"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Are there any Tories here who would consider voting Labour, particularly those that voted New Labour once upon a time? What will Labour have to do to win your vote
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Meanwhile, in "maybe the government does need help with its comms" news, this is the latest on masks in schools.
The policy is now that they're compulsory in lockdown areas, and optional elsewhere. The other important thing to note is that Jonathan Simons is a director at Public First, the consultants that the Cabinet Office keep giving emergency contracts to.
For those who still think this whole Proms row was confected a BBC producer writes..
Yes, as I said, it feels like the BBC is being run by Tory sleeper agents. No one could be this tone deaf.
The anger in the over 75's over the licence fee and now this totally unnecessary barney over the proms just hastens the move to a subscription service for the BBC
Indeed, totally unnecessary. This appears to be just cynical bollocks from Boris et al, which you’ve fallen for, Big_G.
I did not fall for it, I agree with him and it's time the BBC licence fee was abolished
This garbage ? Responding to the news of this year's changes, Mr Johnson told reporters: "I cannot believe... that the BBC is saying that they will not sing the words of Land Of Hope And Glory or Rule Britannia! as they traditionally do at the end of The Last Night of The Proms. "I think it's time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, and about our culture, and we stopped this general fight of self-recrimination and wetness. "I wanted to get that off my chest," he added.
The BBC does not, and never has “sung the lyrics”. That would be the audience. Which is not going to be there this year.
As per the BBC - "For the avoidance of any doubt, these songs will be sung next year. We obviously share the disappointment of everyone that the Proms will have to be different but believe this is the best solution in the circumstances and look forward to their traditional return next year."
Can you clarify just what it is that you agree with the bluffing bullshitter about ?
Its not just the audience, they normally have a soprano there singing it.
This was last year, a mezzo-soprano singing on the stage while waving a flag. Very fun.
The idea there's no singers on the stage . . . have you ever even watched the Proms? Maybe you should familiarise yourself with what is being discussed before joining the conversation.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
it was simply the language to another poster, not the content of the argument
Are there any Tories here who would consider voting Labour, particularly those that voted New Labour once upon a time? What will Labour have to do to win your vote
I voted for Blair (as HYUFD keeps reminding me) so not impossible but Starmer has a long way to go yet.
I truely have no idea who I will vote for in 2024, and at my age I may just be pleased to be able to vote then anyway
I genuinely couldn't give a toss about this issue, I would be a don't know/don't care on the YouGov poll, The Proms isn't my thing at all
If you're ever in London in Summer, definitely go. Top notch performances, friendly crowd. Mostly totally unlike the Last Night. It's a lovely way to spend a summer evening.
On one evening I went to hear The Vienna Philharmonic play in London at The Proms. I joined an enormous queue about 3 hours before kick off, and was one of the last ten to get in. This was in the days before podcasts and on demand iplayers.
I have been to some wonderful Prom concerts at The Royal Albert Hall. The BBC radio coverage is almost consistently good, though I feel that the TV coverage is hampered by celebrity presenters.
It is a great way to discover classical music.
Tomorrow evening Radio 3 is repeating the 1987 Bernstein Mahler 5 with the VPO. I remember hearing that on the radio first time round. Justly regarded as one of the greatest proms of all time.
Thanks for the tip off.
One year I managed to get a ticket for the VPO at The Proms, was offered very silly money by touts, it was 8x face value, Heaven knows what the resale price would have been.
The Last Night can be a trial, some of the in jokes from the season ticket holders turn into tedious grandstanding. It can be great fun, if you are with friends.
Are there any Tories here who would consider voting Labour, particularly those that voted New Labour once upon a time? What will Labour have to do to win your vote
I voted for Blair (as HYUFD keeps reminding me) so not impossible but Starmer has a long way to go yet.
I truely have no idea who I will vote for in 2024, and at my age I may just be pleased to be able to vote then anyway
Don't even say things like that G, you'll outlive us all
I think there's a constituency of thinking in the BBC that thinks to shed it's old audience and gain a younger (more diverse) one it has to actively signal against the values of the old one in order to get down with da kidz.
It's bats. They'll end up losing the older one (and the consensus for the licence fee) whilst gaining none of the younger one, who'll feel patronised and just laugh at them.
And everyone will switch to Netflix and Prime.
I suspect that the BBC's share of young peoples viewing is absolutely dire. Even a year or two ago Netflix had overtaken ALL BBC output combined for the young. YouTube can't be far behind, and I wouldn't even be surprised if Disney+ is beating the BBC amongst child viewers right now. A telly tax for something that has essentially already died for the next generation of viewers is simply not going to work.
Yeah, we just dumped live TV after realising we don't watch it at all and getting the cheap NowTV sports subscription deal. Now we don't pay the licence fee. I don't care to pay BT for sports just for Champions League matches, I'll just catch the goals/highlights on Reddit. Netflix, Prime (which I have for deliveries rather than content), D+ and NowTV sports pretty much covers everything we watch. If Britbox becomes any good it might also be worth a fiver a month, but so far I'm not convinced.
We don't watch that much live TV but we have a Sky Q contract. Two Sky Q boxes which have the full Sky, Netflix and Disney+ packages on one box, its a fantastic piece of kit. Series link shows that we watch, mainly from Sky Witness or Sky Atlantic, but only because its convenient to do so we don't watch them live much.
Technically though even if you dump live TV but watch live TV sport via Now TV the law says you must pay for a licence fee. That is insane.
Are there any Tories here who would consider voting Labour, particularly those that voted New Labour once upon a time? What will Labour have to do to win your vote
If Boris is still PM then it's all to play for in terms of my vote for Labour. However, if they're winning my vote then I expect they've lost 5 on the left so it's probably not worth it for them to try.
Are there any Tories here who would consider voting Labour, particularly those that voted New Labour once upon a time? What will Labour have to do to win your vote
I voted for Blair (as HYUFD keeps reminding me) so not impossible but Starmer has a long way to go yet.
I truely have no idea who I will vote for in 2024, and at my age I may just be pleased to be able to vote then anyway
Don't even say things like that G, you'll outlive us all
Are there any Tories here who would consider voting Labour, particularly those that voted New Labour once upon a time? What will Labour have to do to win your vote
I voted for Blair (as HYUFD keeps reminding me) so not impossible but Starmer has a long way to go yet.
I truely have no idea who I will vote for in 2024, and at my age I may just be pleased to be able to vote then anyway
Don't even say things like that G, you'll outlive us all
I doubt it but a kind thought
I have no doubt, you'll be going on for a long time yet, we're lucky to have you Sir
Are there any Tories here who would consider voting Labour, particularly those that voted New Labour once upon a time? What will Labour have to do to win your vote
BigG as he notes is one of our key swing voters on here, voted for Blair in 1997 and 2001 but Tory since and exactly the type of voter Starmer needs to win to become PM. Philip Thompson also falls into that category. Not sure if any other PBers do?
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
it was simply the language to another poster, not the content of the argument
Yeah, well, I find there is nothing more annoying than being called stupid by someone who plainly actually is stupid. Language wise I tend to think that anything which is OK by the mods is OK, but I am happy to express some conventional remorse about any offence I may have unwittingly caused.
