Back on matters domestic, two observations - first, walking past the Spoons in the Barking Road, it looked as though the usual suspects were all round their usual tables drinking their beer. After yesterday's comments (for which many thanks), I have agreed with my brother we will eat outdoors on Wednesday and sit in his garden after which I believe keeps us legal as long as I access his garden via the side gate and not through the house.
I've reminded Mrs Stodge we can still go and eat at the local cafe and I will be giving them my custom next week as usual even though my T&T app tells me I am now in a High risk area. Anecdotally, more mask wearing in my part of London today but far from universal.
As for the thread topic (thank you, as always, @david_herdson for the read), there's a dilemma for Starmer between playing politics and looking responsible. It's not the role of Opposition to oppose for the sake of it - it is the role of Opposition to scrutinise, to ask awkward questions and to point out inconsistencies and anomalies and seek clarification of those but in the end Starmer has to be seen to be joining the fight against the virus as much as Johnson.
Opportunist Opposition doesn't help as it is all too often obvious. Supporting Government in difficult times is responsible and sensible and even more so if the election is 2024. Trying to carve out a different line just for the sake of being different is I believe politically counter-productive. Starmer is still working on the Labour "offer" for 2024 (or at least he should be). He will know the best way for Labour to look electable against a tired Conservative Government after a decade and a half in Opposition will not be to sound radical and promise the sun, moon and stars but to accept much of what has happened and simply argue it can be done better - that's basically how Blair and Wilson won as non-ideological politicians of the centre-left offering a better way of doing the same things.
Yes, I think that's right. Patience!
Went shopping today, the first time I've been ourdoors for a week. Dramatic increase in mask-wearing on the street, as opposed to merely inside the shops - from 5% to 50%, I'd say. Godalming is level 1, but we think level 2 and quite possibly level 3 are just a matter of time.
Think about it, it just took one man to ensure that no teachers or any other public figures will dare show pictures of Muhammad from now on in France or else have a good chance of being killed for doing so.
This is a key point. A small minority can have an effect regardless of what the majority think if the majority stay silent or look the other way.
“A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’
We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ’silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts–the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Like the silent Muslims, we remain silent and acquiescent, while our freedoms gradually disappear."
The author of that a big fan of the Chinese approach I assume.
The piece is really just identifying the problem, without coming up with any policy to combat it. There is not really anything that can be done about it in my opinion.
The Chinese can deal with it because they are not a liberal democracy, it could never happen like that here.
For once we agree, there's a whole shitload of 'something must be done' around, hardly any 'this should be done'.
Perhaps a pause on Muslim immigration while we figure out a better way of handling things would be a good start.
What, because of the nutter in France? Oh do stop it.
It was in response to Cyclefree's post on the rise of Islamic extremism, not because of one single nutter.
How would you like to see the problem tackled?
Well step one is to dismiss notions such as officially labeling all Muslims (25% of the world's population) as a threat to our welfare. That is paranoia. As to doing more about the problem, I think the main thing is to have equality under the law. We should not - to the extent this does happen - tolerate hate speech from reactionary Muslims, or illiberal policies from reactionary Muslim institutions, due to fear or cultural cringe.
Who has labelled all Muslims as a threat? I even said the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists.
There's a small, but significant minority who are extreme and there's currently no way of knowing which ones they are. More Muslims means more extremists and it makes sense to pause immigration until we can tackle the problem effectively.
As far as I can see a lot of the terrorists were never actually involved in public hate speech. Just clamping down on that isn't going to do much.
Making "Muslim" a status which precludes entry to the UK is officially labeling all Muslims as a threat. Of course it is. Not knowing who will commit a violent atrocity before they do it is simply a general and inescapable truth, regardless of race or religion. Until "Minority Report" becomes a reality it's the job of the police and security services to mitigate these risks. A Muslim ban is a total no no. C'mon. Think about it. Did we ban all Irish people back in IRA days? No. And no-one suggested it. I wonder why some people do so now with Muslims? A clue. The policy is Trumpian and the justification is exactly like Trump Jnr with his "M&Ms" analogy. Bad company.
So your solution is to continue to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries and we'll just have to put up with the odd beheading and bomb attack.
Well you will be delighted to know that is exactly what is going to happen.
Perhaps you should have prefaced your post with "I am not racist but..."
I know that there is little to say beyond expressing horror and sadness at a life so cruelly taken. But the fact that the beheading on the streets of a French capital of a teacher - for doing their job - barely registers is itself noteworthy.
Have we become so inured to this sort of barbarism that we go “oh well, poor France” and carry on?
If being woke or being against hate crimes meant anything substantive, we ought to be incensed at what really is a hate crime and the barbaric bullying in the name of religion of those who dare challenge it.
I totally sympathise with this view, but don't agree that we are inured. We are incensed. The awful reality is that a liberal society and rule of law versus suicidal barbarism is not and cannot be a level playing field.
Cyclefree would need to tell us what 'incensed' looks like in a free society with liberal values? If it looks like revenge it is no longer a liberal society. If it counters barbarity with barbarity, the same applies. If it applies communal guilt to a swathe of people by ethnicity or religion, the same applies.
Well, I have set out what I would like to do pretty extensively on here back in 2015 when the Charlie Hebdo killings happened.
But three things we should do:-
1. We should not make the upholding of free speech something which only brave individuals do - at the cost of threats and, sometimes, their lives. When those cartoonists were killed or the Danish cartoonist attacked every paper in the country, in Europe, in free liberal societies should have published them. Solidarity in numbers. Instead we cravenly self-censored ourselves and are still doing it. Look at how much effort it took to defend those Birmingham schools, for instance. (See also http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/03/21/rendering-unto-caesar/.) 2. The Scottish Hate Crime Bill should be withdrawn and rewritten. As of now, it effectively permits censorship by religions by effectively deeming criticism of a religion a hate crime. 3. Those who incite the sort of thinking and behaviour carried out by this terrorist should be prosecuted.
Thanks for this comment. Some responses:
1) I believe in free speech, but personally I prefer to respect the religious sensibilities of others, on the 'do unto others' principle - and I strongly object to some forms of mocking and distortion of my own religious beliefs even though people are free to do so, I prefer it if they refrain. Media editors may feel the same.
2) In a liberal society you can't tell the media what to do. It is a self evident contradiction.
3) You are of course right about the Scottish Hate Crime Bill
4) Incitement. Easier to say than to define. Freedom of belief is what it is. I am not entitled to murder someone but I am entitled to stand for parliament on a manifesto saying that murder should be made lawful. It would not be difficult for illiberal people (as well as many liberals) to see that as incitement. Which would be the thin end of that Scottish wedge.
I agree on point (1) in the sense that I don’t go around insulting other people’s beliefs just for the hell of it. That is impolite. But there is a huge difference between doing it voluntarily out of politeness and courtesy and doing it because you are scared or because you are threatened. When somebody says that I can’t poke fun at someone’s religion because otherwise they will kill me I am bloody well going to be as provocative as possible. I am not - and nor should any free liberal society - going to be bullied into politeness or respect for something which I don’t respect.
Media editors did not refrain out of politeness; they refrained out of fear.
We should of course poke fun at all religions, and IMHO the world would be a better place without religions at all.
But blurring the boundary between Islamic extremists and the millions of Muslims worldwide is your blind spot, when your otherwise level headed objectivity takes its holidays.
I don’t blur the distinction. Quite the opposite in fact. But if we stay silent when extremists do things in our name then others may worry that that such silence betokens consent rather than disgust.
I apply the same principle to silent bankers.
The liberal West has been very poor at supporting liberal Muslims, most of them in Muslim majority countries, who are trying to fight back against the extremists. I would like to see far more such support precisely in order to show Muslims that we do not accept or assume that the extremists speak for them.
It is one reason why I was so appalled at Britain’s feebleness when Serbs were killing Muslims in Bosnia. It played into the story extremists were telling: that the Christian west did not care about peaceful Muslim communities who had been living here for centuries and was content to stand idly by while they were slaughtered.
For sure. But you don’t, really. As soon as Islam is mentioned your posts tend to join the race for the bottom with those from Sean(s) of this parish.
No they don’t. Though you would clearly like to believe so, which says rather more about you than me.
Unfortunately, he also has a nasty and unpleasant side and tries to go for people personally who he disagrees with - particularly when he senses some inconsistency in their approach. He's done this with me, SeanT, BigGNorthWales and is trying to dog whistle on you now too.
He's also entirely incapable of humility or admitting he's wrong - ever. When I've challenged him on this in the past he's got ever more pompous, snide and self-aggrandizing, and never apologises.
Johnson is going to repeat his performance as London Mayor - but will he be unpopular after winning one more time or will he have had his chance already?
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
And don't forget there was horsemeat galore in the EU, right here in almost every processed meat product you could imagine, and perfectly legally only a few years ago.
Think about it, it just took one man to ensure that no teachers or any other public figures will dare show pictures of Muhammad from now on in France or else have a good chance of being killed for doing so.
This is a key point. A small minority can have an effect regardless of what the majority think if the majority stay silent or look the other way.
“A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’
We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ’silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts–the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Like the silent Muslims, we remain silent and acquiescent, while our freedoms gradually disappear."
The author of that a big fan of the Chinese approach I assume.
The piece is really just identifying the problem, without coming up with any policy to combat it. There is not really anything that can be done about it in my opinion.
The Chinese can deal with it because they are not a liberal democracy, it could never happen like that here.
For once we agree, there's a whole shitload of 'something must be done' around, hardly any 'this should be done'.
Perhaps a pause on Muslim immigration while we figure out a better way of handling things would be a good start.
What, because of the nutter in France? Oh do stop it.
It was in response to Cyclefree's post on the rise of Islamic extremism, not because of one single nutter.
How would you like to see the problem tackled?
Well step one is to dismiss notions such as officially labeling all Muslims (25% of the world's population) as a threat to our welfare. That is paranoia. As to doing more about the problem, I think the main thing is to have equality under the law. We should not - to the extent this does happen - tolerate hate speech from reactionary Muslims, or illiberal policies from reactionary Muslim institutions, due to fear or cultural cringe.
Who has labelled all Muslims as a threat? I even said the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists.
There's a small, but significant minority who are extreme and there's currently no way of knowing which ones they are. More Muslims means more extremists and it makes sense to pause immigration until we can tackle the problem effectively.
As far as I can see a lot of the terrorists were never actually involved in public hate speech. Just clamping down on that isn't going to do much.
Making "Muslim" a status which precludes entry to the UK is officially labeling all Muslims as a threat. Of course it is. Not knowing who will commit a violent atrocity before they do it is simply a general and inescapable truth, regardless of race or religion. Until "Minority Report" becomes a reality it's the job of the police and security services to mitigate these risks. A Muslim ban is a total no no. C'mon. Think about it. Did we ban all Irish people back in IRA days? No. And no-one suggested it. I wonder why some people do so now with Muslims? A clue. The policy is Trumpian and the justification is exactly like Trump Jnr with his "M&Ms" analogy. Bad company.
