And they fall into three broadly equal categories:
- Fantastic, what a send off to the Craig Bond - Fantastic... but also about 45 minutes too long. Why wasn't it edited more? - Too damn long and a disappointing finale.
Spectre was also too long. If you cut the whole "Irish gay computer spymaster five eyes" subplot, it would have been a much better (shorter) movie.
I thought it would be interesting to see how Corbyn did relative to Labour's performance in the rest of London. Being leader didn't do much for him in Islington North. I think Labour would beat Corbyn, but it would be an unwanted distraction as it would get a lot of media attention.
Many of your posts on this concern the failings within the police force for what must have clearly been a bad apple the ranks were closed around? But is there not a problem in wider society outside the police, making this horrendous crime by man on woman far from a one of?
So what is our way forward cyclefree? You likely have every single man in the country other than Wayne Couzens upset and angry toward this most warped, most selfish and brutal man. What effective action can now be taken, or education and guidance taken on board?
If he is just a rotten apple in a barrel, a bad egg, do we regard it as important still for boys to be allowed to be boys, and girls should welcome what is hardcoded into their DNA too? As per the current and traditional teaching, To become a man a boy needs to know how to have a presence, how to have a power - and their courage must never be demeaned by anybody?
I have been blessed in my life to have had men in my family who behaved like gentlemen - in the proper sense of that word. They were not in any sense lesser men for behaving with decency and respect. And yet they had authority and courage and presence too and, if necessary, did fight. to defend country and family.
There are people who are evil but most of us have the capacity to be both bad and good and what we constantly have to do is to try and reinforce the good side of us and minimise the bad. I think often that bad side is praised or indulged or treated as a bit of a joke or boys being boys etc. And when that is the prevailing culture are we really surprised that some take this to a level which results in harm?
There is a pornification of our society which I find deeply troubling. Women are seen as objects to be used, as something to be screwed, in that revolting phrase, as if sex was like screwing a nail to a wall, something that is done repetitively and brutally to a woman, not with her. I will be told that some women like porn. And maybe some do.
But let me leave you with one thought. Maybe women say they like porn because that is what they think the man wants them to say, because that is how they get the man. They feel they need to say this. They are stroking his ego not expressing their own desires. Watch that Panorama programme about attacks on girls in school. Girls want to be loved and desired by boys so they will do stuff that boys ask. And where are boys getting their ideas from? There is a violence in porn which, to me, seems anathema to what really satisfying sex is like.
Perhaps I am hopelessly old-fashioned in saying this. But it needs saying. In the 12 months to August in London alone the police recorded 8,222 rapes. Whatever "respect" training we've been giving people clearly isn't working.
Just a quick post to say Thank you Cyclefree for the very thoughtful response tackling the question. By the number of likes, it was appreciated by many.
one of the questions you asked, is there Pornification, your word implies new direction, rather than thing older even than Susannah and the elders? Or is it our technological renaissance enables preexisting chauvinism and voyeurism, into a quite new dilemma?
[insert story of Suffragette leader reimagined by pre Raphaelite painter as a nude (as a gentlemen’s club commission) I know is out there but once again can’t find] and ask: Is the patriarchal really encoded into DNA, so only through the most acute nurture the resultant gentlemen triumphs over his inner arrogant sex pest?
Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. Is Berger True today? will it always be true? Is it Something to change? Are we (hopefully) living a zeitgeist that can awake to something previously ignored, and achieve change?
In answer to your last question I don't believe the patriarchal is encoded into the DNA. I don't consider my upbringing or that of any of my friends to have been particularly acute in terms of how we view women. My education in women was one of 'different but equal'. It is the same basic premise that underlies how we treat every section of society whether we differ in terms of gender, race or ability. But it was an education that was delivered by example not lecture. That seems to me to be the key in so many things. Not leading by example but teaching by example.
I'm always very careful about using the words "different but equal", as that is pretty much word-for-word, how the South African government used to describe apartheit.
Well he would know about perpetuating Tory hegemony after all.
But seriously, all I get from these factional disputes is the same accusations thrown back at each other. Whichever one is closer to truth matters a bit, but not as much as the sides think. I just don't see how if either are half right about the other that they are able to also argue they are still part of the same movement, let along the same party. Yes there's broad coalitions in parties, but that's ideological, the personal disputes here are just so unseemly. I mean, I know plenty of Tories still think Boris is a sh*t, but the disputes don't see as institutionalised, they are more solvable.
Tony Blair was the greatest PM of the last thirty years. If a Labour member cannot agree with that, then they should resign from the party immediately.
Blair from 1997 to 1999 was very good.
Blair from 1999 to 2007 was power crazed and eventually somewhat deranged.
If he'd had sensible majorities of around 40 seats to keep him honest, if he'd dispatched Brown to the foreign office or given him Prezza's DPM role after 2001 and most importantly if he hadn't got embroiled in Iraq, he could have been with an all time great.
Tony Blair was the greatest PM of the last thirty years. If a Labour member cannot agree with that, then they should resign from the party immediately.
Tony Blair was the greatest PM of the last thirty years. If a Labour member cannot agree with that, then they should resign from the party immediately.
Blair from 1997 to 1999 was very good.
Blair from 1999 to 2007 was power crazed and eventually somewhat deranged.
If he'd had sensible majorities of around 40 seats to keep him honest, if he'd dispatched Brown to the foreign office or given him Prezza's DPM role after 2001 and most importantly if he hadn't got embroiled in Iraq, he could have been with an all time great.
Owen Jones - When I described Starmer’s team as “maniacs” because of their abortive attempts to reintroduce an electoral college granting MPs disproportionate power in the next leadership election, a shadow minister responded to me: “It’s worse than that: they are incompetent.” Starmer, whose own allies describe him as a man without politics, is surrounded by crude factional figures with an obsessive grudge against the left and no vision for the country. Their leader is less popular than a prime minister presiding over a country with fuel shortages, empty supermarket shelves, and an impending cut to universal credit that will drive hundreds of thousands of children into poverty.
Owen Jones - There is nothing to recommend Starmer’s leadership. He is, as we have seen, unprincipled. He is not honest. Where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth. He extolled “integrity” in the leadership election, but as his sacking in May of deputy leader Angela Rayner from her role as Labour chair underlined, he has none. That more Labour voters than not desire his resignation, that more than six in 10 people do not see him as a prime minister in waiting, and that he lost the Hartlepool byelection – a seat Labour retained even in the landslide defeat of 2019 – shows he is unelectable. Starmer is Labour’s version of Theresa May – who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.
Tony Blair was the greatest PM of the last thirty years. If a Labour member cannot agree with that, then they should resign from the party immediately.
Reluctantly, I would have to agree with that verdict, but it is rather like having to decide an order of precedence between a slug, a cockroach, a rat, a louse, a tick and a tapeworm.
But which one is which?
Major - slug Blair - tapeworm Brown - tick Cameron - rat May - louse Johnson - cockroach
I thought it would be interesting to see how Corbyn did relative to Labour's performance in the rest of London. Being leader didn't do much for him in Islington North. I think Labour would beat Corbyn, but it would be an unwanted distraction as it would get a lot of media attention.
There must be a degree of ceiling effect in that graphic. When you look at the trend over time, there gets to be less and less scope for JC to pick up further votes:
Owen Jones - The Starmer leadership’s only trick is to kick the left. They have nothing to say, no compelling answers to the crises afflicting and defining Britain in 2021. They have no future; and alas, so long as it remains under their management, neither does the Labour party.
Owen Jones - There is nothing to recommend Starmer’s leadership. He is, as we have seen, unprincipled. He is not honest. Where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth. He extolled “integrity” in the leadership election, but as his sacking in May of deputy leader Angela Rayner from her role as Labour chair underlined, he has none. That more Labour voters than not desire his resignation, that more than six in 10 people do not see him as a prime minister in waiting, and that he lost the Hartlepool byelection – a seat Labour retained even in the landslide defeat of 2019 – shows he is unelectable. Starmer is Labour’s version of Theresa May – who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.
Let's be blunt -
Boris has a majority of 90 rather than 120 / 130 because Farage stole enough potential Boris Tory votes that Labour were lucky enough to win those seats.