@Cyclefree I use Octopus Energy and have had no problems whatsoever. They have a very easy to use website for submitting meter readings and managing the account also.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
it was simply the language to another poster, not the content of the argument
Yeah, well, I find there is nothing more annoying than being called stupid by someone who plainly actually is stupid. Language wise I tend to think that anything which is OK by the mods is OK, but I am happy to express some conventional remorse about any offence I may have unwittingly caused.
Good for you, you're a good poster please carry on
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
it was simply the language to another poster, not the content of the argument
Yeah, well, I find there is nothing more annoying than being called stupid by someone who plainly actually is stupid. Language wise I tend to think that anything which is OK by the mods is OK, but I am happy to express some conventional remorse about any offence I may have unwittingly caused.
Are there any Tories here who would consider voting Labour, particularly those that voted New Labour once upon a time? What will Labour have to do to win your vote
I voted for Blair (as HYUFD keeps reminding me) so not impossible but Starmer has a long way to go yet.
I truely have no idea who I will vote for in 2024, and at my age I may just be pleased to be able to vote then anyway
Don't even say things like that G, you'll outlive us all
I doubt it but a kind thought
I have no doubt, you'll be going on for a long time yet, we're lucky to have you Sir
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
Our relationship with slavery was more complex than contrarian suggests after 1808. We did after all not free the slaves for a further quarter century, and even after that used indentured Asian labourers, trafficked across the world to Trinidad, Guyana, Mauritius and Fiji. A cynic may even suggest that the British policy was to prevent competition to British plantations from rivals with slave imports. The Lancashire cotton industry was also heavily dependent on slave produced cotton from the Southern USA.
That's right, but even if it wasn't the sheer numbers speak for themselves. It feels like being in an episode of Father Ted when you find yourself floundering for a way of explaining that 3,000,000 is a larger number than 150,000.
Are there any Tories here who would consider voting Labour, particularly those that voted New Labour once upon a time? What will Labour have to do to win your vote
Extremely unlikely for me.
I have always been right-wing, I grew up in Australia and supported John Howard, but voted for Labour in 2001 because: * I was 18 * I thought that Blair and Brown were following good economic policies and not overspending (that changed after the election), that "Iron Chancellor" Brown was following Tory economic policies. * There wasn't much of a difference between Labour and Tories * The Tories wouldn't stop banging on about Europe and I was a Europhile at the time * I felt that Hague was bonkers * I felt that the Tories needed more time in opposition to regain sanity
In 2005 I still felt the Tories should lose, but also felt that Brown was dangerously overspending so switched to the Tories knowing we'd lose but wanting to reduce Blair & Brown's majority. 2010 onwards I've felt Labour completely unfit for office, as I felt about the Tories in 2001 and to a lesser extent 2005.
After being burnt by Brown's bait & switch on spending in 2001 I'm unlikely to ever trust Labour again. I doubt I'll ever vote for them again. But I would be tempted if the following applied.
* I would need to feel the current Tories were unfit for office. * I would need to feel that Labour wouldn't do much damage. * I would need to feel that Labour wouldn't overspend or overtax too much.
In other words I'd need to think that Labour would be pretty close to what the Tories would normally be, and that the Tories are not there.
Our relationship with slavery was more complex than contrarian suggests after 1808. We did after all not free the slaves for a further quarter century, and even after that used indentured Asian labourers, trafficked across the world to Trinidad, Guyana, Mauritius and Fiji. A cynic may even suggest that the British policy was to prevent competition to British plantations from rivals with slave imports. The Lancashire cotton industry was also heavily dependent on slave produced cotton from the Southern USA.
My great-grandfather captained a ship in the South Seas assigned to hunt for slave=traders. He discovered that the New South Wales government was shutting a blind eye to shipping local natives in chains to the French colonies, which needed extra labour. He wrote a book about it which is available free online and makes an interesting read:
setting out the case pretty conclusively. The NSW authorities complained to London, who persuaded Parliament to order him to apologise. It looks like a stitch-up to me, but I'm rather proud of him for making the effort - as a serving officer it was clearly not a good career move to offend the colonial authorities.
I've inherited his astonishingly good paintings of the period, and have been trying to find a publisher who might be interested in the story with the illustration, but no luck. If anyone has any suggestions I'd be glad to hear them - not expecting to make much money out of it, if any, but it's an interesting story enhanced by the pictures and it's a pity that they're just sitting in my cupboard.
This is going to go down badly but I think it is the right thing to do, nobody is immune from prosecution
Has Corbyn come back ?
Do you believe soldiers should be immune from prosecution?
I think it doesn't look good publicly but I can't say I disagree with their position on this
They can already be prosecuted under certain circumstances. However there is also the military compact: soldiers are doing a difficult and dangerous job on behalf of the country as deserve protection. If they breach the rules of engagement there are remedies.
But what we saw in Iraq and subsequently was the weaponisation of the courts by people who disapproved of the civil decision to fight a way in Iraq
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
That's in line with uniform swing, isn't it? Clinton won the national vote narrowly. Biden has improved on her score if the polls are correct, and is doing neither better nor worse, relatively speaking, in the swing states. He's clearly ahead but it remains too close for comfort.
That's in line with uniform swing, isn't it? Clinton won the national vote narrowly. Biden has improved on her score if the polls are correct, and is doing neither better nor worse, relatively speaking, in the swing states. He's clearly ahead but it remains too close for comfort.
Way to close for comfort for me. Dems need to avoid complacency.
Our relationship with slavery was more complex than contrarian suggests after 1808. We did after all not free the slaves for a further quarter century, and even after that used indentured Asian labourers, trafficked across the world to Trinidad, Guyana, Mauritius and Fiji. A cynic may even suggest that the British policy was to prevent competition to British plantations from rivals with slave imports. The Lancashire cotton industry was also heavily dependent on slave produced cotton from the Southern USA.
My great-grandfather captained a ship in the South Seas assigned to hunt for slave=traders. He discovered that the New South Wales government was shutting a blind eye to shipping local natives in chains to the French colonies, which needed extra labour. He wrote a book about it which is available free online and makes an interesting read:
setting out the case pretty conclusively. The NSW authorities complained to London, who persuaded Parliament to order him to apologise. It looks like a stitch-up to me, but I'm rather proud of him for making the effort - as a serving officer it was clearly not a good career move to offend the colonial authorities.
I've inherited his astonishingly good paintings of the period, and have been trying to find a publisher who might be interested in the story with the illustration, but no luck. If anyone has any suggestions I'd be glad to hear them - not expecting to make much money out of it, if any, but it's an interesting story enhanced by the pictures and it's a pity that they're just sitting in my cupboard.
Looks interesting. My own ancesters in Colonial Australia were involved in campaigning against the dubious trade in "coolie labour". They were Presbyterian ministers in the Australian goldfields (and later in Fiji).
Once the early gold rush petered out, the mines became consolidated by a few owners who cut costs by importing indentured Chinese Labour. As well as the racism of the Australian frontier, it was felt that they were undercutting the paid labourers.