So your solution is to continue to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries and we'll just have to put up with the odd beheading and bomb attack.
Well you will be delighted to know that is exactly what is going to happen.
That's OK with me, though immigration isn't mass and hasn't been for a long time. On the scale of threats, being beheaded by a nutter (Muslim or otherwise) is invisibly far down my list, and I'm certainly not supporting restrictions on movement for ordinary people just in case the odd one is bonkers.
My mother grew up in Danzig and her father worked in Berlin in the 30s for over a decade - they saw lots of Germans. Her view was that the old aristocrats and some of the poorer groups were anti-Nazi, but most people were increasingly enthusiastic about Hitler- they felt they'd been humiliated and destitute and they liked what they saw as a winner. Violent extremism is always bad, but the parallels with Muslims and the likes of ISIS are IMO pretty much non-existent.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Why don't we let people choose?
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Well I agree on animal standards, but are you happy not to have a free trade agreement with the EU on the same principle? As Spain and other countries have lower standards for these things than we do.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
And don't forget there was horsemeat galore in the EU, right here in almost every processed meat product you could imagine, and perfectly legally only a few years ago.
I think we do see the effects on American health. As I recall the horsemeat scandal was illegal at the time.
If we get an American Deal, I think there will be a big reaction, not just from British farmers, but also a big swing to a plant based diet. Britons don't want that crap, and crap it is.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
US life expectancy is measurably lower and they clearly have a bigger problem with certain food-related health issues.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Well I agree on animal standards, but are you happy not to have a free trade agreement with the EU on the same principle? As Spain and other countries have lower standards for these things than we do.
If the US committed to enforcing standards at the level of Spain in return for a FTA with us, I think most people would be delighted.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Why don't we let people choose?
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
It's part of government's duty to stop traders poisoning and infecting people just to make an extra buck. Or at least the Victorians thought so. The Americans pay a higher rate of food poisoning weith bactera for their chlorine washing and the like.;
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Well I agree on animal standards, but are you happy not to have a free trade agreement with the EU on the same principle? As Spain and other countries have lower standards for these things than we do.
One of our more positive influences on the EU was raising of food and agricultural standards standards. Its a pity we have abandoned it.
Yes, like most Britons*, I support raising of welfare standards above other countries including the EU ones. Its not likely to happen though under this government.
Think about it, it just took one man to ensure that no teachers or any other public figures will dare show pictures of Muhammad from now on in France or else have a good chance of being killed for doing so.
This is a key point. A small minority can have an effect regardless of what the majority think if the majority stay silent or look the other way.
“A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’
We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ’silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts–the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Like the silent Muslims, we remain silent and acquiescent, while our freedoms gradually disappear."
The author of that a big fan of the Chinese approach I assume.
The piece is really just identifying the problem, without coming up with any policy to combat it. There is not really anything that can be done about it in my opinion.
The Chinese can deal with it because they are not a liberal democracy, it could never happen like that here.
For once we agree, there's a whole shitload of 'something must be done' around, hardly any 'this should be done'.
Perhaps a pause on Muslim immigration while we figure out a better way of handling things would be a good start.
What, because of the nutter in France? Oh do stop it.
It was in response to Cyclefree's post on the rise of Islamic extremism, not because of one single nutter.
How would you like to see the problem tackled?
Well step one is to dismiss notions such as officially labeling all Muslims (25% of the world's population) as a threat to our welfare. That is paranoia. As to doing more about the problem, I think the main thing is to have equality under the law. We should not - to the extent this does happen - tolerate hate speech from reactionary Muslims, or illiberal policies from reactionary Muslim institutions, due to fear or cultural cringe.
Who has labelled all Muslims as a threat? I even said the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists.
There's a small, but significant minority who are extreme and there's currently no way of knowing which ones they are. More Muslims means more extremists and it makes sense to pause immigration until we can tackle the problem effectively.
As far as I can see a lot of the terrorists were never actually involved in public hate speech. Just clamping down on that isn't going to do much.
Making "Muslim" a status which precludes entry to the UK is officially labeling all Muslims as a threat. Of course it is. Not knowing who will commit a violent atrocity before they do it is simply a general and inescapable truth, regardless of race or religion. Until "Minority Report" becomes a reality it's the job of the police and security services to mitigate these risks. A Muslim ban is a total no no. C'mon. Think about it. Did we ban all Irish people back in IRA days? No. And no-one suggested it. I wonder why some people do so now with Muslims? A clue. The policy is Trumpian and the justification is exactly like Trump Jnr with his "M&Ms" analogy. Bad company.
So your solution is to continue to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries and we'll just have to put up with the odd beheading and bomb attack.
Well you will be delighted to know that is exactly what is going to happen.
That's OK with me, though immigration isn't mass and hasn't been for a long time. On the scale of threats, being beheaded by a nutter (Muslim or otherwise) is invisibly far down my list, and I'm certainly not supporting restrictions on movement for ordinary people just in case the odd one is bonkers.
My mother grew up in Danzig and her father worked in Berlin in the 30s for over a decade - they saw lots of Germans. Her view was that the old aristocrats and some of the poorer groups were anti-Nazi, but most people were increasingly enthusiastic about Hitler- they felt they'd been humiliated and destitute and they liked what they saw as a winner. Violent extremism is always bad, but the parallels with Muslims and the likes of ISIS are IMO pretty much non-existent.
Doesn't make me feel that much better about my girlfriend working in a 100% Muslim school that the UN have said was a breeding ground for extremism.
Think about it, it just took one man to ensure that no teachers or any other public figures will dare show pictures of Muhammad from now on in France or else have a good chance of being killed for doing so.
This is a key point. A small minority can have an effect regardless of what the majority think if the majority stay silent or look the other way.
“A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’
We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ’silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts–the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Like the silent Muslims, we remain silent and acquiescent, while our freedoms gradually disappear."
The author of that a big fan of the Chinese approach I assume.
The piece is really just identifying the problem, without coming up with any policy to combat it. There is not really anything that can be done about it in my opinion.
The Chinese can deal with it because they are not a liberal democracy, it could never happen like that here.
For once we agree, there's a whole shitload of 'something must be done' around, hardly any 'this should be done'.
Perhaps a pause on Muslim immigration while we figure out a better way of handling things would be a good start.
What, because of the nutter in France? Oh do stop it.
It was in response to Cyclefree's post on the rise of Islamic extremism, not because of one single nutter.
How would you like to see the problem tackled?
Well step one is to dismiss notions such as officially labeling all Muslims (25% of the world's population) as a threat to our welfare. That is paranoia. As to doing more about the problem, I think the main thing is to have equality under the law. We should not - to the extent this does happen - tolerate hate speech from reactionary Muslims, or illiberal policies from reactionary Muslim institutions, due to fear or cultural cringe.
Who has labelled all Muslims as a threat? I even said the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists.
There's a small, but significant minority who are extreme and there's currently no way of knowing which ones they are. More Muslims means more extremists and it makes sense to pause immigration until we can tackle the problem effectively.
As far as I can see a lot of the terrorists were never actually involved in public hate speech. Just clamping down on that isn't going to do much.
Making "Muslim" a status which precludes entry to the UK is officially labeling all Muslims as a threat. Of course it is. Not knowing who will commit a violent atrocity before they do it is simply a general and inescapable truth, regardless of race or religion. Until "Minority Report" becomes a reality it's the job of the police and security services to mitigate these risks. A Muslim ban is a total no no. C'mon. Think about it. Did we ban all Irish people back in IRA days? No. And no-one suggested it. I wonder why some people do so now with Muslims? A clue. The policy is Trumpian and the justification is exactly like Trump Jnr with his "M&Ms" analogy. Bad company.
So your solution is to continue to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries and we'll just have to put up with the odd beheading and bomb attack.
Well you will be delighted to know that is exactly what is going to happen.
Controlled not open door immigration. Promotion of integration into mainstream society. Zero tolerance of hate speech. Support for moderate Islam. No segregated schools. No cultural cringe. Equality under the law. Appropriate funding and powers for the security services. This is imo a suitable and proportionate approach to the problem. Certainly preferable to demonizing a quarter of the world's population and nonsense such as a national blanket Muslim ban. One suspects, when hearing that sort of thing, that those proposing it are driven more by racism than anything else. I sense you are.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
And don't forget there was horsemeat galore in the EU, right here in almost every processed meat product you could imagine, and perfectly legally only a few years ago.
I think we do see the effects on American health. As I recall the horsemeat scandal was illegal at the time.
If we get an American Deal, I think there will be a big reaction, not just from British farmers, but also a big swing to a plant based diet. Britons don't want that crap, and crap it is.
Then, there's nothing to fear from a US deal. If you're right British consumers will shun such products wholesale and the US will get nothing out of it.
As it happens I've eaten meat in the USA - as have hundreds of thousands of Brits - with no ill effects.
At the end of the day chemical washing might sometimes mask poorer animal welfare and hygiene during regarding rearing (or just be cheaper) but it's a very effective way of cleaning meat and making it safe to eat. Some Americans criticise EU standards for not doing the same with our chicken, making it more susceptible to E.coli, so these issues are not black and white.
PS. You're incorrect about horsemeat. The labelling was improper but not the sale of the meat and the EU had to subsequently change its regulations as a result due to the backlash.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
US life expectancy is measurably lower and they clearly have a bigger problem with certain food-related health issues.
US cancer survival rates remain amongst the highest in the world.
They have a problem with obesity and diabetes but that's a tangential issue.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Why don't we let people choose?
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
Interesting to see that low income people in that survey are more keen than the wealthy on higher standards. I suppose that they cannot buy their way out of it so easily.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Why don't we let people choose?
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
Well, of course it depends where we want to draw the line. Otherwise you could say that about any regulation. Why don't we let people choose if they want toxic paint on children's toys? Or, if people want lead-free petrol they will pay for that.
And if you want to only eat food produced without excessive cruelty, for example, it is not very easy to ask every time you eat when someone else cooks (whether a friend or in a restaurant etc) how they source their eggs.
VAR is crap, but pleased that it went against Liverpool for once.
Twice. If Van Dijk had been onside they would have had a penalty and Pickford off the pitch. Though these days Pickford off the pitch is probably a plus for Everton.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
Think about it, it just took one man to ensure that no teachers or any other public figures will dare show pictures of Muhammad from now on in France or else have a good chance of being killed for doing so.
This is a key point. A small minority can have an effect regardless of what the majority think if the majority stay silent or look the other way.
“A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’
We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ’silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts–the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Like the silent Muslims, we remain silent and acquiescent, while our freedoms gradually disappear."
The author of that a big fan of the Chinese approach I assume.
The piece is really just identifying the problem, without coming up with any policy to combat it. There is not really anything that can be done about it in my opinion.
The Chinese can deal with it because they are not a liberal democracy, it could never happen like that here.
For once we agree, there's a whole shitload of 'something must be done' around, hardly any 'this should be done'.
Perhaps a pause on Muslim immigration while we figure out a better way of handling things would be a good start.
