot of the early UK effort went into increasing NHS capacity- the temporary hospitals and new ventilators- rather than reducing demand.
But it was a massive gamble, for what? Delaying lockdown by ten days or so, and delaying reopening by more than that. Terrible idea with hindsight, but not that smart with foresight. Or, I suspect, a too-clever-by-half hack with foresight that didn't get shot down because the wrong people were in the room.
It was the official plan for a flu pandemic.
Perhaps there were too many people in the room who were originally involved in writing that official plan?
Having said that, the only reason that such a plan will end up looking bad is if a vaccine becomes available much sooner than could have been anticipated only a few years ago.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
Of course this comment is being shown up to try to discredit all the extremely well researched and knowledgeable comments Starkey made that destroyed the arguments of blm halfwits.
Britain's all powerful navy stamped out slavery after it was abolished here It would have been far more widespread if it weren't for the RN.
Britain tore itself apart over the morals of slavery from 1760 up until its abolition.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
Had the Tories formed a minority government in 2010, the LDs could reasonably have acted to block another election by offering to form an alternative government with Labour and other opposition parties. It is far from clear that Cameron would have been granted a dissolution in circumstances where another government could be formed from the existing House of Commons.
Such was Clegg's post 2010 hubris that he would have bitten Cameron's hand off for a mid-term election, anticipating lots more LD MPs
Starkey seems to be setting a incorrectly high bar for genocide in that clip. Elimination of the taino from the Carribean islands ? - Gets us back to Columbus mind...
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
His point is ultimately correct, but certain people will focus on the "damn".
Somewhat ironically the triangle trade prevented genocide, since had people like the Ashanti Empire not had buyers for captured slaves to they would have simply massacred their enemies wholesale. History is messy.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
Of course this comment is being shown up to try to discredit all the extremely well researched and knowledgeable comments Starkey made that destroyed the arguments of blm halfwits.
Britain's all powerful navy stamped out slavery after it was abolished here It would have been far more widespread if it weren't for the RN.
Britain tore itself apart over the morals of slavery from 1760 up until its abolition.
I don't think his remark destroys history. It probably destroys his TV career
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
Of course this comment is being shown up to try to discredit all the extremely well researched and knowledgeable comments Starkey made that destroyed the arguments of blm halfwits.
Britain's all powerful navy stamped out slavery after it was abolished here It would have been far more widespread if it weren't for the RN.
Britain tore itself apart over the morals of slavery from 1760 up until its abolition.
Shocking and shameful the way woke lefties have used Starkey's own words to discredit him, unfairly making him look like a bim(sic) halfwit.
If their signature achievement was getting on top of the public finances following the bank crash - which certainly is the self image of that government, it's identity if you like - it could be a challenge to maintain that accolade if this Tory government opts for magic money over sound money in response to the corona crash. It will then look for all the world as if "austerity" last time was political choice not financial necessity. I predict some interesting debate in this area over the next few years. You (and Dave and George and Nick) need to get a believable story ready to roll.
I don't need a story at all. I'm in no way responsible for this government, didn't vote for it, and have never voted in any election for Boris. Nor are Dave and George responsible for it. They were on the other side of the civil war.
As for 'austerity' (stupid word!), it's coming, irrespective of what this or any other government does. You can't have a mega crash of the economy without wealth being destroyed, that's kinda what it means. And less wealth means less government revenues.
OK fair enough. Sounds like you and me both will be pointing out forcibly that even Boris Johnson cannot magic away the cost of this coming recession should he try to do so (as I sense he will).
Austerity is a stupid word? That is a great and beautifully timed (!) example of the point I was making in my post of 11.33.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
Of course this comment is being shown up to try to discredit all the extremely well researched and knowledgeable comments Starkey made that destroyed the arguments of blm halfwits.
Britain's all powerful navy stamped out slavery after it was abolished here It would have been far more widespread if it weren't for the RN.
Britain tore itself apart over the morals of slavery from 1760 up until its abolition.
I don't think his remark destroys history. It probably destroys his TV career
Don't think he's been much on on tv or radio lately so perhaps he's at the fuck it stage.
Starkey's always been entranced by the sound of his own voice saying controversial things. Trouble is by the law of diminishing returns you've always got to be a little more outré each time.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
Of course this comment is being shown up to try to discredit all the extremely well researched and knowledgeable comments Starkey made that destroyed the arguments of blm halfwits.
Britain's all powerful navy stamped out slavery after it was abolished here It would have been far more widespread if it weren't for the RN.
Britain tore itself apart over the morals of slavery from 1760 up until its abolition.
I don't think his remark destroys history. It probably destroys his TV career
Don't think he's been much on on tv or radio lately so perhaps he's at the fuck it stage.
Starkey's always been entranced by the sound of his own voice saying controversial things. Trouble is by the law of diminishing returns you've always got to be a little more outré each time.
Yes, I just checked. He's 75. Maybe he doesn't give a toss any more, and just wants to annoy; he will possibly enjoy the outraged response.
It is Darren Grimes, therefore, who should be worried. He's clever and with a promising career ahead of him: a young rightwing articulate Brexiteer gay working class white lad. He's probably the ONLY ONE of them, so he will get endless TV invites, as he ticks all the boxes.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
But if that's the case what's the point of voting Lib Dems?
Maybe the Lib Dems should have let the Tories form a minority government, demand a pound of flesh for budgets etc and then just accepted an election was coming?
Or they did the right thing joining the coalition but then should have stood proudly by it. This is where I think they went wrong.
They acted like they were ashamed of being in coalition with the Tories rather than standing up proud saying "yes we are the party for coalitions and look at all we have achieved: this, this, this and this . . . if you elect us again and we are in a position to do so we will be prepared to go into coalition with either party so long as they meet our demands which are this, this and that".
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
But if that's the case what's the point of voting Lib Dems?
Maybe the Lib Dems should have let the Tories form a minority government, demand a pound of flesh for budgets etc and then just accepted an election was coming?
Or they did the right thing joining the coalition but then should have stood proudly by it. This is where I think they went wrong.
They acted like they were ashamed of being in coalition with the Tories rather than standing up proud saying "yes we are the party for coalitions and look at all we have achieved: this, this, this and this . . . if you elect us again and we are in a position to do so we will be prepared to go into coalition with either party so long as they meet our demands which are this, this and that".
I think that their problem was that their support came from all over the political spectrum. Once they picked a side, they were bound to alienate a lot of their voters.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
Of course this comment is being shown up to try to discredit all the extremely well researched and knowledgeable comments Starkey made that destroyed the arguments of blm halfwits.
Britain's all powerful navy stamped out slavery after it was abolished here It would have been far more widespread if it weren't for the RN.
Britain tore itself apart over the morals of slavery from 1760 up until its abolition.
I don't think his remark destroys history. It probably destroys his TV career
Don't think he's been much on on tv or radio lately so perhaps he's at the fuck it stage.
Starkey's always been entranced by the sound of his own voice saying controversial things. Trouble is by the law of diminishing returns you've always got to be a little more outré each time.
Yes, I just checked. He's 75. Maybe he doesn't give a toss any more, and just wants to annoy; he will possibly enjoy the outraged response.
It is Darren Grimes, therefore, who should be worried. He's clever and with a promising career ahead of him: a young rightwing articulate Brexiteer gay working class white lad. He's probably the ONLY ONE of them, so he will get endless TV invites, as he ticks all the boxes.
