Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
I don't think it is antisemitism (although some of it probably is). I actually think there is an element of holding democracies and, dare I say it, white people to higher standards.
As it happens I think the Israeli government is behaving pretty badly and stupidly. China generally gets a free pass because sadly it's priced in.
I would agree with that up to a point. Jews are like us. They should know better. There is an underlying racism in the value judgments but the obsessive focus on the problems of that benighted land also seems to be driven by anti-Semitism.
And I agree about the Israeli government. They are acting like a domestic abuser: "look what you made me do now".
Are not Arabs Semitic? That's why the Iranians always insist they are 'not Arabs".
It is however, completely unrealistic. It would be like expecting the Poles and Czechs to accept that millions of Germans should return to Pomerania, Silesia, and the Sudetenland.
Expecting the Palestinian problem simply to disappear is equally unrealistic.
The article might present no compelling solutions, but it does give a rather more balanced narrative about how we arrived at the present situation.
The best drama on this was Kominsky’s The Promise, which was shown on Channel Four about ten years back I believe, and is still available on DVD. It cleverly intersperses a narrative from the time of the end of the British mandate with a modern day story, to illustrate the source of many of the current day problems. It is particularly noteworthy how some of the behaviours of the Israelis - for example blowing up the family homes of known terrorists - originated from how the British army dealt with early Jewish terrorists.
Careful, you’ll be getting a visit from Dowden’s history police.
Thinking only of the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, do your own sympathies lie more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?
DK: 36% Neither: 34% Palestine: 24% Israel: 9% Breaking it down by politics, 19% of Con voters' sympathies lie with Israel, 16% of Leave, 22% of 65+.
And similar things are happening in the US, you can already see it in the Dem party. What happens when US support gets cut off?
So 76% don't know, don't care, or say Israel?
I think that Israel can live with that. Maybe British voters simply give a shit about issue that affect Britons? Maybe banging on about Israel isn't an election winning platform?
I agree that Israel/Palestine isn't the sort of platform that wins elections, or even really gets people aside in the UK (and have said so *many* times).
However the point I was making is that Israel exists at the mercy of the US, and if they want to retain that (increasingly wavering) support, maybe they should stop murdering hundreds of children because of an internal power struggle (coalition building).
Every death in this conflict, be they Palestinian or Israeli, can be laid directly at Netanyahu's feet.
Yes every death can be laid directly at Netanyahu's feet. Not the terrorist group Hamas that has been launching thousands of rockets at Israel, they're not a part of the story at all are they? Its all the evil Jew's fault isn't it to you? There's only one side in the wrong and it better be the Jew because terrorists firing thousands of rockets don't cause deaths.
Give it a break. Maybe terrorists should stop launching thousands of rockets at the only Jewish state in the world? Maybe those terrorists should recognise Israel's right to exist? Even Biden rightly recognises Israel has a right to defend its own existance.
Wow, that is an utterly disgraceful post, and I hope that the mods look at it, for accusing someone of anti-semitism with absolutely no grounds is reprehensible, and minimisation of the unfortunately very real anti-semitism issues that British Jews have to deal with day in, day out.
Your purposeful muddling up of criticism of Israel and Judaism as a whole is no better than those anti-semites who make the same conflation and start threatening British Jews in the UK.
Netanyahu provoked this conflict in order to collapse the change coalition that involved centrist Israeli parties and Israeli Arab parties that was a couple of days away from ousting him, that is an indisputable fact.
Israel absolutely has a right to exist, and a right to defend themselves, but they also have an obligation to be responsible. We're not in the 1960/70s where Israel is a small state fighting for survival against much larger enemies, Israel is now the predominant regional power, and part of being a responsible regional power isn't using provoking conflict with a desperately poor group of people in order to shore up your domestic position, and then deciding to murder hundreds of them in order to prove a point.
If the shoe fits. I stand by what I wrote and if the Mods want to look into it then let them.
If you're prepared to claim only one side is responsible for every single death in this conflict, rather than there being two sides to the story, then I can only see one reason to take that position.
Israel is a small state, a tiny state, fighting for its survival and Hamas (and it's backers like Iran) literally deny Israel's right to exist. If Israel acted like the Arabs and denied the Gazans right to exist this dispute would have ended decades ago.