Boris winning Hartlepool once Farage didn't stand is very understandable once you grasp the point above. And labour needs to before they have any chance of winning back any Red Wall seats.
If he does, then we can be sure it’s not worth watching.
He’s saving it up for Xmas….
Saving it up for next Thursday.
Going tomorrow - the difficult question was Odeon Deluxe with biggest seats but worse screen (the refurb was done without moving the old screen position forward) or Vue with worse seats but bigger screen.
Just needs to keep him off the Whip until the next selection round for GE 2023/4.
Then iirc he can't stand in the People's Republic of Islington and it's goodbye...
We might see how strong his personal vote is.
Very strong - when I lived there I often canvassed people who stressed that they were only voting for him, not the party. I'd put money on his winning. What is a nuisance for the party is that hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him.
I agree with that. Dick Taverne and Eddie Milne held their seats against official Labour candidates in February 1974 and Dave Nellist came very close to doing so in 1992. Corbyn's personal vote will surely be even stronger.
Owen Jones - The Starmer leadership’s only trick is to kick the left. They have nothing to say, no compelling answers to the crises afflicting and defining Britain in 2021. They have no future; and alas, so long as it remains under their management, neither does the Labour party.
Well duh!
Starmer is in the Kinnock role. He's there to kick out the far left (or make them irrelevant again) and start getting Labour back to actually being a regular opposition party once more.
After he's defeated at the next election he'll depart in favour of someone that can actually win an election.
Just needs to keep him off the Whip until the next selection round for GE 2023/4.
Then iirc he can't stand in the People's Republic of Islington and it's goodbye...
We might see how strong his personal vote is.
Very strong - when I lived there I often canvassed people who stressed that they were only voting for him, not the party. I'd put money on his winning. What is a nuisance for the party is that hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him.
I agree with that. Dick Taverne and Eddie Milne held their seats against official Labour candidates in February 1974 and Dave Nellist came very close to doing so in 1992. Corbyn's personal vote will surely be even stronger.
As a backbencher for 30 years, and apparently being conscientious, I would think he had a lot more opportunity than most to develop his profile within his seat.
I find it quite amusing that Blair and Corbyn seem to share a trait as Labour leaders, in that they're the two with highest number of Lab supporters wanting to disown them.
Just needs to keep him off the Whip until the next selection round for GE 2023/4.
Then iirc he can't stand in the People's Republic of Islington and it's goodbye...
We might see how strong his personal vote is.
Very strong - when I lived there I often canvassed people who stressed that they were only voting for him, not the party. I'd put money on his winning. What is a nuisance for the party is that hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him.
I agree with that. Dick Taverne and Eddie Milne held their seats against official Labour candidates in February 1974 and Dave Nellist came very close to doing so in 1992. Corbyn's personal vote will surely be even stronger.
As a backbencher for 30 years, and apparently being conscientious, I would think he had a lot more opportunity than most to develop his profile within his seat.
Didn't save Dennis Skinner (admittedly, that is a very different seat, but still).
I thought it would be interesting to see how Corbyn did relative to Labour's performance in the rest of London. Being leader didn't do much for him in Islington North. I think Labour would beat Corbyn, but it would be an unwanted distraction as it would get a lot of media attention.
There must be a degree of ceiling effect in that graphic. When you look at the trend over time, there gets to be less and less scope for JC to pick up further votes:
Many of your posts on this concern the failings within the police force for what must have clearly been a bad apple the ranks were closed around? But is there not a problem in wider society outside the police, making this horrendous crime by man on woman far from a one of?
So what is our way forward cyclefree? You likely have every single man in the country other than Wayne Couzens upset and angry toward this most warped, most selfish and brutal man. What effective action can now be taken, or education and guidance taken on board?
If he is just a rotten apple in a barrel, a bad egg, do we regard it as important still for boys to be allowed to be boys, and girls should welcome what is hardcoded into their DNA too? As per the current and traditional teaching, To become a man a boy needs to know how to have a presence, how to have a power - and their courage must never be demeaned by anybody?
I have been blessed in my life to have had men in my family who behaved like gentlemen - in the proper sense of that word. They were not in any sense lesser men for behaving with decency and respect. And yet they had authority and courage and presence too and, if necessary, did fight. to defend country and family.
There are people who are evil but most of us have the capacity to be both bad and good and what we constantly have to do is to try and reinforce the good side of us and minimise the bad. I think often that bad side is praised or indulged or treated as a bit of a joke or boys being boys etc. And when that is the prevailing culture are we really surprised that some take this to a level which results in harm?
There is a pornification of our society which I find deeply troubling. Women are seen as objects to be used, as something to be screwed, in that revolting phrase, as if sex was like screwing a nail to a wall, something that is done repetitively and brutally to a woman, not with her. I will be told that some women like porn. And maybe some do.
But let me leave you with one thought. Maybe women say they like porn because that is what they think the man wants them to say, because that is how they get the man. They feel they need to say this. They are stroking his ego not expressing their own desires. Watch that Panorama programme about attacks on girls in school. Girls want to be loved and desired by boys so they will do stuff that boys ask. And where are boys getting their ideas from? There is a violence in porn which, to me, seems anathema to what really satisfying sex is like.
Perhaps I am hopelessly old-fashioned in saying this. But it needs saying. In the 12 months to August in London alone the police recorded 8,222 rapes. Whatever "respect" training we've been giving people clearly isn't working.
Just a quick post to say Thank you Cyclefree for the very thoughtful response tackling the question. By the number of likes, it was appreciated by many.
one of the questions you asked, is there Pornification, your word implies new direction, rather than thing older even than Susannah and the elders? Or is it our technological renaissance enables preexisting chauvinism and voyeurism, into a quite new dilemma?
[insert story of Suffragette leader reimagined by pre Raphaelite painter as a nude (as a gentlemen’s club commission) I know is out there but once again can’t find] and ask: Is the patriarchal really encoded into DNA, so only through the most acute nurture the resultant gentlemen triumphs over his inner arrogant sex pest?
Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. Is Berger True today? will it always be true? Is it Something to change? Are we (hopefully) living a zeitgeist that can awake to something previously ignored, and achieve change?
In answer to your last question I don't believe the patriarchal is encoded into the DNA. I don't consider my upbringing or that of any of my friends to have been particularly acute in terms of how we view women. My education in women was one of 'different but equal'. It is the same basic premise that underlies how we treat every section of society whether we differ in terms of gender, race or ability. But it was an education that was delivered by example not lecture. That seems to me to be the key in so many things. Not leading by example but teaching by example.
I'm always very careful about using the words "different but equal", as that is pretty much word-for-word, how the South African government used to describe apartheit.
They were, of course, lying, which you're not.
Also used by the US in Dredd Scott. I don't think the analogy works between race and sex, as there are two pretty clear separate sexes with very few exceptions, and clear, consistent biological differences. With race it's just a gradual variation of various features.
Are you and OJ not factionalists who didn't care that JC was a useless nonentity who would never be PM?
I wouldnt regard myself as a factionalist i voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020 ie the one who said in 2016 she wanted to break Corbyn as a man
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
I thought it would be interesting to see how Corbyn did relative to Labour's performance in the rest of London. Being leader didn't do much for him in Islington North. I think Labour would beat Corbyn, but it would be an unwanted distraction as it would get a lot of media attention.
There must be a degree of ceiling effect in that graphic. When you look at the trend over time, there gets to be less and less scope for JC to pick up further votes:
That Wiki graphic only goes up to 2017...
Yes but he still got 64% in 2019, so not that much more to squeeze.
Just needs to keep him off the Whip until the next selection round for GE 2023/4.
Then iirc he can't stand in the People's Republic of Islington and it's goodbye...
We might see how strong his personal vote is.
Very strong - when I lived there I often canvassed people who stressed that they were only voting for him, not the party. I'd put money on his winning. What is a nuisance for the party is that hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him.
Jeremy Corbyn running in Islington North as an independent would probably win his seat - I agree with that. Your comment about "hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him" is interesting is it not?
These are not the kind of people the Labour Party wants knocking on doors asking people for their vote. Nor do they have any interest in the Labour Party if they are so easily swayed to go and campaign against it as so many have them have done pre-2015.
