Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
Those who know him well say the self torture these days is that he really doesn't want Brexit to lead to Scottish independence.
He also think/thought Boris Johnson as PM would ensure Scottish independence that's why he knifed him in 2016.
Not sure how he reconciles his behaviour since 2019. Whilst he's confident Boris Johnson won't grant an indyref2 on his watch his behaviour as PM makes independence likely further down the line.
I think his nightmare scenario is that Boris Johnson decides to grant indyref2 in the belief he can win it.
I think a Sindy2 before 2025 is drifting towards a price worth looking at. All quiet on that front right now but post pandemic it'll be back with a vengeance. People seem to assume Sturgeon won't play hardball - she doesn't really want a vote - but I don't buy that. I don't think it's a simple as Johnson says no and that's the end of it. I think there could be some fireworks and drama coming.
There will be a vote in the Scottish Parliament formally requesting a referendum, then a vote in the UK Parliament to deny the request. Then what? Maybe a few court cases which will be lost, because the relevant powers are clearly Reserved. Then lots of bluster, but nothing can actually be done about it.
The problem for UK/Westminster politicians is there's no real good way of undermining the strength of the SNP in Scotland.
Shower Scotland with cash and it creates resentment in England, and the Scots take the message that the best way to benefit Scotland is continuing to vote SNP and give the impression of flirting with Independence.
Don't do so, and the SNP are able to nuture and build up the grievance culture about how the UK is 'holding back' Scotland.
Short of the SNP imploding, i'm not sure how that situation is resolved - short of another SINDY referendum that votes to stay in the UK.
The entire relationship is deeply toxic. Only divorce fixes that now. The near-half of the Scottish population that wants out and keeps voting SNP ad nauseam is hardly likely to stop.
I don't see how it fixes it - possibly in a situation where the UK and independent Scotland were in the EU, but i just don't see how a hard UK-Scotland border works.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
I'm not familiar with all of Mo Farah's family background but no doubt there are many Kenyan and Somalian talented runners as well as sportsmen and women who'd like to emigrate but would currently struggle to do so. There are probably lots of talented Korean computer scientists and Azerbaijani entrepreneurs who'd like to do so too.
A line has to be drawn somewhere. That will never seem fair to those who fall on just the wrong side of it but it's essential to maintaining stability and cohesion.
One thing about successful children of immigrants (for example Sajid Javid, or Sadiq Khan) is that their parents arrived poor and unskilled, or like Boris Johnson, Michael Portillo, or Dominic Raab as refugees fleeing political persecution. They probably wouldn't get in so easily today.
Is that a good thing? Or did they prevent an indigenous Briton from getting their opportunity?
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
I think both are a problem for social cohesion, which is why I disagree with mass immigration. I dont buy into them both in my personal life - FOM doesnt affect me, I like the bohemian atmosphere when I go to nice places in London, individually Muslims are no better or worse than anyone else. I just dont think its fair on the people it does affect negatively.
I have read what seems to be a similar book called "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe" by Christopher Caldwell
Yes, sounds similar. As regards your perspective, it's quite unusual, I think, for somebody to feel viscerally that diversity is great, and to enjoy it, yet be opposed on intellectual grounds, thinking it through and concluding it damages more people than it enriches. You're one of the few people I've come across (on or off line) like that.
It would be interesting to see what happens if most of the white people living in South Africa, Zimbabwe, etc, decide they'd rather live in the UK.
This actually led to an entertaining train of events.
Under the last Labor government, in Zimbabwe, Mugabe decided to boost flagging popularity by seizing land from white farmers. Since this was done at gun point, complete with death threats and actual killings, many decided to leave the country.
The Labour government wasn't keen on the idea of large numbers of white refugees - they'd managed to find a kind of refugee they didn't like. So they quietly change the rules on immigration from Zimbabwe.
As in most countries around the world, much of the UK immigration work is actually done by hired locals. This is generally considered a prestigious job - and well paid.
So, when told to crack down on immigration, the locals did their job.
Woah! said the British government - why have all the nurses stopped coming from Zimbabwe? Well, it turned out that no one had told the locals that they weren't to crack down on *all* immigration from Zimbabwe... they'd just assumed.
Tricky one - how to discriminate without saying "not the whites, please"? Well, alot of the white farmers and their families had ties to the UK via military service, among other things. So rules were introduced to say that military service was irrelevant as to "having a connection with the UK", for immigration purposes. These rules were added around the world...
So all was lovely. The Zimbabwean nurses came to the UK, and not too many white ex-farmers.
Then a Nepalese chap got told that the fact that he had fought in the British Army and won the VC didn't show he had any connection with the UK.....
The Farahs brothers who came to the UK (Mo twin brother didn't come) are at both extremes of the argument. Mo Farah incredibly successful athlete, his brother a violent career criminal who has been deported.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Isn't she Canadian? Or are you implying that I'm somehow not British because my parents weren't born here?
What is this, non-sequitur Saturday?
Your making a point that doesn't exist. She was born in Canada. She's Canadian. Her parents came from Canada probably a skilled visa route. I'm not sure what it is you're getting at.
Her parents, apparently, are Romanian and Chinese. The very sort that @isam whinges about in between his readings of Douglas Murray, Christopher Caldwell, Enoch Powell etc.
Her parents were Canadian, again unless you're saying that people born overseas can never be considered the same as the people to the countries they move to.
I’m only going on what Wiki says. It doesn’t matter, though, to my point.
One day it’s “these people are hanging out in sub-standard slums”, the next it’s “ra-ra-raducanu” and there is a cognitive dissonance there as far as I am concerned.
Doesn't it? Her parents came here by a skilled migrant route, that's still available to anyone today.
Really what you should be talking about is the founders of BioNTech, though it relates to Germany it probably has a high degree of relevance here.
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
Those who know him well say the self torture these days is that he really doesn't want Brexit to lead to Scottish independence.
He also think/thought Boris Johnson as PM would ensure Scottish independence that's why he knifed him in 2016.
Not sure how he reconciles his behaviour since 2019. Whilst he's confident Boris Johnson won't grant an indyref2 on his watch his behaviour as PM makes independence likely further down the line.
I think his nightmare scenario is that Boris Johnson decides to grant indyref2 in the belief he can win it.
Presumably Gove tries to reconcile what he's done in the same way that Cummings has; If we hadn't backed Boris, Corbyn would have become Prime Minister and that would have been even worse. And, to be kind, that's not entirely self-serving balderdash. Admittedly, one of the key reasons that Johnson's predecessor ended up in the wretched position she did was because of the actions of people like Cummings and Johnson through 2018.
But ultimately, one of the reasons that Gove and Cummings (and I suspect Johnson, though for slightly different reasons) wanted Brexit was to take all the pieces, throw them up in the air and see what would emerge. Creative destruction and all that. But if they really thought that the consequences would be all good and nothing too bad (you know, like chunks of the UK falling off), they were a pair of ninnies.
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
TBH that account looks possibly bowdlerised (ie it was more serious than documented), but there is no easy way to tell.
On of the more detailed accounts of torture in interrogation I have seen from the French resistance was in the book The White Rabbit, involving repeated near-drowning and beatings. Suspect that there are many more.
There's controversy over Atkins' accounts, in particular.
Wartime accounts from the Far East are horrific. But we hear far more from treatment of Westerners compared to treatment of native people.
The Knights of Bushido is very unpleasant reading.
Yes. Contemporary accounts have a completely understandable faux-cheerfulness about them - imo a way of self-distancing. Totally understandable of course, like people not talking about their experiences in WW1 - I had a grandfather (not known to me personally - died when I was young) who was like that.