What, because of the nutter in France? Oh do stop it.
It was in response to Cyclefree's post on the rise of Islamic extremism, not because of one single nutter.
How would you like to see the problem tackled?
Well step one is to dismiss notions such as officially labeling all Muslims (25% of the world's population) as a threat to our welfare. That is paranoia. As to doing more about the problem, I think the main thing is to have equality under the law. We should not - to the extent this does happen - tolerate hate speech from reactionary Muslims, or illiberal policies from reactionary Muslim institutions, due to fear or cultural cringe.
Who has labelled all Muslims as a threat? I even said the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists.
There's a small, but significant minority who are extreme and there's currently no way of knowing which ones they are. More Muslims means more extremists and it makes sense to pause immigration until we can tackle the problem effectively.
As far as I can see a lot of the terrorists were never actually involved in public hate speech. Just clamping down on that isn't going to do much.
Making "Muslim" a status which precludes entry to the UK is officially labeling all Muslims as a threat. Of course it is. Not knowing who will commit a violent atrocity before they do it is simply a general and inescapable truth, regardless of race or religion. Until "Minority Report" becomes a reality it's the job of the police and security services to mitigate these risks. A Muslim ban is a total no no. C'mon. Think about it. Did we ban all Irish people back in IRA days? No. And no-one suggested it. I wonder why some people do so now with Muslims? A clue. The policy is Trumpian and the justification is exactly like Trump Jnr with his "M&Ms" analogy. Bad company.
So your solution is to continue to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries and we'll just have to put up with the odd beheading and bomb attack.
Well you will be delighted to know that is exactly what is going to happen.
Controlled not open door immigration. Promotion of integration into mainstream society. Zero tolerance of hate speech. Support for moderate Islam. No segregated schools. No cultural cringe. Equality under the law. Appropriate funding and powers for the security services. This is imo a suitable and proportionate approach to the problem. Certainly preferable to demonizing a quarter of the world's population and nonsense such as a national blanket Muslim ban. One suspects, when hearing that sort of thing, that those proposing it are driven more by racism than anything else. I sense you are.
Having a pause on immigration from some countries isn't demonising them, this is a crazy conclusion to draw. The vast majority of the planet aren't able to come and settle here, is that demonising them too?
Your other ideas are reasonable, but will cost a lot of time and money. Immigration policy is supposed to best serve the current population of the country, not be a charity to spend a fortune on to solve issues that aren't present in other immigration groups.
Sure yeah pointing out these issues is racism. I give up.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
US life expectancy is measurably lower and they clearly have a bigger problem with certain food-related health issues.
US cancer survival rates remain amongst the highest in the world.
They have a problem with obesity and diabetes but that's a tangential issue.
That's a portion control issue. They simply eat too much.
US Presidential. This from The Hill is interesting and ties in with other analyses from other sources:
"It was, after all, the virus that not only infected the country but brought down his presidential chances as well. In almost every state, Trump gets high marks (over 50 percent) for helping the economy and low marks (in the low 40s) for dealing with the virus. His stands on “law and order” in the face of riots and racial injustice were too far to the right for a public that wanted a balance between reforming the police and the justice systems and re-establishing stability in the country. Biden overwhelmingly is seen as the one who can bring racial reconciliation.
...
"Trump has spent a lot of time courting the Black vote but, in these polls, he is getting about 10 percent. He is doing better (almost 40 percent) among voters he did not spend much time courting – the Latino vote – and he is likely to do especially well with voters from Cuba, Venezuela and Central America. Working-class voters continue to support him strongly, while he faces defections from 2016 among suburban voters and seniors who care more about their safety than the economy. Trump simply spent too much time reinforcing his base and too little time reaching out for swing voters."
VAR is crap, but pleased that it went against Liverpool for once.
Twice. If Van Dijk had been onside they would have had a penalty and Pickford off the pitch. Though these days Pickford off the pitch is probably a plus for Everton.
Yes they were absolutely robbed.
But in the week they tried to grab all the TV money for themselves and the other 5 biggest clubs I have to say...lolz.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Why don't we let people choose?
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
Interesting to see that low income people in that survey are more keen than the wealthy on higher standards. I suppose that they cannot buy their way out of it so easily.
Very interesting observation - and a key rebuttal to the typical Tory assertion of let them get what they can pay for, as an excuse for throwing the poor to the wolves (or, in this case, microparasites such as campylobacter)..
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Why don't we let people choose?
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
Interesting to see that low income people in that survey are more keen than the wealthy on higher standards. I suppose that they cannot buy their way out of it so easily.
Americans are very keen on Country of Origin Labelling not against it.
The idea that red tractor etc would be illegal after a deal is a total myth.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
If that is a global mood at the moment, it bodes well for Biden, and disastrous for Trump.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
And don't forget there was horsemeat galore in the EU, right here in almost every processed meat product you could imagine, and perfectly legally only a few years ago.
I think we do see the effects on American health. As I recall the horsemeat scandal was illegal at the time.
If we get an American Deal, I think there will be a big reaction, not just from British farmers, but also a big swing to a plant based diet. Britons don't want that crap, and crap it is.
Then, there's nothing to fear from a US deal. If you're right British consumers will shun such products wholesale and the US will get nothing out of it.
As it happens I've eaten meat in the USA - as have hundreds of thousands of Brits - with no ill effects.
At the end of the day chemical washing might sometimes mask poorer animal welfare and hygiene during regarding rearing (or just be cheaper) but it's a very effective way of cleaning meat and making it safe to eat. Some Americans criticise EU standards for not doing the same with our chicken, making it more susceptible to E.coli, so these issues are not black and white.
PS. You're incorrect about horsemeat. The labelling was improper but not the sale of the meat and the EU had to subsequently change its regulations as a result due to the backlash.
Did you watch the Despatches programme, and really conclude that such farming practices were something that we should import?
If so you are in a very small minority. Repeated polling shows that Britons do not want that crap. I thought the point was to take back control.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
If that is a global mood at the moment, it bodes well for Biden, and disastrous for Trump.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call of Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Congratulations are very much in order, as she took over a Labour party in 2017 at 24 per cent in the polls.
It shows how really dramatically the right person can completely transform a party's electoral prospects.
(There are plenty of UK parties who can take hope from that from SLAB to the LibDems).
On Covid, she was a little fortunate as the virus hit in the NZ summer, and she basically panicked & shut the country down. It turned out that that was the right approach.
It is interesting that the leaders who panicked and shut their country done have -- in general -- fared better than those who listened to the scientists, especially the theoretical modellers.
Compare for example Norway & Sweden -- I think the Norwegian PM has said she closed everything down out of fear, whereas the Swedish approach was backed up by more cerebral arguments.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
US life expectancy is measurably lower and they clearly have a bigger problem with certain food-related health issues.
US cancer survival rates remain amongst the highest in the world.
They have a problem with obesity and diabetes but that's a tangential issue.
That's a portion control issue. They simply eat too much.
It isn't just portion control that is wrong with the American diet, but also the amount of concealed sugar salt and fat in it. These are easy ways of making bland food more appealing, so core to US food manufacturing and retailing.
Think about it, it just took one man to ensure that no teachers or any other public figures will dare show pictures of Muhammad from now on in France or else have a good chance of being killed for doing so.
This is a key point. A small minority can have an effect regardless of what the majority think if the majority stay silent or look the other way.
“A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’
We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ’silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts–the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Like the silent Muslims, we remain silent and acquiescent, while our freedoms gradually disappear."
The author of that a big fan of the Chinese approach I assume.
The piece is really just identifying the problem, without coming up with any policy to combat it. There is not really anything that can be done about it in my opinion.
The Chinese can deal with it because they are not a liberal democracy, it could never happen like that here.
For once we agree, there's a whole shitload of 'something must be done' around, hardly any 'this should be done'.
Perhaps a pause on Muslim immigration while we figure out a better way of handling things would be a good start.
What, because of the nutter in France? Oh do stop it.
It was in response to Cyclefree's post on the rise of Islamic extremism, not because of one single nutter.
How would you like to see the problem tackled?
Well step one is to dismiss notions such as officially labeling all Muslims (25% of the world's population) as a threat to our welfare. That is paranoia. As to doing more about the problem, I think the main thing is to have equality under the law. We should not - to the extent this does happen - tolerate hate speech from reactionary Muslims, or illiberal policies from reactionary Muslim institutions, due to fear or cultural cringe.
Who has labelled all Muslims as a threat? I even said the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists.
There's a small, but significant minority who are extreme and there's currently no way of knowing which ones they are. More Muslims means more extremists and it makes sense to pause immigration until we can tackle the problem effectively.
As far as I can see a lot of the terrorists were never actually involved in public hate speech. Just clamping down on that isn't going to do much.
Making "Muslim" a status which precludes entry to the UK is officially labeling all Muslims as a threat. Of course it is. Not knowing who will commit a violent atrocity before they do it is simply a general and inescapable truth, regardless of race or religion. Until "Minority Report" becomes a reality it's the job of the police and security services to mitigate these risks. A Muslim ban is a total no no. C'mon. Think about it. Did we ban all Irish people back in IRA days? No. And no-one suggested it. I wonder why some people do so now with Muslims? A clue. The policy is Trumpian and the justification is exactly like Trump Jnr with his "M&Ms" analogy. Bad company.
So your solution is to continue to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries and we'll just have to put up with the odd beheading and bomb attack.
Well you will be delighted to know that is exactly what is going to happen.
Controlled not open door immigration. Promotion of integration into mainstream society. Zero tolerance of hate speech. Support for moderate Islam. No segregated schools. No cultural cringe. Equality under the law. Appropriate funding and powers for the security services. This is imo a suitable and proportionate approach to the problem. Certainly preferable to demonizing a quarter of the world's population and nonsense such as a national blanket Muslim ban. One suspects, when hearing that sort of thing, that those proposing it are driven more by racism than anything else. I sense you are.
The no segregated schools bit is interesting. We have plenty right now. They are religious.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Why don't we let people choose?
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
Interesting to see that low income people in that survey are more keen than the wealthy on higher standards. I suppose that they cannot buy their way out of it so easily.
Americans are very keen on Country of Origin Labelling not against it.
The idea that red tractor etc would be illegal after a deal is a total myth.
In America they may be - not their exports in the UK.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
US life expectancy is measurably lower and they clearly have a bigger problem with certain food-related health issues.
US cancer survival rates remain amongst the highest in the world.
They have a problem with obesity and diabetes but that's a tangential issue.
That's a portion control issue. They simply eat too much.
It isn't just portion control that is wrong with the American diet, but also the amount of concealed sugar salt and fat in it. These are easy ways of making bland food more appealing, so core to US food manufacturing and retailing.
This is true. But even when choosing the very healthiest option, I remain astonished it isn't brought on a forklift.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Why don't we let people choose?
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
Interesting to see that low income people in that survey are more keen than the wealthy on higher standards. I suppose that they cannot buy their way out of it so easily.
Americans are very keen on Country of Origin Labelling not against it.
The idea that red tractor etc would be illegal after a deal is a total myth.
