Lowest net approval rating for Starmer that we have recorded.
Changes +/- 16 Aug
Nicola Sturgeon Approval Rating (23 Aug):
Approve: 28% (-1)
Disapprove: 38% (+4)
Net: -10% (-5)
Lowest net approval rating for Sturgeon that we have recorded.
Changes +/- 16 Aug
No thread on this either... la Sturgeon sinking lower along with Starmer. Boris riding high....
What would be more interesting would be a header which looks at the irony of Johnson rising in the polls and Starmer falling just after an unprepared and hapless Johnson gets absolutely mullered in the HoC Afghanistan debate by a forensic and (unusually) impressive Starmer.
I can't explain it.
What happens in the House of Commons is not immediately representative of the voters at Large. Simples.... and opinion is slow to change/be seen in voting intention. I think voters think that Project Boris needs to be given time. The red wall Tories know that Rome was not built in a day.
Worth noting too that Kabul is the only place people are getting out of. Across the rest of Afghanistan they stand little chance of escape, other than by their own resources.
Lowest net approval rating for Starmer that we have recorded.
Changes +/- 16 Aug
Nicola Sturgeon Approval Rating (23 Aug):
Approve: 28% (-1)
Disapprove: 38% (+4)
Net: -10% (-5)
Lowest net approval rating for Sturgeon that we have recorded.
Changes +/- 16 Aug
No thread on this either... la Sturgeon sinking lower along with Starmer. Boris riding high....
What would be more interesting would be a header which looks at the irony of Johnson rising in the polls and Starmer falling just after an unprepared and hapless Johnson gets absolutely mullered in the HoC Afghanistan debate by a forensic and (unusually) impressive Starmer.
I can't explain it.
What happens in the House of Commons is not immediately representative of the voters at Large. Simples.... and opinion is slow to change/be seen in voting intention. I think voters think that Project Boris needs to be given time. The red wall Tories know that Rome was not built in a day.
When you say he needs to be given time, are we talking about judicial consequences?
FWIW I think that people continue to both overestimate and underestimate the Taliban. They over estimate them because the reality is that they do not have enough military strength in the entire country to take on, let alone defeat 6000 marines, 600 paras and sundry other western forces. If they tried they would be annihilated in the same way that they have been in anything like a straight on clash since western forces went into Afghanistan. If the western forces stay longer than 31st August there will be some bluster and possibly some hostage taking (as if the entire country were not hostages already). Co operation in facilitating departures would no doubt end. But an outright attack is incredibly unlikely.
Underestimated because they do not see themselves as evil but as doing god's work with a deeply backward cultural spin. They find the idea that a woman can walk around visible to the eyes of other men away from their own men folk abhorrent and immoral. Their teachings are clear: apostates and homosexuals should not be allowed to live amongst them. They regard the west's teachings that women and gays are entitled to equality as corruption. Such mind sets do not change in a single generation, probably not in several. This will lead them to do many things that we find shocking. And they will not care.
Not an expert on Afghanistan or military things or anything but they're in the middle of a city full of heavily-armed religious lunatics. Expecting anyone shooting at them to be annihilated sounds optimistic since the Americans would presumably be reluctant to annihilate Kabul in the process, and predicting what the Taliban are going to do requires a knowledge of internal lunatic politics that I don't think any of us have.
It's an airport. Its not in the centre of the city or even a particularly built up area. The Taliban are not heavily armed although they will have picked up a fair bit of kit in recent days. Their main weapon seems to be a technical, with a heavy machine gun fixed to a lorry. Their tactics have been largely passive using IEDs and ambush, classic guerrilla warfare, and they are very good at that. But that would not help them much here.
I suppose it depends on whether they have substantial access to artillery and anti-aircraft weapons as that could lead to a Dien Bien Phu situation if NATO decided to try and hold the airport against Taliban demands to leave.
Just taking pot shots at the planes with AA guns and SAMs would be enough surely? No need to take on the ground forces.
Just mortar the runway. They must have hundreds of M-37s.
Lowest net approval rating for Starmer that we have recorded.
Changes +/- 16 Aug
Nicola Sturgeon Approval Rating (23 Aug):
Approve: 28% (-1)
Disapprove: 38% (+4)
Net: -10% (-5)
Lowest net approval rating for Sturgeon that we have recorded.
Changes +/- 16 Aug
No thread on this either... la Sturgeon sinking lower along with Starmer. Boris riding high....