A couple of years ago, I just had to give up reading a book about the Sack of Nanking, it was so nauseating (and the author wasn't writing for titillation, it was all very sober). Nemesis, by Max Hastings, is a difficult read in places, for similar reasons.
Try reading Christina Lamb's book: "Our Bodies. Their Battlefields."
And yet we need to know about these things if we are to have a chance of stopping them.
My very first lecture on forensics when I was training for the Bar was about a woman who had been raped with a broken bottle. It was before lunch. None of us felt like eating. You need a strong stomach for some criminal / family work. I only did a bit of it and it can be very disturbing.
A particular level of hell is reserved for books which report this sort of thing *approvingly* in a fictional context - I came across one by a current US author from a few years ago which describes with relish how the CIA practice(d?) extraordinary rendition in order to torture the suspect in Syria (then a pro-US country). A Swiss politician tries to intervene during an emergency stop en route and is portrayed as a bumbling bureaucrat getting in the way of the mission.
Even those who argue that torture is sometimes necessary usually draw the line at enjoying it. But some authors really don't.
I'm not sure I agree with that. People use fiction as an outlet in many ways, and sometimes it will be to push a view that is abhorrent, or just with a sort of morbid enjoyment of fictional (albeit based on things that really happen) horrible things, of bad people doing bad things, or arguing some things are good which, most of us, think is bad. Fiction aimed at children upwards can involve the brutal and disproportionate revenge ot those who transgressed the heroes in what is objectively wrong, but vicariously enjoyed by the author and audience. Diana Gabbaldon from the Outlander series must, on some level, enjoy writing about rape for example given how often it happens or nearly happens, albeit it's hardly approving.
A cavalier or even approving attitude toward torture and killing is incredibly common in fiction of all sorts of mediums, and whilst I know you are talking about a specific kind of situation, I think 'special place in hell' is a bit strong for somthing that is very common, even if it is considered wrong.
A weird case a few years ago was some people getting squeamish about a torture scene in GTA5, a series where casual murder (and accidental vehicular homicide) is as common as breathing, presumably due to the manner of depiction (on a general point video game violence is not 'real' violence anymore than most TV and film violence is not real - it's done in a way that is in no way realistic, which we can all recognise, hence why it does not have that much effect).
There was a stat from a few years back that the average 11yo was watching one fictional murder on TV per day.
Why on earth do you think consuming lots of sicko fictional amoral violence, day in, day out, from a young age, has little effect?
Fiction aimed at children upwards can involve the brutal and disproportionate revenge ot those who transgressed the heroes in what is objectively wrong
Couple of typos there, but if you mean brutal and disproportionate revenge on those who surpassed the heroes in carrying out wrong actions then this is NEW. There is nothing like that in say the Narnia books.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
I'm not familiar with all of Mo Farah's family background but no doubt there are many Kenyan and Somalian talented runners as well as sportsmen and women who'd like to emigrate but would currently struggle to do so. There are probably lots of talented Korean computer scientists and Azerbaijani entrepreneurs who'd like to do so too.
A line has to be drawn somewhere. That will never seem fair to those who fall on just the wrong side of it but it's essential to maintaining stability and cohesion.
One thing about successful children of immigrants (for example Sajid Javid, or Sadiq Khan) is that their parents arrived poor and unskilled, or like Boris Johnson, Michael Portillo, or Dominic Raab as refugees fleeing political persecution. They probably wouldn't get in so easily today.
Is that a good thing? Or did they prevent an indigenous Briton from getting their opportunity?
It's a selective use of facts. There are lots of talented first and second immigrants who've made immense contributions to the UK.
There are also lots of Britons who've been here for generations and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps who've done the same.
I have no problem with an immigration policy that selects the best skills and also the most vulnerable refugees worldwide but puts sensible rolling annual limits that command democratic support on both.
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
Those who know him well say the self torture these days is that he really doesn't want Brexit to lead to Scottish independence.
He also think/thought Boris Johnson as PM would ensure Scottish independence that's why he knifed him in 2016.
Not sure how he reconciles his behaviour since 2019. Whilst he's confident Boris Johnson won't grant an indyref2 on his watch his behaviour as PM makes independence likely further down the line.
I think his nightmare scenario is that Boris Johnson decides to grant indyref2 in the belief he can win it.
I think a Sindy2 before 2025 is drifting towards a price worth looking at. All quiet on that front right now but post pandemic it'll be back with a vengeance. People seem to assume Sturgeon won't play hardball - she doesn't really want a vote - but I don't buy that. I don't think it's a simple as Johnson says no and that's the end of it. I think there could be some fireworks and drama coming.
There will be a vote in the Scottish Parliament formally requesting a referendum, then a vote in the UK Parliament to deny the request. Then what? Maybe a few court cases which will be lost, because the relevant powers are clearly Reserved. Then lots of bluster, but nothing can actually be done about it.
The problem for UK/Westminster politicians is there's no real good way of undermining the strength of the SNP in Scotland.
Shower Scotland with cash and it creates resentment in England, and the Scots take the message that the best way to benefit Scotland is continuing to vote SNP and give the impression of flirting with Independence.
Don't do so, and the SNP are able to nuture and build up the grievance culture about how the UK is 'holding back' Scotland.
Short of the SNP imploding, i'm not sure how that situation is resolved - short of another SINDY referendum that votes to stay in the UK.
The entire relationship is deeply toxic. Only divorce fixes that now. The near-half of the Scottish population that wants out and keeps voting SNP ad nauseam is hardly likely to stop.
I don't see how it fixes it - possibly in a situation where the UK and independent Scotland were in the EU, but i just don't see how a hard UK-Scotland border works.
A hard border, if it comes to it (and it may very well not: it's by no means certain that a sovereign Scotland would end up re-joining the EU) is readily manageable. The muddled situation over Ireland won't be replicated because, of course, the political situation is entirely different and a clean break is therefore eminently achievable.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
Has there been a PB eruption about the Canadian statue toppling and I’ve missed it? I thought it would be the talk of the steamie.
Blimey that's poor design. I always think that whoever designs and signs off on cycling infrastructure should have to cycle up and down it a few times afterwards, preferably with their children. That would put a quick end to some of the appallingly unsafe designs out there.
It's 60k of the active travel improvement money for that town, I think. They are monitoring usage for 18 months, and then decide whether to keep it.
You are aware of the "Cycling Farcility of the Month" web page in Warrington. Very funny. Currently down for maintenance, but this is the latest on the Archive. The page to have lost enthusiasm after 20 years.
A lot of the cycling ways in Leicester are similar, disappearing at roundabouts, junctions and other hazards etc. Then there is wonder at why they are under used.
Yep.
The issue with this one is a dangerous merge at *exactly* the most dangerous point where separation is needed because of the squeeze, and drivers being distracted by reading all those road signs and the narrowing lane width.
There should be no separation between the driving lanes, a physically separate cycling lane on both sides, and a controlled crossing rather than bollards.
As it stands the only way to ride that safely is either on the pavement, or in primary position bang in the middle of the traffic lane from 50-100m before to make sure the drivers see you and cannot overtake, though some of the more stupid or careless ones may try regardless to save 8 seconds.
And it's just before a primary school, where the traffic should be slowing down anyway.
How are kids supposed to walk or cycle to school with abortions like this on our roads?
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
Has there been a PB eruption about the Canadian statue toppling and I’ve missed it? I thought it would be the talk of the steamie.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
I'd say those panics are an add-on rather than a replacement. And there's an intellectual side and a visceral side to all of it.