In America they may be - not their exports in the UK.
The advantage of reciprocal trade deals is the same standards apply to both sides.
Oh and kamski many restaurants today already advertise their eggs as free range etc precisely because they know their customers appreciate that.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
US life expectancy is measurably lower and they clearly have a bigger problem with certain food-related health issues.
US cancer survival rates remain amongst the highest in the world.
They have a problem with obesity and diabetes but that's a tangential issue.
That's a portion control issue. They simply eat too much.
It isn't just portion control that is wrong with the American diet, but also the amount of concealed sugar salt and fat in it. These are easy ways of making bland food more appealing, so core to US food manufacturing and retailing.
This is true. But even when choosing the very healthiest option, I remain astonished it isn't brought on a forklift.
One time I arrived late after a flight and ordered what I thought would be a light salad... It could have fed a family of four.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
If that is a global mood at the moment, it bodes well for Biden, and disastrous for Trump.
I don't think there's any such thing as a global mood except to the extent that the western liberal internationalist chattering class applauds the successes of its own.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call of Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Congratulations are very much in order, as she took over a Labour party in 2017 at 24 per cent in the polls.
It shows how really dramatically the right person can completely transform a party's electoral prospects.
(There are plenty of UK parties who can take hope from that from SLAB to the LibDems).
On Covid, she was a little fortunate as the virus hit in the NZ summer, and she basically panicked & shut the country down. It turned out that that was the right approach.
It is interesting that the leaders who panicked and shut their country done have -- in general -- fared better than those who listened to the scientists, especially the theoretical modellers.
Compare for example Norway & Sweden -- I think the Norwegian PM has said she closed everything down out of fear, whereas the Swedish approach was backed up by more cerebral arguments.
Yes, I think Corbyn, Ardern, Boris and the opposite (May and Corbyn part 2) are lessons about leadership not ideology.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call of Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Congratulations are very much in order, as she took over a Labour party in 2017 at 24 per cent in the polls.
It shows how really dramatically the right person can completely transform a party's electoral prospects.
(There are plenty of UK parties who can take hope from that from SLAB to the LibDems).
On Covid, she was a little fortunate as the virus hit in the NZ summer, and she basically panicked & shut the country down. It turned out that that was the right approach.
It is interesting that the leaders who panicked and shut their country done have -- in general -- fared better than those who listened to the scientists, especially the theoretical modellers.
Compare for example Norway & Sweden -- I think the Norwegian PM has said she closed everything down out of fear, whereas the Swedish approach was backed up by more cerebral arguments.
Yes.
It is quite something to watch the election coverage - people mingling, hugging, drinking, singing and laughing freely - and think of life in a Covid-free country.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
If that is a global mood at the moment, it bodes well for Biden, and disastrous for Trump.
I don't think there's any such thing as a global mood except to the extent that the western liberal internationalist chattering class applauds the successes of its own.
Indeed. Politics is local not global.
Trump is a disaster and his politics are disastrous. The rarely spoken truth is that when it comes to most policies Johnson is far, far, far closer to Biden than Trump.
Think about it, it just took one man to ensure that no teachers or any other public figures will dare show pictures of Muhammad from now on in France or else have a good chance of being killed for doing so.
This is a key point. A small minority can have an effect regardless of what the majority think if the majority stay silent or look the other way.
“A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’
We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ’silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts–the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Like the silent Muslims, we remain silent and acquiescent, while our freedoms gradually disappear."
The author of that a big fan of the Chinese approach I assume.
The piece is really just identifying the problem, without coming up with any policy to combat it. There is not really anything that can be done about it in my opinion.
The Chinese can deal with it because they are not a liberal democracy, it could never happen like that here.
For once we agree, there's a whole shitload of 'something must be done' around, hardly any 'this should be done'.
Perhaps a pause on Muslim immigration while we figure out a better way of handling things would be a good start.
What, because of the nutter in France? Oh do stop it.
It was in response to Cyclefree's post on the rise of Islamic extremism, not because of one single nutter.
How would you like to see the problem tackled?
Well step one is to dismiss notions such as officially labeling all Muslims (25% of the world's population) as a threat to our welfare. That is paranoia. As to doing more about the problem, I think the main thing is to have equality under the law. We should not - to the extent this does happen - tolerate hate speech from reactionary Muslims, or illiberal policies from reactionary Muslim institutions, due to fear or cultural cringe.
Who has labelled all Muslims as a threat? I even said the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists.
There's a small, but significant minority who are extreme and there's currently no way of knowing which ones they are. More Muslims means more extremists and it makes sense to pause immigration until we can tackle the problem effectively.
As far as I can see a lot of the terrorists were never actually involved in public hate speech. Just clamping down on that isn't going to do much.
Making "Muslim" a status which precludes entry to the UK is officially labeling all Muslims as a threat. Of course it is. Not knowing who will commit a violent atrocity before they do it is simply a general and inescapable truth, regardless of race or religion. Until "Minority Report" becomes a reality it's the job of the police and security services to mitigate these risks. A Muslim ban is a total no no. C'mon. Think about it. Did we ban all Irish people back in IRA days? No. And no-one suggested it. I wonder why some people do so now with Muslims? A clue. The policy is Trumpian and the justification is exactly like Trump Jnr with his "M&Ms" analogy. Bad company.
So your solution is to continue to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries and we'll just have to put up with the odd beheading and bomb attack.
Well you will be delighted to know that is exactly what is going to happen.
Controlled not open door immigration. Promotion of integration into mainstream society. Zero tolerance of hate speech. Support for moderate Islam. No segregated schools. No cultural cringe. Equality under the law. Appropriate funding and powers for the security services. This is imo a suitable and proportionate approach to the problem. Certainly preferable to demonizing a quarter of the world's population and nonsense such as a national blanket Muslim ban. One suspects, when hearing that sort of thing, that those proposing it are driven more by racism than anything else. I sense you are.
Having a pause on immigration from some countries isn't demonising them, this is a crazy conclusion to draw. The vast majority of the planet aren't able to come and settle here, is that demonising them too?
Your other ideas are reasonable, but will cost a lot of time and money. Immigration policy is supposed to best serve the current population of the country, not be a charity to spend a fortune on to solve issues that aren't present in other immigration groups.
Sure yeah pointing out these issues is racism. I give up.
It's one of our abiding values as a liberal democracy that we don't have race or religion as an excluding or including factor in immigration policy. To propose that Muslims be blanket banned is off the wall extreme and it places you in unsavoury company. Sorry but that's a fact. Just check out the sort of people who agree with you. So, yes, you should give it up.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
Her country is - still - the UK. And she is pledged to dismantling it.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
And don't forget there was horsemeat galore in the EU, right here in almost every processed meat product you could imagine, and perfectly legally only a few years ago.
I think we do see the effects on American health. As I recall the horsemeat scandal was illegal at the time.
If we get an American Deal, I think there will be a big reaction, not just from British farmers, but also a big swing to a plant based diet. Britons don't want that crap, and crap it is.
Then, there's nothing to fear from a US deal. If you're right British consumers will shun such products wholesale and the US will get nothing out of it.
As it happens I've eaten meat in the USA - as have hundreds of thousands of Brits - with no ill effects.
At the end of the day chemical washing might sometimes mask poorer animal welfare and hygiene during regarding rearing (or just be cheaper) but it's a very effective way of cleaning meat and making it safe to eat. Some Americans criticise EU standards for not doing the same with our chicken, making it more susceptible to E.coli, so these issues are not black and white.
PS. You're incorrect about horsemeat. The labelling was improper but not the sale of the meat and the EU had to subsequently change its regulations as a result due to the backlash.
Did you watch the Despatches programme, and really conclude that such farming practices were something that we should import?
If so you are in a very small minority. Repeated polling shows that Britons do not want that crap. I thought the point was to take back control.
We import meat and vegetables from all over the world.
I'm not too fussed about it so long as it's safe, meets minimum standards and is properly labelled. And the best steak and lobster I've ever had in my life has been in North America.
I'm afraid I think a lot of this is knee jerk anti-Americanism.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
Her country is - still - the UK. And she is pledged to dismantling it.
Her state might be, technically.
Her country and nation are Scotland. Which is the whole point. And she is doing far better in Scotland than Mr J in the UK or England (depending which hat he is wearing), according to the people who live in Scotland.
Think about it, it just took one man to ensure that no teachers or any other public figures will dare show pictures of Muhammad from now on in France or else have a good chance of being killed for doing so.
This is a key point. A small minority can have an effect regardless of what the majority think if the majority stay silent or look the other way.
“A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’
We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ’silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts–the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Like the silent Muslims, we remain silent and acquiescent, while our freedoms gradually disappear."
The author of that a big fan of the Chinese approach I assume.
The piece is really just identifying the problem, without coming up with any policy to combat it. There is not really anything that can be done about it in my opinion.
The Chinese can deal with it because they are not a liberal democracy, it could never happen like that here.
For once we agree, there's a whole shitload of 'something must be done' around, hardly any 'this should be done'.
Perhaps a pause on Muslim immigration while we figure out a better way of handling things would be a good start.
What, because of the nutter in France? Oh do stop it.
It was in response to Cyclefree's post on the rise of Islamic extremism, not because of one single nutter.
How would you like to see the problem tackled?
Well step one is to dismiss notions such as officially labeling all Muslims (25% of the world's population) as a threat to our welfare. That is paranoia. As to doing more about the problem, I think the main thing is to have equality under the law. We should not - to the extent this does happen - tolerate hate speech from reactionary Muslims, or illiberal policies from reactionary Muslim institutions, due to fear or cultural cringe.
Who has labelled all Muslims as a threat? I even said the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists.
There's a small, but significant minority who are extreme and there's currently no way of knowing which ones they are. More Muslims means more extremists and it makes sense to pause immigration until we can tackle the problem effectively.
As far as I can see a lot of the terrorists were never actually involved in public hate speech. Just clamping down on that isn't going to do much.
Making "Muslim" a status which precludes entry to the UK is officially labeling all Muslims as a threat. Of course it is. Not knowing who will commit a violent atrocity before they do it is simply a general and inescapable truth, regardless of race or religion. Until "Minority Report" becomes a reality it's the job of the police and security services to mitigate these risks. A Muslim ban is a total no no. C'mon. Think about it. Did we ban all Irish people back in IRA days? No. And no-one suggested it. I wonder why some people do so now with Muslims? A clue. The policy is Trumpian and the justification is exactly like Trump Jnr with his "M&Ms" analogy. Bad company.
So your solution is to continue to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries and we'll just have to put up with the odd beheading and bomb attack.
Well you will be delighted to know that is exactly what is going to happen.
Controlled not open door immigration. Promotion of integration into mainstream society. Zero tolerance of hate speech. Support for moderate Islam. No segregated schools. No cultural cringe. Equality under the law. Appropriate funding and powers for the security services. This is imo a suitable and proportionate approach to the problem. Certainly preferable to demonizing a quarter of the world's population and nonsense such as a national blanket Muslim ban. One suspects, when hearing that sort of thing, that those proposing it are driven more by racism than anything else. I sense you are.