I do not understand how you are so caught up in this. These people are not "the left". They are entryists trying to destroy your party - a good and true party.
It sounds like an independent Corbyn campaign in Islington North would be a very useful thing for Labour.
If some of the card carrying lefties remain in the party by GE time, loudly and repeatedly ask Labour members all over the country please to not go and campaign for Jeremy Corbyn, keep a close eye on the Corbyn campaign, and then expel the lot of them for opposing a Labour candidate.
I am old enough to remember Livingstone winning against Frank Dobson as an independent.
Indeed, Corbyn should consider running for Mayor. He might well win.
Why would you wish that on London? What have the good people of Greater London ever done to you?
26% of delegates to the Labour Party Conference voted against the agreed EHRC action plan to remove the anti-semitism scurge from the party. A quarter. Whilst the hard left screwed up and screwed up badly, there are still a significant number of them. Delegates chosen by their local parties as their best representatives to vote for continuing anti-semitism.
Starmer needs to go much much further.
Is this his moment to turn the Labour party into a proper social democratic party of the centre left and renounce the socialist legacy? It is continuing to make Labour unelectable.
I vote Labour, for decent local candidates, in local elections but not general elections. The anti-semitism thing makes me wonder whether I am complicit in an anti-semitic movement even with the limited support I give them. I would be sorry to come to that conclusion as there are some good people in Labour round here.
But it is telling that in Cumbria there are four seats (out of 6) that ought to be Labour (Copeland, Workington, Barrow, Carlisle), and all have been, and none currently are. It's not just me.
What does "ought to be Labour" mean? Isn't that kind of thing part of the problem?
You are right. It was loosely put. These are seats which typically had strong Labour support, and there is every reason to think they would have a lot more if Labour had been more balanced about Brexit, didn't harbour extremists and became a social democratic party without anti-semitic baggage, and made a better offer than Tories do to the middling sort.
Fair enough. Agree with all of that. Apart from the extremists bit. Labour has always had a Socialist wing. Become a social democratic party only and they are fishing in a pool of 35-40% of the vote. Under FPTP, there aren't enough social democrats to win an election.
ATM a lot of natural centrist social democrats are voting tory as the nearest thing available and electable. Workington and Copeland aren't voting Tory because Labour isn't socialist enough.
Owen Jones - The Starmer leadership’s only trick is to kick the left. They have nothing to say, no compelling answers to the crises afflicting and defining Britain in 2021. They have no future; and alas, so long as it remains under their management, neither does the Labour party.
Well duh!
Starmer is in the Kinnock role. He's there to kick out the far left (or make them irrelevant again) and start getting Labour back to actually being a regular opposition party once more.
After he's defeated at the next election he'll depart in favour of someone that can actually win an election.
Translation service: "no compelling answers" == "no Marxist policies"
Are you and OJ not factionalists who didn't care that JC was a useless nonentity who would never be PM?
I wouldnt regard myself as a factionalist i voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020 ie the one who said in 2016 she wanted to break Corbyn as a man
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
40% but he only won 262 seats, 55 fewer than TMay. Even Brown won 258 seats in 2010.
Just needs to keep him off the Whip until the next selection round for GE 2023/4.
Then iirc he can't stand in the People's Republic of Islington and it's goodbye...
We might see how strong his personal vote is.
Very strong - when I lived there I often canvassed people who stressed that they were only voting for him, not the party. I'd put money on his winning. What is a nuisance for the party is that hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him.
Jeremy Corbyn running in Islington North as an independent would probably win his seat - I agree with that. Your comment about "hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him" is interesting is it not?
These are not the kind of people the Labour Party wants knocking on doors asking people for their vote. Nor do they have any interest in the Labour Party if they are so easily swayed to go and campaign against it as so many have them have done pre-2015.
I do not understand how you are so caught up in this. These people are not "the left". They are entryists trying to destroy your party - a good and true party.
It sounds like an independent Corbyn campaign in Islington North would be a very useful thing for Labour.
If some of the card carrying lefties remain in the party by GE time, loudly and repeatedly ask Labour members all over the country please to not go and campaign for Jeremy Corbyn, keep a close eye on the Corbyn campaign, and then expel the lot of them for opposing a Labour candidate.
I am old enough to remember Livingstone winning against Frank Dobson as an independent.
Indeed, Corbyn should consider running for Mayor. He might well win.
Why would you wish that on London? What have the good people of Greater London ever done to you?
I don't particularly, just citing it in support of him being kept as a Labour MP. He would be more trouble still if he was an independent deselected MP.
Are you and OJ not factionalists who didn't care that JC was a useless nonentity who would never be PM?
I wouldnt regard myself as a factionalist i voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020 ie the one who said in 2016 she wanted to break Corbyn as a man
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
I don't know who you mean, so I googled the highlighted bit.
Are you and OJ not factionalists who didn't care that JC was a useless nonentity who would never be PM?
I wouldnt regard myself as a factionalist i voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020 ie the one who said in 2016 she wanted to break Corbyn as a man
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
Just needs to keep him off the Whip until the next selection round for GE 2023/4.
Then iirc he can't stand in the People's Republic of Islington and it's goodbye...
We might see how strong his personal vote is.
Very strong - when I lived there I often canvassed people who stressed that they were only voting for him, not the party. I'd put money on his winning. What is a nuisance for the party is that hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him.
I agree with that. Dick Taverne and Eddie Milne held their seats against official Labour candidates in February 1974 and Dave Nellist came very close to doing so in 1992. Corbyn's personal vote will surely be even stronger.
As a backbencher for 30 years, and apparently being conscientious, I would think he had a lot more opportunity than most to develop his profile within his seat.
Didn't save Dennis Skinner (admittedly, that is a very different seat, but still).
Oh agreed, though as you say a different type of seat. Just reflecting that the very least one would hope for in an MP who was never interested in climbing the greasy pole would be that they throw themselves into their constituency work, and though I dislike Corbyn's politics and I can believe he took that part pretty seriously, albeit he has his international hobby horses as a distraction.
26% of delegates to the Labour Party Conference voted against the agreed EHRC action plan to remove the anti-semitism scurge from the party. A quarter. Whilst the hard left screwed up and screwed up badly, there are still a significant number of them. Delegates chosen by their local parties as their best representatives to vote for continuing anti-semitism.
Starmer needs to go much much further.
Is this his moment to turn the Labour party into a proper social democratic party of the centre left and renounce the socialist legacy? It is continuing to make Labour unelectable.
I vote Labour, for decent local candidates, in local elections but not general elections. The anti-semitism thing makes me wonder whether I am complicit in an anti-semitic movement even with the limited support I give them. I would be sorry to come to that conclusion as there are some good people in Labour round here.
But it is telling that in Cumbria there are four seats (out of 6) that ought to be Labour (Copeland, Workington, Barrow, Carlisle), and all have been, and none currently are. It's not just me.
What does "ought to be Labour" mean? Isn't that kind of thing part of the problem?
You are right. It was loosely put. These are seats which typically had strong Labour support, and there is every reason to think they would have a lot more if Labour had been more balanced about Brexit, didn't harbour extremists and became a social democratic party without anti-semitic baggage, and made a better offer than Tories do to the middling sort.
Fair enough. Agree with all of that. Apart from the extremists bit. Labour has always had a Socialist wing. Become a social democratic party only and they are fishing in a pool of 35-40% of the vote. Under FPTP, there aren't enough social democrats to win an election.
ATM a lot of natural centrist social democrats are voting tory as the nearest thing available and electable. Workington and Copeland aren't voting Tory because Labour isn't socialist enough.
26% of delegates to the Labour Party Conference voted against the agreed EHRC action plan to remove the anti-semitism scurge from the party. A quarter. Whilst the hard left screwed up and screwed up badly, there are still a significant number of them. Delegates chosen by their local parties as their best representatives to vote for continuing anti-semitism.
Starmer needs to go much much further.
Is this his moment to turn the Labour party into a proper social democratic party of the centre left and renounce the socialist legacy? It is continuing to make Labour unelectable.
I vote Labour, for decent local candidates, in local elections but not general elections. The anti-semitism thing makes me wonder whether I am complicit in an anti-semitic movement even with the limited support I give them. I would be sorry to come to that conclusion as there are some good people in Labour round here.
