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How the papers are covering a very sad day in British politics – politicalbetting.com
How the papers are covering a very sad day in British politics – politicalbetting.com
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How the papers are covering a very sad day in British politics – politicalbetting.com
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I don't think it is anything meaningful, but something I noticed.
I am turning in early and hoping for a brighter day tomorrow.
Not a paper that would normally say anything good about the Tories.
But a touching and very accurate comment. He did die because he was serving the people of his constituency by holding a surgery. Which tragically gave this person their opportunity.
Respect to them for a rare moment of classiness.
Today is a good day to thank an MP for their service. Whether or not you agree with their politics.
https://twitter.com/MrBrendanCox/status/1449102363428540419
That's why we have an incumbency bonus after all.
I was trying to convince my girlfriend we should move to Leigh on Sea last summer, quite glad we didn’t now
The Netherlands is also "securing" its democracy in a sad fashion, in the face of similar violent threats
https://www.euronews.com/2021/09/28/dutch-pm-rutte-given-extra-security-after-death-threats
Depressing. But we mustn't succumb to fatalism
Shocked and devastated at the news of Sir David Amess’ horrific and brutal killing. Still trying to process after finishing my own overrunning surgery today. I served alongside him only this week on a Parliamentary delegation.
Such a kind, decent man, huge loss to us all
https://twitter.com/RupaHuq/status/1449076523332481036
I'm quite upset that we live in a country where elected representatives have become targets. It's wrong and those who do so should be locked up. The casual manner in which people load up an anonymous twitter account and send death threats to our MPs or abuse them out in public is quite damning of our national debate.
It's time for us to take a look at what is causing this. It goes beyond normal politics, the normalisation of people threatening those with whom they disagree with violence needs to be addressed. What conversations did we used to have with each other that we don't have any more. What has caused us to stop communicating with each other. Is it social media echo chambers? Is it time to say social media has had its day?
I'm more worried about the direction in which this country is heading than ever. It's not just this, it's everything. People are living compartmentalised lives that block out conversations they don't want to have with people they see as evil.
One of the few places that I really appreciate is PB. It is the only place on the internet that people have proper discussions with everyone across the political and cultural divide. A place where every opinion is heard and people just talk to each other. We just talk and hopefully listen. We need more of that and fewer echo chambers where people talk past each other or simply erase those views they don't like.
Used to be only 2 reactions. Well played, or (more likely at my level), I made an error.
Now there's a lot of passive aggressive comments.
And use of the word lucky. Which is the last thing it is possible to be. It isn't as though anyone throws three double 6's.
Can't imagine folk would behave like that in person. It is getting wearying tbh.
However, for the rest of it, I think you are mis-analysing what has happened here. While @rcs1000 is right that all the information has not come out, the signs are pointing to an unfortunately too common event, namely a radicalised member of a certain religion deciding to kill an MP. Not a random nut job. Someone who (probably) had a very clear aim.
The question is not ‘how do we live less separate lives, can’t we connect better etc’, it’s how do we deal with a grouping of individuals - who are probably at least in their thousands and probably far more - who hate our society and are prepared to kill people to show their dislike.
Nothing like a tit confirming that they're a tit.
A few years ago in Birmingham (I think) there was quite a big police raid on a number of houses and various Muslim men were arrested. It was said to be a big terror investigation. The men were all released, without charge, and it turned out that there was nothing to it at all - at least not publicly.
Until we know the facts it is unseemly for @HYUFD (or anyone else) to start making political points about immigration. We have no idea whether this person was born here, came here as a baby or a year ago. The facts will come out soon enough I expect.
The poor man is not even in his grave. His wife and 5 children and other family members and friends are mourning him. A bit of common decency - of which thankfully there has been plenty shown on here - is not Amess-worship or shutting down debate. It is just pausing to reflect on the very human sorrow people are feeling at the loss of someone who tried in his own way to make the world a little bit better.
Its a tragic day and we should think of the Amess family and friends grief and give our sympathies for that and not speculate on the killer at this time.
Plenty of time for that further down the line but not today.
https://twitter.com/pennymordaunt/status/1449021012763369475?s=21
The fundamental problem is that people are - increasingly - only hanging out with people like themselves. They don't spend time with people who are different to them, and they therefore end up demonising them.
Identity politics makes this worse.
Transsexuals hang out with other transsexuals and convince themselves the world is out to get them.
Rural heterosexual men hang our with other rural heterosexual men, and ditto.