Having a pause on immigration from some countries isn't demonising them, this is a crazy conclusion to draw. The vast majority of the planet aren't able to come and settle here, is that demonising them too?
Your other ideas are reasonable, but will cost a lot of time and money. Immigration policy is supposed to best serve the current population of the country, not be a charity to spend a fortune on to solve issues that aren't present in other immigration groups.
Sure yeah pointing out these issues is racism. I give up.
It's one of our abiding values as a liberal democracy that we don't have race or religion as an excluding or including factor in immigration policy. To propose that Muslims be blanket banned is off the wall extreme and it places you in unsavoury company. Sorry but that's a fact. Just check out the sort of people who agree with you. So, yes, you should give it up.
Income thresholds tends to disfavour Muslim majority countries anyway.
Not that Muslim immigration is the #1 or even #100 problem faced by this country.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
Her country is - still - the UK. And she is pledged to dismantling it.
Presumably on that basis you thought anyone from the former Soviet Union who wanted to dismantle the USSR was unpatriotic by definition?
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
Her country is - still - the UK. And she is pledged to dismantling it.
Presumably on that basis you thought anyone from the former Soviet Union who wanted to dismantle the USSR was unpatriotic by definition?
Says the person who was blathering about Wales not being a country the other day.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
Her country is - still - the UK. And she is pledged to dismantling it.
Presumably on that basis you thought anyone from the former Soviet Union who wanted to dismantle the USSR was unpatriotic by definition?
Says the person who was blathering about Wales not being a country the other day.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
Her country is - still - the UK. And she is pledged to dismantling it.
Her state might be, technically.
Her country and nation are Scotland. Which is the whole point. And she is doing far better in Scotland than Mr J in the UK or England (depending which hat he is wearing), according to the people who live in Scotland.
The point I was making - perhaps too obliquely - is that there is an audience for positive appeals to unity.
Sturgeon is a much, much smarter and more competent operator than Ardern, but she is also a professional grump and her ideology is by definition divisive.
If we wish to protect the Union (and it appears many on here do not), we must hope for a Scots Labour Ruth Davidson type, who can do humour, optimism, and “togetherness”.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
Her country is - still - the UK. And she is pledged to dismantling it.
Presumably on that basis you thought anyone from the former Soviet Union who wanted to dismantle the USSR was unpatriotic by definition?
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
US life expectancy is measurably lower and they clearly have a bigger problem with certain food-related health issues.
US cancer survival rates remain amongst the highest in the world.
US Cancer survival rates are skewed by over diagnosis.
If you have a slow but incurable cancer, like certain prostate cancers, then in America due to the vastly inefficient and expensive screening US GPS are wont to do you'll find out about it early yet won't do anything about it. In the UK you find out about it later with zero quality of life difference in the intervening years.
Yet that will go down in the statistics as a better cancer survival rate for the US patient because it was known about for longer.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
Her country is - still - the UK. And she is pledged to dismantling it.
Presumably on that basis you thought anyone from the former Soviet Union who wanted to dismantle the USSR was unpatriotic by definition?
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
Her country is - still - the UK. And she is pledged to dismantling it.
Presumably on that basis you thought anyone from the former Soviet Union who wanted to dismantle the USSR was unpatriotic by definition?
Says the person who was blathering about Wales not being a country the other day.
Think about it, it just took one man to ensure that no teachers or any other public figures will dare show pictures of Muhammad from now on in France or else have a good chance of being killed for doing so.
This is a key point. A small minority can have an effect regardless of what the majority think if the majority stay silent or look the other way.
“A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’
We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ’silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts–the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Like the silent Muslims, we remain silent and acquiescent, while our freedoms gradually disappear."
The author of that a big fan of the Chinese approach I assume.
The piece is really just identifying the problem, without coming up with any policy to combat it. There is not really anything that can be done about it in my opinion.
The Chinese can deal with it because they are not a liberal democracy, it could never happen like that here.
For once we agree, there's a whole shitload of 'something must be done' around, hardly any 'this should be done'.
Perhaps a pause on Muslim immigration while we figure out a better way of handling things would be a good start.
What, because of the nutter in France? Oh do stop it.
It was in response to Cyclefree's post on the rise of Islamic extremism, not because of one single nutter.
How would you like to see the problem tackled?
Well step one is to dismiss notions such as officially labeling all Muslims (25% of the world's population) as a threat to our welfare. That is paranoia. As to doing more about the problem, I think the main thing is to have equality under the law. We should not - to the extent this does happen - tolerate hate speech from reactionary Muslims, or illiberal policies from reactionary Muslim institutions, due to fear or cultural cringe.
Who has labelled all Muslims as a threat? I even said the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists.
There's a small, but significant minority who are extreme and there's currently no way of knowing which ones they are. More Muslims means more extremists and it makes sense to pause immigration until we can tackle the problem effectively.
As far as I can see a lot of the terrorists were never actually involved in public hate speech. Just clamping down on that isn't going to do much.
Making "Muslim" a status which precludes entry to the UK is officially labeling all Muslims as a threat. Of course it is. Not knowing who will commit a violent atrocity before they do it is simply a general and inescapable truth, regardless of race or religion. Until "Minority Report" becomes a reality it's the job of the police and security services to mitigate these risks. A Muslim ban is a total no no. C'mon. Think about it. Did we ban all Irish people back in IRA days? No. And no-one suggested it. I wonder why some people do so now with Muslims? A clue. The policy is Trumpian and the justification is exactly like Trump Jnr with his "M&Ms" analogy. Bad company.
So your solution is to continue to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries and we'll just have to put up with the odd beheading and bomb attack.
Well you will be delighted to know that is exactly what is going to happen.
Controlled not open door immigration. Promotion of integration into mainstream society. Zero tolerance of hate speech. Support for moderate Islam. No segregated schools. No cultural cringe. Equality under the law. Appropriate funding and powers for the security services. This is imo a suitable and proportionate approach to the problem. Certainly preferable to demonizing a quarter of the world's population and nonsense such as a national blanket Muslim ban. One suspects, when hearing that sort of thing, that those proposing it are driven more by racism than anything else. I sense you are.
The no segregated schools bit is interesting. We have plenty right now. They are religious.
Yes, for me this is a bit of a silver bullet for many things. Schools not to be segregated by religion or parental bank balance.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
Her country is - still - the UK. And she is pledged to dismantling it.
Her state might be, technically.
Her country and nation are Scotland. Which is the whole point. And she is doing far better in Scotland than Mr J in the UK or England (depending which hat he is wearing), according to the people who live in Scotland.
The point I was making - perhaps too obliquely - is that there is an audience for positive appeals to unity.
Sturgeon is a much, much smarter and more competent operator than Ardern, but she is also a professional grump and her ideology is by definition divisive.
If we wish to protect the Union (and it appears many on here do not), we must hope for a Scots Labour Ruth Davidson type, who can do humour, optimism, and “togetherness”.
You could just as well condemn Messrs Johnson and Gove for having ideology which is "by definition divisive." No, I must decline that as an argument as opposed to personal opinion (which is fair enough).
Professional grump - I should hope so at this time of all times. We're Scots. Of course we understand grumps.
The point re Ms D is interesting. What the Union really needs, however, is a competent government in its centre, nmot a comedain fronting it. There's only so much papering over the cracks that one can do with jokey photo opportunities - as Mr Johnson is showing now. I can't see that Ms Davidson could do any better. She, like Messrs J and Gove, is also a journalist, and specifically a TV one, and I think that showed in her performance, for better and worse. What I was never sure about was her ideology - other than staying in the Union (for which she is now being rewarded with a peerage). In fairness that also applies to most of the Conservative Party, especially in Scotland, who have jettisoned their pro-Europeanness and signed up to the new order. I think it is highly significant she resigned rather than (say) taking maternity leave, and although she had been called back, she's not fronting things.
And you are asking Scottish Labour to repeat their mistake of 2014 and front for the Tories yet again in Scotland, effectively. It's not a good sign for Labour that it's the Tories who are desperate to replace Mr Leonard, who at least has not ignited a civil war within Scottish Labour, and has indeed seen a replacement bid off in recent weeks, possibly because the Tories were so obviously keen to dump him. Laboiur's best chance would have been Wendy Alexander by far - and she was stabbed in the back very quickly.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Why don't we let people choose?
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
Interesting to see that low income people in that survey are more keen than the wealthy on higher standards. I suppose that they cannot buy their way out of it so easily.
Americans are very keen on Country of Origin Labelling not against it.
The idea that red tractor etc would be illegal after a deal is a total myth.
In America they may be - not their exports in the UK.
The advantage of reciprocal trade deals is the same standards apply to both sides.
Oh and kamski many restaurants today already advertise their eggs as free range etc precisely because they know their customers appreciate that.
Trade deals say whatever they say. They don’t have to apply the same standards on both sides. You might be confusing with what happens in the EU.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Why don't we let people choose?
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
Interesting to see that low income people in that survey are more keen than the wealthy on higher standards. I suppose that they cannot buy their way out of it so easily.
Americans are very keen on Country of Origin Labelling not against it.
The idea that red tractor etc would be illegal after a deal is a total myth.
In America they may be - not their exports in the UK.
The advantage of reciprocal trade deals is the same standards apply to both sides.
Oh and kamski many restaurants today already advertise their eggs as free range etc precisely because they know their customers appreciate that.
Like I said it's a case of where you draw the line, unless you are actually arguing that no regulation at all is needed.
Certain lines have been drawn looser in the US, I suspect most people here generally don't want our lines to be loosened to suit American exporters.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
US life expectancy is measurably lower and they clearly have a bigger problem with certain food-related health issues.
US cancer survival rates remain amongst the highest in the world.
US Cancer survival rates are skewed by over diagnosis.
If you have a slow but incurable cancer, like certain prostate cancers, then in America due to the vastly inefficient and expensive screening US GPS are wont to do you'll find out about it early yet won't do anything about it. In the UK you find out about it later with zero quality of life difference in the intervening years.
Yet that will go down in the statistics as a better cancer survival rate for the US patient because it was known about for longer.
Indeed, there is a whole South Korean saga about over diagnosis - and overtreatment - of slow growing, non-lethal cancers (thyroid) skewing not just the nation's cancer survival statistics, but its approach to treatment. To the detriment of patient care.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Why don't we let people choose?
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
Interesting to see that low income people in that survey are more keen than the wealthy on higher standards. I suppose that they cannot buy their way out of it so easily.
Americans are very keen on Country of Origin Labelling not against it.
The idea that red tractor etc would be illegal after a deal is a total myth.
In America they may be - not their exports in the UK.
That's correct. This is my day job (we were responsible with partners for the film on live exports and also work with MPs across party on the trade deal and labelling issues.The detailed discussion which we wrote is here if anyone's interested: https://www.ciwf.org.uk/our-campaigns/other-campaigns/trade-and-animal-welfare/
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Perhaps the more relevant question isn't why she won but why National lost so heavily. Only 2002 was worse in terms of vote share and seats since the coming of MMP.