The visceral side is stuff like "I kneel to nobody but the Queen" and trans people "waving their tackle around."
The intellectual side announces itself with repeated use of the words, "iconoclastic" and "the enlightenment".
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
Has there been a PB eruption about the Canadian statue toppling and I’ve missed it? I thought it would be the talk of the steamie.
It is truly awful. Quite hideous. It should be pulled down on aesthetic grounds, frankly.
We don't care about aethestics in this country, only artistic fashion. Otherwise, we'd have to knock down almost every building built in this country between 1945 and 1990.
Thank goodness you will never have to resort to a “substandard squat” and be accused - against the economic evidence - of driving down wages.
With privilege comes responsibility
Whereas you just carp from the sidelines
Your responsibility is probably to make verifiable claims rather than use language of racial prejudice.
Me, I *am* a migrant. I’m sticking up for my people.
You're not having one of your good days today.
Shades of the working class/working age debacle
There are some similarities.
Brexiters REALLY hate being reminded they were on the same side as the economically inactive and the anti-immigrant types.
They should have the confidence to do & say what they think without worrying about being found guilty by association of some lefty thought crime by bitter Remainers
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Thank goodness you will never have to resort to a “substandard squat” and be accused - against the economic evidence - of driving down wages.
With privilege comes responsibility
Whereas you just carp from the sidelines
Your responsibility is probably to make verifiable claims rather than use language of racial prejudice.
Me, I *am* a migrant. I’m sticking up for my people.
You're not having one of your good days today.
Shades of the working class/working age debacle
There are some similarities.
Brexiters REALLY hate being reminded they were on the same side as the economically inactive and the anti-immigrant types.
They should have the confidence to do & say what they think without worrying about being found guilty by association of some lefty thought crime by bitter Remainers
Remainers were on the same side as Sinn Fein. We can all play the guilt by association game.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
I'd say those panics are an add-on rather than a replacement. And there's an intellectual side and a visceral side to all of it.
The visceral side is stuff like "I kneel to nobody but the Queen" and trans people "waving their tackle around."
The intellectual side announces itself with repeated use of the words, "iconoclastic" and "the enlightenment".
Moral panic suggests something that is not real. But in some cases, there are genuine fears and good reasons for those fears. One shouldn't confuse the two. Too many people do.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
I'd say those panics are an add-on rather than a replacement. And there's an intellectual side and a visceral side to all of it.
The visceral side is stuff like "I kneel to nobody but the Queen" and trans people "waving their tackle around."
The intellectual side announces itself with repeated use of the words, "iconoclastic" and "the enlightenment".
Moral panic suggests something that is not real. But in some cases, there are genuine fears and good reasons for those fears. One shouldn't confuse the two. Too many people do.
Including many men telling women what to think and feel
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Not being in favour of large-scale immigration in a relatively short time period is probably a position that the majority of people in almost every country in the world would support. It doesn't have anything in particular to do with the UK.
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
TBH that account looks possibly bowdlerised (ie it was more serious than documented), but there is no easy way to tell.
On of the more detailed accounts of torture in interrogation I have seen from the French resistance was in the book The White Rabbit, involving repeated near-drowning and beatings. Suspect that there are many more.
There's controversy over Atkins' accounts, in particular.
Wartime accounts from the Far East are horrific. But we hear far more from treatment of Westerners compared to treatment of native people.
The Knights of Bushido is very unpleasant reading.
Yes. Contemporary accounts have a completely understandable faux-cheerfulness about them - imo a way of self-distancing. Totally understandable of course, like people not talking about their experiences in WW1 - I had a grandfather (not known to me personally - died when I was young) who was like that.
A couple of years ago, I just had to give up reading a book about the Sack of Nanking, it was so nauseating (and the author wasn't writing for titillation, it was all very sober). Nemesis, by Max Hastings, is a difficult read in places, for similar reasons.
Try reading Christina Lamb's book: "Our Bodies. Their Battlefields."
And yet we need to know about these things if we are to have a chance of stopping them.
My very first lecture on forensics when I was training for the Bar was about a woman who had been raped with a broken bottle. It was before lunch. None of us felt like eating. You need a strong stomach for some criminal / family work. I only did a bit of it and it can be very disturbing.
A particular level of hell is reserved for books which report this sort of thing *approvingly* in a fictional context - I came across one by a current US author from a few years ago which describes with relish how the CIA practice(d?) extraordinary rendition in order to torture the suspect in Syria (then a pro-US country). A Swiss politician tries to intervene during an emergency stop en route and is portrayed as a bumbling bureaucrat getting in the way of the mission.
Even those who argue that torture is sometimes necessary usually draw the line at enjoying it. But some authors really don't.
I'm not sure I agree with that. People use fiction as an outlet in many ways, and sometimes it will be to push a view that is abhorrent, or just with a sort of morbid enjoyment of fictional (albeit based on things that really happen) horrible things, of bad people doing bad things, or arguing some things are good which, most of us, think is bad. Fiction aimed at children upwards can involve the brutal and disproportionate revenge ot those who transgressed the heroes in what is objectively wrong, but vicariously enjoyed by the author and audience. Diana Gabbaldon from the Outlander series must, on some level, enjoy writing about rape for example given how often it happens or nearly happens, albeit it's hardly approving.
A cavalier or even approving attitude toward torture and killing is incredibly common in fiction of all sorts of mediums, and whilst I know you are talking about a specific kind of situation, I think 'special place in hell' is a bit strong for somthing that is very common, even if it is considered wrong.
A weird case a few years ago was some people getting squeamish about a torture scene in GTA5, a series where casual murder (and accidental vehicular homicide) is as common as breathing, presumably due to the manner of depiction (on a general point video game violence is not 'real' violence anymore than most TV and film violence is not real - it's done in a way that is in no way realistic, which we can all recognise, hence why it does not have that much effect).
There was a stat from a few years back that the average 11yo was watching one fictional murder on TV per day.
Why on earth do you think consuming lots of sicko fictional amoral violence, day in, day out, from a young age, has little effect?
Fiction aimed at children upwards can involve the brutal and disproportionate revenge ot those who transgressed the heroes in what is objectively wrong
Couple of typos there, but if you mean brutal and disproportionate revenge on those who surpassed the heroes in carrying out wrong actions then this is NEW. There is nothing like that in say the Narnia books.
There's plenty in Shakespeare, though. Or take stories like Hop Toad, or the Cask of Amontillado, by Poe, both of which I was introduce to at school.
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Saka and Trippier are injured.
No Bellingham. He must get a run out.
Bellingham just looks so good. Incredible to think he is only one season into a career at the top level and still a teenager.
I personally would have rested either Philips or Rice (as both a booking away from missing the semi-final) and gone with probably Henderson or Bellingham.
The Sun sat on the Hancock affair story, releasing it the weekend before the Batley and Spen byelection. The Tories lost the seat by just over 300 votes and as a result Starmer wasn’t pressured to resign. Labour now ambles along with an extremely unpopular leader and no policies
The Corbinistas were clearly banking on a Labour loss in Batley to get rid of Starmer.
Starmer has a big problem now in Angela Rayner. She was clearly “on manoeuvres” last week, but is directly elected as deputy leader and can’t be fired.
I don't think so. Angela Rayner has emerged as a diminished figure following the reports over the past week. She can only scotch the rumours by being ultra loyal now.
Rayner has really screwed up. I think she’s looked on rather suspiciously by front bench colleagues now.