What would be more interesting would be a header which looks at the irony of Johnson rising in the polls and Starmer falling just after an unprepared and hapless Johnson gets absolutely mullered in the HoC Afghanistan debate by a forensic and (unusually) impressive Starmer.
I can't explain it.
What happens in the House of Commons is not immediately representative of the voters at Large. Simples.... and opinion is slow to change/be seen in voting intention. I think voters think that Project Boris needs to be given time. The red wall Tories know that Rome was not built in a day.
When you say he needs to be given time, are we talking about judicial consequences?
Germany has decided to stop using the coronavirus infection rate as its yardstick for deciding if restrictions should be in force... government will instead monitor hospitalisations as a key indicator for whether the health system is becoming overburdened.
A relative of my wife's, who had studied theology, used to invite the Jehovah's Witness people in off the doorstep. After three hours the witnesses were begging to leave.
Lowest net approval rating for Starmer that we have recorded.
Changes +/- 16 Aug
Nicola Sturgeon Approval Rating (23 Aug):
Approve: 28% (-1)
Disapprove: 38% (+4)
Net: -10% (-5)
Lowest net approval rating for Sturgeon that we have recorded.
Changes +/- 16 Aug
No thread on this either... la Sturgeon sinking lower along with Starmer. Boris riding high....
What would be more interesting would be a header which looks at the irony of Johnson rising in the polls and Starmer falling just after an unprepared and hapless Johnson gets absolutely mullered in the HoC Afghanistan debate by a forensic and (unusually) impressive Starmer.
I can't explain it.
What happens in the House of Commons is not immediately representative of the voters at Large. Simples.... and opinion is slow to change/be seen in voting intention. I think voters think that Project Boris needs to be given time. The red wall Tories know that Rome was not built in a day.
What they don't realise is Pompeii, on the other hand, was destroyed in minutes.
Lowest net approval rating for Starmer that we have recorded.
Changes +/- 16 Aug
Nicola Sturgeon Approval Rating (23 Aug):
Approve: 28% (-1)
Disapprove: 38% (+4)
Net: -10% (-5)
Lowest net approval rating for Sturgeon that we have recorded.
Changes +/- 16 Aug
No thread on this either... la Sturgeon sinking lower along with Starmer. Boris riding high....
What would be more interesting would be a header which looks at the irony of Johnson rising in the polls and Starmer falling just after an unprepared and hapless Johnson gets absolutely mullered in the HoC Afghanistan debate by a forensic and (unusually) impressive Starmer.
I can't explain it.
What happens in the House of Commons is not immediately representative of the voters at Large. Simples.... and opinion is slow to change/be seen in voting intention. I think voters think that Project Boris needs to be given time. The red wall Tories know that Rome was not built in a day.
When you say he needs to be given time, are we talking about judicial consequences?
I said Project Boris.. there is a difference
Project Boris? Excellent plan. Does anyone have a trebuchet they're not using?
What would be more interesting would be a header which looks at the irony of Johnson rising in the polls and Starmer falling just after an unprepared and hapless Johnson gets absolutely mullered in the HoC Afghanistan debate by a forensic and (unusually) impressive Starmer.
I can't explain it.
Unless there is a major military catastrophe with the loss of life of British soldiers, then Afghanistan will shift very, very few votes.
Also, "forensic" will shift very, very few votes. Sounds dull, is dull.
Blair was never forensic. He was (God help us) young, tousle-haired, passionate, articulate and, oh-so-dangerously-persuasive. Not old, steely-haired, tedious, stodgy, plodding and oh-so-safe.
My guess is your previous postings are on the money -- the only way the Tories lose GE 2024 from here is if there are serious economic consequences of the COVID pandemic.
The best example of this is when left-wingers simultaneously describe western countries as racist and bigoted, and at the same time say we should take in large numbers of immigrants from poor countries. If western countries are so bad, why do they want migrants to come here? Doesn't make sense.
Yes it does. If you're unlucky enough to be born in, say, Nigeria, your life expectancy is 55. Move to the UK as a small child and it becomes 80. Yes, you will run into some unpleasant attitudes sometimes, but 25 years of life is pretty motivating. .
You are outlining the problem with multiculturalism. People from countries with wildly different takes on what is right and wrong from us come to the west because they will earn more money and their children will live longer, not because they buy into western values. So you create a society that is United economically but divided philosophically,
It is vain to suppose that these immigrants are desperate to be just like us, & that vanity blinds politicians, leading to enormous problems.