Pre-Covid, Simon Bridges had put National in a decent position - a Colmar Brunton poll in mid February had a 46-41 lead. Unfortunately, the response of Bridges and National to Covid was to carp, criticise and complain and you just don't do that at a time of crisis. In trying to defend National's core constituencies of business and farmers, Bridges struck the wrong note with the suburban and urban vote and from then on he and National started to sink.
Replacing Bridges with farmer-friendly Todd Mueller was a disaster (think IDS) as he was completely incapable of the kind of leadership National needed so it was left to the vastly experienced Judith Collins and Gerry Brownlee to try to save something but they are relics from the Key Government - the nearest analogy is Howard becoming Conservative leader after IDS.
In the end, all Collins could count on was the National core vote and that's the 27%. Yes, some National voters probably went ACT (as did some NZF) but the swing from National to Labour was 15% so there must have been huge direct switching of votes. The Party vote numbers tell a similar story - in Taranaki King-Country (the electorate of former NZ PM Jim Bolger), in 2017 National won the electorate vote by 15,000 and the Party vote by 12,000. This time the electorate was won by 3,500 and the Party vote by just 337.
Another factor was the referendum also taking place on the legalisation of cannabis which I suspect led to a marked increase in voting among younger people who are strongly Labour. I believe turnout is up on 2017.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
And don't forget there was horsemeat galore in the EU, right here in almost every processed meat product you could imagine, and perfectly legally only a few years ago.
I think we do see the effects on American health. As I recall the horsemeat scandal was illegal at the time.
If we get an American Deal, I think there will be a big reaction, not just from British farmers, but also a big swing to a plant based diet. Britons don't want that crap, and crap it is.
Then, there's nothing to fear from a US deal. If you're right British consumers will shun such products wholesale and the US will get nothing out of it.
As it happens I've eaten meat in the USA - as have hundreds of thousands of Brits - with no ill effects.
At the end of the day chemical washing might sometimes mask poorer animal welfare and hygiene during regarding rearing (or just be cheaper) but it's a very effective way of cleaning meat and making it safe to eat. Some Americans criticise EU standards for not doing the same with our chicken, making it more susceptible to E.coli, so these issues are not black and white.
PS. You're incorrect about horsemeat. The labelling was improper but not the sale of the meat and the EU had to subsequently change its regulations as a result due to the backlash.
Did you watch the Despatches programme, and really conclude that such farming practices were something that we should import?
If so you are in a very small minority. Repeated polling shows that Britons do not want that crap. I thought the point was to take back control.
We import meat and vegetables from all over the world.
I'm not too fussed about it so long as it's safe, meets minimum standards and is properly labelled. And the best steak and lobster I've ever had in my life has been in North America.
I'm afraid I think a lot of this is knee jerk anti-Americanism.
Yes, we import lots of foods - which meet our standards. It is certainly possible to eat well in America, if you are rich and choosy where you go.
I am not Anti-American. I lived there for 5 years as a teenager and am really quite fond of the place, the landscapes and people. I even feel some affinity for Southern Redneck culture from my schooling in Georgia.
America (like Britain) is a very diverse country, and it as hard to hate it all as to love it all. There are many bad things about America, including US agribusiness, as well as many positive things. A real patriot is not afraid of criticising their country, as any true patriot wants it to be a better place. I am a patriotic Brit who loves America and Europe too*. There is no conflict in that.
*Many other places too, such as Africa and Australasia too.
Still got this twattish article up. Sorry but true.
I've just put some more money on the US elections, going in on both Presidential and Senate races. This is landslide territory. A seismic change taking place. The corollary will be Johnson's isolation in the world. Delicious.
Isn't the UK being isolated just when we need friends the most a bad thing?
I can't quite understand the glee at the prospect of the UK doing badly.
Of course the isolation and probable break up of the UK is a bad thing, but other countries turning away from similar policies is a good thing. We can only look on in envy. Their idiocies are more easily reversed than ours.
What is the problem with a US trade deal if Trump wins the election?
Reduction in food standards. Watch this, if you can.
Yes it is disgusting. As is us exporting animals to Spain for fast "fattening" and then them being exported again to the Middle East for slaughter in terrible conditions.
But highlighting one and ignoring the other smacks of not wanting a deal with the US IMO.
Oh, I agree. It isn't true though, as I oppose a lot of other factory farming practices domestically too. An American deal would be a big step in the wrong direction, when we should be moving in the direction of higher standards.
Why don't we let people choose?
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
Interesting to see that low income people in that survey are more keen than the wealthy on higher standards. I suppose that they cannot buy their way out of it so easily.
Americans are very keen on Country of Origin Labelling not against it.
The idea that red tractor etc would be illegal after a deal is a total myth.
In America they may be - not their exports in the UK.
The advantage of reciprocal trade deals is the same standards apply to both sides.
Oh and kamski many restaurants today already advertise their eggs as free range etc precisely because they know their customers appreciate that.
Like I said it's a case of where you draw the line, unless you are actually arguing that no regulation at all is needed.
Certain lines have been drawn looser in the US, I suspect most people here generally don't want our lines to be loosened to suit American exporters.
I want the line to primarily concern safety for consumers.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
Her country is - still - the UK. And she is pledged to dismantling it.
Her state might be, technically.
Her country and nation are Scotland. Which is the whole point. And she is doing far better in Scotland than Mr J in the UK or England (depending which hat he is wearing), according to the people who live in Scotland.
The point I was making - perhaps too obliquely - is that there is an audience for positive appeals to unity.
Sturgeon is a much, much smarter and more competent operator than Ardern, but she is also a professional grump and her ideology is by definition divisive.
If we wish to protect the Union (and it appears many on here do not), we must hope for a Scots Labour Ruth Davidson type, who can do humour, optimism, and “togetherness”.
You could just as well condemn Messrs Johnson and Gove for having ideology which is "by definition divisive." No, I must decline that as an argument as opposed to personal opinion (which is fair enough).
Professional grump - I should hope so at this time of all times. We're Scots. Of course we understand grumps.
The point re Ms D is interesting. What the Union really needs, however, is a competent government in its centre, nmot a comedain fronting it. There's only so much papering over the cracks that one can do with jokey photo opportunities - as Mr Johnson is showing now. I can't see that Ms Davidson could do any better. She, like Messrs J and Gove, is also a journalist, and specifically a TV one, and I think that showed in her performance, for better and worse. What I was never sure about was her ideology - other than staying in the Union (for which she is now being rewarded with a peerage). In fairness that also applies to most of the Conservative Party, especially in Scotland, who have jettisoned their pro-Europeanness and signed up to the new order. I think it is highly significant she resigned rather than (say) taking maternity leave, and although she had been called back, she's not fronting things.
And you are asking Scottish Labour to repeat their mistake of 2014 and front for the Tories yet again in Scotland, effectively. It's not a good sign for Labour that it's the Tories who are desperate to replace Mr Leonard, who at least has not ignited a civil war within Scottish Labour, and has indeed seen a replacement bid off in recent weeks, possibly because the Tories were so obviously keen to dump him. Laboiur's best chance would have been Wendy Alexander by far - and she was stabbed in the back very quickly.
You seem to be confusing me with a PB Tory. I loathe Boris and indeed, nothing has been more divisive than Brexit.
I do like this country though - by which I mean - Britain - and I’m interested in ways of protecting the Union. It would make a good thread header for someone...
It seems to me as an outsider to Scottish politics that the SNP have a near-monopoly on conviction, of not competence, and that the Unionist parties are bereft of talent. No, I don’t think Richard Leonard is up to snuff.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
US life expectancy is measurably lower and they clearly have a bigger problem with certain food-related health issues.
US cancer survival rates remain amongst the highest in the world.
US Cancer survival rates are skewed by over diagnosis.
If you have a slow but incurable cancer, like certain prostate cancers, then in America due to the vastly inefficient and expensive screening US GPS are wont to do you'll find out about it early yet won't do anything about it. In the UK you find out about it later with zero quality of life difference in the intervening years.
Yet that will go down in the statistics as a better cancer survival rate for the US patient because it was known about for longer.
Isn't the point of screening that the sooner you find it, the easier it is to treat?
Some may be incurable but most are not if caught early enough.
Think about it, it just took one man to ensure that no teachers or any other public figures will dare show pictures of Muhammad from now on in France or else have a good chance of being killed for doing so.
This is a key point. A small minority can have an effect regardless of what the majority think if the majority stay silent or look the other way.
“A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’
We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ’silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts–the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Like the silent Muslims, we remain silent and acquiescent, while our freedoms gradually disappear."
The author of that a big fan of the Chinese approach I assume.
The piece is really just identifying the problem, without coming up with any policy to combat it. There is not really anything that can be done about it in my opinion.
The Chinese can deal with it because they are not a liberal democracy, it could never happen like that here.
For once we agree, there's a whole shitload of 'something must be done' around, hardly any 'this should be done'.
Perhaps a pause on Muslim immigration while we figure out a better way of handling things would be a good start.
What, because of the nutter in France? Oh do stop it.
It was in response to Cyclefree's post on the rise of Islamic extremism, not because of one single nutter.
How would you like to see the problem tackled?
Well step one is to dismiss notions such as officially labeling all Muslims (25% of the world's population) as a threat to our welfare. That is paranoia. As to doing more about the problem, I think the main thing is to have equality under the law. We should not - to the extent this does happen - tolerate hate speech from reactionary Muslims, or illiberal policies from reactionary Muslim institutions, due to fear or cultural cringe.
Who has labelled all Muslims as a threat? I even said the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists.
There's a small, but significant minority who are extreme and there's currently no way of knowing which ones they are. More Muslims means more extremists and it makes sense to pause immigration until we can tackle the problem effectively.
As far as I can see a lot of the terrorists were never actually involved in public hate speech. Just clamping down on that isn't going to do much.
Making "Muslim" a status which precludes entry to the UK is officially labeling all Muslims as a threat. Of course it is. Not knowing who will commit a violent atrocity before they do it is simply a general and inescapable truth, regardless of race or religion. Until "Minority Report" becomes a reality it's the job of the police and security services to mitigate these risks. A Muslim ban is a total no no. C'mon. Think about it. Did we ban all Irish people back in IRA days? No. And no-one suggested it. I wonder why some people do so now with Muslims? A clue. The policy is Trumpian and the justification is exactly like Trump Jnr with his "M&Ms" analogy. Bad company.
So your solution is to continue to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries and we'll just have to put up with the odd beheading and bomb attack.
Well you will be delighted to know that is exactly what is going to happen.
Controlled not open door immigration. Promotion of integration into mainstream society. Zero tolerance of hate speech. Support for moderate Islam. No segregated schools. No cultural cringe. Equality under the law. Appropriate funding and powers for the security services. This is imo a suitable and proportionate approach to the problem. Certainly preferable to demonizing a quarter of the world's population and nonsense such as a national blanket Muslim ban. One suspects, when hearing that sort of thing, that those proposing it are driven more by racism than anything else. I sense you are.