But it is telling that in Cumbria there are four seats (out of 6) that ought to be Labour (Copeland, Workington, Barrow, Carlisle), and all have been, and none currently are. It's not just me.
What does "ought to be Labour" mean? Isn't that kind of thing part of the problem?
You are right. It was loosely put. These are seats which typically had strong Labour support, and there is every reason to think they would have a lot more if Labour had been more balanced about Brexit, didn't harbour extremists and became a social democratic party without anti-semitic baggage, and made a better offer than Tories do to the middling sort.
Fair enough. Agree with all of that. Apart from the extremists bit. Labour has always had a Socialist wing. Become a social democratic party only and they are fishing in a pool of 35-40% of the vote. Under FPTP, there aren't enough social democrats to win an election.
ATM a lot of natural centrist social democrats are voting tory as the nearest thing available and electable. Workington and Copeland aren't voting Tory because Labour isn't socialist enough.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Just needs to keep him off the Whip until the next selection round for GE 2023/4.
Then iirc he can't stand in the People's Republic of Islington and it's goodbye...
We might see how strong his personal vote is.
Very strong - when I lived there I often canvassed people who stressed that they were only voting for him, not the party. I'd put money on his winning. What is a nuisance for the party is that hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him.
Jeremy Corbyn running in Islington North as an independent would probably win his seat - I agree with that. Your comment about "hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him" is interesting is it not?
These are not the kind of people the Labour Party wants knocking on doors asking people for their vote. Nor do they have any interest in the Labour Party if they are so easily swayed to go and campaign against it as so many have them have done pre-2015.
I do not understand how you are so caught up in this. These people are not "the left". They are entryists trying to destroy your party - a good and true party.
It sounds like an independent Corbyn campaign in Islington North would be a very useful thing for Labour.
If some of the card carrying lefties remain in the party by GE time, loudly and repeatedly ask Labour members all over the country please to not go and campaign for Jeremy Corbyn, keep a close eye on the Corbyn campaign, and then expel the lot of them for opposing a Labour candidate.
I am old enough to remember Livingstone winning against Frank Dobson as an independent.
Indeed, Corbyn should consider running for Mayor. He might well win.
Why would you wish that on London? What have the good people of Greater London ever done to you?
I don't particularly, just citing it in support of him being kept as a Labour MP. He would be more trouble still if he was an independent deselected MP.
Why can't he just bugger off to his allotment like normal septogenarians?
Are you and OJ not factionalists who didn't care that JC was a useless nonentity who would never be PM?
I wouldnt regard myself as a factionalist i voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020 ie the one who said in 2016 she wanted to break Corbyn as a man
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
Genuine winners and contenders like Burnham wouldn't want to lead the party in it's current state as it's still unelectable.
I don't think you really understand the extent of the disaster Labour suffered in 2019... Like they had their worst result (for seats) since 1935 and as @eek says the only reason it wasn't the worst result since 1918 is because of Farage.
Jewish people were genuinely fearful for their futures in this country if Labour had won that election.. that's how bad it was.
Labour won't just bounce back from that in a year or two... By far the best course of action is what they're currently doing with Starmer starting the long hard graft to get Labour back in business again, followed by someone that might actually be able to win an election. I do think 2028/2029 may be winnable for Labour under someone like Burnham, but at the moment it's too soon.
Of course if Labour elects another calamity like Rayner after SKS they could find themselves going into an extinction level election defeat...
Are you and OJ not factionalists who didn't care that JC was a useless nonentity who would never be PM?
I wouldnt regard myself as a factionalist i voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020 ie the one who said in 2016 she wanted to break Corbyn as a man
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
Genuine winners and contenders like Burnham wouldn't want to lead the party in it's current state as it's still unelectable.
I don't think you really understand the extent of the disaster Labour suffered in 2019... Like they had their worst result for (seats) since 1935 and as @eek says the only reason it wasn't the worst result since 1918 is because of Farage.
Jewish people were genuinely fearful for their futures in this country if Labour had won that election.. that's how bad it was.
Labour won't just bounce back from that in a year or two... By far the best course of action is what they're currently doing with Starmer starting the long hard graft to get Labour back in business again, followed by someone that might actually be able to win an election. I do think 2028/2029 may be winnable for Labour under someone like Burnham, but at the moment it's too soon.
Of course if Labour elects another calamity like Rayner after SKS they could find themselves going into an extinction level election defeat...
The worry for the moderates is that it's possible for SKS to do worse than Corbyn did in 2019 in terms of seats, even if he improves the national share of the vote.
Just needs to keep him off the Whip until the next selection round for GE 2023/4.
Then iirc he can't stand in the People's Republic of Islington and it's goodbye...
We might see how strong his personal vote is.
Very strong - when I lived there I often canvassed people who stressed that they were only voting for him, not the party. I'd put money on his winning. What is a nuisance for the party is that hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him.
Jeremy Corbyn running in Islington North as an independent would probably win his seat - I agree with that. Your comment about "hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him" is interesting is it not?
These are not the kind of people the Labour Party wants knocking on doors asking people for their vote. Nor do they have any interest in the Labour Party if they are so easily swayed to go and campaign against it as so many have them have done pre-2015.
I do not understand how you are so caught up in this. These people are not "the left". They are entryists trying to destroy your party - a good and true party.
It sounds like an independent Corbyn campaign in Islington North would be a very useful thing for Labour.
If some of the card carrying lefties remain in the party by GE time, loudly and repeatedly ask Labour members all over the country please to not go and campaign for Jeremy Corbyn, keep a close eye on the Corbyn campaign, and then expel the lot of them for opposing a Labour candidate.
I am old enough to remember Livingstone winning against Frank Dobson as an independent.
Indeed, Corbyn should consider running for Mayor. He might well win.
Why would you wish that on London? What have the good people of Greater London ever done to you?
I don't particularly, just citing it in support of him being kept as a Labour MP. He would be more trouble still if he was an independent deselected MP.
Why can't he just bugger off to his allotment like normal septogenarians?
Just needs to keep him off the Whip until the next selection round for GE 2023/4.
Then iirc he can't stand in the People's Republic of Islington and it's goodbye...
We might see how strong his personal vote is.
Very strong - when I lived there I often canvassed people who stressed that they were only voting for him, not the party. I'd put money on his winning. What is a nuisance for the party is that hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him.
Jeremy Corbyn running in Islington North as an independent would probably win his seat - I agree with that. Your comment about "hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him" is interesting is it not?
These are not the kind of people the Labour Party wants knocking on doors asking people for their vote. Nor do they have any interest in the Labour Party if they are so easily swayed to go and campaign against it as so many have them have done pre-2015.
I do not understand how you are so caught up in this. These people are not "the left". They are entryists trying to destroy your party - a good and true party.
It sounds like an independent Corbyn campaign in Islington North would be a very useful thing for Labour.
If some of the card carrying lefties remain in the party by GE time, loudly and repeatedly ask Labour members all over the country please to not go and campaign for Jeremy Corbyn, keep a close eye on the Corbyn campaign, and then expel the lot of them for opposing a Labour candidate.
I am old enough to remember Livingstone winning against Frank Dobson as an independent.
Indeed, Corbyn should consider running for Mayor. He might well win.
Corbyn was not well suited to being leader, but I am very much in favour of having trouble-makers like Corbyn in the HoC.
It is the job of an MP to cause trouble, to be fully signed up members of the awkward squad, to be an outcast. And a meddler and an inciter and a provocateur and a slanderer. That is what a good MP does.
People like Don Brind just want MPs that can be dipped and branded like sheep, then herded by snapping & slavering dogs into the lobbies. :I am not interested in that.
And on the substantive point, of course Corbyn is right. The antisemitism was exaggerated by his political enemies.
No surprise there!
Duh. That is what your political enemies do. They exploit and exaggerate weaknesses
So for stating the bleeding obvious, Corbyn gets thrown out.
Are you and OJ not factionalists who didn't care that JC was a useless nonentity who would never be PM?
I wouldnt regard myself as a factionalist i voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020 ie the one who said in 2016 she wanted to break Corbyn as a man
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
Today's Neil Kinnock.
Kinnock was a disaster who didnt have a clue how to win.