Well, you in turn are outlining the problem with ethnonationalism. Clearly there are cultural practices that we dislike on very rational grounds, but also others that are just unfamiliar. I don't care, in principle, if not every arrival has identical values to mine (or, with respect, yours). Parts of our culture aren't ideal and may benefit from mixing in other cultures (such as the tradition that multi-generational families stick together and support each other, rather than scatter and all buy separate houses far from each other). Looking in retrospect, would you really say that Britain was a better place in the 1950s when we were pretty uniform in culture but also famously insular?
We are better today than we were in the 1950s, but it's got fuck all to do with multiculturalism. Indeed, elements of multiculturalism have much more in common with the 1950s.
Happiness doesn't correlate with absolute measures of wealth/quality of life though. Happy populations are those which are much better off or have a much better quality of life than their immediate predecessors, and who have a feeling that things are improving. On that measure, the 50s were a golden period.
And on Nick's point, I'd much rather live in a culture where we are culturally 'pretty uniform' and happy with that culture than in the current state of permanent antagonism. ( @NickPalmer - this sounds to me not unlike Denmark, which you often cite as a favourable example, though I've never been so can't really comment in detail). Downsides to that too of course. It must be pretty stultifying if you are in any way outside the mainstream. To go back to the example of Denmark, the culture of Hygge and of communal singing of popular songs sounds mildly hellish to me. (My understanding of Danish culture comes from 'The Almost Nearly Perfect People' by Michael Booth, which is excellent, though doesn't really sell me on the concept of Scandinavianism in the way which the author intends.)
The best example of this is when left-wingers simultaneously describe western countries as racist and bigoted, and at the same time say we should take in large numbers of immigrants from poor countries. If western countries are so bad, why do they want migrants to come here? Doesn't make sense.
Yes it does. If you're unlucky enough to be born in, say, Nigeria, your life expectancy is 55. Move to the UK as a small child and it becomes 80. Yes, you will run into some unpleasant attitudes sometimes, but 25 years of life is pretty motivating. .
You are outlining the problem with multiculturalism. People from countries with wildly different takes on what is right and wrong from us come to the west because they will earn more money and their children will live longer, not because they buy into western values. So you create a society that is United economically but divided philosophically,
It is vain to suppose that these immigrants are desperate to be just like us, & that vanity blinds politicians, leading to enormous problems.
Well, you in turn are outlining the problem with ethnonationalism. Clearly there are cultural practices that we dislike on very rational grounds, but also others that are just unfamiliar. I don't care, in principle, if not every arrival has identical values to mine (or, with respect, yours). Parts of our culture aren't ideal and may benefit from mixing in other cultures (such as the tradition that multi-generational families stick together and support each other, rather than scatter and all buy separate houses far from each other). Looking in retrospect, would you really say that Britain was a better place in the 1950s when we were pretty uniform in culture but also famously insular?
We are better today than we were in the 1950s, but it's got fuck all to do with multiculturalism. Indeed, elements of multiculturalism have much more in common with the 1950s.
If you are a social conservative or socialist we were much better off in the 1950s
Germany has decided to stop using the coronavirus infection rate as its yardstick for deciding if restrictions should be in force... government will instead monitor hospitalisations as a key indicator for whether the health system is becoming overburdened.
Who’d have thought that, with a mostly-vaccinated population, numbers in hospital would be a better indicator than number of cases, with regard to the chances of over-running the healthcare system?
A relative of my wife's, who had studied theology, used to invite the Jehovah's Witness people in off the doorstep. After three hours the witnesses were begging to leave.
I had a similar experience with a duo of evangelical door-knockers. One realised that I was gently steering them into a massive "anti-Semitism trap", but it was too late. The senior one fell face first into it. Paused. Looked horrified. Then the junior one made their excuses and they left. They hadn't even finished their mugs of tea.
A relative of my wife's, who had studied theology, used to invite the Jehovah's Witness people in off the doorstep. After three hours the witnesses were begging to leave.
Thank them for their service. That goes under the same public service remit as my keeping “Microsoft Support” on the line for an hour at a time.
We should all use the skills and the time we have available, to protect society from these people.
FWIW I think that people continue to both overestimate and underestimate the Taliban. They over estimate them because the reality is that they do not have enough military strength in the entire country to take on, let alone defeat 6000 marines, 600 paras and sundry other western forces. If they tried they would be annihilated in the same way that they have been in anything like a straight on clash since western forces went into Afghanistan. If the western forces stay longer than 31st August there will be some bluster and possibly some hostage taking (as if the entire country were not hostages already). Co operation in facilitating departures would no doubt end. But an outright attack is incredibly unlikely.
