The first responses of the Trump faithful to his statement today are very interesting indeed.
Builderman5000 @builderman5000 · 34m Replying to @DanScavino Seriously? What was this all about then? Why did we invest so much of our heart and soul into this? What was all these sleepless night for? Is this the worlds greatest cock tease? Or is something going to happen? Chaotic Mommy @Chaotic_Mommy · 38m Replying to @DanScavino I’m so confused. Is he giving up? What happened to the storm? What happened to game on? I thought he would never give up!!!
Not all bullies are cowards who will recoil from a show of strength against them sadly, some bullies will hit you harder if you stand up to them.
Trump is not that kind of bully. He is a coward as his tough talk on legal cases shows.
FPT - Johnson was predicting workers would flock back to offices once the pandemic ends; he's not encouraging them to do so now, or soon.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think a 3-day week will become the new 5-day week (with most workers WFH on Mondays and Fridays) and some only coming in for one or two days, but of course it's impossible to predict with any certainty at this stage:
I think it will mostly depend on whether your boss is a controlling arsehole or not.
Your assuming that everyone likes working from home.
I like it. I have
- space - quiet - kids - kids who are mature enough to sort out their online schooling themselves - a proper desk - a huge monitor - a high end computer - good internet connection - a proper chair - an employer who has excellent technical infrastructure - a job that can easily be done remotely - a capable, stable long running team
etc etc
Half the team want to go back to the office.
- The younger ones want do back to berserk-after-work - out partying after work. - One guy is sharing his one bed flat with his wife who is a manger on the phone 9 hours a day.... constant meetings, and she doesn't have a volume control.
etc etc
Absolutely.
For the PB demographic (if not retired then I would guess largely similar to your first list) it is fab to work at home. Here I am, gazing out on the frost-dappled trees outside, while the fire is lit in the dining room my study, my employer fedexed a replacement laptop to me when mine was on the fritz, shall I go for a bike ride a bit later to see whether the yellowhammers are out in force yet? I think I shall.
Living in a small flat which you share with family or non-family or living alone with virtually your whole social life centred around work, bars near work, and colleagues from work....not so great.
It is not just money and property - more mature workers already have the job knowledge and experience, and the personal contacts, to make working at home easier and more satisfying.
If you are starting out in a job or career, you are much more reliant on personal interaction with employees, customers and suppliers to learn and develop into the job. And plenty of us know that such contacts can be very useful in future, opening up future opportunities. All of this is being denied to the young who find that being at work means sitting in their bedsit tied to a laptop.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
GB News will bring to the UK what Fox News brought to the US, discuss.
Of course, that’s the idea. Brexit radicalised the low information voters to vote against their own interests based on a platform of lies and tinpot nationalism, it’s been successful for Trump, let’s keep the momentum going.
Having watched events unfold last night, I can't help but think that talk of insurrections and coups is somewhat overblown.
Basically, it was a large, but not massive, crowd of redneck losers incited by their leader. But had the police/security forces done their job they would never have got past the steps at the bottom of the Capitol, and it would have been just another in a sequence of MAGA demos - a non-event. A bit like a well-policed EDL-type thing over here. albeit with larger numbers than Tommy Robinson could muster.
Indeed, once inside the building the losers didn't seem to have a clue as to what they were supposed to do - a pretty shambolic insurrection.
So what worries me most is why there were allowed to access the grounds and building, given that the security forces had lots of advance notice that the rednecks were coming to town. It seems a bit more than careless.
The size of the insurrection is not the issue. The problem is a man behind a lectern, who just happens to be a defeated POTUS telling them to rebel.
Haven't people died either directly or indirectly as a result?
FPT - Johnson was predicting workers would flock back to offices once the pandemic ends; he's not encouraging them to do so now, or soon.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think a 3-day week will become the new 5-day week (with most workers WFH on Mondays and Fridays) and some only coming in for one or two days, but of course it's impossible to predict with any certainty at this stage:
I think it will mostly depend on whether your boss is a controlling arsehole or not.
Your assuming that everyone likes working from home.
I like it. I have
- space - quiet - kids - kids who are mature enough to sort out their online schooling themselves - a proper desk - a huge monitor - a high end computer - good internet connection - a proper chair - an employer who has excellent technical infrastructure - a job that can easily be done remotely - a capable, stable long running team
etc etc
Half the team want to go back to the office.
- The younger ones want do back to berserk-after-work - out partying after work. - One guy is sharing his one bed flat with his wife who is a manger on the phone 9 hours a day.... constant meetings, and she doesn't have a volume control.
etc etc
Absolutely.
For the PB demographic (if not retired then I would guess largely similar to your first list) it is fab to work at home. Here I am, gazing out on the frost-dappled trees outside, while the fire is lit in the dining room my study, my employer fedexed a replacement laptop to me when mine was on the fritz, shall I go for a bike ride a bit later to see whether the yellowhammers are out in force yet? I think I shall.
Living in a small flat which you share with family or non-family or living alone with virtually your whole social life centred around work, bars near work, and colleagues from work....not so great.
I have a cousin who has not long finished University and started on his first job, with an accountancy (or similar). It's in NZ, so they're over lockdown now, but he did find his first few months, when he had to WFH challenging. Fortunately the firm set him up with a 'buddy' so, according to his father, that got him over the worst.
Having watched events unfold last night, I can't help but think that talk of insurrections and coups is somewhat overblown.
Basically, it was a large, but not massive, crowd of redneck losers incited by their leader. But had the police/security forces done their job they would never have got past the steps at the bottom of the Capitol, and it would have been just another in a sequence of MAGA demos - a non-event. A bit like a well-policed EDL-type thing over here, albeit with larger numbers than Tommy Robinson could muster.
Indeed, once inside the building the losers didn't seem to have a clue as to what they were supposed to do - a pretty shambolic insurrection.
So what worries me most is why there were allowed to access the grounds and building, given that the security forces had lots of advance notice that the rednecks were coming to town. It seems a bit more than careless.
The differences being that the crowd were incited by and had the support of the president, and there was a vote going on to certify the election of his replacement where the majority of the Republicans in the House voted not to certify
FPT - Johnson was predicting workers would flock back to offices once the pandemic ends; he's not encouraging them to do so now, or soon.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think a 3-day week will become the new 5-day week (with most workers WFH on Mondays and Fridays) and some only coming in for one or two days, but of course it's impossible to predict with any certainty at this stage:
I think it will mostly depend on whether your boss is a controlling arsehole or not.
Your assuming that everyone likes working from home.
I like it. I have
- space - quiet - kids - kids who are mature enough to sort out their online schooling themselves - a proper desk - a huge monitor - a high end computer - good internet connection - a proper chair - an employer who has excellent technical infrastructure - a job that can easily be done remotely - a capable, stable long running team
etc etc
Half the team want to go back to the office.
- The younger ones want do back to berserk-after-work - out partying after work. - One guy is sharing his one bed flat with his wife who is a manger on the phone 9 hours a day.... constant meetings, and she doesn't have a volume control.
etc etc
The challenge for a lot of people is that as @Sandpit noted the city centre offices may not be there anymore. Even if employee efficiency WFH is 10% down, if operating costs are more than 10% down then its a positive for the business. For too long companies have been largely held hostage by the cartel behaviour of corporate landlords boosting the value of both rental offices and one bed flats for employees to absurd levels.