But he needs to distance himself.
I think Starkey is in a number of those camps himself ( though of course he's not young).
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
"Hence the repeated claim of BLM that the slave trade was genocide or mass murder. It wasn’t of course, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many blacks in North America or the West Indies. Or indeed in Britain."
So, yes, but without the "damn". Which does change it a little.
I'm not so sure about genocide, but the Atlantic slave trade was certainly mass murder, given the high percentage of deaths, both in transit, and on arrival. Arrive life expectancy on arrival at Haiti in 1770, was about two years.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
Hopefully we have now discussed the etymology of the phrase enough for you to understand its meaning though.
I understand its etymology but it is a meaningless phrase.
Give me a current day usage to help me (ie not involving actual gaslights).
I also struggle with it and with 'meme'.
S'OK - @OnlyLivingBoy is going to clear matters up for us.
Trouble is I learn them, don't use them, then when they appear again I have to look them up again even though I know their origins!!!! They just don't feel natural to me. I don't want to think of the source to think what they mean.
On the other hand maybe it is age cos I have no issue with Catch 22.
I generally like words and expressions that can be traced back to works of fiction. For example the Bible and Shakespeare have given us quite a lot, but also Lewis Caroll and Orwell - though sadly "Big Brother" makes people think of something else these days (hopefully temporarily).
Of course Gaslight was published before Catch-22. The literary origin is one reason why I like the phrase Gaslight, Patrick Hamilton is one of my favourite novelists.
Haven't read Patrick Hamilton, what would you recommend?
I'm a bit disappointed nobody took me up on the Bible being a work of fiction - maybe that is finally something we can all agree on?
The bible is not a work of anything at all. It is a compilation by various committees of different books from different places about different things. That is why its chapters are denoted Book of XXX.
I once tried to explain to a Sheriff who objected to the use of the word "bible" in the context of a SPA and associated paperwork that the word simply meant a compilation of books. I am not sure that it helped my cause much.
This is an absurd debate. Of course this government is legitimate. That is not in question. At the same time the demand for people to pay it fealty is also absurd - just because the government is legitimate doesn't mean that you should like or respect the fact that its incompetence has killed tens of thousands of people and that the Brexit bomb is armed and ready to explode.
It it classic Tory gaslighting and hypocrisy.
OH NO!
"gaslighting"
Life is seriously too short to try to work out what it means.
A neologism too far.
Hardly a neologism. The term refers to a play by Patrick Hamilton (one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, imho) from 1938 and has been used colloquially as a term to mean a particular kind of psychological abuse since the 1960s. Perhaps you need to lift your ban on learning new things, who knows, you might learn something!
No it hasn't.
Wikipedia disagrees with you.
So what. It has not been in any kind of common usage until a few months ago.
The term gaslighting has been around for years, certainly before the accession of Trump.
Yes indeed. I feel, anecdotally, that its use has ramped up considerably and people are broadening its use to its detriment, but the idea its not been around for a long time us not sustainable
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
Cameron needed LD support to form a government in 2010 and Starmer will almost certainly need LD support to form a government after the next general election
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
Yes, that looks like pretty naked racism. I can't work out whether he's drunk and misspoke, or he's trying (and failing) to do his provocative shtick, or its just real racism emerging in some peculiarly offhand way.
I fear the last.
Mr Grimes needs to distance himself, in short order
A generous interpretation is that he placed his 'damn' in the wrong place when blurting out his sentence. Had he said '... otherwise, damn, there wouldn't be ..' then he'd be cursing a particular notion be believes foolish instead of a subset of humanity. Dunno.
That is generous. Perhaps it is the truth. I doubt he will get the benefit of the doubt, for the reasons theuniondivvie offers: the entire argument was off-colour and phrased offensively.
I imagine his media appearances are over.
I think in his own head what was happening was "intellectually gifted and super knowledgeable giant in the field tells it like it is without fear or favour and to hell with political correctness when it comes to language."
But now (as you say) he will most likely be cancelled as regards current affairs punditry and people will have to find a way of making such programmes without him.
I think his books and previous TV docs will live on though.
US stock markets poised for a strong open after US jobs data looked better than expected.
Fantastic for my oil investments.
Maybe not so good for Biden investments though
Sounding a bit like a Trumpster there, @contrarian
Not really a supporter, just putting the other side of the argument. As usual!
I was joking. However, there has been a slew of positive data in the past few days - upwards jobs revision for May, consumer confidence growth, stock markets past quarter in a long time (from the shocks of Q1). It will obviously influence how people view the data.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
Hopefully we have now discussed the etymology of the phrase enough for you to understand its meaning though.
I understand its etymology but it is a meaningless phrase.
Give me a current day usage to help me (ie not involving actual gaslights).
I also struggle with it and with 'meme'.
S'OK - @OnlyLivingBoy is going to clear matters up for us.
Trouble is I learn them, don't use them, then when they appear again I have to look them up again even though I know their origins!!!! They just don't feel natural to me. I don't want to think of the source to think what they mean.
On the other hand maybe it is age cos I have no issue with Catch 22.
I generally like words and expressions that can be traced back to works of fiction. For example the Bible and Shakespeare have given us quite a lot, but also Lewis Caroll and Orwell - though sadly "Big Brother" makes people think of something else these days (hopefully temporarily).
Of course Gaslight was published before Catch-22. The literary origin is one reason why I like the phrase Gaslight, Patrick Hamilton is one of my favourite novelists.
Haven't read Patrick Hamilton, what would you recommend?
I'm a bit disappointed nobody took me up on the Bible being a work of fiction - maybe that is finally something we can all agree on?
The bible is not a work of anything at all. It is a compilation by various committees of different books from different places about different things. That is why its chapters are denoted Book of XXX.
I once tried to explain to a Sheriff who objected to the use of the word "bible" in the context of a SPA and associated paperwork that the word simply meant a compilation of books. I am not sure that it helped my cause much.
Doing my articles, we always created bibles to record transactions.
In response to the original point, I doubt if any Christian would dispute that parts of the Bible are fiction, as well as philosophy, law, history, poetry etc.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
I think the missing piece, which would perhaps make it more clear to you, is the element of power or control necessary in the relationship.
In the case of, for example, an individual confronting a bureaucracy which simply refuses to acknowledge what it has done, then the term can be quite apt. I'm pretty sure some of the sub postmasters who fell victim to the Post Office accounting debacle began to doubt their own sanity at times.
It is undoubtedly abusive or corrupt or inept behaviour but calling it "gaslighting" doesn't help clarity.
Say you and I were in a relationship (I know, hard to believe, you don't seem my type, but let's suspend disbelief). You start to feel like you are left to do all the housework, and confront me about it. I know that you are right, I am a lazy shit and waste my time arguing with right wing loons on the internet instead of ever doing anything useful. But instead of saying Yes, you are right, I will try to pull my weight more in the future, I lie and tell you that I actually cleaned the house when you were out. Didn't you notice? That's typical, whenever I do anything to help you don't even notice it, you're just a stupid nag. You think, wow maybe he's right, come to think of it maybe the house did look a bit cleaner on Thursday, I must have just not really noticed, I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm so stupid. That is gaslighting. Hope that helps.
Yes I see. But I also see no need for a whole new word to describe it.
How is it used in political discourse if at all?