In this conflict, i.e. the one that kicked off because Netanyahu needed to collapse the pan Arab-Israeli coalition assembled against him? Yes I can see how those brown people are to blame for it, rather than the person who instigated it, gains the most from it, and will likely cement himself in power because of it.
Israel isn't a small state fighting for their survival anymore, they're the predominant regional power with by far the best military, and the Palestinians are a bunch of largely defenceless people living under an autocratic terrorist state, the only people who gain from that are the top echelons of Hamas and the Israeli right.
Anyway, for the record, your type of conflation of Israel and the Jewish religion as a whole marks you out as a reprehensible person, and a significant contributor towards the anti-semitism British Jews regularly face by morons who listen to your Israel = Judaism conclusions.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
I'd argue that a large part of it is because we fund the Israeli state, so it's something that the UK and US (well, only really the US) could prevent, but choose not to (I suppose Yemen also falls into that bucket, which is why there's still a lot of talk about it).
"We" don't fund Israel. At all. We do give some funding to the Palestinian authorities which no doubt helps to support the German car industry. We have no say, no power, no control, no influence. And yet so many are obsessed.
Breaking down Chameleon's link by the politics he chose:
88% of Con voters say Israel, Don't Know or Neither. 87% of Leave voters say Israel, Don't Know or Neither 85% of 65+ say Israel, Don't Know or Neither.
I suspect Israel can live with that. Maybe part and parcel of why having your MPs banging on about Palestine all the time doesn't win elections.
You can lose an election by what you say and do on this issue but you can't win one. The don't knows and the neithers must include all the 'boths', all three of which are entirely rational positions.
Politicians are limited in their options about a quarrel in which both sides are right and there are no solutions and the good people on both sides are mostly silent.
Indeed which is why politicians like Boris and Biden say the right thing "we want to see a de-escalation", "we want to see peace" - but Chameleon's dreams that Israel is going to be torn down by western public opinion - nope. The typical voter in the west rightly thinks its a mess and hopes it can be sorted out and goes on with their own lives and their own worries.
Please stop putting words into my mouth. I entirely support Israel's right to exist, however Israel needs to act responsibly. And part of acting responsibly is to not provoke conflict with Palestinians in order to solve domestic political issues, and then responding by killing hundreds of them because they can.
Israel didn't provoke the conflict.
I'm not sure that's quite true. Israel is far from the "good guy" in this conflict but neither are they the pantomime villain some people make them out to be.
Breaking down Chameleon's link by the politics he chose:
88% of Con voters say Israel, Don't Know or Neither. 87% of Leave voters say Israel, Don't Know or Neither 85% of 65+ say Israel, Don't Know or Neither.
I suspect Israel can live with that. Maybe part and parcel of why having your MPs banging on about Palestine all the time doesn't win elections.
You can lose an election by what you say and do on this issue but you can't win one. The don't knows and the neithers must include all the 'boths', all three of which are entirely rational positions.
Politicians are limited in their options about a quarrel in which both sides are right and there are no solutions and the good people on both sides are mostly silent.
Indeed which is why politicians like Boris and Biden say the right thing "we want to see a de-escalation", "we want to see peace" - but Chameleon's dreams that Israel is going to be torn down by western public opinion - nope. The typical voter in the west rightly thinks its a mess and hopes it can be sorted out and goes on with their own lives and their own worries.
Please stop putting words into my mouth. I entirely support Israel's right to exist, however Israel needs to act responsibly. And part of acting responsibly is to not provoke conflict with Palestinians in order to solve domestic political issues, and then responding by killing hundreds of them because they can.
Israel didn't provoke the conflict.
I'm not sure that's quite true. Israel is far from the "good guy" in this conflict but neither are they the pantomime villain some people make them out to be.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
I don't think it is antisemitism (although some of it probably is). I actually think there is an element of holding democracies and, dare I say it, white people to higher standards.
As it happens I think the Israeli government is behaving pretty badly and stupidly. China generally gets a free pass because sadly it's priced in.
I would agree with that up to a point. Jews are like us. They should know better. There is an underlying racism in the value judgments but the obsessive focus on the problems of that benighted land also seems to be driven by anti-Semitism.