Anti abortion activists should spend time in rape crisis centers.
Pro life activists should spend time with families who are desperate to adopt.
We've got to a situation where we want the law and the courts to try and make everyone look like us. And it's not going to happen. We need to understand people - to empathise and to understand why people have different views to ourselves - rather than raging and demonising others.
I'd even stick up for somewhat uncouth or distasteful speculation and commentary, as common mood will judge if lines have been crossed on that score.
In any event, it’s the hypocrisy that is the most galling. When jo Cox killed, there was plenty of people on here who rushed in on here to say it was about Brexit, it was right wing terrorism etc, that we should stamp down on hate etc etc who now proclaim how we must not rush to judgement, let the facts come out etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-Life_Action_League
Take Steve Bannon. In the lead up to January 6th he did a lot of things that look an awful lot like incitement to violence. If he calls for people to rise up and fight the "enemies of the people" who stole the election, how is that different from an Iman calling for people to rise up and fight the "enemies of Islam".
Where do you draw the line, and how do you stop the suppression of free speech?
I am still convinced that social media and the internet can - and often is - a force for good. But just like the media we sometimes focus too much on the bad aspects of it and forget the good.
But not to put the cart before the horse. There are two groups, those inciting terrorist outrages, and the mentally ill who are groomed (and radicalised) to carry them out. It is not the mentally ill who hold "those views" or at least not for very long.
Regardless, what we say on here doesn’t matter one jot. It’s a terrible day for his family. Your husband / father goes to work for what seems like a normal day and then your hear of his death in such circumstances.
Yes I am as horrified by David Amess' murder as anyone else is but there is no point brushing under the carpet who the killer almost certainly was and their motive.
It is all well and good the left castigating the Far Right and their hate speech and ensuring they are cracked down on hard and rightly so, the killer of Jo Cox was sentenced to jail for a life term.
However you cannot ignore either the fact the killer of David Amess was almost certainly a jihadi extremist immigrant who got through the net given all the media reports we have and the involvement now of police counter terror units. It is no good liberal leftwingers like you shutting down all discussion of this and avoiding any debate of the need to tighten our borders to keep out extremists. For if we do shut down such debates then incidents such as these will happen sadly again and again and if the liberal elite will not allow even debate on it let alone action, voters will increasingly move to populist forces who will
I've been active in politics for over 50 years and I've canvassed on my own and with others in every sort of community. I've virtually never encountered menacing behaviour face to face. But I routinely encountered it online. If 1 person in 100,000 is seriously nasty, their chance of meeting you is small unless, as in this case, they actually seek you out. But their chance of threatening you online, if they want to, is 100%. If you're on the receiving end, you can't tell if the verbal assailant is as menacing as he sounds, so you just hope for the best. It is indisputably a discouragement to taking part in public life. And if you're a woman, the threats expand from mere violence to rape and other abuse going beyond most male politicians' experience.
I was not one of those who rushed to say anything about the reasons for Jo Cox's murder. And when the Norway massacre happened and one of our well-known posters immediately assumed it was an Islamist attack I was one of the few to say it would make sense to wait until we knew the facts.
Sometimes real life brings us up short and teaches us what really matters. I have had a number of such events happen to my family lately. A brief pause before immediately making unsubstantiated political points is not - mere hours after a man has been horribly murdered - either too much to ask or hypocritical on my part.
Marcus Rashford needs to "prioritise his football" if he is to meet the twin challenges of playing for club and country, says Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/58934077
But we should also acknowledge that - in quite a number of cases - the actual perpetrators / motives weren't who we initially thought.
In about 48 hours, when a lot more information will have been released, we'll have a pretty good handle of what happened, and why it happened.
It may be that he was a Jihadi (although Amess wasn't even a member of the friends of Israel or anything like that that might have brought attention to himself). It may be that the application for his wife to come join him was rejected by the Home Office, and he blamed David Amess for this. It may be that he has been in and out of mental institutions. It may even be that he was a deranged Remainer who wanted to kill a long time Eurosceptic MP. It may be that he was locally radicalised. Or it may be that he wasn't religious at all.
However, my concern is that mental health issues are rowed out so that we, as a society, don’t have to deal with more fundamentally problematic questions as to what to do with a group of individuals who hate us and hate our society and all it stands for. It is far easier just to believe that is just a lone sick individual where the problem lies.
Let people pay their respects to the deceased and quite frankly I have nothing else to say tonight.