It's overused. People seem to use it to suggest their opponent doesn't mean what they say they mean, which can be true sometimes, but conveniently means that you can claim your opponent is opposing you for sinister reasons to try to confuse reality rather than just because they oppose you.
Yes, just like virtue signalling is overused to claim people are saying things because they want to look good not because they actually believe them. Lots of phrases are misused or weaponised as rhetorical devices in political discourse, but that doesn't make them invalid or useless concepts.
I didn't say it was useless or invalid, I said overused.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
It’s not “You did X. No I didn’t do X”
It’s “You did X. X never happened”
In this case the message isn’t that he’s shirking his responsibility for child care, it’s that he has no responsibility for child care. The gaslighting is the process of convincing her that him having no responsibility for childcare is the normal state of affairs.
US stock markets poised for a strong open after US jobs data looked better than expected.
Fantastic for my oil investments.
Maybe not so good for Biden investments though
Sounding a bit like a Trumpster there, @contrarian
Not really a supporter, just putting the other side of the argument. As usual!
I was joking. However, there has been a slew of positive data in the past few days - upwards jobs revision for May, consumer confidence growth, stock markets past quarter in a long time (from the shocks of Q1). It will obviously influence how people view the data.
When you look at what a dreadful candidate Biden is my theory is that some of the stuffing in his poll lead is just American grumpiness. Why wouldn't Americans be extremely grumpy, after all? joblessness there means very meagre welfare and no health insurance. And there is a lot of joblessness.
Yes, that looks like pretty naked racism. I can't work out whether he's drunk and misspoke, or he's trying (and failing) to do his provocative shtick, or its just real racism emerging in some peculiarly offhand way.
I fear the last.
Mr Grimes needs to distance himself, in short order
A generous interpretation is that he placed his 'damn' in the wrong place when blurting out his sentence. Had he said '... otherwise, damn, there wouldn't be ..' then he'd be cursing a particular notion be believes foolish instead of a subset of humanity. Dunno.
That is generous. Perhaps it is the truth. I doubt he will get the benefit of the doubt, for the reasons theuniondivvie offers: the entire argument was off-colour and phrased offensively.
I imagine his media appearances are over.
I think in his own head what was happening was "intellectually gifted and super knowledgeable giant in the field tells it like it is without fear or favour and to hell with political correctness when it comes to language."
But now (as you say) he will most likely be cancelled as regards current affairs punditry and people will have to find a way of making such programmes without him.
I think his books and previous TV docs will live on though.
There's been a rare right > left cancellation today, as well
A right-on BLM Harvard girl made a fairly provocative video saying she would stab anyone who said "All Lives Matter", and happily watch them die.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
Attempts to make out the triangle trade was genocide (some other forms of slavery arguably have been closer), as if simply slavery=bad is not enough, is diminishing what actually happened. Slavery doesn't have to be genocide to be something horrific that should never happen again.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
I think that, like the individual crime of murder, there is a necessity for intent when declaring something to be genocide.
The very large number of deaths as a result of the slave trade were caused primarily by indifference, rather than intent.
It looks like the Chinese are close to implementing a policy of genocide on the Uighurs, because the intent appears to be to bring about a China without Uighurs.
I don't know if there's a word for the manslaughter equivalent of genocide though.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
Cameron needed LD support to form a government in 2010 and Starmer will almost certainly need LD support to form a government after the next general election
Then it´s time you people started being nice to the Lib Dems, isn´t it?
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
It’s not “You did X. No I didn’t do X”
It’s “You did X. X never happened”
In this case the message isn’t that he’s shirking his responsibility for child care, it’s that he has no responsibility for child care. The gaslighting is the process of convincing her that him having no responsibility for childcare is the normal state of affairs.
I get the concept but unless you are in the box with the cat husband and wife it is meaningless because no one knows who did what or what happened.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
Attempts to make out slavery was genocide, as if simply slavery=bad is not enough, is diminishing what actually happened. Slavery doesn't have to be genocide to be something horrific that should never happen again.
Yes, it's a kind of distraction, even a diversion.
Slavery is a uniquely awful form of human evil: treating other humans as objects, possessions, or animals, to be bought, sold, bred and abused.
It stands alone in its scale and horror. It should be seen as such.
Yes, that looks like pretty naked racism. I can't work out whether he's drunk and misspoke, or he's trying (and failing) to do his provocative shtick, or its just real racism emerging in some peculiarly offhand way.
I fear the last.
Mr Grimes needs to distance himself, in short order
A generous interpretation is that he placed his 'damn' in the wrong place when blurting out his sentence. Had he said '... otherwise, damn, there wouldn't be ..' then he'd be cursing a particular notion be believes foolish instead of a subset of humanity. Dunno.
That is generous. Perhaps it is the truth. I doubt he will get the benefit of the doubt, for the reasons theuniondivvie offers: the entire argument was off-colour and phrased offensively.
I imagine his media appearances are over.
I think in his own head what was happening was "intellectually gifted and super knowledgeable giant in the field tells it like it is without fear or favour and to hell with political correctness when it comes to language."
But now (as you say) he will most likely be cancelled as regards current affairs punditry and people will have to find a way of making such programmes without him.
I think his books and previous TV docs will live on though.
There's been a rare right > left cancellation today, as well
A right-on BLM Harvard girl made a fairly provocative video saying she would stab anyone who said "All Lives Matter", and happily watch them die.
There you go. Goose. Gander. Cancellation in this sense (job loss) is rare and when it happens is usually for good reason, e.g. hate speech. The reason there's more sanction against the Right is because the Right do more of it.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
The fact people survived isn't relevant to the question. That's a hole Starkey has fallen into. The question is whether the killing on a mass scale of a people of targeted ethnicity is sufficient to be deemed genocide, or whether there needs to be a deliberate intention to eliminate a race. Problem is the moral distinctions aren't clear. So Nazi concentration camps with gas chambers is genocide; without gas chambers it isn't. Not sure about the usefulness of that distinction.
The discussion of whether the Atlantic slave trade was genocide is simply an argument over the definition of the word genocide. If you want to define genocide that widely, then it was.
However, it's not helpful to extend the definition in that way, since it simply makes the word less precise. Why twist a word to fit when we already have a perfectly clear and well-understood phrase which describes the horror more specifically?
Yes, that looks like pretty naked racism. I can't work out whether he's drunk and misspoke, or he's trying (and failing) to do his provocative shtick, or its just real racism emerging in some peculiarly offhand way.
I fear the last.
Mr Grimes needs to distance himself, in short order
A generous interpretation is that he placed his 'damn' in the wrong place when blurting out his sentence. Had he said '... otherwise, damn, there wouldn't be ..' then he'd be cursing a particular notion be believes foolish instead of a subset of humanity. Dunno.
That is generous. Perhaps it is the truth. I doubt he will get the benefit of the doubt, for the reasons theuniondivvie offers: the entire argument was off-colour and phrased offensively.
I imagine his media appearances are over.
I think in his own head what was happening was "intellectually gifted and super knowledgeable giant in the field tells it like it is without fear or favour and to hell with political correctness when it comes to language."
But now (as you say) he will most likely be cancelled as regards current affairs punditry and people will have to find a way of making such programmes without him.
I think his books and previous TV docs will live on though.
There's been a rare right > left cancellation today, as well
A right-on BLM Harvard girl made a fairly provocative video saying she would stab anyone who said "All Lives Matter", and happily watch them die.