My ancestors ran a hospital and very controversially for the time insisted on treating the Chinese workers equally, and on the same wards as the white Australians. They got some stick for doing so. My uncle has a rather magnificent silk banner given to my great grandfather by the chinese community of the town in thanks.
The story of Empire is a mixed one, a complex brew of being both exploiter and exploited, and delivered opportunity as well as degradation*. Even at the time there was controversy and realisation that a lot of what was going on was morally wrong, like the "blackbirding" trade your ancestor tried to expose.
*for example, having been chucked out of Speyside in the clearances, my family benefited by farming and mining land cleared of aborigines.
That's in line with uniform swing, isn't it? Clinton won the national vote narrowly. Biden has improved on her score if the polls are correct, and is doing neither better nor worse, relatively speaking, in the swing states. He's clearly ahead but it remains too close for comfort.
Way to close for comfort for me. Dems need to avoid complacency.
When I've pointed this out I've been told, "no, they're not!"
You know who’s worse than those who try to shame all modern Britons for the Empire? Those who try to defend the Empire.
I really dont get the need to pretend that there was nothing bad about the Empire. There were good things that happened as well, but lots of terrible things - the same is true of all empires past and present and probably will apply in the future too. There is not much point studying history and then pretending it was all good.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Auschwitz was a death camp designed to exterminate a whole race - by design. Being sent there guaranteed death. It explains why there are so few Jews in continental Europe today.
Slavery was a system of enforced subjucation and hard labour for life but wasn't designed to exterminate nor guarantee death, which would have lost owners money. That explains why there are many of African descent in the Carribbean and North America today.
So whilst both were despicable, the Holocaust was uniquely evil as it was designed to exterminate a whole race.
Biden is up 9.3% not 9% nationally. They have him as up by 8% in Wisconsin, 6.3% in Pennysylvania and 7.1% in Wisconsin. Win those and he's home. And if he doesn't win all three, there are others that could get Biden over the line given a bit of variable swing - most notably Florida and Arizona where he's currently 5.9% and 4.8% ahead respectively.
Biden's polling of 51.4% is also his highest polling yet, as the graph shows.
So yes, the electoral college sucks. But we've always know that. It shouldn't obscure from the fact that the polling now, in general, is nearly as good as it's been at any point for Biden. And there's now little more than 2 months to go for a recovery by a president whose disapproval rating is marked not only by its scale but also by its remarkable stability.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Auschwitz was a death camp designed to exterminate a whole race - by design. Being sent there guaranteed death. It explains why there are so few Jews in continental Europe today.
Slavery was a system of enforced subjucation and hard labour for life but wasn't designed to exterminate nor guarantee death, which would have lost owners money. That explains why there are many of African descent in the Carribbean and North America today.
So whilst both were despicable, the Holocaust was uniquely evil as it was designed to exterminate a whole race.
This shouldn't even need pointing out.
The native Tasmanians say "hello" (or they would do had they not been exterminated).
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Of course you can compare it, that is your right, but to do so only makes it look more ludicrous. Slavery was gravely unjust but it was not extermination. Your last question beggars belief. I doubt a single passenger on the Auschwitz train wouldn't have gladly swapped with those boarding a slave ship. And I doubt anyone on the slave ship would have willingly swapped with someone on their way to Auschwitz.
They're undemocratic, certainly. They're not necessarily racist.
The Romans were notoriously unfussy about who they sold and shipped into and out of slavery, sometimes including members of their own extended families.
They were a product of their time, they are unlikely to be coming back, Superpowers have taken their place. The USA and China may not have overseas territories but they project economic power and in terms of the US and Russia military power too when it suits, the EU is also seeking to join them as is India
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Auschwitz was a death camp designed to exterminate a whole race - by design. Being sent there guaranteed death. It explains why there are so few Jews in continental Europe today.
Slavery was a system of enforced subjucation and hard labour for life but wasn't designed to exterminate nor guarantee death, which would have lost owners money. That explains why there are many of African descent in the Carribbean and North America today.
So whilst both were despicable, the Holocaust was uniquely evil as it was designed to exterminate a whole race.
This shouldn't even need pointing out.
Yes, perhaps a better comparison is with Albert Speers use of forced labour via the Todt organisation.
They're undemocratic, certainly. They're not necessarily racist.
The Romans were notoriously unfussy about who they sold and shipped into and out of slavery, sometimes including members of their own extended families.
In fact, even the former isn't necessarily true since the British Empire tried (in almost all of its colonies) to move them to democratic models of self-governance prior to granting them independence.
The successor is the Commonwealth which celebrates those values.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Auschwitz was a death camp designed to exterminate a whole race - by design. Being sent there guaranteed death. It explains why there are so few Jews in continental Europe today.
Slavery was a system of enforced subjucation and hard labour for life but wasn't designed to exterminate nor guarantee death, which would have lost owners money. That explains why there are many of African descent in the Carribbean and North America today.
So whilst both were despicable, the Holocaust was uniquely evil as it was designed to exterminate a whole race.
This shouldn't even need pointing out.
Yes, perhaps a better comparison is with Aber Speers use of forced labour via the Todt organisation.
A better comparison is not to compare Britain to Nazi Germany at all.
They're undemocratic, certainly. They're not necessarily racist.
The Romans were notoriously unfussy about who they sold and shipped into and out of slavery, sometimes including members of their own extended families.
In fact, even the former isn't necessarily true since the British Empire tried (in almost all of its colonies) to move them to democratic models of self-governance prior to granting them independence.
The successor is the Commonwealth which celebrates those values.
Ironically, of course "Commonwealth" means republic!
BTW how many Indian viceroys were elected by the Indian public?
They were a product of their time, they are unlikely to be coming back, Superpowers have taken their place. The USA and China may not have overseas territories but they project economic power and in terms of the US and Russia military power too when it suits, the EU is also seeking to join them as is India
China is effectively exercising imperial rule in Tibet and in parts of Xinjiang.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Of course you can compare it, that is your right, but to do so only makes it look more ludicrous. Slavery was gravely unjust but it was not extermination. Your last question beggars belief. I doubt a single passenger on the Auschwitz train wouldn't have gladly swapped with those boarding a slave ship. And I doubt anyone on the slave ship would have willingly swapped with someone on their way to Auschwitz.
People think differently. Its a very morbid hypothetical but there will be a reasonable proportion who prefer the quicker death of Auschwitz than a lifetime as a slave. I dont know which option I would choose, would probably depend on my age at the time and therefore the chance of escaping the slavery at some later point. Without actually agreeing with it, I think it is far from a ludicrous comparison, quite interesting I thought.
They're undemocratic, certainly. They're not necessarily racist.
The Romans were notoriously unfussy about who they sold and shipped into and out of slavery, sometimes including members of their own extended families.
In fact, even the former isn't necessarily true since the British Empire tried (in almost all of its colonies) to move them to democratic models of self-governance prior to granting them independence.
The successor is the Commonwealth which celebrates those values.
Ironically, of course "Commonwealth" means republic!
BTW how many Indian viceroys were elected by the Indian public?
When they say no lyrics I wonder how they expect to stop the audience singing it?
Is there going to be an audience?