The facts of the case will come out in the next couple of days. We can discuss that then.
And when Cox was murdered people were shocked and horrified and stopped campaigning for a few days out of respect. Same today. Respect for Amess is all that needs to be on the agenda tonight. 😢
It is not surprising that the guy with the mental health issues was also the guy who found himself in the Liberal Democrats a religious organisation.
I have a friend who was a member of a cult, and his stories about how they targeted the mentally ill are heartbreaking.
Are we meant to ignore all this, on a site which is dedicated to open discussion and frank debate, and timely breaking of news?
Ludicrous. You'd turn PB into some kind of mausoleum of old opinions.
An awful murder happened, which menaces the bedrock of our democracy: the work of MPs in their constituencies. It looks like it was an Islamist attack, but we really cannot be sure, yet. That's it. Denying the facts as they stand is futile and weird when the coppers themselves are discussing them in public?!
However, as said, for me it is the hypocrisy that is the most galling. The same people who rushed to pass judgement on Jo Cox’s killer right after the event are now claiming it is indecent to do in this case. Sorry, same standards should apply - either don’t speculate at all, regardless of the political circumstances, or allow people to speculate.
As for me shutting down debate on immigration or indeed Islam, you have a brass neck and a very short memory. I am one of the few header writers who has written thread headers on both of these topics as far back as 2016, precisely because they are legitimate subjects for debate.
But I have tried to do so on the basis of facts. It has nothing to do with me being some sort of "left liberal" and everything with me being a professional investigator for the best part of 4 decades and so having a rather better idea than you of what is involved in sensitive investigations, the difficulties of establishing facts quickly and the dangers of jumping to conclusions or of making assumptions.
I do try and read some of your thread headers but then again reading War and Peace takes almost as long so forgive me if I do not always remember precisely all the main points of them
It's the sort of thing St Paul was writing about;
“All things are lawful,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up.
Culturally, we've lost that distinction, and that's a problem. Goodness only knows what we do about it, beyond resolving to be nicer individuals ourselves.
That of itself does not prove anything. Yet.
It is not so much not denying facts as some on here making up facts which suit the political point they want to make.
Regardless, as @Isam has stated, there are certain pointers that suggest where this is heading. Given what has been said, I don’t think it’s wrong to speculate what was the motivation for this attack.
It is the best single day in the calendar, if you like art old and new, and I DO
It was cancelled last year. Deeply sad. But now it is back
I was in the Groucho tonight with a mate and central London is ROARING. Queues for bars! Queues for restaurants! Mask wearing down to about 50% on the Tube, and non-existent elsewhere. Young Londoners have decided that Covid is Fucking Over and quite frankly I don't blame them
While you claim others are making political points, you are doing the same yourself. Only you seem to think you’re not.
Looking for the finest French restaurants? Go to London, not Paris
Not only that, but the Italian restaurants are better than Rome’s. Really, why bother going abroad?
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/oct/14/looking-for-the-finest-french-restaurants-go-to-london-not-paris-jay-rayner
@MarqueeMark is an advocate of tidal power.
@squareroot2 is an RL fan. (Even if it is St Helens).
@HYUFD has forgotten more about polling than I'll ever know.
@DavidL is a Dylan fan.
@Philip_Thompson is quite woke. And thinks the youth get screwed over.
@MaxPB ditto. Apart from the woke bit.
I could probably do this for all the righties on here.
Then you think. Mmm. Maybe it is worth listening to them on other subjects . If only to decide they are actually very wrong.
But, at least you give them a hearing.
Great food. Service a bit iffy. Had to take out a second mortgage.
None of them are in Rome.
https://twitter.com/metpoliceuk/status/1449150762332925952?s=20
And agree, Soho is back. Buzzing tonight
Agree on the second mortgage. I think you have to avoid the wine. If you like red wine, you can’t get a bottle for less than £60
Let me know when you're next in "the 'Ho" and we can have a martini
I just made that up. "The Ho". I like it
Afghanistan was still largely Taliban free when he left office and there were no further terror attacks on US soil after 9/11 on his watch.
He also avoided the collapse of the US economy in 2008 in the GFC.
Bush's legacy looks a lot better now than it did then given what has occurred since
I was trying to work out why history might compare Barack Obama to a Radio 1 DJ from the 80s known as "the Hairy Cornflake", now slightly sullied by allegations connected to #MeToo but not entirely proven