Yes, that looks like pretty naked racism. I can't work out whether he's drunk and misspoke, or he's trying (and failing) to do his provocative shtick, or its just real racism emerging in some peculiarly offhand way.
I fear the last.
Mr Grimes needs to distance himself, in short order
A generous interpretation is that he placed his 'damn' in the wrong place when blurting out his sentence. Had he said '... otherwise, damn, there wouldn't be ..' then he'd be cursing a particular notion be believes foolish instead of a subset of humanity. Dunno.
That is generous. Perhaps it is the truth. I doubt he will get the benefit of the doubt, for the reasons theuniondivvie offers: the entire argument was off-colour and phrased offensively.
I imagine his media appearances are over.
I think in his own head what was happening was "intellectually gifted and super knowledgeable giant in the field tells it like it is without fear or favour and to hell with political correctness when it comes to language."
But now (as you say) he will most likely be cancelled as regards current affairs punditry and people will have to find a way of making such programmes without him.
I think his books and previous TV docs will live on though.
There's been a rare right > left cancellation today, as well
A right-on BLM Harvard girl made a fairly provocative video saying she would stab anyone who said "All Lives Matter", and happily watch them die.
There you go. Goose. Gander. Cancellation in this sense (job loss) is rare and when it happens is usually for good reason, e.g. hate speech. The reason there's more sanction against the Right is because the Right do more of it.
"Buck Sexton" eh. Sounds a bit of a boyo.
The lesson I learn from this is more modest and true: don't do contentious identity politics on social media, and especially don't make videos of it. Ditto Starkey.
That’s an example of a good political cartoon compared to the rubbish you usually post
The cringeing obsession of remoaners with how we're perceived abroad is something akin to a mental disorder. We voted for Brexit to be an independent trading nation, with a democratically elected Government setting our own laws. I would be surprised if that rather humble aim did not eventually result in grudging respect in the counsels of the world, but if it results in interminable attempts at levity, that's fine too, I really couldn't give a toss, and neither should anyone else.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
The fact people survived isn't relevant to the question. That's a hole Starkey has fallen into. The question is whether the killing on a mass scale of a people of targeted ethnicity is sufficient to be deemed genocide, or whether there needs to be a deliberate intention to eliminate a race. Problem is the moral distinctions aren't clear. So Nazi concentration camps with gas chambers is genocide; without gas chambers it isn't. Not sure about the usefulness of that distinction.
No, it goes to motive. The objective of genocide is to kill (doesn't matter if it is all or just a significant part (cf the Balkans)). The objective of slavery is to exploit. The slave trade was horrifically exploitative, unbelievably cruel and totally immoral. But it wasn't intended to be genocide.
The best thing I can say about Boris Johnson is that he’s not a real Tory. The Prime Minister belongs instead to the popular liberal right, though he seems to get less popular by the day. His appeal to right-wing voters is based on his promise to ‘get Brexit done’ and the demented, 30-tweet-thread rage-pain he stirs in the hearts of some progressives. What these supporters have not yet but one day will have to confront is the fact that Boris is not one of them. Not on immigration, not on climate change, not on the culture wars. Anyone who can establish a substantive difference between his response to the riots and that of Sir Keir Starmer, feel free to fire in down in the comments......
....FDR drew upon grand rhetoric to sell grand ideas; Boris talks big to retail small change. The idea of reform seems to energise him but not enough to make the necessary financial outlay. He is a liberal in his head but still a conservative in his pocketbook.
But is the government plan remotely up to the task of rebuilding the post-COVID economy?
In today's money Roosevelt spent £660 billion. We're in roundings of a percentage of that territory....
No we're not, that's the media telling fibs.
Roosevelt spent £660 billion when you add all of his spending up together. Not in a single day, not in a single speech.
Yesterday's speech was £5 billion but yesterday's speech was just one single element of what the govenrment is doing. How much has the government spent when it comes to furlough? That absolutely must be included when it comes to any comparisons with Roosevelt.
As someone once said "a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money."
I think about £25bn so far
I think that understates it. I have been reading about the last year or so of the Hoover administration and the introduction of the New Deal.
The crucial mistake by Hoover was to insist upon a tightening of the money supply reducing demand in the economy. This was followed by wage cuts and the non payment of many public servants, notably teachers, as state governments literally ran out of money. In contrast the UK has quite correctly kept all the spending at normal levels and has essentially deferred tax bills in a very big way, hence the massive deficits. On one view we are over £100bn already and will be over £150bn when the numbers for June come out.
If sheer weight of money is all that is needed we are spending enough.
Total spending/tax deferral is way more. I think the last months deficits was £100bn alone
I’m fairly sure the Treasury said the other day they had spend £25.4bn in 2 months on the furlough
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
Well he's not actually making that argument at all, coherently or otherwise. Nor is he making the other argument people having been saying here about the importance of intent. His argument is that it can't be a genocide because, if it was, it'd be an unsuccessful one. Which is as nonsensical as it is vile.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
Cameron needed LD support to form a government in 2010 and Starmer will almost certainly need LD support to form a government after the next general election
SNP plus Plaid , SDLP & Green might be enough without the LDs.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
The fact people survived isn't relevant to the question. That's a hole Starkey has fallen into. The question is whether the killing on a mass scale of a people of targeted ethnicity is sufficient to be deemed genocide, or whether there needs to be a deliberate intention to eliminate a race. Problem is the moral distinctions aren't clear. So Nazi concentration camps with gas chambers is genocide; without gas chambers it isn't. Not sure about the usefulness of that distinction.
You're simply wrong. If genocide means just "killing lots of people from one group", then every war is a genocide. The First World War saw the British enacting a genocide on the Germans, while the Germans enforced a genocide on the French and the British. The Korean War was a two way genocide within the same race. The Falklands War was an attempted genocide on British sailors.
It's ridiculous. Slavery doesn't need to be pimped up with the word genocide, and the word genocide is too valuable to be watered down.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
Attempts to make out slavery was genocide, as if simply slavery=bad is not enough, is diminishing what actually happened. Slavery doesn't have to be genocide to be something horrific that should never happen again.
Yes, it's a kind of distraction, even a diversion.
Slavery is a uniquely awful form of human evil: treating other humans as objects, possessions, or animals, to be bought, sold, bred and abused.
It stands alone in its scale and horror. It should be seen as such.
True, but it is different from the attempted extermination of a race, like the holocaust. The Nazis did not want anything to do with the Jews. They just wanted them gone. Eliminated (though admittedly some were used as slave labour).
Two kinds of horrible evil. But two different kinds.
The discussion of whether the Atlantic slave trade was genocide is simply an argument over the definition of the word genocide. If you want to define genocide that widely, then it was.
However, it's not helpful to extend the definition in that way, since it simply makes the word less precise. Why twist a word to fit when we already have a perfectly clear and well-understood phrase which describes the horror more specifically?
Yes, almost as if steering the discussion into the tedious minutiae of semantics to defend an argument Starkey wasn't even making is to utterly miss the point and divert the subject away from something actually important.
That’s an example of a good political cartoon compared to the rubbish you usually post
The cringeing obsession of remoaners with how we're perceived abroad is something akin to a mental disorder. We voted for Brexit to be an independent trading nation, with a democratically elected Government setting our own laws. I would be surprised if that rather humble aim did not eventually result in grudging respect in the counsels of the world, but if it results in interminable attempts at levity, that's fine too, I really couldn't give a toss, and neither should anyone else.