Hmm. Not so sure. She now has the anti-Starmer faction coalescing around her, while previously there was no figurehead. She also is canny enough to make it all deniable.
Under current rules, a challenger needs 20% of MPs to back them, and the incumbent is automatically on the members ballot. Only if Starmer resigns is the lower 5% threshold applied. In effect this makes it hard for more than one challenger to be on the ballot.
Rayner is consolidating her position as the Queen over the water.
She is a loser. Unlikemy Labourvwoukd win with her as leader imho.
Winning ...
Well, in the sense of winning a majority, Labour cannot win without a significant comeback in Scotland. I don't know if they can solve that problem.
But, in terms of winning the seats back in the Midlands/North of England, Rayner is likely to be better than a metropolitan lawyer from the South of England, like SKS.
In terms of actually running the country as PM, SKS is likely to be better than Rayner.
For what its worth I think Labour should forget Scotland for time being. A deal with SNP will keep Tories out of office if Labour come close enough. They would be far better tearing up the entire policy/strategy book and starting again with the focus being how can be win in England?
Not being in favour of large-scale immigration in a relatively short time period is probably a position that the majority of people in almost every country in the world would support. It doesn't have anything in particular to do with the UK.
Former head of Germany's spy agency slams Angela Merkel's immigration policies as 'fatal' and says country is 'declining politically and economically'
The Sun sat on the Hancock affair story, releasing it the weekend before the Batley and Spen byelection. The Tories lost the seat by just over 300 votes and as a result Starmer wasn’t pressured to resign. Labour now ambles along with an extremely unpopular leader and no policies
The Corbinistas were clearly banking on a Labour loss in Batley to get rid of Starmer.
Starmer has a big problem now in Angela Rayner. She was clearly “on manoeuvres” last week, but is directly elected as deputy leader and can’t be fired.
I don't think so. Angela Rayner has emerged as a diminished figure following the reports over the past week. She can only scotch the rumours by being ultra loyal now.
Rayner has really screwed up. I think she’s looked on rather suspiciously by front bench colleagues now.
Hmm. Not so sure. She now has the anti-Starmer faction coalescing around her, while previously there was no figurehead. She also is canny enough to make it all deniable.
Under current rules, a challenger needs 20% of MPs to back them, and the incumbent is automatically on the members ballot. Only if Starmer resigns is the lower 5% threshold applied. In effect this makes it hard for more than one challenger to be on the ballot.
Rayner is consolidating her position as the Queen over the water.
She is a loser. Unlikemy Labourvwoukd win with her as leader imho.
Winning ...
Well, in the sense of winning a majority, Labour cannot win without a significant comeback in Scotland. I don't know if they can solve that problem.
But, in terms of winning the seats back in the Midlands/North of England, Rayner is likely to be better than a metropolitan lawyer from the South of England, like SKS.
In terms of actually running the country as PM, SKS is likely to be better than Rayner.
For what its worth I think Labour should forget Scotland for time being. A deal with SNP will keep Tories out of office if Labour come close enough. They would be far better tearing up the entire policy/strategy book and starting again with the focus being how can be win in England?
Lie about our master plan to bribe the SNP with another £37bn per year to keep them sweet?
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Saka and Trippier are injured.
No Bellingham. He must get a run out.
Bellingham just looks so good. Incredible to think he is only one season into a career at the top level and still a teenager.
I personally would have rested either Philips or Rice (as both a booking away from missing the semi-final) and gone with probably Henderson or Bellingham.
He’s such a great kid too. Really grounded and just seems such a good lad. I’m a Brum fan so I love him to bits.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
I'd say those panics are an add-on rather than a replacement. And there's an intellectual side and a visceral side to all of it.
The visceral side is stuff like "I kneel to nobody but the Queen" and trans people "waving their tackle around."
The intellectual side announces itself with repeated use of the words, "iconoclastic" and "the enlightenment".
Moral panic suggests something that is not real. But in some cases, there are genuine fears and good reasons for those fears. One shouldn't confuse the two. Too many people do.
Yes, you need to distinguish between the rational concerns and the moral panic. That's the nub of the matter.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
Has there been a PB eruption about the Canadian statue toppling and I’ve missed it? I thought it would be the talk of the steamie.
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Just wanted to let you know that divorce isnt funny
Gove's divorce is hilarious. Marries a woman that looks like a bloke and then has to get divorced when he gets caught ******* * *****.
I've read some remarkable stories online about Gove in recent days. I've no idea whether they are true. One poster claimed to be have been "walking around like a broken thing for several days", after spending the night with him.
That was because she tore of his triple layer of tesco carrier bags and realised what she had just shagged
I'm not sure of the sex of the person who posted that comment.
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Saka and Trippier are injured.
No Bellingham. He must get a run out.
Bellingham just looks so good. Incredible to think he is only one season into a career at the top level and still a teenager.
I personally would have rested either Philips or Rice (as both a booking away from missing the semi-final) and gone with probably Henderson or Bellingham.
He’s such a great kid too. Really grounded and just seems such a good lad. I’m a Brum fan so I love him to bits.
I think its also impressive to decide to go abroad at such a young age with only a single season of championship football (which is very different from EPL academy players who have been groomed their whole lives in the ways of elite football setups). It would have been much easier to sign with middle tier premier league club.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
It's also about the control side. Free movement within a supranational entity is only sustainable if it either doesn't lead to any net movement of people because there is equal economic opportunity everywhere, or if people subscribe to a shared identity strongly enough that they disagree with restricting the movement of people on principle, even if it does lead to large net migration.
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Saka and Trippier are injured.
Hurrah to Sancho! Thought that Mount would be back in though.
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Thank goodness you will never have to resort to a “substandard squat” and be accused - against the economic evidence - of driving down wages.
With privilege comes responsibility
Whereas you just carp from the sidelines
Your responsibility is probably to make verifiable claims rather than use language of racial prejudice.
Me, I *am* a migrant. I’m sticking up for my people.
You're not having one of your good days today.
Shades of the working class/working age debacle
There are some similarities.
Brexiters REALLY hate being reminded they were on the same side as the economically inactive and the anti-immigrant types.
They should have the confidence to do & say what they think without worrying about being found guilty by association of some lefty thought crime by bitter Remainers
George W Bush said “Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”
You do sometimes seem to fall into this trap: your posts seem often to be railing against somewhat imagined bitter Remoaners that roam the lands.
By and large, your political opponents are not immoral*, they're just people that have slightly different priorities than you.
I think we would all benefit from assuming the best of out political opponents, and that they are coming from a good place of wanting to make the world (and the UK) a better place. Now, maybe they only see the good things from immigration - but that doesn't make them evil, that merely means that you need to help them see that there are two sides to every story.
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Saka and Trippier are injured.
Hurrah to Sancho! Thought that Mount would be back in though.
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
I'd say those panics are an add-on rather than a replacement. And there's an intellectual side and a visceral side to all of it.
The visceral side is stuff like "I kneel to nobody but the Queen" and trans people "waving their tackle around."
The intellectual side announces itself with repeated use of the words, "iconoclastic" and "the enlightenment".
Moral panic suggests something that is not real. But in some cases, there are genuine fears and good reasons for those fears. One shouldn't confuse the two. Too many people do.
Including many men telling women what to think and feel
Yup - as they've been doing for centuries. Those doing it now really stand on the shoulders of all those patriarchs, priests, ayatollahs etc who like bossing women around and cannot tolerate women with opinions and freedoms of their own. They should feel so proud.
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Saka and Trippier are injured.