I don't think so, which goes back to the main point. The normal Last Night jollities are off the agenda this year, and Rule Britannia, if it works at all, needs a big raucous crowd. Same as the British Sea Songs number; without an audience mucking around, it's not a great piece.
(Rule Britannia is fairly lazy patriotism at that. "I vow to thee my country" is much better, given it's implication that, you know, we might have to contribute something rather than just saying we're going to be brilliant.)
But yes. The bright sparks at No 10 have realised that this is a great wedge issue. Get their core vote wound up about the singing of a song that virtually nobody knows the words to, which is likely to sound rubbish if it is sung in this context. (Though my "sing it in the style of the John Lewis Christmas Ad" proposal is still on the table, for my usual fee.)
Very smart politics, very stupid government, excellent illustration of the aphorism about patriotism and scoundrels.
I don't see how its stupid government or being a scoundrel to be playing some smart politics during Silly Season.
There isn't really any other news happening that's being ignored. Parliament is in recess, not much is going on even for an action packed year. The Prime Minister spoke about kids going back to school which is far more important but nobody wants to talk about that. Its the media and Twitter as much as the PM driving this issue being discussed.
And, as a hack, BoJo blooming well knows that. He chose to inflate the story, because he could. But since you ask, there are various non-scoundrel ways of dealing with this.
One is for Johnson to actually be liberal. "You know, it's important that the BBC serves the public without fear or favour, and as Prime Minister I mustn't be the one telling them what to do."
Another is to be supportive and avuncular. "We will all miss the singing, as we have missed so many things this year. But the important thing is to defeat the virus, and look forward to gathering again in the future."
He did neither of those things, because he saw a political opportunity to get one over on the libs. Act of a scoundrel.
Tbf, it's politics. The BBC handed him an opportunity, he took it. The stupidity lies with the BBC for pushing the woke agenda for a show that appeals to an older crowd that have no love for wokeism. It feels like the BBC has got Tory sleeper agents running it. The PM is in trouble over schools, virus and has got a popular chancellor breathing down his neck and the BBC chooses this exact moment to inflate a nothing row over some music that is ultimately meaningless.
Indeed. The BBC could have neutralised this easily and said its nothing to do with wokeness - they could have said that the music will be played but due to COVID its going to be different this year without an audience or a singer, but they look forward to it being back to normal next year. They didn't do that, they played into the culture war issue and then are surprised when others jump into it to. The BBC started this not the PM.
It's like Ben and Jerry's, they got into in an argument they had no need to get involved with. The BBC has walked into this and now they will pay the price as are Unilever wrt Ben and Jerry's. As a famous basketballer once said "republicans buy trainers too". Corporates and the BBC should just stay out of these rows and definitely not start them. Nothing is ever enough for the mob and even an inch is too much for majority and in almost all of these cases the majority is not woke.
I've seen claims Ben and Jerry's are suffering but no evidence yet - have you?
I bought their ice cream years ago (I didn't know they were Woke then) and thought it was crap: the "cream" was relatively little and melted quickly leaving you with large chunky and annoying bits you had to chew instead. Yum.
Haagen Dazs is far better. Of course, there's no guarantee they won't beat a path down the same road too.
The best chocolate ice cream I have ever bought from a supermarket was Green & Blacks, which I made a particular effort to find when I was making an ice cream cake. I forget whether this was before, or after, they were bought up by Cadburys and became part of an evil corporate behemoth.
Naturally, despite the quality, I haven't seen it in a supermarket for years.
The greatest danger to supermarket ice cream isn't Ben and Jerry's novelty flavours, it's all the overengineered crap with unfeasibly low numbers of calories that isn't made with enough of the basic ingredients of cream, egg yolks and sugar.
When they say no lyrics I wonder how they expect to stop the audience singing it?
Is there going to be an audience?
I don't think so, which goes back to the main point. The normal Last Night jollities are off the agenda this year, and Rule Britannia, if it works at all, needs a big raucous crowd. Same as the British Sea Songs number; without an audience mucking around, it's not a great piece.
(Rule Britannia is fairly lazy patriotism at that. "I vow to thee my country" is much better, given it's implication that, you know, we might have to contribute something rather than just saying we're going to be brilliant.)
But yes. The bright sparks at No 10 have realised that this is a great wedge issue. Get their core vote wound up about the singing of a song that virtually nobody knows the words to, which is likely to sound rubbish if it is sung in this context. (Though my "sing it in the style of the John Lewis Christmas Ad" proposal is still on the table, for my usual fee.)
Very smart politics, very stupid government, excellent illustration of the aphorism about patriotism and scoundrels.
I don't see how its stupid government or being a scoundrel to be playing some smart politics during Silly Season.
There isn't really any other news happening that's being ignored. Parliament is in recess, not much is going on even for an action packed year. The Prime Minister spoke about kids going back to school which is far more important but nobody wants to talk about that. Its the media and Twitter as much as the PM driving this issue being discussed.
And, as a hack, BoJo blooming well knows that. He chose to inflate the story, because he could. But since you ask, there are various non-scoundrel ways of dealing with this.
One is for Johnson to actually be liberal. "You know, it's important that the BBC serves the public without fear or favour, and as Prime Minister I mustn't be the one telling them what to do."
Another is to be supportive and avuncular. "We will all miss the singing, as we have missed so many things this year. But the important thing is to defeat the virus, and look forward to gathering again in the future."
He did neither of those things, because he saw a political opportunity to get one over on the libs. Act of a scoundrel.
Tbf, it's politics. The BBC handed him an opportunity, he took it. The stupidity lies with the BBC for pushing the woke agenda for a show that appeals to an older crowd that have no love for wokeism. It feels like the BBC has got Tory sleeper agents running it. The PM is in trouble over schools, virus and has got a popular chancellor breathing down his neck and the BBC chooses this exact moment to inflate a nothing row over some music that is ultimately meaningless.
Indeed. The BBC could have neutralised this easily and said its nothing to do with wokeness - they could have said that the music will be played but due to COVID its going to be different this year without an audience or a singer, but they look forward to it being back to normal next year. They didn't do that, they played into the culture war issue and then are surprised when others jump into it to. The BBC started this not the PM.
It's like Ben and Jerry's, they got into in an argument they had no need to get involved with. The BBC has walked into this and now they will pay the price as are Unilever wrt Ben and Jerry's. As a famous basketballer once said "republicans buy trainers too". Corporates and the BBC should just stay out of these rows and definitely not start them. Nothing is ever enough for the mob and even an inch is too much for majority and in almost all of these cases the majority is not woke.
I've seen claims Ben and Jerry's are suffering but no evidence yet - have you?
I bought their ice cream years ago (I didn't know they were Woke then) and thought it was crap: the "cream" was relatively little and melted quickly leaving you with large chunky and annoying bits you had to chew instead. Yum.
Haagen Dazs is far better. Of course, there's no guarantee they won't beat a path down the same road too.
The best chocolate ice cream I have ever bought from a supermarket was Green & Blacks, which I made a particular effort to find when I was making an ice cream cake. I forget whether this was before, or after, they were bought up by Cadburys and became part of an evil corporate behemoth.