The opportunity to downsize is too appealing. Cut the huge cost of the city office. Dump the cost of office costs onto your employees. The one bed flat in easy commuting distance to the office is what will go, not the city centre office to stay. A massive development of similar apartments surrounding Wembley Stadium, bonkers rents and a supporting infrastructure of eateries and shops to feed the workers with easy commute into the City. Glad I haven't invested in that...
Yes, the £1,000/sqft apartment, “only 20 mins walk from the tube”, is probably not the best investment to be holding at the moment.
For a lot of people, their 2022 office is going to be a conference room at an hotel in Milton Keynes or Basingstoke, where they spend a few days a month brainstorming, teambuilding and socialising. They’ll be living all over the place, in nice houses rather than shoebox flats. Their employer will save a fortune on their central London offices, and the employee will save a fortune in time and money by getting rid of the daily commute.
Of course that won’t happen for everyone, there will be certain fast-paced companies that meet more often, and there will be arsehole bosses who insist on commuting for the sake of it - but as the economy recovers, employees will have these choices available to them, and employers will have a wider range of potential employees, who for many reasons can’t or won’t move close to London.
I’m even being approached for some of these jobs, working for a London-based company but remotely out of Dubai.
London salaries and Nowheresville expenses, that's the dream. How long before companies cut wages? We've already seen this in America, and in the City with banks relocating back-office functions.
But we also need to consider the mooted 10 per cent drop in efficiency. We can live with that. In some ways it might be a good thing if it means the firm needs to employ more people. But if I'm on trial for my part in the Trumpskyite Senate Invasion of 2021, I'd want my own lawyer working at 100 per cent efficiency, thank you very much.
FPT - Johnson was predicting workers would flock back to offices once the pandemic ends; he's not encouraging them to do so now, or soon.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think a 3-day week will become the new 5-day week (with most workers WFH on Mondays and Fridays) and some only coming in for one or two days, but of course it's impossible to predict with any certainty at this stage:
I think it will mostly depend on whether your boss is a controlling arsehole or not.
Your assuming that everyone likes working from home.
I like it. I have
- space - quiet - kids - kids who are mature enough to sort out their online schooling themselves - a proper desk - a huge monitor - a high end computer - good internet connection - a proper chair - an employer who has excellent technical infrastructure - a job that can easily be done remotely - a capable, stable long running team
etc etc
Half the team want to go back to the office.
- The younger ones want do back to berserk-after-work - out partying after work. - One guy is sharing his one bed flat with his wife who is a manger on the phone 9 hours a day.... constant meetings, and she doesn't have a volume control.
etc etc
All that, but it's also a little boring after a while.
I want Wednesdays (key seminars and workshops) and Thursdays (1:1s, team meeting and pub). And aside from that I'm happy to WFH.
It may be a bit different for graduates and their managers, who may need to figure something else out.
The issue with wanting Wednesdays and Thursdays is so will everyone else.
It reminds me of flying around Europe - Monday arrive late, Tuesday + Wednesday are long days and Thursday features a dash to the airport.
Having everyone work two days a week from the central office is a worst-of-all-worlds scenario. Two daily peak train tickets a week are as expensive as an annual season, people still have to live close enough to commute to the office, the company still needs almost as much office space as previously, and still suffers from the potential downsides of productivity, team integration and social life.
I'm not so sure.
I've known people doing this - living outside the regular London commute zone, but doing 2 days a week in London.
You can survive a couple of days a week, in return for a big house, family life in the country etc.
If the company is hot desking - then it still reduces the *average* number of people in the office.
True. Or you can stay over in a Travelodge of somesuch - as I have known senior people do four nights a week, who choose to live in some far flung spot (or even abroad) and accept being away from home as a temporary sacrifice to maximise their earnings.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave and attempted to blow up Thatcher and her cabinet in the Brighton bomb and kill Major and His cabinet in No 10.
So no, the extreme left is not immune from committing murder either
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
How many statue topplings does it take to be equivalent to a murder? Six? (your list plus Colston) Seven? More?
I completely agree there are nutters of both sides, but your response to @OnlyLivingBoy seems very odd to me.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave etc.
So no, the extreme left is not immune to murder either
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave etc.
So no, the extreme left is not immune to murder either
If on the other hand you regard the IRA as extreme nationalists, how does that change the accounting?
I think one motivation for Trump's deplorable behaviour, cited here by Yokes, is that he knows that without Presidential power, the tottering Trump Empire, built on duplicity and sand, may be about to topple. From what we know of him, I would be shocked if he doesn't have eye watering levels of debt and tax returns that would make Walter Mitty blush. Who is going to continue to lend money to Trump once he is removed from office? I can see how financial collapse could be his biggest immediate problem.
Talking in general, equivalence of the far left and far right can reasonably be drawn. It is when it comes to specifics that one can wander into false equivalence and one has to objectively assess actions in this context. So, for all the unpalatable views within the BLM and antifa movements, for the rioting that resulted, they didn't get near such a direct assault on democracy. On the other hand, we must note that it looks like the deaths yesterday might well all be of protesters, and I don't necessarily buy into that BLM doing that would have ended in a wildly different result, on this occasion, once things turned for the worse.
At the moment, and over recent years, it is the far right that appear nearer to the edge in terms of what is being done, but we don't have to go back too many decades to Baader Meinhof and the Red Brigade and the Marxism of the IRA to reverse that.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave etc.
So no, the extreme left is not immune to murder either
If on the other hand you regard the IRA as extreme nationalists, how does that change the accounting?
The IRA were the military wing of Sinn Fein, described on Wikipedia as a party of 'left wing nationalism' and 'democratic socialism'
Having watched events unfold last night, I can't help but think that talk of insurrections and coups is somewhat overblown.
Basically, it was a large, but not massive, crowd of redneck losers incited by their leader. But had the police/security forces done their job they would never have got past the steps at the bottom of the Capitol, and it would have been just another in a sequence of MAGA demos - a non-event. A bit like a well-policed EDL-type thing over here, albeit with larger numbers than Tommy Robinson could muster.
Indeed, once inside the building the losers didn't seem to have a clue as to what they were supposed to do - a pretty shambolic insurrection.
So what worries me most is why there were allowed to access the grounds and building, given that the security forces had lots of advance notice that the rednecks were coming to town. It seems a bit more than careless.
I disagree about it being overblown. Yes it was an undisciplined mob without a coherent plan but at the urging of an individual they went with a particular political aim, to prevent Joe Bidens confirmation as president through the counting of electoral college votes. And to prevent it through violence.
They succeeded, at least in delaying the process to the next day. Actual coup attempts have achieved less than that.
Assassination attempts dont cease to be just because they are inept. And A mob storming a legislature for a political purpose in support of a particular person is a coup attempt, however inept.
Having watched events unfold last night, I can't help but think that talk of insurrections and coups is somewhat overblown.
Basically, it was a large, but not massive, crowd of redneck losers incited by their leader. But had the police/security forces done their job they would never have got past the steps at the bottom of the Capitol, and it would have been just another in a sequence of MAGA demos - a non-event. A bit like a well-policed EDL-type thing over here, albeit with larger numbers than Tommy Robinson could muster.