So yeah SKS does have similarities.
Although Kinnock wasn't a bad orator nor such a boring bastard
Many of your posts on this concern the failings within the police force for what must have clearly been a bad apple the ranks were closed around? But is there not a problem in wider society outside the police, making this horrendous crime by man on woman far from a one of?
So what is our way forward cyclefree? You likely have every single man in the country other than Wayne Couzens upset and angry toward this most warped, most selfish and brutal man. What effective action can now be taken, or education and guidance taken on board?
If he is just a rotten apple in a barrel, a bad egg, do we regard it as important still for boys to be allowed to be boys, and girls should welcome what is hardcoded into their DNA too? As per the current and traditional teaching, To become a man a boy needs to know how to have a presence, how to have a power - and their courage must never be demeaned by anybody?
I have been blessed in my life to have had men in my family who behaved like gentlemen - in the proper sense of that word. They were not in any sense lesser men for behaving with decency and respect. And yet they had authority and courage and presence too and, if necessary, did fight. to defend country and family.
There are people who are evil but most of us have the capacity to be both bad and good and what we constantly have to do is to try and reinforce the good side of us and minimise the bad. I think often that bad side is praised or indulged or treated as a bit of a joke or boys being boys etc. And when that is the prevailing culture are we really surprised that some take this to a level which results in harm?
There is a pornification of our society which I find deeply troubling. Women are seen as objects to be used, as something to be screwed, in that revolting phrase, as if sex was like screwing a nail to a wall, something that is done repetitively and brutally to a woman, not with her. I will be told that some women like porn. And maybe some do.
But let me leave you with one thought. Maybe women say they like porn because that is what they think the man wants them to say, because that is how they get the man. They feel they need to say this. They are stroking his ego not expressing their own desires. Watch that Panorama programme about attacks on girls in school. Girls want to be loved and desired by boys so they will do stuff that boys ask. And where are boys getting their ideas from? There is a violence in porn which, to me, seems anathema to what really satisfying sex is like.
Perhaps I am hopelessly old-fashioned in saying this. But it needs saying. In the 12 months to August in London alone the police recorded 8,222 rapes. Whatever "respect" training we've been giving people clearly isn't working.
Just a quick post to say Thank you Cyclefree for the very thoughtful response tackling the question. By the number of likes, it was appreciated by many.
one of the questions you asked, is there Pornification, your word implies new direction, rather than thing older even than Susannah and the elders? Or is it our technological renaissance enables preexisting chauvinism and voyeurism, into a quite new dilemma?
[insert story of Suffragette leader reimagined by pre Raphaelite painter as a nude (as a gentlemen’s club commission) I know is out there but once again can’t find] and ask: Is the patriarchal really encoded into DNA, so only through the most acute nurture the resultant gentlemen triumphs over his inner arrogant sex pest?
Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. Is Berger True today? will it always be true? Is it Something to change? Are we (hopefully) living a zeitgeist that can awake to something previously ignored, and achieve change?
In answer to your last question I don't believe the patriarchal is encoded into the DNA. I don't consider my upbringing or that of any of my friends to have been particularly acute in terms of how we view women. My education in women was one of 'different but equal'. It is the same basic premise that underlies how we treat every section of society whether we differ in terms of gender, race or ability. But it was an education that was delivered by example not lecture. That seems to me to be the key in so many things. Not leading by example but teaching by example.
I'm always very careful about using the words "different but equal", as that is pretty much word-for-word, how the South African government used to describe apartheit.
They were, of course, lying, which you're not.
Also used by the US in Dredd Scott. I don't think the analogy works between race and sex, as there are two pretty clear separate sexes with very few exceptions, and clear, consistent biological differences. With race it's just a gradual variation of various features.
Though the phrase was from Plessy v Ferguson?
Actually that might not be the case, but I only know the names of like 3 Supreme Court cases (Brown v Board of Education, and Citizens United), so felt compelled to mention it.
Are you and OJ not factionalists who didn't care that JC was a useless nonentity who would never be PM?
I wouldnt regard myself as a factionalist i voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020 ie the one who said in 2016 she wanted to break Corbyn as a man
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
Today's Neil Kinnock.
Kinnock was a disaster who didnt have a clue how to win.
So yeah SKS does have similarities.
Although Kinnock wasn't a bad orator nor such a boring bastard
I don't like Kinnock, but he had really excellent speechwriters (that is why Sleepy Joe nicked the ideas).
Just needs to keep him off the Whip until the next selection round for GE 2023/4.
Then iirc he can't stand in the People's Republic of Islington and it's goodbye...
We might see how strong his personal vote is.
Very strong - when I lived there I often canvassed people who stressed that they were only voting for him, not the party. I'd put money on his winning. What is a nuisance for the party is that hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him.
Jeremy Corbyn running in Islington North as an independent would probably win his seat - I agree with that. Your comment about "hundreds of activists would divert from marginals to go and help him" is interesting is it not?
These are not the kind of people the Labour Party wants knocking on doors asking people for their vote. Nor do they have any interest in the Labour Party if they are so easily swayed to go and campaign against it as so many have them have done pre-2015.
I do not understand how you are so caught up in this. These people are not "the left". They are entryists trying to destroy your party - a good and true party.
It sounds like an independent Corbyn campaign in Islington North would be a very useful thing for Labour.
If some of the card carrying lefties remain in the party by GE time, loudly and repeatedly ask Labour members all over the country please to not go and campaign for Jeremy Corbyn, keep a close eye on the Corbyn campaign, and then expel the lot of them for opposing a Labour candidate.
I am old enough to remember Livingstone winning against Frank Dobson as an independent.
Indeed, Corbyn should consider running for Mayor. He might well win.
Why would you wish that on London? What have the good people of Greater London ever done to you?
I don't particularly, just citing it in support of him being kept as a Labour MP. He would be more trouble still if he was an independent deselected MP.
Why can't he just bugger off to his allotment like normal septogenarians?
Can he take his brother with him please?
I'm somewhat at a loss as to how Piers Corbyn became known even to the extent he is, as a crank. Corbyn has decades of that political movement, he is not a terrible speaker when he is on his favourite topics, he's got a gentle, unassuming manner when he is not losing his cool, but Piers doesn't have that. Is it as a simple as he is a bit of a conspiracy nut and being the brother of a famous man managed to get him noticed?
Are you and OJ not factionalists who didn't care that JC was a useless nonentity who would never be PM?
I wouldnt regard myself as a factionalist i voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020 ie the one who said in 2016 she wanted to break Corbyn as a man
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
Today's Neil Kinnock.
Kinnock was a disaster who didnt have a clue how to win.
So yeah SKS does have similarities.
Although Kinnock wasn't a bad orator nor such a boring bastard
Tony Blair was the greatest PM of the last thirty years. If a Labour member cannot agree with that, then they should resign from the party immediately.
Blair from 1997 to 1999 was very good.
Blair from 1999 to 2007 was power crazed and eventually somewhat deranged.
If he'd had sensible majorities of around 40 seats to keep him honest, if he'd dispatched Brown to the foreign office or given him Prezza's DPM role after 2001 and most importantly if he hadn't got embroiled in Iraq, he could have been with an all time great.
Maybe I'm in a minority here but I was never taken by Blair from Day One.
My view of him actually improved as he approached the end of his term in office and I think 2005-2007 were his best years as PM.
Are you and OJ not factionalists who didn't care that JC was a useless nonentity who would never be PM?
I wouldnt regard myself as a factionalist i voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020 ie the one who said in 2016 she wanted to break Corbyn as a man
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
Today's Neil Kinnock.
Kinnock was a disaster who didnt have a clue how to win.
So yeah SKS does have similarities.
Although Kinnock wasn't a bad orator nor such a boring bastard
He helped stop Labour from being unelectable.
Someone needs to do that now.
There is another Corbyn brother available, if he could be persuaded.
Eric Topol @EricTopol We're at 56% US total population fully vaccinated. We need to get to at least 75% to achieve containment, as has been determined by at least 12 countries (w/ caveats and contingencies)
Many of your posts on this concern the failings within the police force for what must have clearly been a bad apple the ranks were closed around? But is there not a problem in wider society outside the police, making this horrendous crime by man on woman far from a one of?