I like it: give the Ukrainians a hand by only fielding 10.
That's what I like England. We're an absolute bastion of fair play. Has this changed the odds?
West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises Sage, said: “The most serious problem is that if you have a situation where not everyone has been even offered the vaccine then you’ve already got clearly a huge unfairness.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
Has there been a PB eruption about the Canadian statue toppling and I’ve missed it? I thought it would be the talk of the steamie.
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Saka and Trippier are injured.
No Bellingham. He must get a run out.
Bellingham just looks so good. Incredible to think he is only one season into a career at the top level and still a teenager.
I personally would have rested either Philips or Rice (as both a booking away from missing the semi-final) and gone with probably Henderson or Bellingham.
He’s such a great kid too. Really grounded and just seems such a good lad. I’m a Brum fan so I love him to bits.
I think its also impressive to decide to go abroad at such a young age with only a single season of championship football (which is very different from EPL academy players who have been groomed their whole lives in the ways of elite football setups). It would have been much easier to sign with middle tier premier league club.
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Saka and Trippier are injured.
No Bellingham. He must get a run out.
Bellingham just looks so good. Incredible to think he is only one season into a career at the top level and still a teenager.
I personally would have rested either Philips or Rice (as both a booking away from missing the semi-final) and gone with probably Henderson or Bellingham.
He’s such a great kid too. Really grounded and just seems such a good lad. I’m a Brum fan so I love him to bits.
I think its also impressive to decide to go abroad at such a young age with only a single season of championship football (which is very different from EPL academy players who have been groomed their whole lives in the ways of elite football setups). It would have been much easier to sign with middle tier premier league club.
I get the impression, from following the Birmingham city twitter topic, his advisors and family are very grounded and have his best interests at heart. When it was first mooted the talk was he wanted to go to that club due to,their reputation for polishing young diamonds.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
I'm not familiar with all of Mo Farah's family background but no doubt there are many Kenyan and Somalian talented runners as well as sportsmen and women who'd like to emigrate but would currently struggle to do so. There are probably lots of talented Korean computer scientists and Azerbaijani entrepreneurs who'd like to do so too.
A line has to be drawn somewhere. That will never seem fair to those who fall on just the wrong side of it but it's essential to maintaining stability and cohesion.
One thing about successful children of immigrants (for example Sajid Javid, or Sadiq Khan) is that their parents arrived poor and unskilled, or like Boris Johnson, Michael Portillo, or Dominic Raab as refugees fleeing political persecution. They probably wouldn't get in so easily today.
Is that a good thing? Or did they prevent an indigenous Briton from getting their opportunity?
It's a selective use of facts. There are lots of talented first and second immigrants who've made immense contributions to the UK.
There are also lots of Britons who've been here for generations and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps who've done the same.
I have no problem with an immigration policy that selects the best skills and also the most vulnerable refugees worldwide but puts sensible rolling annual limits that command democratic support on both.
Yes, I agree, a high proportion of immigrants have been of significant benefit to the country and deserve their success. Indeed upward social mobility is a striking feature of immigrant populations, including my immigrant grandparents.
Indeed I think the upward social mobility is the source of at least some resentment of migrant populations. Having an immigrant boss is a different kettle of fish to having an immigrant cleaner. Enoch encapsulated this with his view that "soon the black man will have the whip hand over the white".
The truth is even more abhorrent. She went to a grammar.
Deport her now!
We all know the best students are the ones whose parents decided to save the state the expense of educating their children.
Jack Draper the young up and coming player on the men's side....much more up your alley. Private school in Surrey nats.
Joking aside, the thing that really worries about me is that these days cricket only seems to be pretty much played in private schools.
Round here we’ve got several local village/small town clubs with state-educated young people playing. Many of the current Essex team came through scouting local clubs, too.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Isn't she Canadian? Or are you implying that I'm somehow not British because my parents weren't born here?
What is this, non-sequitur Saturday?
Your making a point that doesn't exist. She was born in Canada. She's Canadian. Her parents came from Canada probably a skilled visa route. I'm not sure what it is you're getting at.
Her parents, apparently, are Romanian and Chinese. The very sort that @isam whinges about in between his readings of Douglas Murray, Christopher Caldwell, Enoch Powell etc.
Her parents were Canadian, again unless you're saying that people born overseas can never be considered the same as the people to the countries they move to.
I’m only going on what Wiki says. It doesn’t matter, though, to my point.
One day it’s “these people are hanging out in sub-standard slums”, the next it’s “ra-ra-raducanu” and there is a cognitive dissonance there as far as I am concerned.
Do you support having any controls on immigration ?
Because if you support any restriction on immigration then it then becomes only a question of where you draw the line.
And unsurprisingly people tend to draw the immigration line depending on how it affects themselves.
I do.
It seems pretty straightforward there must be kind of limit on a country’s ability to absorb immigration, although how to work that out I don’t know.
But I am keen to remind the comfortable PB consensus that ALL the evidence suggests
- East European immigrants were averagely more skilled than native employees - EU (inc East European) migration increased both productivity and average GDP per capita - The effect on U.K. workers was largely (though admittedly not universally) to improve their wages as they were able to “move up the ladder”.
One also notes the astonishing contribution to culture, food, arts etc, esp in London.
The data on house prices also suggests that EU migration was NOT a significant contributor to inflation, at least relative to many other factors.
To the extent there were strains on infrastructure etc I rather blame govt fiscal policy rather than the immigrants themselves.
The claims about education, productivity and GDP are highly dubious given we know there were more immigrants than officially reported and the 'missing' immigrants were far more likely to be towards the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
A university graduate working as a cleaner is still only a cleaner - a clear waste of human resources.
Even if productivity as a whole increased (which is highly disputable) it certainly decreased in some economic sectors - the hand carwash is the most obvious example.
And if GDP increased who benefitted ? I'll suggest that the people who did gain were those who benefitted from a downward pressure on employment costs and an upward pressure on housing costs ie the rich.
The interesting thing about cultural issues is how little benefit there was - Indian, Italian, Chinese restaurants are synonymous with improved eating possibilities and a trip around a northern town will now reveal restaurants featuring food from South America, South-East Asia, the Middle East etc but rarely anything Eastern European. Likewise West Indian, and later African, immigration became associated with stars in sports and music in a way Eastern Europeans haven't.
West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises Sage, said: “The most serious problem is that if you have a situation where not everyone has been even offered the vaccine then you’ve already got clearly a huge unfairness.
Yes I know some can't have it etc, but 90 odd percentage of people have. And second doses won't be long now for people who want that.
Absolutely!
We've reached the point now where everyone has been eligible for the vaccine for a while, if they've not had their first dose or scheduled it yet its entirely their own responsibility because they've chosen not to do so.
As for seconds, they're limited to the 8 weeks currently so not that long for anybody really, but now that there's so few firsts left to do that 8 weeks really ought to be brought forwards whenever possible.
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Saka and Trippier are injured.
No Bellingham. He must get a run out.
Bellingham just looks so good. Incredible to think he is only one season into a career at the top level and still a teenager.
I personally would have rested either Philips or Rice (as both a booking away from missing the semi-final) and gone with probably Henderson or Bellingham.
He’s such a great kid too. Really grounded and just seems such a good lad. I’m a Brum fan so I love him to bits.
I think its also impressive to decide to go abroad at such a young age with only a single season of championship football (which is very different from EPL academy players who have been groomed their whole lives in the ways of elite football setups). It would have been much easier to sign with middle tier premier league club.
Yes, also true of Sancho, of course.