Indeed, once inside the building the losers didn't seem to have a clue as to what they were supposed to do - a pretty shambolic insurrection.
So what worries me most is why there were allowed to access the grounds and building, given that the security forces had lots of advance notice that the rednecks were coming to town. It seems a bit more than careless.
The thing is, there does seem to have been a genuine moment of coup potential. Trump did not call in the national guard, and was apparently crediting police support. Both farce and deadly, lethal seriousness, in the way life often is, but most of all with Trump.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave and attempted to blow up Thatcher and her cabinet in the Brighton bomb and kill Major and His cabinet in No 10.
So no, the extreme left is not immune from committing murder either
I wouldn't say SinnFein/IRA are 'extreme left' or even 'left' at all. Some are, but they seem to be extreme nationalists to me.
FPT - Johnson was predicting workers would flock back to offices once the pandemic ends; he's not encouraging them to do so now, or soon.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think a 3-day week will become the new 5-day week (with most workers WFH on Mondays and Fridays) and some only coming in for one or two days, but of course it's impossible to predict with any certainty at this stage:
I think it will mostly depend on whether your boss is a controlling arsehole or not.
Your assuming that everyone likes working from home.
I like it. I have
- space - quiet - kids - kids who are mature enough to sort out their online schooling themselves - a proper desk - a huge monitor - a high end computer - good internet connection - a proper chair - an employer who has excellent technical infrastructure - a job that can easily be done remotely - a capable, stable long running team
etc etc
Half the team want to go back to the office.
- The younger ones want do back to berserk-after-work - out partying after work. - One guy is sharing his one bed flat with his wife who is a manger on the phone 9 hours a day.... constant meetings, and she doesn't have a volume control.
etc etc
Damn it I'm doing it again; liking both sides of an argument. People stop being so bloody convincing.
Actually I quite often see both sides of an argument
I think one motivation for Trump's deplorable behaviour, cited here by Yokes, is that he knows that without Presidential power, the tottering Trump Empire, built on duplicity and sand, may be about to topple. From what we know of him, I would be shocked if he doesn't have eye watering levels of debt and tax returns that would make Walter Mitty blush. Who is going to continue to lend money to Trump once he is removed from office? I can see how financial collapse could be his biggest immediate problem.
Trump's bottom line might well be part of his rationale but remember there is plenty of evidence that Trump really does believe whatever he is told; it used to be said Americans could tell which television programme Trump was watching by what he tweeted. I've little doubt the President is genuinely convinced that he was robbed and cheated of his second term.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave and attempted to blow up Thatcher and her cabinet in the Brighton bomb and kill Major and His cabinet in No 10.
So no, the extreme left is not immune from committing murder either
I don't think you could classify them as 'extreme left'. At the time I don't think you could identify them as either left or right, because I suspect most people would not know what they stood for except for the obvious. They were murdering terrorists fighting to leave the UK and join Eire (which was not extreme left either).
Since then Sinn Fein is clearly of the left but hardly extreme (I don't hear Marx or Mao being quoted).
Some terrorists are of the far right, some of the far left, but it is possible for a terrorist to be neither and have another cause.
Despite being into politics I largely don't watch TV news any more. Quality has degraded significantly, and I don't miss it (which is a little sad). There's a gap in the market for a non-leftwing or utterly tedious channel, and I hope it does a good job.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave etc.
So no, the extreme left is not immune to murder either
And the point of this discussion is?
Suggest you get back on topic.
I think the point is that statue-toppling and violent disorder (quite aside from the criminality) is that they can also be the precursor to more violent revolution, and there are plenty of examples of those inspired by Marxism taking place in our past - and even the lyrics of the Red Flag allude to it. We all know where they ended. In fact, I think that's a concern both you and I share.
And let's not forget that, thankfully, whilst only a handful of people were killed in the protests last year many families had their livelihoods ruined (including many black families) by having their businesses, property and vehicles torched and destroyed.
I think people are concerned that the West ends up a bit like South America, with quasi-Marxist governments counterbalanced, from time to time, by right-wing military dictatorships.
So, no - I don't think it's a false equivalence. It's a warning for us to all get back to sanity.
Trump's statement claims his term as the greatest first term in US history and suggests it is only the start of his campaign to MAGA.
Looks like a belated and surely forlorn attempt to recover the future career he just trashed?
He must be impeached.
The counter view is that he has destroyed himself and should now just be sidelined and ignored, rather than making him the focus of attention once again. It's the attention he craves more than anything, and the imminent loss of being the centre of things that has tipped him over the edge. Like my dog trainer says, for dogs being ignored is a greater punishment than being told off.
The US should spend a bit more time bringing those who trashed the Capitol and posted images of themselves doing so on social media, to justice.
People need formal punishment sometimes as examples to others and ourselves. He may in some fashion enjoy the attention even of legal consequences but if hes broken the law or breached the constitution he should not avoid facing that because of how loud and influential his tantrums are.
Sometimes you need to have the confrontation before you can deescalate.
Anyone know what the ‘medical emergencies’ were that killed the other 3 people? Seems a weird addendum to the whole disaster.
One fell of Scaffolding that they climbed.
. In a population, some individuals will have inherited traits that help them survive and reproduce (given the conditions of the environment, such as the predators and food sources present).
Looks like he didn't inherit traits that predisposed him toward survival
Death was just God's way of telling him he'd failed, I suppose.
FPT - Johnson was predicting workers would flock back to offices once the pandemic ends; he's not encouraging them to do so now, or soon.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think a 3-day week will become the new 5-day week (with most workers WFH on Mondays and Fridays) and some only coming in for one or two days, but of course it's impossible to predict with any certainty at this stage:
I think it will mostly depend on whether your boss is a controlling arsehole or not.
Your assuming that everyone likes working from home.
I like it. I have
- space - quiet - kids - kids who are mature enough to sort out their online schooling themselves - a proper desk - a huge monitor - a high end computer - good internet connection - a proper chair - an employer who has excellent technical infrastructure - a job that can easily be done remotely - a capable, stable long running team
etc etc
Half the team want to go back to the office.
- The younger ones want do back to berserk-after-work - out partying after work. - One guy is sharing his one bed flat with his wife who is a manger on the phone 9 hours a day.... constant meetings, and she doesn't have a volume control.
etc etc
Damn it I'm doing it again; liking both sides of an argument. People stop being so bloody convincing.
Actually I quite often see both sides of an argument
I'm not just seeing them, I'm actually liking them for goodness sake. I'm a pushover.
Comments from Drosten in his latest podcast that South Africa has a degree of herd immunity, so strong selective pressure for mutations that have some ability to get around the immunity to older variants - hence the new mutation.
If so, another nail in the coffin in the arguments for trying to reach herd immunity through enough people being infected.
And more reasons for having (had since last February, but better late than never) strong restrictions on travel.
The same selective pressure will be there from vaccine-induced immunity. Cue ongoing outbreaks and re-vaccination. Like the flu, only worse.
I don't think that's entirely true. Mutations are more likely if you have lots of people infected where mutations can occur. Reaching herd immunity by infection requires large numbers of people infected. Vaccinating everyone prevents this.