Underestimated because they do not see themselves as evil but as doing god's work with a deeply backward cultural spin. They find the idea that a woman can walk around visible to the eyes of other men away from their own men folk abhorrent and immoral. Their teachings are clear: apostates and homosexuals should not be allowed to live amongst them. They regard the west's teachings that women and gays are entitled to equality as corruption. Such mind sets do not change in a single generation, probably not in several. This will lead them to do many things that we find shocking. And they will not care.
Not an expert on Afghanistan or military things or anything but they're in the middle of a city full of heavily-armed religious lunatics. Expecting anyone shooting at them to be annihilated sounds optimistic since the Americans would presumably be reluctant to annihilate Kabul in the process, and predicting what the Taliban are going to do requires a knowledge of internal lunatic politics that I don't think any of us have.
It's an airport. Its not in the centre of the city or even a particularly built up area. The Taliban are not heavily armed although they will have picked up a fair bit of kit in recent days. Their main weapon seems to be a technical, with a heavy machine gun fixed to a lorry. Their tactics have been largely passive using IEDs and ambush, classic guerrilla warfare, and they are very good at that. But that would not help them much here.
I suppose it depends on whether they have substantial access to artillery and anti-aircraft weapons as that could lead to a Dien Bien Phu situation if NATO decided to try and hold the airport against Taliban demands to leave.
Just taking pot shots at the planes with AA guns and SAMs would be enough surely? No need to take on the ground forces.
It just shows how stupid those who are saying “what’s the point of having armed forces if we can’t hold an airport” are. I’m sure the British army could hold the airport for a theoretically long enough time to get everyone out however there isn’t much point if planes can’t land because the runway has been mortared beyond use and the taliban stop any civilians coming anywhere near the airport (because we don’t control outside the airport). So we end up with large casualties from mortar, missile and artillery strikes, inevitably hard core Isis people wanting to do suicidal ground attacks against the soldiers in the airport and can’t get anyone out anyway as no planes and no people...... genius.
It would be different if holding or losing Kabul airport posed a direct threat to the UK as a launchpad for attacks on the UK but unless there is a vital need to hold it then why do it. Holding out at Dunkirk made sense, British soldiers trying to hold off the German army at a Paris airport to allow people out not so much.
A relative of my wife's, who had studied theology, used to invite the Jehovah's Witness people in off the doorstep. After three hours the witnesses were begging to leave.
My late father used to do that.
They didn't come back until some eventually new stooges took over the patch.
A relative of my wife's, who had studied theology, used to invite the Jehovah's Witness people in off the doorstep. After three hours the witnesses were begging to leave.
I had a similar experience with a duo of evangelical door-knockers. One realised that I was gently steering them into a massive "anti-Semitism trap", but it was too late. The senior one fell face first into it. Paused. Looked horrified. Then the junior one made their excuses and they left. They hadn't even finished their mugs of tea.
I'd take a religious doorknocker over a churglar any day.
Once had a very nice pair of Dutch chaps knock on the door. If I'd been remotely interested, their friendly approach would've worked very well, unlike the judgemental stern ladies that knocked a year or two later.
The best example of this is when left-wingers simultaneously describe western countries as racist and bigoted, and at the same time say we should take in large numbers of immigrants from poor countries. If western countries are so bad, why do they want migrants to come here? Doesn't make sense.
Yes it does. If you're unlucky enough to be born in, say, Nigeria, your life expectancy is 55. Move to the UK as a small child and it becomes 80. Yes, you will run into some unpleasant attitudes sometimes, but 25 years of life is pretty motivating. .
You are outlining the problem with multiculturalism. People from countries with wildly different takes on what is right and wrong from us come to the west because they will earn more money and their children will live longer, not because they buy into western values. So you create a society that is United economically but divided philosophically,
It is vain to suppose that these immigrants are desperate to be just like us, & that vanity blinds politicians, leading to enormous problems.
Well, you in turn are outlining the problem with ethnonationalism. Clearly there are cultural practices that we dislike on very rational grounds, but also others that are just unfamiliar. I don't care, in principle, if not every arrival has identical values to mine (or, with respect, yours). Parts of our culture aren't ideal and may benefit from mixing in other cultures (such as the tradition that multi-generational families stick together and support each other, rather than scatter and all buy separate houses far from each other). Looking in retrospect, would you really say that Britain was a better place in the 1950s when we were pretty uniform in culture but also famously insular?