Speaking as someone who spends quite a lot of time talking to assorted foreigners in the fields of finance, economics and public policy, that's really not my experience. They all think we're bonkers and have an inflated idea of the UK's international importance. The only exceptions are other Europeans who hate the EU and hope Brexit might hasten its demise.
The best thing I can say about Boris Johnson is that he’s not a real Tory. The Prime Minister belongs instead to the popular liberal right, though he seems to get less popular by the day. His appeal to right-wing voters is based on his promise to ‘get Brexit done’ and the demented, 30-tweet-thread rage-pain he stirs in the hearts of some progressives. What these supporters have not yet but one day will have to confront is the fact that Boris is not one of them. Not on immigration, not on climate change, not on the culture wars. Anyone who can establish a substantive difference between his response to the riots and that of Sir Keir Starmer, feel free to fire in down in the comments......
....FDR drew upon grand rhetoric to sell grand ideas; Boris talks big to retail small change. The idea of reform seems to energise him but not enough to make the necessary financial outlay. He is a liberal in his head but still a conservative in his pocketbook.
But is the government plan remotely up to the task of rebuilding the post-COVID economy?
In today's money Roosevelt spent £660 billion. We're in roundings of a percentage of that territory....
No we're not, that's the media telling fibs.
Roosevelt spent £660 billion when you add all of his spending up together. Not in a single day, not in a single speech.
Yesterday's speech was £5 billion but yesterday's speech was just one single element of what the govenrment is doing. How much has the government spent when it comes to furlough? That absolutely must be included when it comes to any comparisons with Roosevelt.
As someone once said "a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money."
I think about £25bn so far
I think that understates it. I have been reading about the last year or so of the Hoover administration and the introduction of the New Deal.
The crucial mistake by Hoover was to insist upon a tightening of the money supply reducing demand in the economy. This was followed by wage cuts and the non payment of many public servants, notably teachers, as state governments literally ran out of money. In contrast the UK has quite correctly kept all the spending at normal levels and has essentially deferred tax bills in a very big way, hence the massive deficits. On one view we are over £100bn already and will be over £150bn when the numbers for June come out.
If sheer weight of money is all that is needed we are spending enough.
Total spending/tax deferral is way more. I think the last months deficits was £100bn alone
I’m fairly sure the Treasury said the other day they had spend £25.4bn in 2 months on the furlough
I think it was £55bn last month (May) and will probably be similar this month (June). The deficit for the year will be up there with years of total warfare. Measuring this contribution by reference to the monies spent on individual schemes understates what is at stake for all of us and our children.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
Cameron needed LD support to form a government in 2010 and Starmer will almost certainly need LD support to form a government after the next general election
Is it that likely that Lib Dems support will make the difference between Starmer becoming PM or not?
Even if they have a very good GE there will be quite a narrow range of results where their MPs will make the difference. It's almost certain there will be more than twice as many SNP MPs as Lib Dems - there are currently more than four times as many.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
I think that, like the individual crime of murder, there is a necessity for intent when declaring something to be genocide.
The very large number of deaths as a result of the slave trade were caused primarily by indifference, rather than intent.
It looks like the Chinese are close to implementing a policy of genocide on the Uighurs, because the intent appears to be to bring about a China without Uighurs.
I don't know if there's a word for the manslaughter equivalent of genocide though.
A reasonable point, complicated by the fact you don't necessarily need to kill people, let alone intentionally kill, to ensure the destruction of a race
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
Well he's not actually making that argument at all, coherently or otherwise. Nor is he making the other argument people having been saying here about the importance of intent. His argument is that it can't be a genocide because, if it was, it'd be an unsuccessful one. Which is as nonsensical as it is vile.
Yes, you phrase it better than me. His argument is absurd and insulting, and along with the "damn", surely brings a coda to his career.
Talking of careers, now I really do have to work. Later.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
The fact people survived isn't relevant to the question. That's a hole Starkey has fallen into. The question is whether the killing on a mass scale of a people of targeted ethnicity is sufficient to be deemed genocide, or whether there needs to be a deliberate intention to eliminate a race. Problem is the moral distinctions aren't clear. So Nazi concentration camps with gas chambers is genocide; without gas chambers it isn't. Not sure about the usefulness of that distinction.
No, it goes to motive. The objective of genocide is to kill (doesn't matter if it is all or just a significant part (cf the Balkans)). The objective of slavery is to exploit. The slave trade was horrifically exploitative, unbelievably cruel and totally immoral. But it wasn't intended to be genocide.
Well said.
The only example of British colonial genocide I know of happened in Tasmania, Australia. The aboriginal population on the island were effectively wiped out.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
Well he's not actually making that argument at all, coherently or otherwise. Nor is he making the other argument people having been saying here about the importance of intent. His argument is that it can't be a genocide because, if it was, it'd be an unsuccessful one. Which is as nonsensical as it is vile.
It is oddly incendiary, and yes, a poorly made argument.
I am not fully up on genocide, but I wouldn't say 19th century slavery was one, for the reason stated above - the whole point of a slave is that they're alive.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
Attempts to make out slavery was genocide, as if simply slavery=bad is not enough, is diminishing what actually happened. Slavery doesn't have to be genocide to be something horrific that should never happen again.
Yes, it's a kind of distraction, even a diversion.
Slavery is a uniquely awful form of human evil: treating other humans as objects, possessions, or animals, to be bought, sold, bred and abused.
It stands alone in its scale and horror. It should be seen as such.
True, but it is different from the attempted extermination of a race, like the holocaust. The Nazis did not want anything to do with the Jews. They just wanted them gone. Eliminated (though admittedly some were used as slave labour).
Two kinds of horrible evil. But two different kinds.
Actually, the Nazi policy evolved from WorkThemReallyHardAsSlaves to WorkThem ToDeathAsSlaves and then to KillThem.
The first policy was then continued with groups such as Russian prisoners of war. Whose conditions and death rates resembled the worst versions of the older forms of slavery (mines were always particularly horrible for slaves)
FPT, I am glad that @RCS has joined me in thinking Virginia could be a surprise flip for the Republicans in November. He needs to be careful, he might be accused of being a Trumpster
In seriousness, I think the chances are more than expect. As RCS pointed out, Trump's satisfaction ratings are holding up relatively well there. Moreover, there has been a lot of opposition to the Governor's statements on guns and abortion and that has really fired up a lot of opposition particularly in rural areas. I pointed out the flip of a historically Democratic city council to Republicans and, while only a city council, it may highlight Republican turnout may be more motivated.
Nevada is the other state I would keep an eye on - small Clinton majority last time, signs Biden is polling worse amongst Latinos and the importance of a reopening of the economy of Las Vegas.
Re Arizona, slightly surprised re the Gravis poll, especially with McNally ahead. However, I will say it again, if you look at the Democrat share of the vote in AZ for the Presidential election, it has been remarkably stable at 44%-45% from 2000 to 2016 despite all the talk of demographic changes helping the Dems. What hit Trump's majority last time was a large peeling off of Republican votes to the Libertarians / McMullin, which may not happen this time.
There's a difference between being a Trump backer and a Trump supporter.
I asked you this and you clarified that you are both. Both a Trump backer and a Trumpton.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
Cameron needed LD support to form a government in 2010 and Starmer will almost certainly need LD support to form a government after the next general election
Then it´s time you people started being nice to the Lib Dems, isn´t it?