Naturally, despite the quality, I haven't seen it in a supermarket for years.
The greatest danger to supermarket ice cream isn't Ben and Jerry's novelty flavours, it's all the overengineered crap with unfeasibly low numbers of calories that isn't made with enough of the basic ingredients of cream, egg yolks and sugar.
Most of them are bad but some of the Oppo ones are both low calorie and taste good, salted caramel in particular.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Auschwitz was a death camp designed to exterminate a whole race - by design. Being sent there guaranteed death. It explains why there are so few Jews in continental Europe today.
Slavery was a system of enforced subjucation and hard labour for life but wasn't designed to exterminate nor guarantee death, which would have lost owners money. That explains why there are many of African descent in the Carribbean and North America today.
So whilst both were despicable, the Holocaust was uniquely evil as it was designed to exterminate a whole race.
This shouldn't even need pointing out.
Yes, perhaps a better comparison is with Aber Speers use of forced labour via the Todt organisation.
A better comparison is not to compare Britain to Nazi Germany at all.
Quite obviously different political systems, but time does tend to throw a veil over these things.
The outrage about Mussolini in Ethiopia in the 1930s would have been unremarkeable for any European Empire just 50 years earlier. The East India Company in 18th Century Bengal was of the same order as Leopold in the Congo a century or so later.
Can't you see that "Land of hope and glory, mother of the free" rings rather hollow over much of the world, even as close to home as Connaught?
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Of course you can compare it, that is your right, but to do so only makes it look more ludicrous. Slavery was gravely unjust but it was not extermination. Your last question beggars belief. I doubt a single passenger on the Auschwitz train wouldn't have gladly swapped with those boarding a slave ship. And I doubt anyone on the slave ship would have willingly swapped with someone on their way to Auschwitz.
People think differently. Its a very morbid hypothetical but there will be a reasonable proportion who prefer the quicker death of Auschwitz than a lifetime as a slave. I dont know which option I would choose, would probably depend on my age at the time and therefore the chance of escaping the slavery at some later point. Without actually agreeing with it, I think it is far from a ludicrous comparison, quite interesting I thought.
Of course Auschwitz was both an extermination camp and concentration camp; there was a fair chance of a (short) lifetime as a slave with extermination at the end. Not that different from the harsher plantations in the West Indies which were predicated on slaves being worked as hard as possible and being replaced on their deaths.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Of course you can compare it, that is your right, but to do so only makes it look more ludicrous. Slavery was gravely unjust but it was not extermination. Your last question beggars belief. I doubt a single passenger on the Auschwitz train wouldn't have gladly swapped with those boarding a slave ship. And I doubt anyone on the slave ship would have willingly swapped with someone on their way to Auschwitz.
People think differently. Its a very morbid hypothetical but there will be a reasonable proportion who prefer the quicker death of Auschwitz than a lifetime as a slave. I dont know which option I would choose, would probably depend on my age at the time and therefore the chance of escaping the slavery at some later point. Without actually agreeing with it, I think it is far from a ludicrous comparison, quite interesting I thought.
You think Auschwitz was a quick death do you? OK. Most people are not clinically insane, therefore I feel being 'owned' but kept fed and in a fit condition to work, is going to be preferable to being transported to a glorified abbatoir, regardless of age, call me old fashioned.
Ironically, of course "Commonwealth" means republic!
BTW how many Indian viceroys were elected by the Indian public?
This is what I don't get. Critics of the British empire - I mean the sort of brain-dead critics who seem to have taken over the debate - have the most bizarrely twisted view of history.
It starts with Enlightenment values - values which were created in Europe, and especially in France and in British-empire building Scotland , but also in England - and generalises those European, Enlightenment values to be universal. This is historically a very odd thing to do - no other society in the entire history of the world had these values before they became mainstream in Europe. But let's go with it, and judge the colonial period by the human-rights standards we would expect today.
Was the British Empire bad by those standards, compared with alternatives of the time? As you rightly say, no Viceroy of India was elected by Indians. So what? Who was? Was there some kind of Swedish-style social democracy, governed by the rule of law, and free of human rights abuses, and offering opportunities to all castes, amongst the Mughals and Maharajahs, and which was cruelly displayed by the British Empire?
Quite obviously different political systems, but time does tend to throw a veil over these things.
The outrage about Mussolini in Ethiopia in the 1930s would have been unremarkeable for any European Empire just 50 years earlier. The East India Company in 18th Century Bengal was of the same order as Leopold in the Congo a century or so later.
Can't you see that "Land of hope and glory, mother of the free" rings rather hollow over much of the world, even as close to home as Connaught?
Err, no. The East India Company was by no conceivable standard comparable to Leopold in the Congo. Don't be daft.
When they say no lyrics I wonder how they expect to stop the audience singing it?
Is there going to be an audience?
I don't think so, which goes back to the main point. The normal Last Night jollities are off the agenda this year, and Rule Britannia, if it works at all, needs a big raucous crowd. Same as the British Sea Songs number; without an audience mucking around, it's not a great piece.
(Rule Britannia is fairly lazy patriotism at that. "I vow to thee my country" is much better, given it's implication that, you know, we might have to contribute something rather than just saying we're going to be brilliant.)
But yes. The bright sparks at No 10 have realised that this is a great wedge issue. Get their core vote wound up about the singing of a song that virtually nobody knows the words to, which is likely to sound rubbish if it is sung in this context. (Though my "sing it in the style of the John Lewis Christmas Ad" proposal is still on the table, for my usual fee.)
Very smart politics, very stupid government, excellent illustration of the aphorism about patriotism and scoundrels.
I don't see how its stupid government or being a scoundrel to be playing some smart politics during Silly Season.
There isn't really any other news happening that's being ignored. Parliament is in recess, not much is going on even for an action packed year. The Prime Minister spoke about kids going back to school which is far more important but nobody wants to talk about that. Its the media and Twitter as much as the PM driving this issue being discussed.
And, as a hack, BoJo blooming well knows that. He chose to inflate the story, because he could. But since you ask, there are various non-scoundrel ways of dealing with this.
One is for Johnson to actually be liberal. "You know, it's important that the BBC serves the public without fear or favour, and as Prime Minister I mustn't be the one telling them what to do."
Another is to be supportive and avuncular. "We will all miss the singing, as we have missed so many things this year. But the important thing is to defeat the virus, and look forward to gathering again in the future."
He did neither of those things, because he saw a political opportunity to get one over on the libs. Act of a scoundrel.
Tbf, it's politics. The BBC handed him an opportunity, he took it. The stupidity lies with the BBC for pushing the woke agenda for a show that appeals to an older crowd that have no love for wokeism. It feels like the BBC has got Tory sleeper agents running it. The PM is in trouble over schools, virus and has got a popular chancellor breathing down his neck and the BBC chooses this exact moment to inflate a nothing row over some music that is ultimately meaningless.
I think there's a constituency of thinking in the BBC that thinks to shed it's old audience and gain a younger (more diverse) one it has to actively signal against the values of the old one in order to get down with da kidz.
It's bats. They'll end up losing the older one (and the consensus for the licence fee) whilst gaining none of the younger one, who'll feel patronised and just laugh at them.