We are better today than we were in the 1950s, but it's got fuck all to do with multiculturalism. Indeed, elements of multiculturalism have much more in common with the 1950s.
If you are a social conservative or socialist we were much better off in the 1950s
Well, I was there, and there was a widespread feeling that we'll all be dead soon in a nuclear war. Girls who got pregnant were thrown out of school and often their families. Homosexuals were imprisoned...... and the police used to hang about places where they were believed to congregate to make some easy arrests. People were executed for crimes they didn't commit.
We were working to make the world better. But then youth often does!
He’s always been the biggest and best mass debater around.
Edit - in reading the article, sounds as though they have ignored him, but did agree to serve him.
My reading was exactly the opposite! The waiters refused to serve him so the owner had to do it themselves. But the waiters did speak to him the next day when he offered to come back to debate. I think? Sounds like a waste of everyone's time but they can all choose to spend their time how they like, I suppose.
Honestly, is this what you have to go through now if you want to holiday in Scotland?
A relative of my wife's, who had studied theology, used to invite the Jehovah's Witness people in off the doorstep. After three hours the witnesses were begging to leave.
I had a similar experience with a duo of evangelical door-knockers. One realised that I was gently steering them into a massive "anti-Semitism trap", but it was too late. The senior one fell face first into it. Paused. Looked horrified. Then the junior one made their excuses and they left. They hadn't even finished their mugs of tea.
You let them in? Wow!!
They’ve just built their new HQ a couple of miles from where I live
The best example of this is when left-wingers simultaneously describe western countries as racist and bigoted, and at the same time say we should take in large numbers of immigrants from poor countries. If western countries are so bad, why do they want migrants to come here? Doesn't make sense.
Yes it does. If you're unlucky enough to be born in, say, Nigeria, your life expectancy is 55. Move to the UK as a small child and it becomes 80. Yes, you will run into some unpleasant attitudes sometimes, but 25 years of life is pretty motivating. .
You are outlining the problem with multiculturalism. People from countries with wildly different takes on what is right and wrong from us come to the west because they will earn more money and their children will live longer, not because they buy into western values. So you create a society that is United economically but divided philosophically,
It is vain to suppose that these immigrants are desperate to be just like us, & that vanity blinds politicians, leading to enormous problems.
Well, you in turn are outlining the problem with ethnonationalism. Clearly there are cultural practices that we dislike on very rational grounds, but also others that are just unfamiliar. I don't care, in principle, if not every arrival has identical values to mine (or, with respect, yours). Parts of our culture aren't ideal and may benefit from mixing in other cultures (such as the tradition that multi-generational families stick together and support each other, rather than scatter and all buy separate houses far from each other). Looking in retrospect, would you really say that Britain was a better place in the 1950s when we were pretty uniform in culture but also famously insular?
We are better today than we were in the 1950s, but it's got fuck all to do with multiculturalism. Indeed, elements of multiculturalism have much more in common with the 1950s.
If you are a social conservative or socialist we were much better off in the 1950s
Well, I was there, and there was a widespread feeling that we'll all be dead soon in a nuclear war. Girls who got pregnant were thrown out of school and often their families. Homosexuals were imprisoned...... and the police used to hang about places where they were believed to congregate to make some easy arrests. People were executed for crimes they didn't commit.
We were working to make the world better. But then youth often does!
For social conservatives who take a traditional line on the family there were fewer unmarried mothers in the 1950s, fewer divorces, homosexuality was only practised behind closed doors and abortion was not legal and contraception was not openly available so sex was largely solely within marriage. Immigration was also more tightly controlled. Many support capital punishment today too.
In Truman and Ike and Attlee and Churchill there were also leaders prepared to stand up for the West.
For socialists most of the main industries were nationalised, most industries were heavily unionised and there was a higher top rate of tax, so they also preferred the 1950s too.
The only people who really would have hated the 1950s are liberals and libertarians
The Taliban have set us a deadline of 31st August to complete all evacuations.
They have said any US and UK and western military presence in Afghanistan still after that date will provoke a response from them.
So we have a week to complete the process and get all refugees and troops out or face a bloodbath
We aren't going to get "all refugees" out. Ben Wallace has conceded this.
This is the most emotionally impacting foreign policy crisis I can remember. What matches it?