Plus the vaccines may offer better immunity than infection,
FPT - Johnson was predicting workers would flock back to offices once the pandemic ends; he's not encouraging them to do so now, or soon.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think a 3-day week will become the new 5-day week (with most workers WFH on Mondays and Fridays) and some only coming in for one or two days, but of course it's impossible to predict with any certainty at this stage:
I think it will mostly depend on whether your boss is a controlling arsehole or not.
Your assuming that everyone likes working from home.
I like it. I have
- space - quiet - kids - kids who are mature enough to sort out their online schooling themselves - a proper desk - a huge monitor - a high end computer - good internet connection - a proper chair - an employer who has excellent technical infrastructure - a job that can easily be done remotely - a capable, stable long running team
etc etc
Half the team want to go back to the office.
- The younger ones want do back to berserk-after-work - out partying after work. - One guy is sharing his one bed flat with his wife who is a manger on the phone 9 hours a day.... constant meetings, and she doesn't have a volume control.
etc etc
The challenge for a lot of people is that as @Sandpit noted the city centre offices may not be there anymore. Even if employee efficiency WFH is 10% down, if operating costs are more than 10% down then its a positive for the business. For too long companies have been largely held hostage by the cartel behaviour of corporate landlords boosting the value of both rental offices and one bed flats for employees to absurd levels.
The opportunity to downsize is too appealing. Cut the huge cost of the city office. Dump the cost of office costs onto your employees. The one bed flat in easy commuting distance to the office is what will go, not the city centre office to stay. A massive development of similar apartments surrounding Wembley Stadium, bonkers rents and a supporting infrastructure of eateries and shops to feed the workers with easy commute into the City. Glad I haven't invested in that...
Yes, the £1,000/sqft apartment, “only 20 mins walk from the tube”, is probably not the best investment to be holding at the moment.
For a lot of people, their 2022 office is going to be a conference room at an hotel in Milton Keynes or Basingstoke, where they spend a few days a month brainstorming, teambuilding and socialising. They’ll be living all over the place, in nice houses rather than shoebox flats. Their employer will save a fortune on their central London offices, and the employee will save a fortune in time and money by getting rid of the daily commute.
Of course that won’t happen for everyone, there will be certain fast-paced companies that meet more often, and there will be arsehole bosses who insist on commuting for the sake of it - but as the economy recovers, employees will have these choices available to them, and employers will have a wider range of potential employees, who for many reasons can’t or won’t move close to London.
I’m even being approached for some of these jobs, working for a London-based company but remotely out of Dubai.
London salaries and Nowheresville expenses, that's the dream. How long before companies cut wages? We've already seen this in America, and in the City with banks relocating back-office functions.
But we also need to consider the mooted 10 per cent drop in efficiency. We can live with that. In some ways it might be a good thing if it means the firm needs to employ more people. But if I'm on trial for my part in the Trumpskyite Senate Invasion of 2021, I'd want my own lawyer working at 100 per cent efficiency, thank you very much.
Yes and those with the worthless shoebox flats will have them like an albatross around their necks for a very long time.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave and attempted to blow up Thatcher and her cabinet in the Brighton bomb and kill Major and His cabinet in No 10.
So no, the extreme left is not immune from committing murder either
I don't think you could classify them as 'extreme left'. At the time I don't think you could identify them as either left or right, because I suspect most people would not know what they stood for except for the obvious. They were murdering terrorists fighting to leave the UK and join Eire (which was not extreme left either).
Since then Sinn Fein is clearly of the left but hardly extreme (I don't hear Marx or Mao being quoted).
Some terrorists are of the far right, some of the far left, but it is possible for a terrorist to be neither and have another cause.
Republicans in NI vary between left and extreme left, with a smattering of loves-violence-for-its-own-sake.
Since the end of the Cold War (1989) - like a lot of parties in Europe, Sein Fein has lost their copy of Marx down the back of the sofa... "What us? We were always Social Democrats..." etc etc
Since the peace process they have worked very hard to airbrush away their past....
BORIS Johnson will hold a Downing Street press conference later today as he unveils a new Army-led distribution plan for the UK's Covid vaccines.
Oh god help us.
Let's see , would I prefer a pharmacist or a dumb ass squaddie to adminster my jab?
Actual doctors can be bad at jabbing people with needles, I wouldn't assume any profession bar nurses are definitely best for it. Though pharmacists are among ones I'd be most confident
FPT - Johnson was predicting workers would flock back to offices once the pandemic ends; he's not encouraging them to do so now, or soon.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think a 3-day week will become the new 5-day week (with most workers WFH on Mondays and Fridays) and some only coming in for one or two days, but of course it's impossible to predict with any certainty at this stage:
I think it will mostly depend on whether your boss is a controlling arsehole or not.
Your assuming that everyone likes working from home.
I like it. I have
- space - quiet - kids - kids who are mature enough to sort out their online schooling themselves - a proper desk - a huge monitor - a high end computer - good internet connection - a proper chair - an employer who has excellent technical infrastructure - a job that can easily be done remotely - a capable, stable long running team
etc etc
Half the team want to go back to the office.
- The younger ones want do back to berserk-after-work - out partying after work. - One guy is sharing his one bed flat with his wife who is a manger on the phone 9 hours a day.... constant meetings, and she doesn't have a volume control.
etc etc
All that, but it's also a little boring after a while.
I want Wednesdays (key seminars and workshops) and Thursdays (1:1s, team meeting and pub). And aside from that I'm happy to WFH.
It may be a bit different for graduates and their managers, who may need to figure something else out.
The issue with wanting Wednesdays and Thursdays is so will everyone else.
It reminds me of flying around Europe - Monday arrive late, Tuesday + Wednesday are long days and Thursday features a dash to the airport.
Having everyone work two days a week from the central office is a worst-of-all-worlds scenario. Two daily peak train tickets a week are as expensive as an annual season, people still have to live close enough to commute to the office, the company still needs almost as much office space as previously, and still suffers from the potential downsides of productivity, team integration and social life.
I'm not so sure.
I've known people doing this - living outside the regular London commute zone, but doing 2 days a week in London.
You can survive a couple of days a week, in return for a big house, family life in the country etc.
If the company is hot desking - then it still reduces the *average* number of people in the office.
I guess it would depend on things like would the company pay your hotel overnight between the two days, and if you’re going to seriously reduce the office space it will mean people working Mondays and Fridays in the city.
What’s almost certainly true, is that different companies will persuade different work strategies, and people will over time gravitate to those companies where home/office and work/life balance matches up.
Talking in general, equivalence of the far left and far right can reasonably be drawn. It is when it comes to specifics that one can wander into false equivalence and one has to objectively assess actions in this context. So, for all the unpalatable views within the BLM and antifa movements, for the rioting that resulted, they didn't get near such a direct assault on democracy. On the other hand, we must note that it looks like the deaths yesterday might well all be of protesters, and I don't necessarily buy into that BLM doing that would have ended in a wildly different result, on this occasion, once things turned for the worse.
At the moment, and over recent years, it is the far right that appear nearer to the edge in terms of what is being done, but we don't have to go back too many decades to Baader Meinhof and the Red Brigade and the Marxism of the IRA to reverse that.
History demonstrates quite clearly that both can lead to millions of deaths. Really that should be the end of the discussion.