And everyone will switch to Netflix and Prime.
It's yet to be proven that young people will pay for wokeness, the most popular Netflix shows aren't really the woke ones and Netflix seems to have run out of road with their current strategy. The latest woke show seems to have generated a lot of controversy, but more in disgust than anything else.
Netflix did a very popular show - Sex Education - that was laced with the stuff that's usually the subject of wokeness but somehow that didn't piss anyone off.
Why? They didn't push the Wokeness in your face as the central element of the "story", like you're being lectured. They just made a very very good show, with the diversity built around it in casting and to enhance the interest of storytelling.
The BBC would have done, just like they do with Doctor Who, and that's the problem with the BBC.
It's not just in Sex Education, it's in a lot of the Netflix Originals shows. They have diverse characters, who are characters for reasons other than their diversity, and it's simply incidental and normal that they are homosexual, or black, or whatever. I can't think of where I've ever seen it before.
They're undemocratic, certainly. They're not necessarily racist.
The Romans were notoriously unfussy about who they sold and shipped into and out of slavery, sometimes including members of their own extended families.
In fact, even the former isn't necessarily true since the British Empire tried (in almost all of its colonies) to move them to democratic models of self-governance prior to granting them independence.
The successor is the Commonwealth which celebrates those values.
Ironically, of course "Commonwealth" means republic!
BTW how many Indian viceroys were elected by the Indian public?
It's actually a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good.
Viceroy's weren't elected (nor would they have been in any country) as they were representatives of the monarch. However, the gradual introduction of self-government in India was declared (legally) as early as the India Act 1919, and further built upon in the India Act 1935. Involvement in local government goes back earlier still. So to characterise all Empires as autocracies isn't necessarily true.
The issue was that it didn't go far and quickly enough in India. Self governing political institutions (as well as the civic institutions like universities, courts and libraries that were constructed) should have been built in India in the 1860-1880s (as they were for Australia, Canada and New Zealand) so that India too could have become a fully self-governing dominion under the 1931 statue of Westminster.
Had that been done India would have been a full and willing partner in WW2, we'd probably have avoided a nasty partition and I expect it'd still be a Commonwealth realm today.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Of course you can compare it, that is your right, but to do so only makes it look more ludicrous. Slavery was gravely unjust but it was not extermination. Your last question beggars belief. I doubt a single passenger on the Auschwitz train wouldn't have gladly swapped with those boarding a slave ship. And I doubt anyone on the slave ship would have willingly swapped with someone on their way to Auschwitz.
People think differently. Its a very morbid hypothetical but there will be a reasonable proportion who prefer the quicker death of Auschwitz than a lifetime as a slave. I dont know which option I would choose, would probably depend on my age at the time and therefore the chance of escaping the slavery at some later point. Without actually agreeing with it, I think it is far from a ludicrous comparison, quite interesting I thought.
Of course Auschwitz was both an extermination camp and concentration camp; there was a fair chance of a (short) lifetime as a slave with extermination at the end. Not that different from the harsher plantations in the West Indies which were predicated on slaves being worked as hard as possible and being replaced on their deaths.
There's an unfeasible amount of utter wankery that's being spouted here just to try and justify binning a song.
Ironically, of course "Commonwealth" means republic!
BTW how many Indian viceroys were elected by the Indian public?
This is what I don't get. Critics of the British empire - I mean the sort of brain-dead critics who seem to have taken over the debate - have the most bizarrely twisted view of history.
It starts with Enlightenment values - values which were created in Europe, and especially in France and in British-empire building Scotland , but also in England - and generalises those European, Enlightenment values to be universal. This is historically a very odd thing to do - no other society in the entire history of the world had these values before they became mainstream in Europe. But let's go with it, and judge the colonial period by the human-rights standards we would expect today.
Was the British Empire bad by those standards, compared with alternatives of the time? As you rightly say, no Viceroy of India was elected by Indians. So what? Who was? Was there some kind of Swedish-style social democracy, governed by the rule of law, and free of human rights abuses, and offering opportunities to all castes, amongst the Mughals and Maharajahs, and which was cruelly displayed by the British Empire?
Without the British Empire existing as it did at the time it's likely we'd have far less democracy and freedom in the world today, which would likely be a highly autocratic one - at best.
That's not to apologise for its many crimes but, in assessing its legacy in the round, it must also be part of the scorecard.
Quite obviously different political systems, but time does tend to throw a veil over these things.
The outrage about Mussolini in Ethiopia in the 1930s would have been unremarkeable for any European Empire just 50 years earlier. The East India Company in 18th Century Bengal was of the same order as Leopold in the Congo a century or so later.
Can't you see that "Land of hope and glory, mother of the free" rings rather hollow over much of the world, even as close to home as Connaught?
Err, no. The East India Company was by no conceivable standard comparable to Leopold in the Congo. Don't be daft.
Agreed. Correct me if I am wrong but I don't remember the East India Company cutting off the hands of labourers if they failed to meet their quotas.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Of course you can compare it, that is your right, but to do so only makes it look more ludicrous. Slavery was gravely unjust but it was not extermination. Your last question beggars belief. I doubt a single passenger on the Auschwitz train wouldn't have gladly swapped with those boarding a slave ship. And I doubt anyone on the slave ship would have willingly swapped with someone on their way to Auschwitz.
People think differently. Its a very morbid hypothetical but there will be a reasonable proportion who prefer the quicker death of Auschwitz than a lifetime as a slave. I dont know which option I would choose, would probably depend on my age at the time and therefore the chance of escaping the slavery at some later point. Without actually agreeing with it, I think it is far from a ludicrous comparison, quite interesting I thought.
You think Auschwitz was a quick death do you? OK. Most people are not clinically insane, therefore I feel being 'owned' but kept fed and in a fit condition to work, is going to be preferable to being transported to a glorified abbatoir, regardless of age, call me old fashioned.
You think Auschwitz a slower death than slavery do you?
Quicker and quick mean different things, there is no point discussing a delicate subject if you are going to deliberately misinterpret.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Auschwitz was a death camp designed to exterminate a whole race - by design. Being sent there guaranteed death. It explains why there are so few Jews in continental Europe today.
Slavery was a system of enforced subjucation and hard labour for life but wasn't designed to exterminate nor guarantee death, which would have lost owners money. That explains why there are many of African descent in the Carribbean and North America today.
So whilst both were despicable, the Holocaust was uniquely evil as it was designed to exterminate a whole race.
This shouldn't even need pointing out.
Yes, perhaps a better comparison is with Aber Speers use of forced labour via the Todt organisation.
A better comparison is not to compare Britain to Nazi Germany at all.
Quite obviously different political systems, but time does tend to throw a veil over these things.
The outrage about Mussolini in Ethiopia in the 1930s would have been unremarkeable for any European Empire just 50 years earlier. The East India Company in 18th Century Bengal was of the same order as Leopold in the Congo a century or so later.
No it wasn't.