Tens of thousands of people at risk from a cruel and evil conqueror. A race to get them out
It's like Dunkirk with Korans
If it was Dunkirk the tens of thousands would be dead already. The conqueror reached the airport over a week ago and is providing airport security now to assist in the evacuation.
I can't think what compares.
Similar to Hitler's halt order, which gave some time for the evacuation.
Completely different.
There's extremely little evidence that the halt order was done in order to assist the evacuation. Instead the evidence is generally considered to be that it was to allow the German infantry to catch up, to preserve their Panzers and/or to allow the Luftwaffe to have the opportunity to destroy Dunkirk which is what Goring wanted.
What's happening now is more if the infantry etc had caught up after the halt order, then they resumed movement, got into Dunkirk and then they started assisting the British etc onto the ships instead of seeking to destroy them.
The Taliban aren't on the way to the airport, they're their and working side-by-side and even behind British lines to assist in security. Not something Hitler would have done. 😕
Yeah, I'm not arguing they are exactly the same. But the Taliban could have overrun the airport if they wanted to, much how Hitler could have overrun the port.
I would say that if looking for analogies, perhaps a place to look is medieval siege warfare, although there may be a few instances from say WW2 or more modern conflicts.
Did they ever pause to let people out in the Thirty Years War?
The best example of this is when left-wingers simultaneously describe western countries as racist and bigoted, and at the same time say we should take in large numbers of immigrants from poor countries. If western countries are so bad, why do they want migrants to come here? Doesn't make sense.
Yes it does. If you're unlucky enough to be born in, say, Nigeria, your life expectancy is 55. Move to the UK as a small child and it becomes 80. Yes, you will run into some unpleasant attitudes sometimes, but 25 years of life is pretty motivating. .
You are outlining the problem with multiculturalism. People from countries with wildly different takes on what is right and wrong from us come to the west because they will earn more money and their children will live longer, not because they buy into western values. So you create a society that is United economically but divided philosophically,
It is vain to suppose that these immigrants are desperate to be just like us, & that vanity blinds politicians, leading to enormous problems.
Well, you in turn are outlining the problem with ethnonationalism. Clearly there are cultural practices that we dislike on very rational grounds, but also others that are just unfamiliar. I don't care, in principle, if not every arrival has identical values to mine (or, with respect, yours). Parts of our culture aren't ideal and may benefit from mixing in other cultures (such as the tradition that multi-generational families stick together and support each other, rather than scatter and all buy separate houses far from each other). Looking in retrospect, would you really say that Britain was a better place in the 1950s when we were pretty uniform in culture but also famously insular?
We are better today than we were in the 1950s, but it's got fuck all to do with multiculturalism. Indeed, elements of multiculturalism have much more in common with the 1950s.
If you are a social conservative or socialist we were much better off in the 1950s
Well, I was there, and there was a widespread feeling that we'll all be dead soon in a nuclear war. Girls who got pregnant were thrown out of school and often their families. Homosexuals were imprisoned...... and the police used to hang about places where they were believed to congregate to make some easy arrests. People were executed for crimes they didn't commit.
We were working to make the world better. But then youth often does!
Interesting. Optimism is always better in retrospect. Nostalgia is seductive because in hindsight you know how it turns out. We can look back on periods like the 50s or 70s fondly because we can enjoy the cosy cultural aspects that we lived through or imagined while airbrushing out the existential angst (on either a macro scale - will we all die in a nuclear war? - or a micro scale - will I grow up to lead the sort of life I want to lead?)
I can't see any possibility of the Taliban extending the deadline. Why should they? As it is they are showing the world that the US has surrendered to them, and they can claim, with quite a lot of justification, that they have magnanimously kept to the agreed terms of the American surrender. They have lots of headstrong young men who want to get on with enjoying the sweets of victory, and plenty of scores to settle once the journalists have left. The West has nothing to offer them, or at least nothing that the West will be prepared to offer.
I really hesitate to say it (because it could go horribly wrong very quickly), but barbaric and reactionary as they are, they haven't behaved too badly in the last couple of weeks - several nasty incidents, but nothing on the scale that one typically sees when an army conquers a capital city full of enemies. Against that, there are any number of atrocities reported in places they've captured previously.
Is it possible that the leadership feels "we're going to have to run this place now, we'd better rein the lunatics in a bit"? And if so, do they have the authority to make that work? And will it last?
The answer to both the last three questions is no
Both the last three?
Well, I make it three. And yes, to the first, sometimes, but not always to the second, and possibly to the third.