The no segregated schools bit is interesting. We have plenty right now. They are religious.
Yes, for me this is a bit of a silver bullet for many things. Schools not to be segregated by religion or parental bank balance.
So you don't believe in children walking to their local school? Determined by the bank balance of who got a school in its catchment area.
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
US life expectancy is measurably lower and they clearly have a bigger problem with certain food-related health issues.
US cancer survival rates remain amongst the highest in the world.
US Cancer survival rates are skewed by over diagnosis.
If you have a slow but incurable cancer, like certain prostate cancers, then in America due to the vastly inefficient and expensive screening US GPS are wont to do you'll find out about it early yet won't do anything about it. In the UK you find out about it later with zero quality of life difference in the intervening years.
Yet that will go down in the statistics as a better cancer survival rate for the US patient because it was known about for longer.
Indeed, there is a whole South Korean saga about over diagnosis - and overtreatment - of slow growing, non-lethal cancers (thyroid) skewing not just the nation's cancer survival statistics, but its approach to treatment. To the detriment of patient care.
That said if I was over 65 (so on medicare) and had a nasty cancer I would prefer to be in America rather than the UK. Medicare is willing to spend silly money on cancer treatments.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
Yes, I think that's right.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Pretty much. Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
Why do you think "Sturgeon by definition does not"?
Her country is - still - the UK. And she is pledged to dismantling it.
Her state might be, technically.
Her country and nation are Scotland. Which is the whole point. And she is doing far better in Scotland than Mr J in the UK or England (depending which hat he is wearing), according to the people who live in Scotland.
The point I was making - perhaps too obliquely - is that there is an audience for positive appeals to unity.
Sturgeon is a much, much smarter and more competent operator than Ardern, but she is also a professional grump and her ideology is by definition divisive.
If we wish to protect the Union (and it appears many on here do not), we must hope for a Scots Labour Ruth Davidson type, who can do humour, optimism, and “togetherness”.
You could just as well condemn Messrs Johnson and Gove for having ideology which is "by definition divisive." No, I must decline that as an argument as opposed to personal opinion (which is fair enough).
Professional grump - I should hope so at this time of all times. We're Scots. Of course we understand grumps.
The point re Ms D is interesting. What the Union really needs, however, is a competent government in its centre, nmot a comedain fronting it. There's only so much papering over the cracks that one can do with jokey photo opportunities - as Mr Johnson is showing now. I can't see that Ms Davidson could do any better. She, like Messrs J and Gove, is also a journalist, and specifically a TV one, and I think that showed in her performance, for better and worse. What I was never sure about was her ideology - other than staying in the Union (for which she is now being rewarded with a peerage). In fairness that also applies to most of the Conservative Party, especially in Scotland, who have jettisoned their pro-Europeanness and signed up to the new order. I think it is highly significant she resigned rather than (say) taking maternity leave, and although she had been called back, she's not fronting things.
And you are asking Scottish Labour to repeat their mistake of 2014 and front for the Tories yet again in Scotland, effectively. It's not a good sign for Labour that it's the Tories who are desperate to replace Mr Leonard, who at least has not ignited a civil war within Scottish Labour, and has indeed seen a replacement bid off in recent weeks, possibly because the Tories were so obviously keen to dump him. Laboiur's best chance would have been Wendy Alexander by far - and she was stabbed in the back very quickly.
You seem to be confusing me with a PB Tory. I loathe Boris and indeed, nothing has been more divisive than Brexit.
I do like this country though - by which I mean - Britain - and I’m interested in ways of protecting the Union. It would make a good thread header for someone...
It seems to me as an outsider to Scottish politics that the SNP have a near-monopoly on conviction, of not competence, and that the Unionist parties are bereft of talent. No, I don’t think Richard Leonard is up to snuff.
My apologies!
I do think Ms Davidson has a certain talent - but it's very much the TV comedian front person - not without its real uses in politics as Mr J shows. And she pretty much erased a lot of the older Tories in the Annabel Goldie mould and replaced them with younger clones. Someone with a deeper observation skill than I could perhaps do a thread header on her similarities with Mr J,. which wouild no doubt horrify both of them. Though she's not history, yet, by any means, especially as she can carry on her campaign from the secure base of the HoL. I wouldn't be in the least surprised to see her replace Alister Jack as Satrap for Scotland in the Westminster cabinet once she takes up the ermine.
On Labour talent, we do have Ms Baillie and Mr Sarwar, and Mr Rowley, though if they were so good why did they not win long before ...? I was talking to someone only this morning and suggesting that Mr Leonard was not that bad if only because there was nobody to replace him, at which my colocutor - who is socialist at heart - mentioned a certain Labour frontbencher and guffawed. I don't want to name that person, as I justr don't have the heart, but the politician in question is certainly half a haddock fillet and the brown sauce short of a full supper. That person even having a MSP seat - never mind a shadow position - is not a good sign of the level of Labour talent.
Are we going to have an article about how Gupta is also wrong? For balance, you know.
Has she ever been right at any point during the pandemic? By which I mean - not obviously disproved within weeks of any of her pronouncements (unlike in March, April, May, or June).
Or does she just rely on the fact that anyone who wants to believe what she’s saying will be automatically credulous?
I'm not a fan of some of its farming methods but America is not the third world or the wild west. If it were that unsafe for human consumption or resulted in cancer we'd see the results in the US population starkly with that of Europe.
US life expectancy is measurably lower and they clearly have a bigger problem with certain food-related health issues.
US cancer survival rates remain amongst the highest in the world.
US Cancer survival rates are skewed by over diagnosis.
If you have a slow but incurable cancer, like certain prostate cancers, then in America due to the vastly inefficient and expensive screening US GPS are wont to do you'll find out about it early yet won't do anything about it. In the UK you find out about it later with zero quality of life difference in the intervening years.
Yet that will go down in the statistics as a better cancer survival rate for the US patient because it was known about for longer.
Indeed, there is a whole South Korean saga about over diagnosis - and overtreatment - of slow growing, non-lethal cancers (thyroid) skewing not just the nation's cancer survival statistics, but its approach to treatment. To the detriment of patient care.
That said if I was over 65 (so on medicare) and had a nasty cancer I would prefer to be in America rather than the UK. Medicare is willing to spend silly money on cancer treatments.
Think about it, it just took one man to ensure that no teachers or any other public figures will dare show pictures of Muhammad from now on in France or else have a good chance of being killed for doing so.
This is a key point. A small minority can have an effect regardless of what the majority think if the majority stay silent or look the other way.
“A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’
We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ’silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts–the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Like the silent Muslims, we remain silent and acquiescent, while our freedoms gradually disappear."
The author of that a big fan of the Chinese approach I assume.
The piece is really just identifying the problem, without coming up with any policy to combat it. There is not really anything that can be done about it in my opinion.
The Chinese can deal with it because they are not a liberal democracy, it could never happen like that here.
For once we agree, there's a whole shitload of 'something must be done' around, hardly any 'this should be done'.
Perhaps a pause on Muslim immigration while we figure out a better way of handling things would be a good start.
What, because of the nutter in France? Oh do stop it.
It was in response to Cyclefree's post on the rise of Islamic extremism, not because of one single nutter.
How would you like to see the problem tackled?
Well step one is to dismiss notions such as officially labeling all Muslims (25% of the world's population) as a threat to our welfare. That is paranoia. As to doing more about the problem, I think the main thing is to have equality under the law. We should not - to the extent this does happen - tolerate hate speech from reactionary Muslims, or illiberal policies from reactionary Muslim institutions, due to fear or cultural cringe.
Who has labelled all Muslims as a threat? I even said the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists.
There's a small, but significant minority who are extreme and there's currently no way of knowing which ones they are. More Muslims means more extremists and it makes sense to pause immigration until we can tackle the problem effectively.
As far as I can see a lot of the terrorists were never actually involved in public hate speech. Just clamping down on that isn't going to do much.
Making "Muslim" a status which precludes entry to the UK is officially labeling all Muslims as a threat. Of course it is. Not knowing who will commit a violent atrocity before they do it is simply a general and inescapable truth, regardless of race or religion. Until "Minority Report" becomes a reality it's the job of the police and security services to mitigate these risks. A Muslim ban is a total no no. C'mon. Think about it. Did we ban all Irish people back in IRA days? No. And no-one suggested it. I wonder why some people do so now with Muslims? A clue. The policy is Trumpian and the justification is exactly like Trump Jnr with his "M&Ms" analogy. Bad company.
So your solution is to continue to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries and we'll just have to put up with the odd beheading and bomb attack.
Well you will be delighted to know that is exactly what is going to happen.
Controlled not open door immigration. Promotion of integration into mainstream society. Zero tolerance of hate speech. Support for moderate Islam. No segregated schools. No cultural cringe. Equality under the law. Appropriate funding and powers for the security services. This is imo a suitable and proportionate approach to the problem. Certainly preferable to demonizing a quarter of the world's population and nonsense such as a national blanket Muslim ban. One suspects, when hearing that sort of thing, that those proposing it are driven more by racism than anything else. I sense you are.
The no segregated schools bit is interesting. We have plenty right now. They are religious.
Yes, for me this is a bit of a silver bullet for many things. Schools not to be segregated by religion or parental bank balance.
So you don't believe in children walking to their local school? Determined by the bank balance of who got a school in its catchment area.
Little that one can do about that other than spreading wealth around rather more evenly. Levelling up as more than soundbite.
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Went shopping today, the first time I've been ourdoors for a week. Dramatic increase in mask-wearing on the street, as opposed to merely inside the shops - from 5% to 50%, I'd say. Godalming is level 1, but we think level 2 and quite possibly level 3 are just a matter of time.
Unfortunately, he also has a nasty and unpleasant side and tries to go for people personally who he disagrees with - particularly when he senses some inconsistency in their approach. He's done this with me, SeanT, BigGNorthWales and is trying to dog whistle on you now too.
He's also entirely incapable of humility or admitting he's wrong - ever. When I've challenged him on this in the past he's got ever more pompous, snide and self-aggrandizing, and never apologises.
He just never thinks he's wrong.
Biden 50% (+1)
Trump 43% (-1)
Changes from yesterday.
And don't forget there was horsemeat galore in the EU, right here in almost every processed meat product you could imagine, and perfectly legally only a few years ago.
My mother grew up in Danzig and her father worked in Berlin in the 30s for over a decade - they saw lots of Germans. Her view was that the old aristocrats and some of the poorer groups were anti-Nazi, but most people were increasingly enthusiastic about Hitler- they felt they'd been humiliated and destitute and they liked what they saw as a winner. Violent extremism is always bad, but the parallels with Muslims and the likes of ISIS are IMO pretty much non-existent.
If people want red tractor meat, free range eggs they will pay for that.
If we get an American Deal, I think there will be a big reaction, not just from British farmers, but also a big swing to a plant based diet. Britons don't want that crap, and crap it is.
Yes, like most Britons*, I support raising of welfare standards above other countries including the EU ones. Its not likely to happen though under this government.