In 2010 it certainly appeared that Labour expected the LibDems to just sign up to 'keep the Tories out' with very little in return. If Keir has any sense, which he might have, he should 'war game' the scenario and see what can be offered - if the Labour party will let him, which they won't.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
Cameron needed LD support to form a government in 2010 and Starmer will almost certainly need LD support to form a government after the next general election
SNP plus Plaid , SDLP & Green might be enough without the LDs.
The discussion of whether the Atlantic slave trade was genocide is simply an argument over the definition of the word genocide. If you want to define genocide that widely, then it was.
However, it's not helpful to extend the definition in that way, since it simply makes the word less precise. Why twist a word to fit when we already have a perfectly clear and well-understood phrase which describes the horror more specifically?
As genocide was defined only after WW2, the argument is somewhat moot.
But the transatlantic slave trade probably falls within the UN definition, which is, in the literal sense, definitive.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
Cameron needed LD support to form a government in 2010 and Starmer will almost certainly need LD support to form a government after the next general election
SNP plus Plaid , SDLP & Green might be enough without the LDs.
Starmer would prefer to deal with the LDs than the SNP if he has the choice, it may be he needs both the SNP and LDs anyway
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
The fact people survived isn't relevant to the question. That's a hole Starkey has fallen into. The question is whether the killing on a mass scale of a people of targeted ethnicity is sufficient to be deemed genocide, or whether there needs to be a deliberate intention to eliminate a race. Problem is the moral distinctions aren't clear. So Nazi concentration camps with gas chambers is genocide; without gas chambers it isn't. Not sure about the usefulness of that distinction.
I thought it was quite clear that the Nazis were engaged in genocide before the gas chambers - they had formed death squads to eliminate Jews, they were meticulous about counting Jews in territory they conquered for the purpose of eliminating them, etc.
The gas chambers came later because they were more efficient at killing large numbers than using bullets and firing squads. This is a difference in degree, but intent.
The discussion of whether the Atlantic slave trade was genocide is simply an argument over the definition of the word genocide. If you want to define genocide that widely, then it was.
However, it's not helpful to extend the definition in that way, since it simply makes the word less precise. Why twist a word to fit when we already have a perfectly clear and well-understood phrase which describes the horror more specifically?
As genocide was defined only after WW2, the argument is somewhat moot.
But the transatlantic slave trade probably falls within the UN definition, which is, in the literal sense, definitive.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
That definition shows that the Atlantic slave trade wasn't genocide. There was no 'intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'. [Or at least, there was no such intent amongst the Europeans involved. Not sure about the African tribes doing much of the enslaving - they might have had such intent.]
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
Cameron needed LD support to form a government in 2010 and Starmer will almost certainly need LD support to form a government after the next general election
Then it´s time you people started being nice to the Lib Dems, isn´t it?
I think most Tory MPs would rather go into opposition than have to form another government with the LDs on a BINO basis, they would leave Starmer to govern with the LDs and/or SNP and look to form a strong opposition
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
The fact people survived isn't relevant to the question. That's a hole Starkey has fallen into. The question is whether the killing on a mass scale of a people of targeted ethnicity is sufficient to be deemed genocide, or whether there needs to be a deliberate intention to eliminate a race. Problem is the moral distinctions aren't clear. So Nazi concentration camps with gas chambers is genocide; without gas chambers it isn't. Not sure about the usefulness of that distinction.
You're simply wrong. If genocide means just "killing lots of people from one group", then every war is a genocide. The First World War saw the British enacting a genocide on the Germans, while the Germans enforced a genocide on the French and the British. The Korean War was a two way genocide within the same race. The Falklands War was a genocide perpetrated on the Falkland islanders.
It's ridiculous. Slavery doesn't need to be pimped up with the word genocide, and the word genocide is too valuable to be watered down.
I am not equating the First World War deaths with the slave trade or Nazi concentration camps. Definitions mean whatever we intend them to mean, but they need to be useful and make useful distinctions between what's included and what isn't. I'm not saying yours, and presumably Starkey's, definition of genocide is wrong, but it is a narrow one. I am not sure in terms of moral equivalence it's the most useful one. Precisely, the horrors of the UK slave trade weren't a watering down of anything.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
Cameron needed LD support to form a government in 2010 and Starmer will almost certainly need LD support to form a government after the next general election
Is it that likely that Lib Dems support will make the difference between Starmer becoming PM or not?
Even if they have a very good GE there will be quite a narrow range of results where their MPs will make the difference. It's almost certain there will be more than twice as many SNP MPs as Lib Dems - there are currently more than four times as many.
No, HYUFD is wrong.
If the Lib Dems still had approximately 50 seats they could have been kingmakers but the likelihood is they'll struggle to get even half of that. The odds of the Lib Dems being in a kingmaker decision are very slim - if anything they might be in a position where they simply need to be bought off like the DUP in 2017.
The discussion of whether the Atlantic slave trade was genocide is simply an argument over the definition of the word genocide. If you want to define genocide that widely, then it was.
However, it's not helpful to extend the definition in that way, since it simply makes the word less precise. Why twist a word to fit when we already have a perfectly clear and well-understood phrase which describes the horror more specifically?
As genocide was defined only after WW2, the argument is somewhat moot.
But the transatlantic slave trade probably falls within the UN definition, which is, in the literal sense, definitive.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
That definition shows that the Atlantic slave trade wasn't genocide. There was no 'intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'. [Or at least, there was no such intent amongst the Europeans involved. Not sure about the African tribes doing the enslaving - they might have had such intent.]
Exactly slavery is an evil in its own right without calling it something its not.
News Flash - Our Fearless Leader now giving press conference at White House touting latest economic numbers.
Hoobert Hever lives again! Seizing upon any glimmer of good news in a sea of ill tidings, trying to convince and persuade and cajole and brainwash voters that things are improving, that his "leadership" is working, that he's MAGA despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
In 1928 Americans elected "the Great Engineer" by a landslide, to keep prosperity rolling along. In 2016 the elected the "expert" in "Art of the Deal" to drain the swamp.
Four years later in 1935 in the depths of the Great Depression they threw Hoover out; because of his failure on his own terms and despite - or rather because of - his constant flow of empty words.
The discussion of whether the Atlantic slave trade was genocide is simply an argument over the definition of the word genocide. If you want to define genocide that widely, then it was.
However, it's not helpful to extend the definition in that way, since it simply makes the word less precise. Why twist a word to fit when we already have a perfectly clear and well-understood phrase which describes the horror more specifically?
As genocide was defined only after WW2, the argument is somewhat moot.
But the transatlantic slave trade probably falls within the UN definition, which is, in the literal sense, definitive.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
That definition shows that the Atlantic slave trade wasn't genocide. There was no 'intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'. [Or at least, there was no such intent amongst the Europeans involved. Not sure about the African tribes doing the enslaving - they might have had such intent.]
I agree that the intent part of the definition (which is what distinguishes genocide), is arguable.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
Cameron needed LD support to form a government in 2010 and Starmer will almost certainly need LD support to form a government after the next general election
Is it that likely that Lib Dems support will make the difference between Starmer becoming PM or not?
Even if they have a very good GE there will be quite a narrow range of results where their MPs will make the difference. It's almost certain there will be more than twice as many SNP MPs as Lib Dems - there are currently more than four times as many.
No, HYUFD is wrong.