FPT - Johnson was predicting workers would flock back to offices once the pandemic ends; he's not encouraging them to do so now, or soon.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think a 3-day week will become the new 5-day week (with most workers WFH on Mondays and Fridays) and some only coming in for one or two days, but of course it's impossible to predict with any certainty at this stage:
There’s no chance of the same level of commuting coming back, especially not into central London. Many companies have found that any drop in productivity with everyone WFH is outweighed by the cost of maintaining sufficient office space for everyone.
I’m expecting a solution for many companies based around a few days a month in the office for each team, that allows them to move out of daily commutable distance from London. The offices themselves might end up out of town too, with minimal space retained in the capital for those who really have to work alongside suppliers and customers on a face-to-face basis.
Johnson is trying to keep GDP up by having everyone buy coffees and lunches, and avoid having to put billions into the railways.
Yet another reason why HS2 is a pointless white elephant. The money should be going into improving local services and infrastructure to improve and encourage more WFH.
Trump's statement claims his term as the greatest first term in US history and suggests it is only the start of his campaign to MAGA.
Looks like a belated and surely forlorn attempt to recover the future career he just trashed?
He must be impeached.
The counter view is that he has destroyed himself and should now just be sidelined and ignored, rather than making him the focus of attention once again. It's the attention he craves more than anything, and the imminent loss of being the centre of things that has tipped him over the edge. Like my dog trainer says, for dogs being ignored is a greater punishment than being told off.
The US should spend a bit more time bringing those who trashed the Capitol and posted images of themselves doing so on social media, to justice.
They will be writing in for a pardon! Hopefully they have committed some state crimes not just federal ones?
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave etc.
So no, the extreme left is not immune to murder either
And the point of this discussion is?
Suggest you get back on topic.
I think the point is that statue-toppling and violent disorder (quite aside from the criminality) is that they can also be the precursor to more violent revolution, and there are plenty of examples of those inspired by Marxism taking place in our past - and even the lyrics of the Red Flag allude to it. We all know where they ended. In fact, I think that's a concern both you and I share.
And let's not forget that, thankfully, whilst only a handful of people were killed in the protests last year many families had their livelihoods ruined (including many black families) by having their businesses, property and vehicles torched and destroyed.
I think people are concerned that the West ends up a bit like South America, with quasi-Marxist governments counterbalanced, from time to time, by right-wing military dictatorships.
So, no - I don't think it's a false equivalence. It's a warning for us to all get back to sanity.
Eagerness to keep turning the discussion to matters other than the immediate one facing America, and by extension the rest of us, is however becoming tiresome - and a little bizarre. As if the Site Twat didn't make enough of a fool of himself along the same lines last night.
BORIS Johnson will hold a Downing Street press conference later today as he unveils a new Army-led distribution plan for the UK's Covid vaccines.
Oh god help us.
Let's see , would I prefer a pharmacist or a dumb ass squaddie to adminster my jab?
Actual doctors can be bad at jabbing people with needles, I wouldn't assume any profession bar nurses are definitely best for it. Though pharmacists are among ones I'd be most confident
Another reason why getting vets involved is a good idea. They administer jabs daily.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave and attempted to blow up Thatcher and her cabinet in the Brighton bomb and kill Major and His cabinet in No 10.
So no, the extreme left is not immune from committing murder either
I don't think you could classify them as 'extreme left'. At the time I don't think you could identify them as either left or right, because I suspect most people would not know what they stood for except for the obvious. They were murdering terrorists fighting to leave the UK and join Eire (which was not extreme left either).
Since then Sinn Fein is clearly of the left but hardly extreme (I don't hear Marx or Mao being quoted).
Some terrorists are of the far right, some of the far left, but it is possible for a terrorist to be neither and have another cause.
Republicans in NI vary between left and extreme left, with a smattering of loves-violence-for-its-own-sake.
Since the end of the Cold War (1989) - like a lot of parties in Europe, Sein Fein has lost their copy of Marx down the back of the sofa... "What us? We were always Social Democrats..." etc etc
Since the peace process they have worked very hard to airbrush away their past....
Thanks for that. My knowledge of history obviously a bit vague even though I was around at the time. I guess because the focus was on their key aim.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave and attempted to blow up Thatcher and her cabinet in the Brighton bomb and kill Major and His cabinet in No 10.
So no, the extreme left is not immune from committing murder either
Was the IRA's goal to create socialism in the UK or to force the end to Irish partition? I wouldn't class them as primarily a left wing organisation. Also their "armed struggle" ended over 20 years ago. Still, we will bear you in mind when the Whataboutery of the Year Awards are given out, you are a strong contender this year, as always.
BORIS Johnson will hold a Downing Street press conference later today as he unveils a new Army-led distribution plan for the UK's Covid vaccines.
Oh god help us.
Let's see , would I prefer a pharmacist or a dumb ass squaddie to adminster my jab?
Actual doctors can be bad at jabbing people with needles, I wouldn't assume any profession bar nurses are definitely best for it. Though pharmacists are among ones I'd be most confident
That's good to hear! Actually, in the dimly recalled days of student-hood I used to be quite good at getting blood. And, IIRC, the last people you wanted to actually DO anything 'physical' on a ward are doctors. They generally made a mess of it. Surgeons, of course, are a different matter!
Trump's statement claims his term as the greatest first term in US history and suggests it is only the start of his campaign to MAGA.
Looks like a belated and surely forlorn attempt to recover the future career he just trashed?
He must be impeached.
The counter view is that he has destroyed himself and should now just be sidelined and ignored, rather than making him the focus of attention once again. It's the attention he craves more than anything, and the imminent loss of being the centre of things that has tipped him over the edge. Like my dog trainer says, for dogs being ignored is a greater punishment than being told off.
The US should spend a bit more time bringing those who trashed the Capitol and posted images of themselves doing so on social media, to justice.
People need formal punishment sometimes as examples to others and ourselves. He may in some fashion enjoy the attention even of legal consequences but if hes broken the law or breached the constitution he should not avoid facing that because of how loud and influential his tantrums are.
Sometimes you need to have the confrontation before you can deescalate.
Agreed. The Democratic Norms have been broken. Effort has to be put in to re-establishing them. That includes being clear that actions have consequences.
How did American politics degenerate to such an extent?
Failure to actually reform the South after 1865. And then the nature of Big Tent America politics giving the Dixiecrats a home.
There have been inflection points - bit it is a pretty straight line from Lincoln's assassination through the end of Reconstruction in 1877, Integration of the Military in 1948, the Civil Rights act of 1964 to now.
It is a country born in violent insurrection, where children are still taught at school that revolution is admirable.
Revolution can achieve things, as France and the United States can testify ; if you're a post-revolutionary society, the question and problem is always how you either manage or update that tradition.
We like to forget but we were in the revolutionary business long before the US and France. France were latecomers to the monarch decapitation game. That our revolutions (ultimately) ended up with a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic doesn’t really change that.
Yes, England's first revolution was forgotten, and its pioneering revolutionary-protestant culture by the standards of europe swept under the carpet by the Medici-descended Charles II in his orgy of pleasure and relief ; the second one essentially a slick change of chairs at the top ; and then lastly the French Revolution was determined to to be beastly French and foreign, even though without Britain's revolutionary protestant culture Voltaire would never had a base from which to launch it from in the first pace.