*https://yougov.co.uk/topics/food/articles-reports/2020/06/16/britain-chlorinated-chicken-US-trade-deal
As it happens I've eaten meat in the USA - as have hundreds of thousands of Brits - with no ill effects.
At the end of the day chemical washing might sometimes mask poorer animal welfare and hygiene during regarding rearing (or just be cheaper) but it's a very effective way of cleaning meat and making it safe to eat. Some Americans criticise EU standards for not doing the same with our chicken, making it more susceptible to E.coli, so these issues are not black and white.
PS. You're incorrect about horsemeat. The labelling was improper but not the sale of the meat and the EU had to subsequently change its regulations as a result due to the backlash.
She is not very bright, and has not run a very effective adminstration, but she exudes empathy and made the right call on Covid. The Opposition have not been able to lay a glove on her.
Her win is superlative, and she can now form a single party government - unprecedented in the modern era.
Thank goodness too that Winston Peters and NZFirst have finally been booted out. He is/was NZ’s nearest thing to Nigel Farage. NZers finally - after 40 years - have tired of his crooked, race-baiting schtick.
I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn for the U.K.
On one hand, the election can be read as a massive shift leftwards (the Greens also did well). On the other, Jacinda governed and campaigned as a centrist. Her win was really a win for positivity and unity - qualities conspicuously lacking from Boris, Keir or Sturgeon.
They have a problem with obesity and diabetes but that's a tangential issue.
https://www.which.co.uk/news/2020/06/why-labels-wont-protect-uk-food-standards-from-a-us-trade-deal/
Interesting to see that low income people in that survey are more keen than the wealthy on higher standards. I suppose that they cannot buy their way out of it so easily.
Why don't we let people choose if they want toxic paint on children's toys?
Or, if people want lead-free petrol they will pay for that.
And if you want to only eat food produced without excessive cruelty, for example, it is not very easy to ask every time you eat when someone else cooks (whether a friend or in a restaurant etc) how they source their eggs.
Though these days Pickford off the pitch is probably a plus for Everton.
It's her emotional intelligence that's supreme and she has been rewarded for.
The antithesis of Theresa May perhaps?
Your other ideas are reasonable, but will cost a lot of time and money. Immigration policy is supposed to best serve the current population of the country, not be a charity to spend a fortune on to solve issues that aren't present in other immigration groups.
Sure yeah pointing out these issues is racism. I give up.
Just wasn't sure of which division.
"It was, after all, the virus that not only infected the country but brought down his presidential chances as well. In almost every state, Trump gets high marks (over 50 percent) for helping the economy and low marks (in the low 40s) for dealing with the virus. His stands on “law and order” in the face of riots and racial injustice were too far to the right for a public that wanted a balance between reforming the police and the justice systems and re-establishing stability in the country. Biden overwhelmingly is seen as the one who can bring racial reconciliation.
...
"Trump has spent a lot of time courting the Black vote but, in these polls, he is getting about 10 percent. He is doing better (almost 40 percent) among voters he did not spend much time courting – the Latino vote – and he is likely to do especially well with voters from Cuba, Venezuela and Central America. Working-class voters continue to support him strongly, while he faces defections from 2016 among suburban voters and seniors who care more about their safety than the economy. Trump simply spent too much time reinforcing his base and too little time reaching out for swing voters."
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/521457-swing-state-polls-suggest-a-narrowed-path-for-trumps-reelection
But in the week they tried to grab all the TV money for themselves and the other 5 biggest clubs I have to say...lolz.
The idea that red tractor etc would be illegal after a deal is a total myth.
Though both manifestly care about their respective countries in a way that Boris does not, Sturgeon by definition does not, and Keir has yet to tell us.
If that is a global mood at the moment, it bodes well for Biden, and disastrous for Trump.
If so you are in a very small minority. Repeated polling shows that Britons do not want that crap. I thought the point was to take back control.
It shows how really dramatically the right person can completely transform a party's electoral prospects.
(There are plenty of UK parties who can take hope from that from SLAB to the LibDems).
On Covid, she was a little fortunate as the virus hit in the NZ summer, and she basically panicked & shut the country down. It turned out that that was the right approach.
It is interesting that the leaders who panicked and shut their country done have -- in general -- fared better than those who listened to the scientists, especially the theoretical modellers.
Compare for example Norway & Sweden -- I think the Norwegian PM has said she closed everything down out of fear, whereas the Swedish approach was backed up by more cerebral arguments.
They are religious.
Oh and kamski many restaurants today already advertise their eggs as free range etc precisely because they know their customers appreciate that.
It is quite something to watch the election coverage - people mingling, hugging, drinking, singing and laughing freely - and think of life in a Covid-free country.
Trump is a disaster and his politics are disastrous. The rarely spoken truth is that when it comes to most policies Johnson is far, far, far closer to Biden than Trump.
And she is pledged to dismantling it.
I'm not too fussed about it so long as it's safe, meets minimum standards and is properly labelled. And the best steak and lobster I've ever had in my life has been in North America.
I'm afraid I think a lot of this is knee jerk anti-Americanism.
Her country and nation are Scotland. Which is the whole point. And she is doing far better in Scotland than Mr J in the UK or England (depending which hat he is wearing), according to the people who live in Scotland.
Not that Muslim immigration is the #1 or even #100 problem faced by this country.
Probably RochdalePioneers: https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/3062923/#Comment_3062923
Sturgeon is a much, much smarter and more competent operator than Ardern, but she is also a professional grump and her ideology is by definition divisive.
If we wish to protect the Union (and it appears many on here do not), we must hope for a Scots Labour Ruth Davidson type, who can do humour, optimism, and “togetherness”.
If you have a slow but incurable cancer, like certain prostate cancers, then in America due to the vastly inefficient and expensive screening US GPS are wont to do you'll find out about it early yet won't do anything about it. In the UK you find out about it later with zero quality of life difference in the intervening years.
Yet that will go down in the statistics as a better cancer survival rate for the US patient because it was known about for longer.
It was RochdalePioneers & Pulpstar who denied the existence of Wales as a country.
I will add their names to the list.
Yours has been removed.
Professional grump - I should hope so at this time of all times. We're Scots. Of course we understand grumps.
The point re Ms D is interesting. What the Union really needs, however, is a competent government in its centre, nmot a comedain fronting it. There's only so much papering over the cracks that one can do with jokey photo opportunities - as Mr Johnson is showing now. I can't see that Ms Davidson could do any better. She, like Messrs J and Gove, is also a journalist, and specifically a TV one, and I think that showed in her performance, for better and worse. What I was never sure about was her ideology - other than staying in the Union (for which she is now being rewarded with a peerage). In fairness that also applies to most of the Conservative Party, especially in Scotland, who have jettisoned their pro-Europeanness and signed up to the new order. I think it is highly significant she resigned rather than (say) taking maternity leave, and although she had been called back, she's not fronting things.
And you are asking Scottish Labour to repeat their mistake of 2014 and front for the Tories yet again in Scotland, effectively. It's not a good sign for Labour that it's the Tories who are desperate to replace Mr Leonard, who at least has not ignited a civil war within Scottish Labour, and has indeed seen a replacement bid off in recent weeks, possibly because the Tories were so obviously keen to dump him. Laboiur's best chance would have been Wendy Alexander by far - and she was stabbed in the back very quickly.
Certain lines have been drawn looser in the US, I suspect most people here generally don't want our lines to be loosened to suit American exporters.
See https://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2014/11/thyroid-cancer-south-korea-cautionary-tale-about-dangers-overdiagnosis/
Pre-Covid, Simon Bridges had put National in a decent position - a Colmar Brunton poll in mid February had a 46-41 lead. Unfortunately, the response of Bridges and National to Covid was to carp, criticise and complain and you just don't do that at a time of crisis. In trying to defend National's core constituencies of business and farmers, Bridges struck the wrong note with the suburban and urban vote and from then on he and National started to sink.
Replacing Bridges with farmer-friendly Todd Mueller was a disaster (think IDS) as he was completely incapable of the kind of leadership National needed so it was left to the vastly experienced Judith Collins and Gerry Brownlee to try to save something but they are relics from the Key Government - the nearest analogy is Howard becoming Conservative leader after IDS.
In the end, all Collins could count on was the National core vote and that's the 27%. Yes, some National voters probably went ACT (as did some NZF) but the swing from National to Labour was 15% so there must have been huge direct switching of votes. The Party vote numbers tell a similar story - in Taranaki King-Country (the electorate of former NZ PM Jim Bolger), in 2017 National won the electorate vote by 15,000 and the Party vote by 12,000. This time the electorate was won by 3,500 and the Party vote by just 337.
Another factor was the referendum also taking place on the legalisation of cannabis which I suspect led to a marked increase in voting among younger people who are strongly Labour. I believe turnout is up on 2017.
I am not Anti-American. I lived there for 5 years as a teenager and am really quite fond of the place, the landscapes and people. I even feel some affinity for Southern Redneck culture from my schooling in Georgia.
America (like Britain) is a very diverse country, and it as hard to hate it all as to love it all. There are many bad things about America, including US agribusiness, as well as many positive things. A real patriot is not afraid of criticising their country, as any true patriot wants it to be a better place. I am a patriotic Brit who loves America and Europe too*. There is no conflict in that.
*Many other places too, such as Africa and Australasia too.
I loathe Boris and indeed, nothing has been more divisive than Brexit.
I do like this country though - by which I mean - Britain - and I’m interested in ways of protecting the Union. It would make a good thread header for someone...
It seems to me as an outsider to Scottish politics that the SNP have a near-monopoly on conviction, of not competence, and that the Unionist parties are bereft of talent. No, I don’t think Richard Leonard is up to snuff.
Some may be incurable but most are not if caught early enough.
I do think Ms Davidson has a certain talent - but it's very much the TV comedian front person - not without its real uses in politics as Mr J shows. And she pretty much erased a lot of the older Tories in the Annabel Goldie mould and replaced them with younger clones. Someone with a deeper observation skill than I could perhaps do a thread header on her similarities with Mr J,. which wouild no doubt horrify both of them. Though she's not history, yet, by any means, especially as she can carry on her campaign from the secure base of the HoL. I wouldn't be in the least surprised to see her replace Alister Jack as Satrap for Scotland in the Westminster cabinet once she takes up the ermine.
On Labour talent, we do have Ms Baillie and Mr Sarwar, and Mr Rowley, though if they were so good why did they not win long before ...? I was talking to someone only this morning and suggesting that Mr Leonard was not that bad if only because there was nobody to replace him, at which my colocutor - who is socialist at heart - mentioned a certain Labour frontbencher and guffawed. I don't want to name that person, as I justr don't have the heart, but the politician in question is certainly half a haddock fillet and the brown sauce short of a full supper. That person even having a MSP seat - never mind a shadow position - is not a good sign of the level of Labour talent.
By which I mean - not obviously disproved within weeks of any of her pronouncements (unlike in March, April, May, or June).
Or does she just rely on the fact that anyone who wants to believe what she’s saying will be automatically credulous?