It is, although my point was somebody like Sancho had been in the Watford then Man City setups. The kids drilled though these elite EPL academies live a different life. They are already well used to widespread worldwide travel, playing in and against youth teams that are full of the best talent from around the world. Going to Dortmund, yes different language, but they are transplanting elite level to elite level.
No offense to Birmingham City, but they don't move in those circles.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
I'd say those panics are an add-on rather than a replacement. And there's an intellectual side and a visceral side to all of it.
The visceral side is stuff like "I kneel to nobody but the Queen" and trans people "waving their tackle around."
The intellectual side announces itself with repeated use of the words, "iconoclastic" and "the enlightenment".
Moral panic suggests something that is not real. But in some cases, there are genuine fears and good reasons for those fears. One shouldn't confuse the two. Too many people do.
Yes, you need to distinguish between the rational concerns and the moral panic. That's the nub of the matter.
Is there anything that was labelled a moral panic at the time but then turned out to be a genuine society-altering-for-the-worse event? I can't think of much. The naysaying before the First World War perhaps.
Currant Bun (who seem to have correctly known the line-up ahead of time so far in the Euros, and this is also what the Athletic reported) say the England team is ....
Pickford Walker Stones Maguire Shaw Philips Rice Sancho Sterling Kane
Saka and Trippier are injured.
Hopefully we are fielding 11 players???
Woophs...Mount is back at 10.
I've done an inverse Stuart Pearce.
Mount might be worth an assist. Raheem Sterling is a bit short for first goalscorer on account for his having been first goalscorer three times in four games already.
Watching Czech Republic and Denmark. Nothing here to trouble Boris' Barmy Army...if Czechs' win.
I can't see England beating the diving cheating fouling Italians though.
My current open Euros bet is a lay of Spain. I think the Italians should much more favoured than the implied chance against them and I think England is at least level with them in a final, the Danes would have a very good outsiders chance too on this half's evidence. Didn't seem 3.8 to win it all to me.
The Sun sat on the Hancock affair story, releasing it the weekend before the Batley and Spen byelection. The Tories lost the seat by just over 300 votes and as a result Starmer wasn’t pressured to resign. Labour now ambles along with an extremely unpopular leader and no policies
The Corbinistas were clearly banking on a Labour loss in Batley to get rid of Starmer.
Starmer has a big problem now in Angela Rayner. She was clearly “on manoeuvres” last week, but is directly elected as deputy leader and can’t be fired.
I don't think so. Angela Rayner has emerged as a diminished figure following the reports over the past week. She can only scotch the rumours by being ultra loyal now.
Rayner has really screwed up. I think she’s looked on rather suspiciously by front bench colleagues now.
Hmm. Not so sure. She now has the anti-Starmer faction coalescing around her, while previously there was no figurehead. She also is canny enough to make it all deniable.
Under current rules, a challenger needs 20% of MPs to back them, and the incumbent is automatically on the members ballot. Only if Starmer resigns is the lower 5% threshold applied. In effect this makes it hard for more than one challenger to be on the ballot.
Rayner is consolidating her position as the Queen over the water.
She is a loser. Unlikemy Labourvwoukd win with her as leader imho.
Winning ...
Well, in the sense of winning a majority, Labour cannot win without a significant comeback in Scotland. I don't know if they can solve that problem.
But, in terms of winning the seats back in the Midlands/North of England, Rayner is likely to be better than a metropolitan lawyer from the South of England, like SKS.
In terms of actually running the country as PM, SKS is likely to be better than Rayner.
For what its worth I think Labour should forget Scotland for time being. A deal with SNP will keep Tories out of office if Labour come close enough. They would be far better tearing up the entire policy/strategy book and starting again with the focus being how can be win in England?
No need to make a deal with the SNP today, we all know full well what the deal is. A deal with the SNP will entail a referendum, no ifs or buts. So they can work on winning as many seats as they can in England and Scotland, including from the SNP (yeah right!)
The danger zone is that Labour lose England but win enough to take Downing Street with SNP support. The problem is then if the SNP win their referendum it puts Labour back into opposition, plus any time there's an English only law the SNP can abstain and see Westminster ground to a halt; and of course its in the SNPs interests to see Westminster fail.
West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises Sage, said: “The most serious problem is that if you have a situation where not everyone has been even offered the vaccine then you’ve already got clearly a huge unfairness.
Yes I know some can't have it etc, but 90 odd percentage of people have. And second doses won't be long now for people who want that.
Trouble is that we aren't at 90 percent of people yet.
According to ourworldindata.org, we're at about 67% of people for first dose and 50% fully dosed. That's good (and most of those who haven't been jabbed are young and mostly at very low personal risk), but it's still a lot of people who have yet to be offered a vaccination.
And there's not a huge amount to be done about any of that now until the second Pfizer order comes on-stream (at the end of August?)
West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises Sage, said: “The most serious problem is that if you have a situation where not everyone has been even offered the vaccine then you’ve already got clearly a huge unfairness.
Yes I know some can't have it etc, but 90 odd percentage of people have. And second doses won't be long now for people who want that.
Trouble is that we aren't at 90 percent of people yet.
According to ourworldindata.org, we're at about 67% of people for first dose and 50% fully dosed. That's good (and most of those who haven't been jabbed are young and mostly at very low personal risk), but it's still a lot of people who have yet to be offered a vaccination.
And there's not a huge amount to be done about any of that now until the second Pfizer order comes on-stream (at the end of August?)
Why would you count children, considering they're not eligible?
From those who are eligible it is 85.7% and 63.4% - if we estimate that 10% are refusing the vaccine then that means over 95% of first vaccinations have been done.
West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises Sage, said: “The most serious problem is that if you have a situation where not everyone has been even offered the vaccine then you’ve already got clearly a huge unfairness.
Yes I know some can't have it etc, but 90 odd percentage of people have. And second doses won't be long now for people who want that.
Trouble is that we aren't at 90 percent of people yet.
According to ourworldindata.org, we're at about 67% of people for first dose and 50% fully dosed. That's good (and most of those who haven't been jabbed are young and mostly at very low personal risk), but it's still a lot of people who have yet to be offered a vaccination.
And there's not a huge amount to be done about any of that now until the second Pfizer order comes on-stream (at the end of August?)
That is total population, not adults. Adults its 86% / 63%. We will get to 80%+ total in the near future. Every adult (excluding the rare cases of medical issues) have been offered first jab and its max 8 weeks for 2nd dose. They are also talking about altering the rules for school kids, regardless of vaccination status.
So in a few weeks we really just be talking about refuseniks. If they feel its "unfair", well they can do something about it.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
Has there been a PB eruption about the Canadian statue toppling and I’ve missed it? I thought it would be the talk of the steamie.
It's quite puzzling. I'm not sure hideous is the right word but it does not look much like Diana and who are the children and why are the boys wearing shorts and why is one child hidden by another? If you'd told me it was a wartime scene of a woman taking in refugees, I'd nod quite happily.
Watching Czech Republic and Denmark. Nothing here to trouble Boris' Barmy Army...if Czechs' win.
I can't see England beating the diving cheating fouling Italians though.
An hour until the team is announced. Has Boris and his Downing Street flag persuaded Southgate to start Grealish, I wonder?
I think you could perm almost any 11 in any formation from the squad and we'd win tonight. Denmark looks a much stiffer test in the semis, and we'll be a dog against likely finalists Italy. Tonight's match should be comfortable though.
West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises Sage, said: “The most serious problem is that if you have a situation where not everyone has been even offered the vaccine then you’ve already got clearly a huge unfairness.