The Scottish revolutions of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the Irish revolution of 1916-23, should also be remembered.
BORIS Johnson will hold a Downing Street press conference later today as he unveils a new Army-led distribution plan for the UK's Covid vaccines.
Oh god help us.
Let's see , would I prefer a pharmacist or a dumb ass squaddie to adminster my jab?
Actual doctors can be bad at jabbing people with needles, I wouldn't assume any profession bar nurses are definitely best for it. Though pharmacists are among ones I'd be most confident
Another reason why getting vets involved is a good idea. They administer jabs daily.
If you can administer an injection to a Jack Russell terrier with the animal actually biting you.......
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave and attempted to blow up Thatcher and her cabinet in the Brighton bomb and kill Major and His cabinet in No 10.
So no, the extreme left is not immune from committing murder either
I don't think you could classify them as 'extreme left'. At the time I don't think you could identify them as either left or right, because I suspect most people would not know what they stood for except for the obvious. They were murdering terrorists fighting to leave the UK and join Eire (which was not extreme left either).
Since then Sinn Fein is clearly of the left but hardly extreme (I don't hear Marx or Mao being quoted).
Some terrorists are of the far right, some of the far left, but it is possible for a terrorist to be neither and have another cause.
Republicans in NI vary between left and extreme left, with a smattering of loves-violence-for-its-own-sake.
Since the end of the Cold War (1989) - like a lot of parties in Europe, Sein Fein has lost their copy of Marx down the back of the sofa... "What us? We were always Social Democrats..." etc etc
Since the peace process they have worked very hard to airbrush away their past....
Thanks for that. My knowledge of history obviously a bit vague even though I was around at the time. I guess because the focus was on their key aim.
There was a reason the Hard Left in the rest of the UK liked them - it wasn't just the "revolutionary " bit.
When 89 came round they dropped the hard left stuff like a stone.
It was quite interesting - I had to explain the "We deny the right of the people to do wrong" thing to a young relative of mine who was doing history. She couldn't conceive of people in "proper" countries being able to justify their actions on anything other than a democratic basis.
She was really shocked when I pointed out that some of the policies of the UN don't acknowledge democracy as the answer to all disputes.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave etc.
So no, the extreme left is not immune to murder either
And the point of this discussion is?
Suggest you get back on topic.
I think the point is that statue-toppling and violent disorder (quite aside from the criminality) is that they can also be the precursor to more violent revolution, and there are plenty of examples of those inspired by Marxism taking place in our past - and even the lyrics of the Red Flag allude to it. We all know where they ended. In fact, I think that's a concern both you and I share.
And let's not forget that, thankfully, whilst only a handful of people were killed in the protests last year many families had their livelihoods ruined (including many black families) by having their businesses, property and vehicles torched and destroyed.
I think people are concerned that the West ends up a bit like South America, with quasi-Marxist governments counterbalanced, from time to time, by right-wing military dictatorships.
So, no - I don't think it's a false equivalence. It's a warning for us to all get back to sanity.
Eagerness to keep turning the discussion to matters other than the immediate one facing America, and by extension the rest of us, is however becoming tiresome - and a little bizarre. As if the Site Twat didn't make enough of a fool of himself along the same lines last night.
Is that post even necessary, Ian?
Last night was shocking. I condemned it unequivocally. Trump will be gone in two weeks; then, we need to consider what comes next. As it happens, I didn't agree with a fair bit of what Leon was saying either (not least of which were the comparisons to Brexit) but there is a broader point about polarisation, schisms and the normalisation of street level violence in America with both left and right using it to advance their aims.
I might have got the timing wrong in making those comments - given the immediate nature of the insurrection, and Trump's inciting of it, I should have probably held my thoughts on that until it was safely over - but I sometimes feel that some (not all) left-liberal commentators simply don't want to explore the deeper issues nor go beyond condemning Trump as an evil man.
I get that, I really do, but it's not a sufficient answer to heal American democracy. Or Western divisions more broadly.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave and attempted to blow up Thatcher and her cabinet in the Brighton bomb and kill Major and His cabinet in No 10.
So no, the extreme left is not immune from committing murder either
I don't think you could classify them as 'extreme left'. At the time I don't think you could identify them as either left or right, because I suspect most people would not know what they stood for except for the obvious. They were murdering terrorists fighting to leave the UK and join Eire (which was not extreme left either).
Since then Sinn Fein is clearly of the left but hardly extreme (I don't hear Marx or Mao being quoted).
Some terrorists are of the far right, some of the far left, but it is possible for a terrorist to be neither and have another cause.
Republicans in NI vary between left and extreme left, with a smattering of loves-violence-for-its-own-sake.
Since the end of the Cold War (1989) - like a lot of parties in Europe, Sein Fein has lost their copy of Marx down the back of the sofa... "What us? We were always Social Democrats..." etc etc
Since the peace process they have worked very hard to airbrush away their past....
Thanks for that. My knowledge of history obviously a bit vague even though I was around at the time. I guess because the focus was on their key aim.
There was a reason the Hard Left in the rest of the UK liked them - it wasn't just the "revolutionary " bit.
When 89 came round they dropped the hard left stuff like a stone.
It was quite interesting - I had to explain the "We deny the right of the people to do wrong" thing to a young relative of mine who was doing history. She couldn't conceive of people in "proper" countries being able to justify their actions on anything other than a democratic basis.
She was really shocked when I pointed out that some of the policies of the UN don't acknowledge democracy as the answer to all disputes.
"The majority have no right to do wrong." I thought that was De Valera?
BORIS Johnson will hold a Downing Street press conference later today as he unveils a new Army-led distribution plan for the UK's Covid vaccines.
Oh god help us.
Let's see , would I prefer a pharmacist or a dumb ass squaddie to adminster my jab?
Actual doctors can be bad at jabbing people with needles, I wouldn't assume any profession bar nurses are definitely best for it. Though pharmacists are among ones I'd be most confident
Another reason why getting vets involved is a good idea. They administer jabs daily.
If you can administer an injection to a Jack Russell terrier with the animal actually biting you.......
The idea, I think you will find, is not to use the Army for the actual injections.
It's to use their skills for all the other stuff at the mass vaccination sites. Managing the logistics etc to feed a lot of people through to the people actually jabbing, and then out again the other side.
Simple maths shows that the number of people actually doing jabs isn't an especial choke point.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
That wasn't the extreme left, that was a bunch of wankers. And while I agree with you about the crime, it wasn't a crime that could be committed in a vacuum at a personal or corporate level. We committed it as a nation, where we includes you.
I agree. That's why the statue went up and stayed up for so long - Colston didn't put it up himself after all (he'd been dead for a century IIRC). That's why it was important his statue was taken down from its place of pride looking down on the Black citizens of Bristol. It should be in a museum as part of an exhibit about the slave trade and its deep legacy in the UK.
Unfortunately for supporters of democracy the labour council debated it's removal and decided to retain it. I agree it should be in a museum but only after it was taken down by the stokes croft mob did the left wing politicians support its removal. When they could have removed it they decided against.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave and attempted to blow up Thatcher and her cabinet in the Brighton bomb and kill Major and His cabinet in No 10.