And I agree about the Israeli government. They are acting like a domestic abuser: "look what you made me do now".
Are not Arabs Semitic? That's why the Iranians always insist they are 'not Arabs".
You want to be careful with that phrasing....
"Arabs are Semites, therefor we can't be anti-semitic" is the line used by some truly awful people in the region.
What grates me is the complete lack of critical thinking on Twitter and other social media sites. Every arab source is automatically completely true whilst every Israeli source is immediately written off as "Mossad propaganda".
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
If you’re in Eurovision, you should be held to a higher standard - FACT. I don’t think I’m even joking.
The problem is because there's so many Israeli settlements in the West Bank now — that is near impossible.
That's why I said Israel should keep the "settlements" (which are primarily in areas that Israel annexed anyway) and the rest of the West Bank should return to Jordan.
But the Jordanians don't want that because easier to have the conflict with Israel than to resolve the problems they created by annexing the West Bank in 48.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
If you’re in Eurovision, you should be held to a higher standard - FACT. I don’t think I’m even joking.
Dominic Cummings @Dominic2306 I’ve got the only copy of a crucial historical document from covid decision-making. Should I 1/ give it to the Cmte next week / put on blog, b/ auction it as an Ethereum NFT & give the ETH to a covid families charity?
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
If you’re in Eurovision, you should be held to a higher standard - FACT. I don’t think I’m even joking.
You also should be able to sing, apparently, but....
The problem is because there's so many Israeli settlements in the West Bank now — that is near impossible.
That's why I said Israel should keep the "settlements" (which are primarily in areas that Israel annexed anyway) and the rest of the West Bank should return to Jordan.
But the Jordanians don't want that because easier to have the conflict with Israel than to resolve the problems they created by annexing the West Bank in 48.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
If you’re in Eurovision, you should be held to a higher standard - FACT. I don’t think I’m even joking.
Some people think it was NATO that ended the Balkan wars, but it was actually being able to give each other douze points at Eurovision.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
I don't think it is antisemitism (although some of it probably is). I actually think there is an element of holding democracies and, dare I say it, white people to higher standards.
As it happens I think the Israeli government is behaving pretty badly and stupidly. China generally gets a free pass because sadly it's priced in.
See also George Floyd and other victims of the US police, and Apartheid South Africa in decades gone by.
Both democracies, both held to a higher standard than non-democracies.
Mr. Sandpit, aye, but a rare useful comment from one of the commentators a few races ago has stuck with me: there are now two safety cars, with branding. We're going to see more rather than fewer safety cars for corporate nonsense reasons, I think.
Thinking only of the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, do your own sympathies lie more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?
DK: 36% Neither: 34% Palestine: 24% Israel: 9% Breaking it down by politics, 19% of Con voters' sympathies lie with Israel, 16% of Leave, 22% of 65+.
And similar things are happening in the US, you can already see it in the Dem party. What happens when US support gets cut off?
So 76% don't know, don't care, or say Israel?
I think that Israel can live with that. Maybe British voters simply give a shit about issue that affect Britons? Maybe banging on about Israel isn't an election winning platform?
I agree that Israel/Palestine isn't the sort of platform that wins elections, or even really gets people aside in the UK (and have said so *many* times).
However the point I was making is that Israel exists at the mercy of the US, and if they want to retain that (increasingly wavering) support, maybe they should stop murdering hundreds of children because of an internal power struggle (coalition building).
Every death in this conflict, be they Palestinian or Israeli, can be laid directly at Netanyahu's feet.
Yes every death can be laid directly at Netanyahu's feet. Not the terrorist group Hamas that has been launching thousands of rockets at Israel, they're not a part of the story at all are they? Its all the evil Jew's fault isn't it to you? There's only one side in the wrong and it better be the Jew because terrorists firing thousands of rockets don't cause deaths.
Give it a break. Maybe terrorists should stop launching thousands of rockets at the only Jewish state in the world? Maybe those terrorists should recognise Israel's right to exist? Even Biden rightly recognises Israel has a right to defend its own existance.
Wow, that is an utterly disgraceful post, and I hope that the mods look at it, for accusing someone of anti-semitism with absolutely no grounds is reprehensible, and minimisation of the unfortunately very real anti-semitism issues that British Jews have to deal with day in, day out.