And more generally a fine morning here today, but cooler...... perhaps due to the lack of cloud cover. A very full moon in the wee small hours this morning. Forecast looks quite good today, but back to cloud tomorrow.
Lovely morning here, lots of fog that will burn off quickly I believe, looks like it will be a really nice day. Nice listening to the birds singing their hearts out.
Fog doesn't burn. It evaporates.
And good morning, btw!
Good Morning Pedant. In Scotland it burns up and evaporates. No one ever says "that fog will evaporate", it is always "that fog will burn off quickly/slowly etc".
According to the BBC what he appears to have done could now (and damn well should) land him in front of the local Court this morning!
What on earth is this? I can't find it.
In the Daily Turd Carnyx PS: Fair play to him , went back on his holidays and educated the morons. The owner shoudl have booted them up the jacksie and told them to get on with serving people and that their politics was F all to do with their narrow minded viewpoints.
A relative of my wife's, who had studied theology, used to invite the Jehovah's Witness people in off the doorstep. After three hours the witnesses were begging to leave.
I had a similar experience with a duo of evangelical door-knockers. One realised that I was gently steering them into a massive "anti-Semitism trap", but it was too late. The senior one fell face first into it. Paused. Looked horrified. Then the junior one made their excuses and they left. They hadn't even finished their mugs of tea.
According to the BBC what he appears to have done could now (and damn well should) land him in front of the local Court this morning!
What on earth is this? I can't find it.
In the Daily Turd Carnyx PS: Fair play to him , went back on his holidays and educated the morons. The owner shoudl have booted them up the jacksie and told them to get on with serving people and that their politics was F all to do with their narrow minded viewpoints.
They regard the west's teachings that women and gays are entitled to equality as corruption. Such mind sets do not change in a single generation, probably not in several.
So "the west", aka the US and its satellites, offer "teachings" now? Why did the Tory government under Thatcher oppose equality for gays? Given that several generations haven't passed since that time, it will be good for your thesis if the Tories' "reasoning" - which they have now binned - was founded on something other than a notion of "corruption". It's as though you think the "west" is lovely - that it can be wrong, but that it tends eventually to right its wrongs - and much faster and in any case better than any damned stuck-in-the-mud fuzzy-wuzzies are capable of, at least until the day that western "teachings" win out globally, when there won't be anything still existing that the west can be compared with. You might ask yourself how you would think of the "west" if you were outside it. No local person (local to the west or anywhere else) who's unwilling to think like that should start asserting that the culture in their own locality is the best in the world, etc.
The Taliban have set us a deadline of 31st August to complete all evacuations.
They have said any US and UK and western military presence in Afghanistan still after that date will provoke a response from them.
So we have a week to complete the process and get all refugees and troops out or face a bloodbath
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In this case, we are definitely on the right side, despite our many errors. The Taliban are pretty much pure evil
They are now beating women for the crime of walking alone in the street. Once the cameras and troops have gone, they will only get worse. It is their nature
I agree that the moral argument in Vietnam was much more finely balanced
What is interesting is the conviction with which you think you are right and are in the right. Not that I disagree but you are like an atheist arguing with someone who believes in God or vice versa. Each side absolutely convinced of the truth of their position.
That is why this is so shocking.
The inability of so many westerners now, especially those coming out of western universities, to believe in the values of freedom and liberty and democracy and the achievements of western civilisation and our heritage and to be willing to defend them is precisely why the more ideological communists of China and the jihadis of the Middle East and North Africa and South Asia may get the upper hand.
The best example of this is when left-wingers simultaneously describe western countries as racist and bigoted, and at the same time say we should take in large numbers of immigrants from poor countries. If western countries are so bad, why do they want migrants to come here? Doesn't make sense.
The standard of living is higher.
It's like this:
1. Alice stole Bob's stuff, murdered half his family, and forced him and his remaining family members into penury. 2. With the proceeds, Alice paid some builders to build her a big mansion and a lovely garden. 3. Bob and his family heard about this from their gutter, and they thought they'd try to come and live in the mansion and enjoy the garden too. 4. Bad, bad Bob! What a degenerate! Can take the pig out of the sty but not the sty out of the pig, etc.
Comments
https://order-order.com/2021/08/24/extinction-rebellion-co-founder-admits-to-driving-a-diesel-car/
Dominic Cummings had a 'three-hour debate' on Brexit and Scottish independence with waiters who refused to serve him at Highland restaurant
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9920747/Dominic-Cummings-three-hour-debate-Brexit-Scottish-independence-waiters.html
https://twitter.com/samroggeveen/status/1429966072069845037?s=21
https://twitter.com/jamiesont/status/1430082231876341770?s=20
Anyway - this story doesn't do much to encourage English tourists to return to Scotland.