Yes I know some can't have it etc, but 90 odd percentage of people have. And second doses won't be long now for people who want that.
Trouble is that we aren't at 90 percent of people yet.
According to ourworldindata.org, we're at about 67% of people for first dose and 50% fully dosed. That's good (and most of those who haven't been jabbed are young and mostly at very low personal risk), but it's still a lot of people who have yet to be offered a vaccination.
And there's not a huge amount to be done about any of that now until the second Pfizer order comes on-stream (at the end of August?)
Does anyone have an idea, of what might have been the issues with the vaccine swap with Israel? Binning a million doses doesn’t seem like an optimal outcome, so presumably there were good reasons behind the decision not to proceed.
The Sun sat on the Hancock affair story, releasing it the weekend before the Batley and Spen byelection. The Tories lost the seat by just over 300 votes and as a result Starmer wasn’t pressured to resign. Labour now ambles along with an extremely unpopular leader and no policies
The Corbinistas were clearly banking on a Labour loss in Batley to get rid of Starmer.
Starmer has a big problem now in Angela Rayner. She was clearly “on manoeuvres” last week, but is directly elected as deputy leader and can’t be fired.
I don't think so. Angela Rayner has emerged as a diminished figure following the reports over the past week. She can only scotch the rumours by being ultra loyal now.
Rayner has really screwed up. I think she’s looked on rather suspiciously by front bench colleagues now.
Hmm. Not so sure. She now has the anti-Starmer faction coalescing around her, while previously there was no figurehead. She also is canny enough to make it all deniable.
Under current rules, a challenger needs 20% of MPs to back them, and the incumbent is automatically on the members ballot. Only if Starmer resigns is the lower 5% threshold applied. In effect this makes it hard for more than one challenger to be on the ballot.
Rayner is consolidating her position as the Queen over the water.
She is a loser. Unlikemy Labourvwoukd win with her as leader imho.
Winning ...
Well, in the sense of winning a majority, Labour cannot win without a significant comeback in Scotland. I don't know if they can solve that problem.
But, in terms of winning the seats back in the Midlands/North of England, Rayner is likely to be better than a metropolitan lawyer from the South of England, like SKS.
In terms of actually running the country as PM, SKS is likely to be better than Rayner.
They are fecked in Scotland until they are seen as a Scottish party and actually support independence, being lickspittles for London will mean them languishing forever as a tainted English subsidiary.
West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises Sage, said: “The most serious problem is that if you have a situation where not everyone has been even offered the vaccine then you’ve already got clearly a huge unfairness.
Yes I know some can't have it etc, but 90 odd percentage of people have. And second doses won't be long now for people who want that.
Trouble is that we aren't at 90 percent of people yet.
According to ourworldindata.org, we're at about 67% of people for first dose and 50% fully dosed. That's good (and most of those who haven't been jabbed are young and mostly at very low personal risk), but it's still a lot of people who have yet to be offered a vaccination.
And there's not a huge amount to be done about any of that now until the second Pfizer order comes on-stream (at the end of August?)
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
It's also about the control side. Free movement within a supranational entity is only sustainable if it either doesn't lead to any net movement of people because there is equal economic opportunity everywhere, or if people subscribe to a shared identity strongly enough that they disagree with restricting the movement of people on principle, even if it does lead to large net migration.
If so, its days are probably numbered. Idea ahead of its time perhaps. I don't know.
West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises Sage, said: “The most serious problem is that if you have a situation where not everyone has been even offered the vaccine then you’ve already got clearly a huge unfairness.
Yes I know some can't have it etc, but 90 odd percentage of people have. And second doses won't be long now for people who want that.
Trouble is that we aren't at 90 percent of people yet.
According to ourworldindata.org, we're at about 67% of people for first dose and 50% fully dosed. That's good (and most of those who haven't been jabbed are young and mostly at very low personal risk), but it's still a lot of people who have yet to be offered a vaccination.
And there's not a huge amount to be done about any of that now until the second Pfizer order comes on-stream (at the end of August?)
That is total population, not adults. Adults its 86% / 63%. We will get to 80%+ total in the near future.
They are also talking about altering the rules for school kids, regardless of vaccination status.
So in a few weeks we really just be talking about refuseniks.
I think that you have to also allow that a lot of the unvaxed have acquired antibodies from the virus itself. Mind you the high prevalence in youngsters seems to suggest either that is not a great protection or there are still many antibody negative.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
I'm not familiar with all of Mo Farah's family background but no doubt there are many Kenyan and Somalian talented runners as well as sportsmen and women who'd like to emigrate but would currently struggle to do so. There are probably lots of talented Korean computer scientists and Azerbaijani entrepreneurs who'd like to do so too.
A line has to be drawn somewhere. That will never seem fair to those who fall on just the wrong side of it but it's essential to maintaining stability and cohesion.
One thing about successful children of immigrants (for example Sajid Javid, or Sadiq Khan) is that their parents arrived poor and unskilled, or like Boris Johnson, Michael Portillo, or Dominic Raab as refugees fleeing political persecution. They probably wouldn't get in so easily today.
Boris Johnson's parents were both born in England (unlike him).
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
I'm not familiar with all of Mo Farah's family background but no doubt there are many Kenyan and Somalian talented runners as well as sportsmen and women who'd like to emigrate but would currently struggle to do so. There are probably lots of talented Korean computer scientists and Azerbaijani entrepreneurs who'd like to do so too.
A line has to be drawn somewhere. That will never seem fair to those who fall on just the wrong side of it but it's essential to maintaining stability and cohesion.
One thing about successful children of immigrants (for example Sajid Javid, or Sadiq Khan) is that their parents arrived poor and unskilled, or like Boris Johnson, Michael Portillo, or Dominic Raab as refugees fleeing political persecution. They probably wouldn't get in so easily today.
Boris Johnson's parents were both born in England (unlike him).
West, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises Sage, said: “The most serious problem is that if you have a situation where not everyone has been even offered the vaccine then you’ve already got clearly a huge unfairness.
Yes I know some can't have it etc, but 90 odd percentage of people have. And second doses won't be long now for people who want that.
Trouble is that we aren't at 90 percent of people yet.
According to ourworldindata.org, we're at about 67% of people for first dose and 50% fully dosed. That's good (and most of those who haven't been jabbed are young and mostly at very low personal risk), but it's still a lot of people who have yet to be offered a vaccination.
And there's not a huge amount to be done about any of that now until the second Pfizer order comes on-stream (at the end of August?)
That is total population, not adults. Adults its 86% / 63%. We will get to 80%+ total in the near future.
They are also talking about altering the rules for school kids, regardless of vaccination status.
So in a few weeks we really just be talking about refuseniks.
I think that you have to also allow that a lot of the untaxed have acquired antibodies from the virus itself. Mind you the high prevalence in youngsters seems to suggest either that is not a great protection or there are still many antibody negative.
ONS has some data out this week from their ongoing surveying. Reinfection rate is very low and most importantly they have found that the unlucky who have the viral load is higher skewed to be much lower (unlike first infection where it spans how range) and thus less potential for serious illness and also less likely to spread it.
The majority of reinfections were actually asymptomatic. I did post the figure, I was to say 50 odd percentage..
Comments
Is that a good thing? Or did they prevent an indigenous Briton from getting their opportunity?
Under the last Labor government, in Zimbabwe, Mugabe decided to boost flagging popularity by seizing land from white farmers. Since this was done at gun point, complete with death threats and actual killings, many decided to leave the country.