You're drawing a false equivalence there which you think strengthens your point but actually serves to undermine it by virtue of its absurdity.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Of course you can compare it, that is your right, but to do so only makes it look more ludicrous. Slavery was gravely unjust but it was not extermination. Your last question beggars belief. I doubt a single passenger on the Auschwitz train wouldn't have gladly swapped with those boarding a slave ship. And I doubt anyone on the slave ship would have willingly swapped with someone on their way to Auschwitz.
People think differently. Its a very morbid hypothetical but there will be a reasonable proportion who prefer the quicker death of Auschwitz than a lifetime as a slave. I dont know which option I would choose, would probably depend on my age at the time and therefore the chance of escaping the slavery at some later point. Without actually agreeing with it, I think it is far from a ludicrous comparison, quite interesting I thought.
Of course Auschwitz was both an extermination camp and concentration camp; there was a fair chance of a (short) lifetime as a slave with extermination at the end. Not that different from the harsher plantations in the West Indies which were predicated on slaves being worked as hard as possible and being replaced on their deaths.
There's an unfeasible amount of utter wankery that's being spouted here just to try and justify binning a song.
I didn't mention a song, only factual observations.
They're undemocratic, certainly. They're not necessarily racist.
The Romans were notoriously unfussy about who they sold and shipped into and out of slavery, sometimes including members of their own extended families.
In fact, even the former isn't necessarily true since the British Empire tried (in almost all of its colonies) to move them to democratic models of self-governance prior to granting them independence.
The successor is the Commonwealth which celebrates those values.
Ironically, of course "Commonwealth" means republic!
BTW how many Indian viceroys were elected by the Indian public?
It's actually a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good.
Viceroy's weren't elected (nor would they have been in any country) as they were representatives of the monarch. However, the gradual introduction of self-government in India was declared (legally) as early as the India Act 1919, and further built upon in the India Act 1935. Involvement in local government goes back earlier still. So to characterise all Empires as autocracies isn't necessarily true.
The issue was that it didn't go far and quickly enough in India. Self governing political institutions (as well as the civic institutions like universities, courts and libraries that were constructed) should have been built in India in the 1860-1880s (as they were for Australia, Canada and New Zealand) so that India too could have become a fully self-governing dominion under the 1931 statue of Westminster.
Had that been done India would have been a full and willing partner in WW2, we'd probably have avoided a nasty partition and I expect it'd still be a Commonwealth realm today.
I think that would have been difficult Casino. India was different from the likes of Australia in two ways (1) its people didn't have ties to the home country as the Dominions did and (2) there were a number of Princely rulers which complicated matters.
PS sorry to be a pedant but India is still a member of the Commonwealth.
"Your overall position would be stronger if you admitted the existence of exceptions and edge cases. Consider, hypothetically, a patriotic German song written in the early 40s with a chorus which said that "True born Germans shall never ever ever be sent to death camps," and there's a valid historical claim that the song is really about, oooh, the fighting on the Russian front, not about Jews at all. Is that song OK? I know it's different, but what are the *relevant* differences?"
Looks a cracking point to me.
But then you are completely ignorant of the facts and are believing the lies of the marxist black lives matter movement.
Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy West Africa squadron intercepted more than 1,000 slave boats and freed 150,000 West Africans bound for slavery.
In 1915 at the Battle of Jutland ensured German expansionism never took control in Europe
And in 1939-1942 the Royal Navy played its part to ensure that one of the most noxious regimes ever to inhabit the planet could not strangle the life out of the last remaining democracy to oppose it in the Atlantic
None of these amazingly good and anti-racist things would have been possible had not Britannia Ruled the Waves.
All in all your point one of the most spectacularly ignorant, most prejudiced and and least considered points ever made on here.
Do bugger off, you silly little man. cuntrarian by name, ...
You can't accuse people of historical ignorance and then start a sentence "Between 1809 and 1865, in the teeth of the Napoleonic wars..." Long old wars, those, and of course the French navy was very much a force to be reckoned with after the events of 1805 (look it up).
And don't be a fucking wazzock about the West Africa squadron, look at the numbers. We shipped over 3 million slaves across the Atlantic. When you add in the conditions under which their descendants lived and died in our colonies, the atrocity is probably worse than the holocaust. Saying we thought better of it and rescued 150,000 is on a par with contending that Adolf Eichmann was a lovely bloke who used to send his mother flowers, and that.
Not sure what your underlying problem is, and the best advice I can give is from the Beautiful South: Crap inside your union jack and wrap it round your head.
What a disgusting post
I am not sure you have read the earlier comments by Contrarian. If you have, language aside, I cannot understand why you find IshmaelZ's post disgusting.
Thank you!
Personally I find it bizarre. That 3 million were transported by Britain as slaves is deeply regrettable, but it is in no way comparable to a situation where 6 million Jews alone were put to death.
I can compare it. On the numbers, 3 is half of 6 but if you assume a minimum of two generations descended from the 3 million living under conditions amounting to an atrocity, the numbers at least even out. As for the quality of atrocity, is it obvious to you which was the more unfortunate, the passenger waiting for a train to Auschwitz or for a slave ship to New Orleans? It isn’t to me.
Of course you can compare it, that is your right, but to do so only makes it look more ludicrous. Slavery was gravely unjust but it was not extermination. Your last question beggars belief. I doubt a single passenger on the Auschwitz train wouldn't have gladly swapped with those boarding a slave ship. And I doubt anyone on the slave ship would have willingly swapped with someone on their way to Auschwitz.
People think differently. Its a very morbid hypothetical but there will be a reasonable proportion who prefer the quicker death of Auschwitz than a lifetime as a slave. I dont know which option I would choose, would probably depend on my age at the time and therefore the chance of escaping the slavery at some later point. Without actually agreeing with it, I think it is far from a ludicrous comparison, quite interesting I thought.
Of course Auschwitz was both an extermination camp and concentration camp; there was a fair chance of a (short) lifetime as a slave with extermination at the end. Not that different from the harsher plantations in the West Indies which were predicated on slaves being worked as hard as possible and being replaced on their deaths.
There's an unfeasible amount of utter wankery that's being spouted here just to try and justify binning a song.
I didn't mention a song, only factual observations.
It's not a fact. Auschwitz was designed to slaughter as many Jews as quickly and efficiently as possible to achieve the goal of racial elimination.
Slavery was not.
This argument really hinges on the fact that because both are terrible they're basically as bad each other.
Comments
The policy is now that they're compulsory in lockdown areas, and optional elsewhere. The other important thing to note is that Jonathan Simons is a director at Public First, the consultants that the Cabinet Office keep giving emergency contracts to.
https://twitter.com/jonathansimons/status/1298349549954760704
This is a better video tbh, bit shorter
I truely have no idea who I will vote for in 2024, and at my age I may just be pleased to be able to vote then anyway
One year I managed to get a ticket for the VPO at The Proms, was offered very silly money by touts, it was 8x face value, Heaven knows what the resale price would have been.
The Last Night can be a trial, some of the in jokes from the season ticket holders turn into tedious grandstanding. It can be great fun, if you are with friends.
It does rather smack of desperation and disorganisation to be ferreting about for a team at this point in the process.
Technically though even if you dump live TV but watch live TV sport via Now TV the law says you must pay for a licence fee. That is insane.