So what is our way forward cyclefree? You likely have every single man in the country other than Wayne Couzens upset and angry toward this most warped, most selfish and brutal man. What effective action can now be taken, or education and guidance taken on board?
If he is just a rotten apple in a barrel, a bad egg, do we regard it as important still for boys to be allowed to be boys, and girls should welcome what is hardcoded into their DNA too? As per the current and traditional teaching, To become a man a boy needs to know how to have a presence, how to have a power - and their courage must never be demeaned by anybody?
I have been blessed in my life to have had men in my family who behaved like gentlemen - in the proper sense of that word. They were not in any sense lesser men for behaving with decency and respect. And yet they had authority and courage and presence too and, if necessary, did fight. to defend country and family.
There are people who are evil but most of us have the capacity to be both bad and good and what we constantly have to do is to try and reinforce the good side of us and minimise the bad. I think often that bad side is praised or indulged or treated as a bit of a joke or boys being boys etc. And when that is the prevailing culture are we really surprised that some take this to a level which results in harm?
There is a pornification of our society which I find deeply troubling. Women are seen as objects to be used, as something to be screwed, in that revolting phrase, as if sex was like screwing a nail to a wall, something that is done repetitively and brutally to a woman, not with her. I will be told that some women like porn. And maybe some do.
But let me leave you with one thought. Maybe women say they like porn because that is what they think the man wants them to say, because that is how they get the man. They feel they need to say this. They are stroking his ego not expressing their own desires. Watch that Panorama programme about attacks on girls in school. Girls want to be loved and desired by boys so they will do stuff that boys ask. And where are boys getting their ideas from? There is a violence in porn which, to me, seems anathema to what really satisfying sex is like.
Perhaps I am hopelessly old-fashioned in saying this. But it needs saying. In the 12 months to August in London alone the police recorded 8,222 rapes. Whatever "respect" training we've been giving people clearly isn't working.
Just a quick post to say Thank you Cyclefree for the very thoughtful response tackling the question. By the number of likes, it was appreciated by many.
one of the questions you asked, is there Pornification, your word implies new direction, rather than thing older even than Susannah and the elders? Or is it our technological renaissance enables preexisting chauvinism and voyeurism, into a quite new dilemma?
[insert story of Suffragette leader reimagined by pre Raphaelite painter as a nude (as a gentlemen’s club commission) I know is out there but once again can’t find] and ask: Is the patriarchal really encoded into DNA, so only through the most acute nurture the resultant gentlemen triumphs over his inner arrogant sex pest?
Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. Is Berger True today? will it always be true? Is it Something to change? Are we (hopefully) living a zeitgeist that can awake to something previously ignored, and achieve change?
In answer to your last question I don't believe the patriarchal is encoded into the DNA. I don't consider my upbringing or that of any of my friends to have been particularly acute in terms of how we view women. My education in women was one of 'different but equal'. It is the same basic premise that underlies how we treat every section of society whether we differ in terms of gender, race or ability. But it was an education that was delivered by example not lecture. That seems to me to be the key in so many things. Not leading by example but teaching by example.
I'm always very careful about using the words "different but equal", as that is pretty much word-for-word, how the South African government used to describe apartheit.
They were, of course, lying, which you're not.
I genuinely didn't know that. It was simply the way I was brought up. There are many differences between people but none of them change the way we should treat each other.
Tony Blair was the greatest PM of the last thirty years. If a Labour member cannot agree with that, then they should resign from the party immediately.
Reluctantly, I would have to agree with that verdict, but it is rather like having to decide an order of precedence between a slug, a cockroach, a rat, a louse, a tick and a tapeworm.
But which one is which?
Major - slug Blair - tapeworm Brown - tick Cameron - rat May - louse Johnson - cockroach
Many of your posts on this concern the failings within the police force for what must have clearly been a bad apple the ranks were closed around? But is there not a problem in wider society outside the police, making this horrendous crime by man on woman far from a one of?
So what is our way forward cyclefree? You likely have every single man in the country other than Wayne Couzens upset and angry toward this most warped, most selfish and brutal man. What effective action can now be taken, or education and guidance taken on board?
If he is just a rotten apple in a barrel, a bad egg, do we regard it as important still for boys to be allowed to be boys, and girls should welcome what is hardcoded into their DNA too? As per the current and traditional teaching, To become a man a boy needs to know how to have a presence, how to have a power - and their courage must never be demeaned by anybody?
I have been blessed in my life to have had men in my family who behaved like gentlemen - in the proper sense of that word. They were not in any sense lesser men for behaving with decency and respect. And yet they had authority and courage and presence too and, if necessary, did fight. to defend country and family.
There are people who are evil but most of us have the capacity to be both bad and good and what we constantly have to do is to try and reinforce the good side of us and minimise the bad. I think often that bad side is praised or indulged or treated as a bit of a joke or boys being boys etc. And when that is the prevailing culture are we really surprised that some take this to a level which results in harm?
There is a pornification of our society which I find deeply troubling. Women are seen as objects to be used, as something to be screwed, in that revolting phrase, as if sex was like screwing a nail to a wall, something that is done repetitively and brutally to a woman, not with her. I will be told that some women like porn. And maybe some do.
But let me leave you with one thought. Maybe women say they like porn because that is what they think the man wants them to say, because that is how they get the man. They feel they need to say this. They are stroking his ego not expressing their own desires. Watch that Panorama programme about attacks on girls in school. Girls want to be loved and desired by boys so they will do stuff that boys ask. And where are boys getting their ideas from? There is a violence in porn which, to me, seems anathema to what really satisfying sex is like.
Perhaps I am hopelessly old-fashioned in saying this. But it needs saying. In the 12 months to August in London alone the police recorded 8,222 rapes. Whatever "respect" training we've been giving people clearly isn't working.
Just a quick post to say Thank you Cyclefree for the very thoughtful response tackling the question. By the number of likes, it was appreciated by many.
one of the questions you asked, is there Pornification, your word implies new direction, rather than thing older even than Susannah and the elders? Or is it our technological renaissance enables preexisting chauvinism and voyeurism, into a quite new dilemma?
[insert story of Suffragette leader reimagined by pre Raphaelite painter as a nude (as a gentlemen’s club commission) I know is out there but once again can’t find] and ask: Is the patriarchal really encoded into DNA, so only through the most acute nurture the resultant gentlemen triumphs over his inner arrogant sex pest?
Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. Is Berger True today? will it always be true? Is it Something to change? Are we (hopefully) living a zeitgeist that can awake to something previously ignored, and achieve change?
In answer to your last question I don't believe the patriarchal is encoded into the DNA. I don't consider my upbringing or that of any of my friends to have been particularly acute in terms of how we view women. My education in women was one of 'different but equal'. It is the same basic premise that underlies how we treat every section of society whether we differ in terms of gender, race or ability. But it was an education that was delivered by example not lecture. That seems to me to be the key in so many things. Not leading by example but teaching by example.
I'm always very careful about using the words "different but equal", as that is pretty much word-for-word, how the South African government used to describe apartheit.
They were, of course, lying, which you're not.
I genuinely didn't know that. It was simply the way I was brought up. There are many differences between people but none of them change the way we should treat each other.
Many phrases are fine on their own but the context can make them unusable of course (In the USA certainly). I remember a John Oliver joke about how technically you could call Yoga retreats concentration camps.
Oh agreed, though as you say a different type of seat. Just reflecting that the very least one would hope for in an MP who was never interested in climbing the greasy pole would be that they throw themselves into their constituency work, and though I dislike Corbyn's politics and I can believe he took that part pretty seriously, albeit he has his international hobby horses as a distraction.
He does. I've been to his surgeries - they go on forever, as he listens and talks and listens and talks until everyone else says "Well, thanks" and goes home to dinner. His worst enemy couldn't accuse him of being an inattentive constituency MP. I'm not sure Skinner was that keen on that aspect - never heard one way or the other.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Tony Blair was the greatest PM of the last thirty years. If a Labour member cannot agree with that, then they should resign from the party immediately.
He would have been if 9/11 never happened
I think you also have to factor in the trebling of house prices and the eventual financial crisis.