The Labour government wasn't keen on the idea of large numbers of white refugees - they'd managed to find a kind of refugee they didn't like. So they quietly change the rules on immigration from Zimbabwe.
As in most countries around the world, much of the UK immigration work is actually done by hired locals. This is generally considered a prestigious job - and well paid.
So, when told to crack down on immigration, the locals did their job.
Woah! said the British government - why have all the nurses stopped coming from Zimbabwe? Well, it turned out that no one had told the locals that they weren't to crack down on *all* immigration from Zimbabwe... they'd just assumed.
Tricky one - how to discriminate without saying "not the whites, please"? Well, alot of the white farmers and their families had ties to the UK via military service, among other things. So rules were introduced to say that military service was irrelevant as to "having a connection with the UK", for immigration purposes. These rules were added around the world...
So all was lovely. The Zimbabwean nurses came to the UK, and not too many white ex-farmers.
Then a Nepalese chap got told that the fact that he had fought in the British Army and won the VC didn't show he had any connection with the UK.....
Really what you should be talking about is the founders of BioNTech, though it relates to Germany it probably has a high degree of relevance here.
If you're trying to make a valid point, anyway.
But ultimately, one of the reasons that Gove and Cummings (and I suspect Johnson, though for slightly different reasons) wanted Brexit was to take all the pieces, throw them up in the air and see what would emerge. Creative destruction and all that. But if they really thought that the consequences would be all good and nothing too bad (you know, like chunks of the UK falling off), they were a pair of ninnies.
Why on earth do you think consuming lots of sicko fictional amoral violence, day in, day out, from a young age, has little effect? Couple of typos there, but if you mean brutal and disproportionate revenge on those who surpassed the heroes in carrying out wrong actions then this is NEW. There is nothing like that in say the Narnia books.
There are also lots of Britons who've been here for generations and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps who've done the same.
I have no problem with an immigration policy that selects the best skills and also the most vulnerable refugees worldwide but puts sensible rolling annual limits that command democratic support on both.
I like some of Maggie Hambling’s work but she’s had a bit of a ‘mare recently.
The issue with this one is a dangerous merge at *exactly* the most dangerous point where separation is needed because of the squeeze, and drivers being distracted by reading all those road signs and the narrowing lane width.
There should be no separation between the driving lanes, a physically separate cycling lane on both sides, and a controlled crossing rather than bollards.
As it stands the only way to ride that safely is either on the pavement, or in primary position bang in the middle of the traffic lane from 50-100m before to make sure the drivers see you and cannot overtake, though some of the more stupid or careless ones may try regardless to save 8 seconds.
And it's just before a primary school, where the traffic should be slowing down anyway.
How are kids supposed to walk or cycle to school with abortions like this on our roads?
This, by the way, is in that Green city Brighton and Hove, on a road where there is ample room for everything in the corridor.
https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8363203,-0.161331,3a,75y,52.21h,85.56t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sChHAiP0JU5bH4wtu6R-v0g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Brexiters REALLY hate being reminded they were on the same side as the economically inactive and the anti-immigrant types.
The visceral side is stuff like "I kneel to nobody but the Queen" and trans people "waving their tackle around."
The intellectual side announces itself with repeated use of the words, "iconoclastic" and "the enlightenment".
https://www.skysports.com/amp/tennis/news/12110/12346812/emma-raducanu-tipped-for-a-bright-future-as-she-continues-her-dream-wimbledon-run
The truth is even more abhorrent. She went to a grammar.
Pickford
Walker
Stones
Maguire
Shaw
Philips
Rice
Sancho
Sterling
Kane
Saka and Trippier are injured.
I personally would have rested either Philips or Rice (as both a booking away from missing the semi-final) and gone with probably Henderson or Bellingham.
We all know the best students are the ones whose parents decided to save the state the expense of educating their children.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9752205/Former-head-Germanys-spy-agency-slams-Angela-Merkels-immigration-policies-fatal.html
I've done an inverse Stuart Pearce.
You do sometimes seem to fall into this trap: your posts seem often to be railing against somewhat imagined bitter Remoaners that roam the lands.
By and large, your political opponents are not immoral*, they're just people that have slightly different priorities than you.
I think we would all benefit from assuming the best of out political opponents, and that they are coming from a good place of wanting to make the world (and the UK) a better place. Now, maybe they only see the good things from immigration - but that doesn't make them evil, that merely means that you need to help them see that there are two sides to every story.
* Except George Galloway
That's what I like England. We're an absolute bastion of fair play. Has this changed the odds?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jul/03/allowing-people-in-england-with-covid-both-jabs-to-skip-quarantine-will-cause-resentment
But we haven't...so.....
Yes I know some can't have it etc, but 90 odd percentage of people have. And second doses won't be long now for people who want that.
https://tinyurl.com/2k5cm4ya
Indeed I think the upward social mobility is the source of at least some resentment of migrant populations. Having an immigrant boss is a different kettle of fish to having an immigrant cleaner. Enoch encapsulated this with his view that "soon the black man will have the whip hand over the white".
Miss Raducanu advances to the second week alone.
A university graduate working as a cleaner is still only a cleaner - a clear waste of human resources.
Even if productivity as a whole increased (which is highly disputable) it certainly decreased in some economic sectors - the hand carwash is the most obvious example.
And if GDP increased who benefitted ? I'll suggest that the people who did gain were those who benefitted from a downward pressure on employment costs and an upward pressure on housing costs ie the rich.
The interesting thing about cultural issues is how little benefit there was - Indian, Italian, Chinese restaurants are synonymous with improved eating possibilities and a trip around a northern town will now reveal restaurants featuring food from South America, South-East Asia, the Middle East etc but rarely anything Eastern European. Likewise West Indian, and later African, immigration became associated with stars in sports and music in a way Eastern Europeans haven't.
We've reached the point now where everyone has been eligible for the vaccine for a while, if they've not had their first dose or scheduled it yet its entirely their own responsibility because they've chosen not to do so.
As for seconds, they're limited to the 8 weeks currently so not that long for anybody really, but now that there's so few firsts left to do that 8 weeks really ought to be brought forwards whenever possible.
No offense to Birmingham City, but they don't move in those circles.
The danger zone is that Labour lose England but win enough to take Downing Street with SNP support. The problem is then if the SNP win their referendum it puts Labour back into opposition, plus any time there's an English only law the SNP can abstain and see Westminster ground to a halt; and of course its in the SNPs interests to see Westminster fail.
According to ourworldindata.org, we're at about 67% of people for first dose and 50% fully dosed. That's good (and most of those who haven't been jabbed are young and mostly at very low personal risk), but it's still a lot of people who have yet to be offered a vaccination.
And there's not a huge amount to be done about any of that now until the second Pfizer order comes on-stream (at the end of August?)
Sajid Javid has ruled out Baroness Harding of Winscombe as the next chief executive of NHS England, it is understood.
Dido Harding, 53, the Conservative peer and former head of Test and Trace, lost a key ally when Matt Hancock resigned as health secretary last week.
The decision not to support her candidacy is one of Javid’s first big decisions since becoming health secretary last weekend.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dido-harding-is-ruled-out-of-nhs-chief-executive-job-8cf3557ff
From those who are eligible it is 85.7% and 63.4% - if we estimate that 10% are refusing the vaccine then that means over 95% of first vaccinations have been done.
So in a few weeks we really just be talking about refuseniks. If they feel its "unfair", well they can do something about it.
The majority of reinfections were actually asymptomatic. I did post the figure, I was to say 50 odd percentage..