If the Lib Dems still had approximately 50 seats they could have been kingmakers but the likelihood is they'll struggle to get even half of that. The odds of the Lib Dems being in a kingmaker decision are very slim - if anything they might be in a position where they simply need to be bought off like the DUP in 2017.
It is quite possible the LDs could get to 30 plus seats next time, with a few gains in Scotland and 70 in England Starmer could then form a government with LD support and exclude the SNP
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
The fact people survived isn't relevant to the question. That's a hole Starkey has fallen into. The question is whether the killing on a mass scale of a people of targeted ethnicity is sufficient to be deemed genocide, or whether there needs to be a deliberate intention to eliminate a race. Problem is the moral distinctions aren't clear. So Nazi concentration camps with gas chambers is genocide; without gas chambers it isn't. Not sure about the usefulness of that distinction.
I thought it was quite clear that the Nazis were engaged in genocide before the gas chambers - they had formed death squads to eliminate Jews, they were meticulous about counting Jews in territory they conquered for the purpose of eliminating them, etc.
The gas chambers came later because they were more efficient at killing large numbers than using bullets and firing squads. This is a difference in degree, but intent.
The German economy of 1930s was a slave economy. The concentration camps were a key part of that. The government was completely indifferent to who survived and who didn't - plenty more where they came from. But they did need those people to survive for a while to be productive. In that sense no different from the owners and traders of the UK slave trade.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
Attempts to make out slavery was genocide, as if simply slavery=bad is not enough, is diminishing what actually happened. Slavery doesn't have to be genocide to be something horrific that should never happen again.
Yes, it's a kind of distraction, even a diversion.
Slavery is a uniquely awful form of human evil: treating other humans as objects, possessions, or animals, to be bought, sold, bred and abused.
It stands alone in its scale and horror. It should be seen as such.
True, but it is different from the attempted extermination of a race, like the holocaust. The Nazis did not want anything to do with the Jews. They just wanted them gone. Eliminated (though admittedly some were used as slave labour).
Two kinds of horrible evil. But two different kinds.
Actually, the Nazi policy evolved from WorkThemReallyHardAsSlaves to WorkThem ToDeathAsSlaves and then to KillThem.
The first policy was then continued with groups such as Russian prisoners of war. Whose conditions and death rates resembled the worst versions of the older forms of slavery (mines were always particularly horrible for slaves)
Hitler's policy was ALWAYS to rid the earth of the Jewish people. Any seeming evolution was strictly tactical.
News Flash - Our Fearless Leader now giving press conference at White House touting latest economic numbers.
Hoobert Hever lives again! Seizing upon any glimmer of good news in a sea of ill tidings, trying to convince and persuade and cajole and brainwash voters that things are improving, that his "leadership" is working, that he's MAGA despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
In 1928 Americans elected "the Great Engineer" by a landslide, to keep prosperity rolling along. In 2016 the elected the "expert" in "Art of the Deal" to drain the swamp.
Four years later in 1935 in the depths of the Great Depression they threw Hoover out; because of his failure on his own terms and despite - or rather because of - his constant flow of empty words.
And in 2020 . . . you get the picture.
The rise in the stock market suggests Trump isn't the only one who believes things are getting better.
Will 'X wasn't genocide cos it only killed 6 million of Y, and how do we know it was 6 million anyway' be Starkey's next schtick?
Is Starkey gaslighting people who believe the Atlantic slave trade was one of the great crimes of the modern age?
Yes, the whole statement is bizarre, quite apart from the hideous cuss word "damn".
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I think a slave trade that lead to millions, maybe tens of millions, of deaths of Africans, can reasonably be described as a genocide
No. A genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people from one ethnic group, or an attempt to kill them all".
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
Attempts to make out slavery was genocide, as if simply slavery=bad is not enough, is diminishing what actually happened. Slavery doesn't have to be genocide to be something horrific that should never happen again.
Yes, it's a kind of distraction, even a diversion.
Slavery is a uniquely awful form of human evil: treating other humans as objects, possessions, or animals, to be bought, sold, bred and abused.
It stands alone in its scale and horror. It should be seen as such.
True, but it is different from the attempted extermination of a race, like the holocaust. The Nazis did not want anything to do with the Jews. They just wanted them gone. Eliminated (though admittedly some were used as slave labour).
Two kinds of horrible evil. But two different kinds.
Actually, the Nazi policy evolved from WorkThemReallyHardAsSlaves to WorkThem ToDeathAsSlaves and then to KillThem.
The first policy was then continued with groups such as Russian prisoners of war. Whose conditions and death rates resembled the worst versions of the older forms of slavery (mines were always particularly horrible for slaves)
Hitler's policy was ALWAYS to rid the earth of the Jewish people. Any seeming evolution was strictly tactical.
I'm not sure that's true. The Nazis really did consider shipping all the Jews to Madagascar, for instance. Or Siberia.
What Hitler wanted, at first, was a Europe that was "Judenrein" - "free of Jews". This didn't necessarily mean killing them all, just moving them far far away.
It was at the Wannsee Conference that this policy crystallised into the Final Solution.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Aue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories sc
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Libho was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
The Tories didn't lay traps. I didn't say they did.
The Tories took credit for the good ideas - and the Lib Dems let them do so.
All governments take credit for what goes right - and take the flak for what goes wrong, that's the nature of politics. But the Lib Dems abdicated taking responsibility for the 2010-15 government. The Lib Dems looked abashed at what was going on rather than proudly standing up and saying "look at this, this is us". That's on them not the Tories.
After five years of government what were Clegg and his MPs shouting that were their big achievements? Frankly the only thing I remember the Lib Dems coming up with during that time that they proudly shouted as their own was the 5p bag charge - which may have been a good environmental idea but was that a good legacy for five years in office?
The Lib Dems were buggered by the 2010 election result. The Conservatives fell just short of the number of seats they needed to govern on their own (which doesn't need to be an overall majority). They needed a coalition partner. The Lib Dems could have let the Conservatives form a minority government, but sooner or later, it would have called an election, which it would have won.
The Lib Dems could, technically, have formed a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Plaid, and the SDLP to keep out the Tories, but it would have fallen apart eventually, and the Conservatives would have won a crushing majority.
What they needed was for the Conservatives to win enough seats to form a government on their own, leaving them in the position of not having to pick a side - every politician's worst nightmare.
Cameron needed LD support to form a government in 2010 and Starmer will almost certainly need LD support to form a government after the next general election
Is it that likely that Lib Dems support will make the difference between Starmer becoming PM or not?
Even if they have a very good GE there will be quite a narrow range of results where their MPs will make the difference. It's almost certain there will be more than twice as many SNP MPs as Lib Dems - there are currently more than four times as many.
No, HYUFD is wrong.
If the Lib Dems still had approximately 50 seats they could have been kingmakers but the likelihood is they'll struggle to get even half of that. The odds of the Lib Dems being in a kingmaker decision are very slim - if anything they might be in a position where they simply need to be bought off like the DUP in 2017.
It is quite possible the LDs could get to 30 plus seats next time, with a few gains in Scotland and 70 in England Starmer could then form a government with LD support and exclude the SNP
FPTP makes the seat numbers a bit of a lottery, but the LibDems do well when there is a Tory government with a non-scary Labour leader. There is plenty of scope for The Tories to become unpopular, their handling of Covid-19 has taken the shine off (including DominicGate) and we have the reality of Brexit to look forward to next year.