He’s always been the biggest and best mass debater around.
Edit - in reading the article, sounds as though they have ignored him, but did agree to serve him.
Also, "forensic" will shift very, very few votes. Sounds dull, is dull.
Blair was never forensic. He was (God help us) young, tousle-haired, passionate, articulate and, oh-so-dangerously-persuasive. Not old, steely-haired, tedious, stodgy, plodding and oh-so-safe.
My guess is your previous postings are on the money -- the only way the Tories lose GE 2024 from here is if there are serious economic consequences of the COVID pandemic.
And on Nick's point, I'd much rather live in a culture where we are culturally 'pretty uniform' and happy with that culture than in the current state of permanent antagonism. ( @NickPalmer - this sounds to me not unlike Denmark, which you often cite as a favourable example, though I've never been so can't really comment in detail).
Downsides to that too of course. It must be pretty stultifying if you are in any way outside the mainstream. To go back to the example of Denmark, the culture of Hygge and of communal singing of popular songs sounds mildly hellish to me. (My understanding of Danish culture comes from 'The Almost Nearly Perfect People' by Michael Booth, which is excellent, though doesn't really sell me on the concept of Scandinavianism in the way which the author intends.)
We should all use the skills and the time we have available, to protect society from these people.
It would be different if holding or losing Kabul airport posed a direct threat to the UK as a launchpad for attacks on the UK but unless there is a vital need to hold it then why do it. Holding out at Dunkirk made sense, British soldiers trying to hold off the German army at a Paris airport to allow people out not so much.
They didn't come back until some eventually new stooges took over the patch.
Although, it also feels like Cummings might be a little *too* willing to argue with random people for 3 hours.,,
,,,maybe he should join PB?
Fair play, that does show the courage of his convictions that he was willing to do it. Not everyone would.
Edit - and following that the restaurant staff were happy to serve him again even though they didn’t agree with a word they said.
Once had a very nice pair of Dutch chaps knock on the door. If I'd been remotely interested, their friendly approach would've worked very well, unlike the judgemental stern ladies that knocked a year or two later.
Girls who got pregnant were thrown out of school and often their families.
Homosexuals were imprisoned...... and the police used to hang about places where they were believed to congregate to make some easy arrests.
People were executed for crimes they didn't commit.
We were working to make the world better. But then youth often does!
Clearly my Scottish counterpart.
Honestly, is this what you have to go through now if you want to holiday in Scotland?
https://www.jw.org/en/news/jw/region/united-kingdom/Britain-Bethel-Family-Moves-to-New-Home-in-Chelmsford/
Many support capital punishment today too.
In Truman and Ike and Attlee and Churchill there were also leaders prepared to stand up for the West.
For socialists most of the main industries were nationalised, most industries were heavily unionised and there was a higher top rate of tax, so they also preferred the 1950s too.
The only people who really would have hated the 1950s are liberals and libertarians
Did they ever pause to let people out in the Thirty Years War?
PS: Fair play to him , went back on his holidays and educated the morons. The owner shoudl have booted them up the jacksie and told them to get on with serving people and that their politics was F all to do with their narrow minded viewpoints.
Why did the Tory government under Thatcher oppose equality for gays? Given that several generations haven't passed since that time, it will be good for your thesis if the Tories' "reasoning" - which they have now binned - was founded on something other than a notion of "corruption". It's as though you think the "west" is lovely - that it can be wrong, but that it tends eventually to right its wrongs - and much faster and in any case better than any damned stuck-in-the-mud fuzzy-wuzzies are capable of, at least until the day that western "teachings" win out globally, when there won't be anything still existing that the west can be compared with. You might ask yourself how you would think of the "west" if you were outside it. No local person (local to the west or anywhere else) who's unwilling to think like that should start asserting that the culture in their own locality is the best in the world, etc. The standard of living is higher.
It's like this:
1. Alice stole Bob's stuff, murdered half his family, and forced him and his remaining family members into penury.
2. With the proceeds, Alice paid some builders to build her a big mansion and a lovely garden.
3. Bob and his family heard about this from their gutter, and they thought they'd try to come and live in the mansion and enjoy the garden too.
4. Bad, bad Bob! What a degenerate! Can take the pig out of the sty but not the sty out of the pig, etc.