26% of delegates to the Labour Party Conference voted against the agreed EHRC action plan to remove the anti-semitism scurge from the party. A quarter. Whilst the hard left screwed up and screwed up badly, there are still a significant number of them. Delegates chosen by their local parties as their best representatives to vote for continuing anti-semitism.
Starmer needs to go much much further.
Is this his moment to turn the Labour party into a proper social democratic party of the centre left and renounce the socialist legacy? It is continuing to make Labour unelectable.
I vote Labour, for decent local candidates, in local elections but not general elections. The anti-semitism thing makes me wonder whether I am complicit in an anti-semitic movement even with the limited support I give them. I would be sorry to come to that conclusion as there are some good people in Labour round here.
But it is telling that in Cumbria there are four seats (out of 6) that ought to be Labour (Copeland, Workington, Barrow, Carlisle), and all have been, and none currently are. It's not just me.
What does "ought to be Labour" mean? Isn't that kind of thing part of the problem?
You are right. It was loosely put. These are seats which typically had strong Labour support, and there is every reason to think they would have a lot more if Labour had been more balanced about Brexit, didn't harbour extremists and became a social democratic party without anti-semitic baggage, and made a better offer than Tories do to the middling sort.
Fair enough. Agree with all of that. Apart from the extremists bit. Labour has always had a Socialist wing. Become a social democratic party only and they are fishing in a pool of 35-40% of the vote. Under FPTP, there aren't enough social democrats to win an election.
ATM a lot of natural centrist social democrats are voting tory as the nearest thing available and electable. Workington and Copeland aren't voting Tory because Labour isn't socialist enough.
There is a place for Socialists in the Labour Party. Always has been. Tony Benn was around for decades. The problem re Workington, Copeland and many other similar seats is that the age profile is hugely skewed to the Tories. If they were in the South they'd have been solid Tory long ago. A decent programme for government would help. That doesn't have to be centrist. Nor leftist. But it does have to be radical. Not same old, same old. Post GFC those answers aren't even relevant to the question. The only radical policy since has been Brexit. That is why it holds such sway.
Just needs to keep him off the Whip until the next selection round for GE 2023/4.
Then iirc he can't stand in the People's Republic of Islington and it's goodbye...
Incideentally, I don't think that's correct. Selection as a candidate is nothing to do with what the Chief Whip decides. If you're a member of the Party and have been for 3 years, you're eligible for selection. And the chance of the CLP not selecting him if they have the chance is zero.
That’s getting pretty close to electoral fraud by misrepresentation.
“I’m the labour candidate” “Will you take the whip?” “No”
What does it mean to be the “labour candidate” if you are not part of the labour parliamentary party
He'll be pleased to take the whip if it's offered to him; currently the Chief Whip declines to do so. And being a Labour candidate means being the candidate of the Labour Party chosen by the body appointed to select candidates, namely the CLP. What the Chief Whip decides to do is a matter for him.
As kle4 points out, there are councillors elected on one ticket or another who fall out with their colleagues - they don't thereby become un-councillors or ineligible for reselection. Personally, I think Starmer should have a "unity amnesty" and sweep up readmitting diverse people who defected from Labour under Corbyn and let them back in at the same time as readmitting him to the whip - people have got the point that Starmer isn't Corbyn and this stuff is just a tiresome distraction.
Don't candidates have to be rubber stamped by the NEC?
Don't think so, unless there is some dispute about their membership. I don't recall ever having to get NEC signoff. If you're a new candidate there's a test to check you're not totally useless - I knew one chap who failed it. He was seeking to become a County Councillor, but found himself unable to tell the panel what County Councillors actually do. He's not alone in that, but the panel felt it would have been nice if he'd looked it up.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
Tony Blair was the greatest PM of the last thirty years. If a Labour member cannot agree with that, then they should resign from the party immediately.
Reluctantly, I would have to agree with that verdict, but it is rather like having to decide an order of precedence between a slug, a cockroach, a rat, a louse, a tick and a tapeworm.
But which one is which?
Major - slug Blair - tapeworm Brown - tick Cameron - rat May - louse Johnson - cockroach
Surely Johnstone is (Mr) Toad?
Major -- a limpet Blair -- a hamster Brown -- a rhinoceros Cameron -- a pot-bellied pig May -- a rhea Johnson -- a giant sloth
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
Boosters are certainly already being given to NHS staff. I now a couple who have already had them. Not sure about anyone else yet.
Owen Jones - There is nothing to recommend Starmer’s leadership. He is, as we have seen, unprincipled. He is not honest. Where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth. He extolled “integrity” in the leadership election, but as his sacking in May of deputy leader Angela Rayner from her role as Labour chair underlined, he has none. That more Labour voters than not desire his resignation, that more than six in 10 people do not see him as a prime minister in waiting, and that he lost the Hartlepool byelection – a seat Labour retained even in the landslide defeat of 2019 – shows he is unelectable. Starmer is Labour’s version of Theresa May – who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.
Let's be blunt -
Boris has a majority of 90 rather than 120 / 130 because Farage stole enough potential Boris Tory votes that Labour were lucky enough to win those seats.
Boris winning Hartlepool once Farage didn't stand is very understandable once you grasp the point above. And labour needs to before they have any chance of winning back any Red Wall seats.
I don't agree with this. Labour lost a lot of votes to the Lib Dems in 2019, and it's far from clear those votes will stay with the Lib Dems. In fact, the Lib Dems are polling lower and Labour higher than the 2019 result. As things stand today, some of those seats are heading back to Labour.
It is thinking like that that helped make me £4,300 at the C&A by-election. Please continue
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
It's happening, but the official advice is to wait to be contacted. They want to wait until 6 months after the second jabs.
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
This morning I received my invitation for my third jab.
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
He's talking mince. Six months after the second dose is a hard limit for a start. So only folk fully vaccinated in March. And only top categories. See here.
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
I got a text from my GP to book my booster (though had it last week at work) so I think it is being rolled out for the over fifties. I don't think it as rigid as the original group system, but has to be 6 months or more after the second.
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
It's happening, but the official advice is to wait to be contacted. They want to wait until 6 months after the second jabs.
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
It's happening, but the official advice is to wait to be contacted. They want to wait until 6 months after the second jabs.
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
He's talking mince. Six months after the second dose is a hard limit for a start. So only folk fully vaccinated in March. And only top categories. See here.
Owen Jones - There is nothing to recommend Starmer’s leadership. He is, as we have seen, unprincipled. He is not honest. Where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth. He extolled “integrity” in the leadership election, but as his sacking in May of deputy leader Angela Rayner from her role as Labour chair underlined, he has none. That more Labour voters than not desire his resignation, that more than six in 10 people do not see him as a prime minister in waiting, and that he lost the Hartlepool byelection – a seat Labour retained even in the landslide defeat of 2019 – shows he is unelectable. Starmer is Labour’s version of Theresa May – who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.
Let's be blunt -
Boris has a majority of 90 rather than 120 / 130 because Farage stole enough potential Boris Tory votes that Labour were lucky enough to win those seats.
Boris winning Hartlepool once Farage didn't stand is very understandable once you grasp the point above. And labour needs to before they have any chance of winning back any Red Wall seats.
I don't agree with this. Labour lost a lot of votes to the Lib Dems in 2019, and it's far from clear those votes will stay with the Lib Dems. In fact, the Lib Dems are polling lower and Labour higher than the 2019 result. As things stand today, some of those seats are heading back to Labour.
A swing from LibDem to Labour in the Waitrose belt isn't going to help Labour.
Run away and call 999 if you feel in danger when stopped by a lone person claiming to be an officer, the Met Police has said.
The force has urged people to try to get help if they believe the person who stopped them is not genuine.
This "advice" from the Met is absolutely fucking mad. Couzens WAS a genuine copper.
Indeed, and potentially very risky if it was a genuine PC.
Short of going back to doubled up patrolling, it is hard to see what the Met can do to regain confidence. This may have been a bad apple, but he was known to be a bad apple, and nothing was done about it.
Run away and call 999 if you feel in danger when stopped by a lone person claiming to be an officer, the Met Police has said.
The force has urged people to try to get help if they believe the person who stopped them is not genuine.
This "advice" from the Met is absolutely fucking mad. Couzens WAS a genuine copper.