Your purposeful muddling up of criticism of Israel and Judaism as a whole is no better than those anti-semites who make the same conflation and start threatening British Jews in the UK.
Netanyahu provoked this conflict in order to collapse the change coalition that involved centrist Israeli parties and Israeli Arab parties that was a couple of days away from ousting him, that is an indisputable fact.
Israel absolutely has a right to exist, and a right to defend themselves, but they also have an obligation to be responsible. We're not in the 1960/70s where Israel is a small state fighting for survival against much larger enemies, Israel is now the predominant regional power, and part of being a responsible regional power isn't using provoking conflict with a desperately poor group of people in order to shore up your domestic position, and then deciding to murder hundreds of them in order to prove a point.
If the shoe fits. I stand by what I wrote and if the Mods want to look into it then let them.
If you're prepared to claim only one side is responsible for every single death in this conflict, rather than there being two sides to the story, then I can only see one reason to take that position.
Israel is a small state, a tiny state, fighting for its survival and Hamas (and it's backers like Iran) literally deny Israel's right to exist. If Israel acted like the Arabs and denied the Gazans right to exist this dispute would have ended decades ago.
In this conflict, i.e. the one that kicked off because Netanyahu needed to collapse the pan Arab-Israeli coalition assembled against him? Yes I can see how those brown people are to blame for it, rather than the person who instigated it, gains the most from it, and will likely cement himself in power because of it.
Israel isn't a small state fighting for their survival anymore, they're the predominant regional power with by far the best military, and the Palestinians are a bunch of largely defenceless people living under an autocratic terrorist state, the only people who gain from that are the top echelons of Hamas and the Israeli right.
Anyway, for the record, your type of conflation of Israel and the Jewish religion as a whole marks you out as a reprehensible person, and a significant contributor towards the anti-semitism British Jews regularly face by morons who listen to your Israel = Judaism conclusions.
Holding Israel uniquely to a standard you don't hold anyone else to is recognised, rightly, as anti-Semitism.
Israel is not the only predominant power in the region. Iran is also a power in the region, a power that like Hamas doesn't recognise Israel's right to exist and seeks Israel's destruction. A power that funds and provides weaponry to Hamas and Hezbollah with the stated aim of wiping Israel off the map. So yes the Israelis are quite literally fighting for their very survival against powers that openly say they are seeking the destruction of the state of Israel from sea to sea.
So if you have a non anti-Semitic reason for thinking people who are literally seeking to destroy the only Jewish state in the world have zero responsibility for any deaths in this conflict and 100% of all deaths are solely Netanyahu's responsibility then I'd love to hear it.
The problem is because there's so many Israeli settlements in the West Bank now — that is near impossible.
That's why I said Israel should keep the "settlements" (which are primarily in areas that Israel annexed anyway) and the rest of the West Bank should return to Jordan.
But the Jordanians don't want that because easier to have the conflict with Israel than to resolve the problems they created by annexing the West Bank in 48.
It is however, completely unrealistic. It would be like expecting the Poles and Czechs to accept that millions of Germans should return to Pomerania, Silesia, and the Sudetenland.
Expecting the Palestinian problem simply to disappear is equally unrealistic.
The article might present no compelling solutions, but it does give a rather more balanced narrative about how we arrived at the present situation.
The best drama on this was Kominsky’s The Promise, which was shown on Channel Four about ten years back I believe, and is still available on DVD. It cleverly intersperses a narrative from the time of the end of the British mandate with a modern day story, to illustrate the source of many of the current day problems. It is particularly noteworthy how some of the behaviours of the Israelis - for example blowing up the family homes of known terrorists - originated from how the British army dealt with early Jewish terrorists.
Careful, you’ll be getting a visit from Dowden’s history police.
"Are you now or have you ever been woke? Answer me!"
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
I don't think it is antisemitism (although some of it probably is). I actually think there is an element of holding democracies and, dare I say it, white people to higher standards.
As it happens I think the Israeli government is behaving pretty badly and stupidly. China generally gets a free pass because sadly it's priced in.