Trolling The Daily Mail.
Great headlines.
I use Avro. Good value and easy to deal with.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/no-deal-no-problem
The 3 million out there were far away...
I have always been right-wing, I grew up in Australia and supported John Howard, but voted for Labour in 2001 because:
* I was 18
* I thought that Blair and Brown were following good economic policies and not overspending (that changed after the election), that "Iron Chancellor" Brown was following Tory economic policies.
* There wasn't much of a difference between Labour and Tories
* The Tories wouldn't stop banging on about Europe and I was a Europhile at the time
* I felt that Hague was bonkers
* I felt that the Tories needed more time in opposition to regain sanity
In 2005 I still felt the Tories should lose, but also felt that Brown was dangerously overspending so switched to the Tories knowing we'd lose but wanting to reduce Blair & Brown's majority. 2010 onwards I've felt Labour completely unfit for office, as I felt about the Tories in 2001 and to a lesser extent 2005.
After being burnt by Brown's bait & switch on spending in 2001 I'm unlikely to ever trust Labour again. I doubt I'll ever vote for them again. But I would be tempted if the following applied.
* I would need to feel the current Tories were unfit for office.
* I would need to feel that Labour wouldn't do much damage.
* I would need to feel that Labour wouldn't overspend or overtax too much.
In other words I'd need to think that Labour would be pretty close to what the Tories would normally be, and that the Tories are not there.
https://ia902606.us.archive.org/28/items/kidnappinginsou02palmgoog/kidnappinginsou02palmgoog.pdf
setting out the case pretty conclusively. The NSW authorities complained to London, who persuaded Parliament to order him to apologise. It looks like a stitch-up to me, but I'm rather proud of him for making the effort - as a serving officer it was clearly not a good career move to offend the colonial authorities.
I've inherited his astonishingly good paintings of the period, and have been trying to find a publisher who might be interested in the story with the illustration, but no luck. If anyone has any suggestions I'd be glad to hear them - not expecting to make much money out of it, if any, but it's an interesting story enhanced by the pictures and it's a pity that they're just sitting in my cupboard.
But what we saw in Iraq and subsequently was the weaponisation of the courts by people who disapproved of the civil decision to fight a way in Iraq
Once the early gold rush petered out, the mines became consolidated by a few owners who cut costs by importing indentured Chinese Labour. As well as the racism of the Australian frontier, it was felt that they were undercutting the paid labourers.
My ancestors ran a hospital and very controversially for the time insisted on treating the Chinese workers equally, and on the same wards as the white Australians. They got some stick for doing so. My uncle has a rather magnificent silk banner given to my great grandfather by the chinese community of the town in thanks.
The story of Empire is a mixed one, a complex brew of being both exploiter and exploited, and delivered opportunity as well as degradation*. Even at the time there was controversy and realisation that a lot of what was going on was morally wrong, like the "blackbirding" trade your ancestor tried to expose.
*for example, having been chucked out of Speyside in the clearances, my family benefited by farming and mining land cleared of aborigines.
What's the crack for kids who live in Bradford lockdown zone but attend school in North Yorkshire? They mask up while their classmates don't?
Slavery was a system of enforced subjucation and hard labour for life but wasn't designed to exterminate nor guarantee death, which would have lost owners money. That explains why there are many of African descent in the Carribbean and North America today.
So whilst both were despicable, the Holocaust was uniquely evil as it was designed to exterminate a whole race.
This shouldn't even need pointing out.
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1238516597339426824?s=20
39% of Leave voters and 38% of Tory voters even still want an Empire
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1238517490952605697?s=20
Biden is up 9.3% not 9% nationally. They have him as up by 8% in Wisconsin, 6.3% in Pennysylvania and 7.1% in Wisconsin. Win those and he's home. And if he doesn't win all three, there are others that could get Biden over the line given a bit of variable swing - most notably Florida and Arizona where he's currently 5.9% and 4.8% ahead respectively.
Biden's polling of 51.4% is also his highest polling yet, as the graph shows.
So yes, the electoral college sucks. But we've always know that. It shouldn't obscure from the fact that the polling now, in general, is nearly as good as it's been at any point for Biden. And there's now little more than 2 months to go for a recovery by a president whose disapproval rating is marked not only by its scale but also by its remarkable stability.
The Romans were notoriously unfussy about who they sold and shipped into and out of slavery, sometimes including members of their own extended families.
The successor is the Commonwealth which celebrates those values.
BTW how many Indian viceroys were elected by the Indian public?
Naturally, despite the quality, I haven't seen it in a supermarket for years.
The greatest danger to supermarket ice cream isn't Ben and Jerry's novelty flavours, it's all the overengineered crap with unfeasibly low numbers of calories that isn't made with enough of the basic ingredients of cream, egg yolks and sugar.
The outrage about Mussolini in Ethiopia in the 1930s would have been unremarkeable for any European Empire just 50 years earlier. The East India Company in 18th Century Bengal was of the same order as Leopold in the Congo a century or so later.
Can't you see that "Land of hope and glory, mother of the free" rings rather hollow over much of the world, even as close to home as Connaught?
It starts with Enlightenment values - values which were created in Europe, and especially in France and in British-empire building Scotland , but also in England - and generalises those European, Enlightenment values to be universal. This is historically a very odd thing to do - no other society in the entire history of the world had these values before they became mainstream in Europe. But let's go with it, and judge the colonial period by the human-rights standards we would expect today.
Was the British Empire bad by those standards, compared with alternatives of the time? As you rightly say, no Viceroy of India was elected by Indians. So what? Who was? Was there some kind of Swedish-style social democracy, governed by the rule of law, and free of human rights abuses, and offering opportunities to all castes, amongst the Mughals and Maharajahs, and which was cruelly displayed by the British Empire?
Viceroy's weren't elected (nor would they have been in any country) as they were representatives of the monarch. However, the gradual introduction of self-government in India was declared (legally) as early as the India Act 1919, and further built upon in the India Act 1935. Involvement in local government goes back earlier still. So to characterise all Empires as autocracies isn't necessarily true.
The issue was that it didn't go far and quickly enough in India. Self governing political institutions (as well as the civic institutions like universities, courts and libraries that were constructed) should have been built in India in the 1860-1880s (as they were for Australia, Canada and New Zealand) so that India too could have become a fully self-governing dominion under the 1931 statue of Westminster.
Had that been done India would have been a full and willing partner in WW2, we'd probably have avoided a nasty partition and I expect it'd still be a Commonwealth realm today.
That's not to apologise for its many crimes but, in assessing its legacy in the round, it must also be part of the scorecard.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13952592
Playing Devil's Advocate. Would have not been better for a number of countries (e.g. Sierra Leone) if they had stayed British than become independent?
Quicker and quick mean different things, there is no point discussing a delicate subject if you are going to deliberately misinterpret.
You're drawing a false equivalence there which you think strengthens your point but actually serves to undermine it by virtue of its absurdity.
PS sorry to be a pedant but India is still a member of the Commonwealth.
Slavery was not.
This argument really hinges on the fact that because both are terrible they're basically as bad each other.
They're not.