I think, at the minimum, police officers should be in pairs. There are still cases like with Dalian Atkinson, but if you could say that a lone police officer was exceeding their powers that would help.
I think I'd be more willing to trust a pair of police officers than one alone.
Run away and call 999 if you feel in danger when stopped by a lone person claiming to be an officer, the Met Police has said.
The force has urged people to try to get help if they believe the person who stopped them is not genuine.
This "advice" from the Met is absolutely fucking mad. Couzens WAS a genuine copper.
I think, at the minimum, police officers should be in pairs. There are still cases like with Dalian Atkinson, but if you could say that a lone police officer was exceeding their powers that would help.
I think I'd be more willing to trust a pair of police officers than one alone.
The Met won't say it for fear of looking like they are blaming Sarah, but also, if the cop isn't in uniform, that should also sound alarm bells.
Not a fan myself but I thought this frontpage headline was a bit harsh on Cressida:
Quite. I mean, she's the boss, and should carry the can. But she didn't appoint him. Nor did she personally take no action about his flashing. I'm sure she was as horrified as the rest of us. And would have had him locked up lickety split had she known what might happen. But she didn't.
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
My Dad just turned up at the local library, where they are giving out boosters, a week before his 6 month gap or whatever it is from his 2nd jab, and they gave him his 3rd
Run away and call 999 if you feel in danger when stopped by a lone person claiming to be an officer, the Met Police has said.
The force has urged people to try to get help if they believe the person who stopped them is not genuine.
This "advice" from the Met is absolutely fucking mad. Couzens WAS a genuine copper.
I think, at the minimum, police officers should be in pairs. There are still cases like with Dalian Atkinson, but if you could say that a lone police officer was exceeding their powers that would help.
I think I'd be more willing to trust a pair of police officers than one alone.
I expect coppers would love to work in pairs, but they're not the NHS are they ?
Run away and call 999 if you feel in danger when stopped by a lone person claiming to be an officer, the Met Police has said.
The force has urged people to try to get help if they believe the person who stopped them is not genuine.
This "advice" from the Met is absolutely fucking mad. Couzens WAS a genuine copper.
Indeed, and potentially very risky if it was a genuine PC.
Yes, police do not like it when people do not respond to them as they consider appropriate. Even if the person has a legitimate reason to be suspicious.
No way in hell many of them will let you stand there, reach into your pocket for your phone and, what, ask if you can call 999 on them to check they are both legit and there on legitimate purposes? Plenty of people will try that on just to frustrate them, and they'll hate it.
Comments
So, I've now read a number of reviews.
And they fall into three broadly equal categories:
- Fantastic, what a send off to the Craig Bond
- Fantastic... but also about 45 minutes too long. Why wasn't it edited more?
- Too damn long and a disappointing finale.
Spectre was also too long. If you cut the whole "Irish gay computer spymaster five eyes" subplot, it would have been a much better (shorter) movie.
They were, of course, lying, which you're not.
But seriously, all I get from these factional disputes is the same accusations thrown back at each other. Whichever one is closer to truth matters a bit, but not as much as the sides think. I just don't see how if either are half right about the other that they are able to also argue they are still part of the same movement, let along the same party. Yes there's broad coalitions in parties, but that's ideological, the personal disputes here are just so unseemly. I mean, I know plenty of Tories still think Boris is a sh*t, but the disputes don't see as institutionalised, they are more solvable.
Blair from 1999 to 2007 was power crazed and eventually somewhat deranged.
If he'd had sensible majorities of around 40 seats to keep him honest, if he'd dispatched Brown to the foreign office or given him Prezza's DPM role after 2001 and most importantly if he hadn't got embroiled in Iraq, he could have been with an all time great.
(Or part way through transitioning, of course.)
I wonder if any pber can suggest any films which indisputably fall into that category?
Major - slug
Blair - tapeworm
Brown - tick
Cameron - rat
May - louse
Johnson - cockroach
Boris has a majority of 90 rather than 120 / 130 because Farage stole enough potential Boris Tory votes that Labour were lucky enough to win those seats.
Boris winning Hartlepool once Farage didn't stand is very understandable once you grasp the point above. And labour needs to before they have any chance of winning back any Red Wall seats.
The bigger screen won.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Law#2005_general_election
Starmer is in the Kinnock role. He's there to kick out the far left (or make them irrelevant again) and start getting Labour back to actually being a regular opposition party once more.
After he's defeated at the next election he'll depart in favour of someone that can actually win an election.
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
Got this at the top!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/29/labour-mps-vs-corbyn-war-party-members-tories-brexit
By Diane Abbott
In such a cynical and selfish GB today, why not a round of applause for Boris and the government, for stabilising this dreadful situation?
But but Brexit means there is an inevitable shortage of geese everywhere in the world, including the moon.
@zarahsultana
Trans rights aren't some "fringe issue". They're a question of human rights.
https://twitter.com/zarahsultana/status/1443640605599576065
"Trans women are women. How are we debating this?"
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
I don't think you really understand the extent of the disaster Labour suffered in 2019... Like they had their worst result (for seats) since 1935 and as @eek says the only reason it wasn't the worst result since 1918 is because of Farage.
Jewish people were genuinely fearful for their futures in this country if Labour had won that election.. that's how bad it was.
Labour won't just bounce back from that in a year or two... By far the best course of action is what they're currently doing with Starmer starting the long hard graft to get Labour back in business again, followed by someone that might actually be able to win an election. I do think 2028/2029 may be winnable for Labour under someone like Burnham, but at the moment it's too soon.
Of course if Labour elects another calamity like Rayner after SKS they could find themselves going into an extinction level election defeat...
It is the job of an MP to cause trouble, to be fully signed up members of the awkward squad, to be an outcast. And a meddler and an inciter and a provocateur and a slanderer. That is what a good MP does.
People like Don Brind just want MPs that can be dipped and branded like sheep, then herded by snapping & slavering dogs into the lobbies. :I am not interested in that.
And on the substantive point, of course Corbyn is right. The antisemitism was exaggerated by his political enemies.
No surprise there!
Duh. That is what your political enemies do. They exploit and exaggerate weaknesses
So for stating the bleeding obvious, Corbyn gets thrown out.
So yeah SKS does have similarities.
Although Kinnock wasn't a bad orator nor such a boring bastard
Actually that might not be the case, but I only know the names of like 3 Supreme Court cases (Brown v Board of Education, and Citizens United), so felt compelled to mention it.
And he was a good public speaker.
Someone needs to do that now.
My view of him actually improved as he approached the end of his term in office and I think 2005-2007 were his best years as PM.
Eric Topol
@EricTopol
We're at 56% US total population fully vaccinated.
We need to get to at least 75% to achieve containment, as has been determined by at least 12 countries (w/ caveats and contingencies)
The problem re Workington, Copeland and many other similar seats is that the age profile is hugely skewed to the Tories. If they were in the South they'd have been solid Tory long ago.
A decent programme for government would help. That doesn't have to be centrist. Nor leftist. But it does have to be radical.
Not same old, same old. Post GFC those answers aren't even relevant to the question.
The only radical policy since has been Brexit. That is why it holds such sway.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
Blair -- a hamster
Brown -- a rhinoceros
Cameron -- a pot-bellied pig
May -- a rhea
Johnson -- a giant sloth
The force has urged people to try to get help if they believe the person who stopped them is not genuine.
This "advice" from the Met is absolutely fucking mad. Couzens WAS a genuine copper.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/coronavirus-booster-vaccine/
Third jab is taking place on Saturday.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/coronavirus-booster-vaccine/
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination/book-or-manage-a-booster-dose-of-the-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine/
Short of going back to doubled up patrolling, it is hard to see what the Met can do to regain confidence. This may have been a bad apple, but he was known to be a bad apple, and nothing was done about it.
I think I'd be more willing to trust a pair of police officers than one alone.
I'm sure she was as horrified as the rest of us. And would have had him locked up lickety split had she known what might happen.
But she didn't.
Always loved this but can somebody explain the "Tracy emin art" gag?
No way in hell many of them will let you stand there, reach into your pocket for your phone and, what, ask if you can call 999 on them to check they are both legit and there on legitimate purposes? Plenty of people will try that on just to frustrate them, and they'll hate it.