Comments
There is a good argument that slavery was and is a grotesque stain on human civilisation, but has never been a genocide, as such: slaves have been taken from all human races, by all other human races. But he makes it in the most slapdash and incoherent way.
Did he have a stiff pre-lunch lockdown gin and tonic?
I imagine his media appearances are over.
Perhaps there were too many people in the room who were originally involved in writing that official plan?
Having said that, the only reason that such a plan will end up looking bad is if a vaccine becomes available much sooner than could have been anticipated only a few years ago.
Britain's all powerful navy stamped out slavery after it was abolished here It would have been far more widespread if it weren't for the RN.
Britain tore itself apart over the morals of slavery from 1760 up until its abolition.
Headline : 35
7 Days: 28
Yesterday: 2
As ever, last 3-5 days are provisional and will be revised upward over time. Last 5 days included for completeness.
Or not.. thankfully
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7575255/PICTURED-Descendants-Taino-Native-Americans-declared-extinct.html
Nevertheless still an incorrectly high bar.
Somewhat ironically the triangle trade prevented genocide, since had people like the Ashanti Empire not had buyers for captured slaves to they would have simply massacred their enemies wholesale. History is messy.
Mind you, I got called a racist, just yesterday for pointing out what China is doing in Africa.
Austerity is a stupid word? That is a great and beautifully timed (!) example of the point I was making in my post of 11.33.
Starkey's always been entranced by the sound of his own voice saying controversial things. Trouble is by the law of diminishing returns you've always got to be a little more outré each time.
It is Darren Grimes, therefore, who should be worried. He's clever and with a promising career ahead of him: a young rightwing articulate Brexiteer gay working class white lad. He's probably the ONLY ONE of them, so he will get endless TV invites, as he ticks all the boxes.
But he needs to distance himself.
It was not however, unique.
Clear ramp up in last few years
Slavery was never that. It was explicitly not that: they wanted the slaves alive so they could work. The many, many deaths were an unfortunate loss of valuable goods.
I am not in any way diminishing the horror of slavery. There is an argument to say that slavery is the greatest crime humans have done to other humans, taken in toto. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaved over the centuries.
But genocide is an important and powerful word and we shouldn't weaken it by using it too liberally.
But now (as you say) he will most likely be cancelled as regards current affairs punditry and people will have to find a way of making such programmes without him.
I think his books and previous TV docs will live on though.
In response to the original point, I doubt if any Christian would dispute that parts of the Bible are fiction, as well as philosophy, law, history, poetry etc.
It’s “You did X. X never happened”
In this case the message isn’t that he’s shirking his responsibility for child care, it’s that he has no responsibility for child care. The gaslighting is the process of convincing her that him having no responsibility for childcare is the normal state of affairs.
Would a fast recovery change the game? who knows.
A right-on BLM Harvard girl made a fairly provocative video saying she would stab anyone who said "All Lives Matter", and happily watch them die.
She's now lost her job and she's crying.
https://twitter.com/Never_Again_UK_/status/1278481409968128000?s=20
The very large number of deaths as a result of the slave trade were caused primarily by indifference, rather than intent.
It looks like the Chinese are close to implementing a policy of genocide on the Uighurs, because the intent appears to be to bring about a China without Uighurs.
I don't know if there's a word for the manslaughter equivalent of genocide though.
“We had a long discussion during which he reached the conclusion he should resign”
cathusband and wife it is meaningless because no one knows who did what or what happened.At least we all know what gaslighting means now.
"We had a long discussion during which Dom concluded I could keep my job. For now."
Slavery is a uniquely awful form of human evil: treating other humans as objects, possessions, or animals, to be bought, sold, bred and abused.
It stands alone in its scale and horror. It should be seen as such.
"Buck Sexton" eh. Sounds a bit of a boyo.
However, it's not helpful to extend the definition in that way, since it simply makes the word less precise. Why twist a word to fit when we already have a perfectly clear and well-understood phrase which describes the horror more specifically?
Of the 10 listed council areas last week above 30 pillar 1+2 cases per 100k, the following has happened:
Remained above 45: Bradford, Leicester
Reduced from above 45 to 30-45: Rochdale, Barnsley
Remained within 30-45 band: Oldham
Dropped below 30: Blackburn, Tameside, Kirklees, Rotherham, Bedford
No authorities have gone above 30.
And now, to work.
I’m fairly sure the Treasury said the other day they had spend £25.4bn in 2 months on the furlough
It's ridiculous. Slavery doesn't need to be pimped up with the word genocide, and the word genocide is too valuable to be watered down.
Two kinds of horrible evil. But two different kinds.
The only exceptions are other Europeans who hate the EU and hope Brexit might hasten its demise.
Even if they have a very good GE there will be quite a narrow range of results where their MPs will make the difference. It's almost certain there will be more than twice as many SNP MPs as Lib Dems - there are currently more than four times as many.
Talking of careers, now I really do have to work. Later.
The only example of British colonial genocide I know of happened in Tasmania, Australia. The aboriginal population on the island were effectively wiped out.
It is oddly incendiary, and yes, a poorly made argument.
I am not fully up on genocide, but I wouldn't say 19th century slavery was one, for the reason stated above - the whole point of a slave is that they're alive.
The first policy was then continued with groups such as Russian prisoners of war. Whose conditions and death rates resembled the worst versions of the older forms of slavery (mines were always particularly horrible for slaves)
I asked you this and you clarified that you are both. Both a Trump backer and a Trumpton.
If Keir has any sense, which he might have, he should 'war game' the scenario and see what can be offered - if the Labour party will let him, which they won't.
But the transatlantic slave trade probably falls within the UN definition, which is, in the literal sense, definitive.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The gas chambers came later because they were more efficient at killing large numbers than using bullets and firing squads. This is a difference in degree, but intent.
If the Lib Dems still had approximately 50 seats they could have been kingmakers but the likelihood is they'll struggle to get even half of that. The odds of the Lib Dems being in a kingmaker decision are very slim - if anything they might be in a position where they simply need to be bought off like the DUP in 2017.
https://twitter.com/AP/status/1278686132172193801?s=20
Hoobert Hever lives again! Seizing upon any glimmer of good news in a sea of ill tidings, trying to convince and persuade and cajole and brainwash voters that things are improving, that his "leadership" is working, that he's MAGA despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
In 1928 Americans elected "the Great Engineer" by a landslide, to keep prosperity rolling along. In 2016 the elected the "expert" in "Art of the Deal" to drain the swamp.
Four years later in 1935 in the depths of the Great Depression they threw Hoover out; because of his failure on his own terms and despite - or rather because of - his constant flow of empty words.
And in 2020 . . . you get the picture.
Curiouser and curiouser.
They won't be able to get away with another "hey, look, squirrel, oh she's committed suicide, never mind", so presumably she will go to trial.
That will be explosive, unless she does some plea bargain.
What Hitler wanted, at first, was a Europe that was "Judenrein" - "free of Jews". This didn't necessarily mean killing them all, just moving them far far away.
It was at the Wannsee Conference that this policy crystallised into the Final Solution.
He was not widely liked or admired. Have watched his rise to TV stardom in a bewildered state.
https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1278677098681577472
There is plenty of scope for The Tories to become unpopular, their handling of Covid-19 has taken the shine off (including DominicGate) and we have the reality of Brexit to look forward to next year.