So no, the extreme left is not immune from committing murder either
Was the IRA's goal to create socialism in the UK or to force the end to Irish partition? I wouldn't class them as primarily a left wing organisation. Also their "armed struggle" ended over 20 years ago. Still, we will bear you in mind when the Whataboutery of the Year Awards are given out, you are a strong contender this year, as always.
Sinn Féin is a democratic socialist and left-wing party. In the European Parliament, the party aligns itself with the European United Left–Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) parliamentary group.
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave and attempted to blow up Thatcher and her cabinet in the Brighton bomb and kill Major and His cabinet in No 10.
So no, the extreme left is not immune from committing murder either
I don't think you could classify them as 'extreme left'. At the time I don't think you could identify them as either left or right, because I suspect most people would not know what they stood for except for the obvious. They were murdering terrorists fighting to leave the UK and join Eire (which was not extreme left either).
Since then Sinn Fein is clearly of the left but hardly extreme (I don't hear Marx or Mao being quoted).
Some terrorists are of the far right, some of the far left, but it is possible for a terrorist to be neither and have another cause.
Republicans in NI vary between left and extreme left, with a smattering of loves-violence-for-its-own-sake.
Since the end of the Cold War (1989) - like a lot of parties in Europe, Sein Fein has lost their copy of Marx down the back of the sofa... "What us? We were always Social Democrats..." etc etc
Since the peace process they have worked very hard to airbrush away their past....
Thanks for that. My knowledge of history obviously a bit vague even though I was around at the time. I guess because the focus was on their key aim.
There was a reason the Hard Left in the rest of the UK liked them - it wasn't just the "revolutionary " bit.
When 89 came round they dropped the hard left stuff like a stone.
It was quite interesting - I had to explain the "We deny the right of the people to do wrong" thing to a young relative of mine who was doing history. She couldn't conceive of people in "proper" countries being able to justify their actions on anything other than a democratic basis.
She was really shocked when I pointed out that some of the policies of the UN don't acknowledge democracy as the answer to all disputes.
"The majority have no right to do wrong." I thought that was De Valera?
Yes
What she had a hard time understanding was that people rejecting the results of democracy could ever be other than unthinkable stuff they do in uncivilised countries.
1989 caused a massive change.
Before that, it wasn't uncommon to hear *MPs* on radio/TV declaring that "Western Deomocary isn't right for Africa. Demanding it would be colonial interference with their traditional ways."
Similarly - "The Soviet Union has a right to control Eastern Europe, WWII blah blah. And their society is better"
Some of the same people are still around... Which does make me laugh when I hear them prate on the subject of democracy.
I think one motivation for Trump's deplorable behaviour, cited here by Yokes, is that he knows that without Presidential power, the tottering Trump Empire, built on duplicity and sand, may be about to topple. From what we know of him, I would be shocked if he doesn't have eye watering levels of debt and tax returns that would make Walter Mitty blush. Who is going to continue to lend money to Trump once he is removed from office? I can see how financial collapse could be his biggest immediate problem.
Trump's bottom line might well be part of his rationale but remember there is plenty of evidence that Trump really does believe whatever he is told; it used to be said Americans could tell which television programme Trump was watching by what he tweeted. I've little doubt the President is genuinely convinced that he was robbed and cheated of his second term.
But do the millions of Republicans that believe that the election was "stolen" actually believe it?
If they do are they just thick and ignorant or is there another explanation?
Many of the signs were there. I believe that Trump would have imprisoned opponents if he could have got away with it and I believe he would have closed down news outlets that opposed him if he could have got away with it.
I think people are concerned that the West ends up a bit like South America, with quasi-Marxist governments counterbalanced, from time to time, by right-wing military dictatorships.
Cheap high quality prostitutes and a good football team tho...
I think one motivation for Trump's deplorable behaviour, cited here by Yokes, is that he knows that without Presidential power, the tottering Trump Empire, built on duplicity and sand, may be about to topple. From what we know of him, I would be shocked if he doesn't have eye watering levels of debt and tax returns that would make Walter Mitty blush. Who is going to continue to lend money to Trump once he is removed from office? I can see how financial collapse could be his biggest immediate problem.
Trump's bottom line might well be part of his rationale but remember there is plenty of evidence that Trump really does believe whatever he is told; it used to be said Americans could tell which television programme Trump was watching by what he tweeted. I've little doubt the President is genuinely convinced that he was robbed and cheated of his second term.
But do the millions of Republicans that believe that the election was "stolen" actually believe it?
If they do are they just thick and ignorant or is there another explanation?
They really do believe it. They have been radicalised
Even after that appalling disgrace last night 2/3 of Republican representatives vote to support the objection to the vote in Pennsylvania , 137 for the objection and 64 against. The sickness in that party goes way beyond Trump.
It started long before Trump, as well.
Agreed. It starts with a kind of nativism, a belief that this country belongs to them and people like them, not to others. This makes it legitimate to suppress the vote of these others (since you are protecting your country) and, if that doesn't work sufficiently, to eventually to reject the vote of the others since only the votes of those like them should count. It is racist, undemocratic and horribly divisive. The fact that Trump has jet fueled this tendency and given it an apparent legitimacy makes it a threat to the continued existence of the republic.
Indeed. Doesn't feel like a coincidence that the same a day an African American man is elected Senator in Georgia, a mob with Confederate flags attacks the Capitol building. Let's not pretend we don't have these vile tendencies in this country too.
There are vile tendencies in a small minority in both the extreme right and left in all countries
Phoney moral equivalence.
Nothing phoney at all in that comment
In this country the extreme left tore down the statue of someone who got rich off the greatest crime in human history. The extreme right murdered an MP and young mother. I don't think the two are equivalent in the slightest.
The extreme left has also attacked statues of Lincoln and Columbus and Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Baden Powell and trashed banks and business when rioting in London.
The extreme right has also attacked countless people. The fact remains that the most prominent (certainly on PB) example of far left violence involved the long overdue removal of a statue to someone who profited from genocide, while on the other side we have the murder of an MP that robbed two little kids of their mother. In my view it is a false equivalence to claim that the two sides are the same.
If you include Sinn Fein/IRA in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s in the extreme left and I do then they also murdered Mountbatten and his young grandson, Airey Neave etc.
So no, the extreme left is not immune to murder either
And the point of this discussion is?
Suggest you get back on topic.
I think the point is that statue-toppling and violent disorder (quite aside from the criminality) is that they can also be the precursor to more violent revolution, and there are plenty of examples of those inspired by Marxism taking place in our past - and even the lyrics of the Red Flag allude to it. We all know where they ended. In fact, I think that's a concern both you and I share.
And let's not forget that, thankfully, whilst only a handful of people were killed in the protests last year many families had their livelihoods ruined (including many black families) by having their businesses, property and vehicles torched and destroyed.
I think people are concerned that the West ends up a bit like South America, with quasi-Marxist governments counterbalanced, from time to time, by right-wing military dictatorships.
So, no - I don't think it's a false equivalence. It's a warning for us to all get back to sanity.
Eagerness to keep turning the discussion to matters other than the immediate one facing America, and by extension the rest of us, is however becoming tiresome - and a little bizarre. As if the Site Twat didn't make enough of a fool of himself along the same lines last night.
Is that post even necessary, Ian?
Last night was shocking. I condemned it unequivocally. Trump will be gone in two weeks; then, we need to consider what comes next. As it happens, I didn't agree with a fair bit of what Leon was saying either (not least of which were the comparisons to Brexit) but there is a broader point about polarisation, schisms and the normalisation of street level violence in America with both left and right using it to advance their aims.
I might have got the timing wrong in making those comments - given the immediate nature of the insurrection, and Trump's inciting of it, I should have probably held my thoughts on that until it was safely over - but I sometimes feel that some (not all) left-liberal commentators simply don't want to explore the deeper issues nor go beyond condemning Trump as an evil man.
I get that, I really do, but it's not a sufficient answer to heal American democracy. Or Western divisions more broadly.
Having watched events unfold last night, I can't help but think that talk of insurrections and coups is somewhat overblown.
Basically, it was a large, but not massive, crowd of redneck losers incited by their leader. But had the police/security forces done their job they would never have got past the steps at the bottom of the Capitol, and it would have been just another in a sequence of MAGA demos - a non-event. A bit like a well-policed EDL-type thing over here, albeit with larger numbers than Tommy Robinson could muster.
Indeed, once inside the building the losers didn't seem to have a clue as to what they were supposed to do - a pretty shambolic insurrection.
So what worries me most is why there were allowed to access the grounds and building, given that the security forces had lots of advance notice that the rednecks were coming to town. It seems a bit more than careless.
Yes - this was a huge national security failure by the USA. Imagine what a few ISIS goons wearing MAGA hats could have done
Reports that J&J have begun the data analysis on their single shot vaccine and are nearing submission. Also that they are ready to deliver from the middle of February to early contract holders (US, UK). If that's true and a single jab has 80%+ efficacy then it is a game changer as it has all of the same advantages of the AZ vaccine in terms of storage and distribution. With 30m of those doses on early order we could bring forwards our herd immunity date quite significantly. It would also be interesting to see how well it couples with a second shot of AZ which also uses an adenovirus vector but may not have viral vector immunity issues as may be the case for two shots of AZ.
I think people are concerned that the West ends up a bit like South America, with quasi-Marxist governments counterbalanced, from time to time, by right-wing military dictatorships.
Cheap high quality prostitutes and a good football team tho...
I think people are concerned that the West ends up a bit like South America, with quasi-Marxist governments counterbalanced, from time to time, by right-wing military dictatorships.
Cheap high quality prostitutes and a good football team tho...
No everywhere. The football team I mean. No experience elsewhere.
Comments
Trump is not that kind of bully. He is a coward as his tough talk on legal cases shows.
Haven't people died either directly or indirectly as a result?
But we also need to consider the mooted 10 per cent drop in efficiency. We can live with that. In some ways it might be a good thing if it means the firm needs to employ more people. But if I'm on trial for my part in the Trumpskyite Senate Invasion of 2021, I'd want my own lawyer working at 100 per cent efficiency, thank you very much.
So no, the extreme left is not immune from committing murder either
I completely agree there are nutters of both sides, but your response to @OnlyLivingBoy seems very odd to me.
Suggest you get back on topic.
At the moment, and over recent years, it is the far right that appear nearer to the edge in terms of what is being done, but we don't have to go back too many decades to Baader Meinhof and the Red Brigade and the Marxism of the IRA to reverse that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinn_Féin
They succeeded, at least in delaying the process to the next day. Actual coup attempts have achieved less than that.
Assassination attempts dont cease to be just because they are inept. And A mob storming a legislature for a political purpose in support of a particular person is a coup attempt, however inept.
Since then Sinn Fein is clearly of the left but hardly extreme (I don't hear Marx or Mao being quoted).
Some terrorists are of the far right, some of the far left, but it is possible for a terrorist to be neither and have another cause.
On GB News, we'll have to wait and see.
Despite being into politics I largely don't watch TV news any more. Quality has degraded significantly, and I don't miss it (which is a little sad). There's a gap in the market for a non-leftwing or utterly tedious channel, and I hope it does a good job.
And let's not forget that, thankfully, whilst only a handful of people were killed in the protests last year many families had their livelihoods ruined (including many black families) by having their businesses, property and vehicles torched and destroyed.
I think people are concerned that the West ends up a bit like South America, with quasi-Marxist governments counterbalanced, from time to time, by right-wing military dictatorships.
So, no - I don't think it's a false equivalence. It's a warning for us to all get back to sanity.
Sometimes you need to have the confrontation before you can deescalate.
Their autotune of Nigel Farage into a song a decade ago was absolutely brilliant.
Since the end of the Cold War (1989) - like a lot of parties in Europe, Sein Fein has lost their copy of Marx down the back of the sofa... "What us? We were always Social Democrats..." etc etc
Since the peace process they have worked very hard to airbrush away their past....
I suspect she doesn't need arresting. She has gone from 'It's a revolution' to 'but I got pushed'
What’s almost certainly true, is that different companies will persuade different work strategies, and people will over time gravitate to those companies where home/office and work/life balance matches up.
History demonstrates quite clearly that both can lead to millions of deaths. Really that should be the end of the discussion.
And, IIRC, the last people you wanted to actually DO anything 'physical' on a ward are doctors. They generally made a mess of it. Surgeons, of course, are a different matter!
When 89 came round they dropped the hard left stuff like a stone.
It was quite interesting - I had to explain the "We deny the right of the people to do wrong" thing to a young relative of mine who was doing history. She couldn't conceive of people in "proper" countries being able to justify their actions on anything other than a democratic basis.
She was really shocked when I pointed out that some of the policies of the UN don't acknowledge democracy as the answer to all disputes.
Last night was shocking. I condemned it unequivocally. Trump will be gone in two weeks; then, we need to consider what comes next. As it happens, I didn't agree with a fair bit of what Leon was saying either (not least of which were the comparisons to Brexit) but there is a broader point about polarisation, schisms and the normalisation of street level violence in America with both left and right using it to advance their aims.
I might have got the timing wrong in making those comments - given the immediate nature of the insurrection, and Trump's inciting of it, I should have probably held my thoughts on that until it was safely over - but I sometimes feel that some (not all) left-liberal commentators simply don't want to explore the deeper issues nor go beyond condemning Trump as an evil man.
I get that, I really do, but it's not a sufficient answer to heal American democracy. Or Western divisions more broadly.
It's to use their skills for all the other stuff at the mass vaccination sites. Managing the logistics etc to feed a lot of people through to the people actually jabbing, and then out again the other side.
Simple maths shows that the number of people actually doing jabs isn't an especial choke point.
What she had a hard time understanding was that people rejecting the results of democracy could ever be other than unthinkable stuff they do in uncivilised countries.
1989 caused a massive change.
Before that, it wasn't uncommon to hear *MPs* on radio/TV declaring that "Western Deomocary isn't right for Africa. Demanding it would be colonial interference with their traditional ways."
Similarly - "The Soviet Union has a right to control Eastern Europe, WWII blah blah. And their society is better"
Some of the same people are still around... Which does make me laugh when I hear them prate on the subject of democracy.
If they do are they just thick and ignorant or is there another explanation?