I would agree with that up to a point. Jews are like us. They should know better. There is an underlying racism in the value judgments but the obsessive focus on the problems of that benighted land also seems to be driven by anti-Semitism.
And I agree about the Israeli government. They are acting like a domestic abuser: "look what you made me do now".
Are not Arabs Semitic? That's why the Iranians always insist they are 'not Arabs".
You want to be careful with that phrasing....
"Arabs are Semites, therefor we can't be anti-semitic" is the line used by some truly awful people in the region.
Indeed. And as others here are demonstrating, as the man said 'words mean what I want them' to mean. Apart from the remark about 'whose responsibility' going back at least 100 years, and probably a lot longer, I'm watching a private fight. AIUI, too, under the Ottoman Empire, apart from rates of taxation varying, Jews Christians (of whatever sort) and Moslems (ditto) got along reasonably well.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
If you’re in Eurovision, you should be held to a higher standard - FACT. I don’t think I’m even joking.
Some people think it was NATO that ended the Balkan wars, but it was actually being able to give each other douze points at Eurovision.
Thinking only of the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, do your own sympathies lie more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?
DK: 36% Neither: 34% Palestine: 24% Israel: 9% Breaking it down by politics, 19% of Con voters' sympathies lie with Israel, 16% of Leave, 22% of 65+.
And similar things are happening in the US, you can already see it in the Dem party. What happens when US support gets cut off?
So 76% don't know, don't care, or say Israel?
I think that Israel can live with that. Maybe British voters simply give a shit about issue that affect Britons? Maybe banging on about Israel isn't an election winning platform?
I agree that Israel/Palestine isn't the sort of platform that wins elections, or even really gets people aside in the UK (and have said so *many* times).
However the point I was making is that Israel exists at the mercy of the US, and if they want to retain that (increasingly wavering) support, maybe they should stop murdering hundreds of children because of an internal power struggle (coalition building).
Every death in this conflict, be they Palestinian or Israeli, can be laid directly at Netanyahu's feet.
Yes every death can be laid directly at Netanyahu's feet. Not the terrorist group Hamas that has been launching thousands of rockets at Israel, they're not a part of the story at all are they? Its all the evil Jew's fault isn't it to you? There's only one side in the wrong and it better be the Jew because terrorists firing thousands of rockets don't cause deaths.
Give it a break. Maybe terrorists should stop launching thousands of rockets at the only Jewish state in the world? Maybe those terrorists should recognise Israel's right to exist? Even Biden rightly recognises Israel has a right to defend its own existance.
Wow, that is an utterly disgraceful post, and I hope that the mods look at it, for accusing someone of anti-semitism with absolutely no grounds is reprehensible, and minimisation of the unfortunately very real anti-semitism issues that British Jews have to deal with day in, day out.
Your purposeful muddling up of criticism of Israel and Judaism as a whole is no better than those anti-semites who make the same conflation and start threatening British Jews in the UK.
Netanyahu provoked this conflict in order to collapse the change coalition that involved centrist Israeli parties and Israeli Arab parties that was a couple of days away from ousting him, that is an indisputable fact.
Israel absolutely has a right to exist, and a right to defend themselves, but they also have an obligation to be responsible. We're not in the 1960/70s where Israel is a small state fighting for survival against much larger enemies, Israel is now the predominant regional power, and part of being a responsible regional power isn't using provoking conflict with a desperately poor group of people in order to shore up your domestic position, and then deciding to murder hundreds of them in order to prove a point.
If the shoe fits. I stand by what I wrote and if the Mods want to look into it then let them.
If you're prepared to claim only one side is responsible for every single death in this conflict, rather than there being two sides to the story, then I can only see one reason to take that position.
Israel is a small state, a tiny state, fighting for its survival and Hamas (and it's backers like Iran) literally deny Israel's right to exist. If Israel acted like the Arabs and denied the Gazans right to exist this dispute would have ended decades ago.
In this conflict, i.e. the one that kicked off because Netanyahu needed to collapse the pan Arab-Israeli coalition assembled against him? Yes I can see how those brown people are to blame for it, rather than the person who instigated it, gains the most from it, and will likely cement himself in power because of it.
Israel isn't a small state fighting for their survival anymore, they're the predominant regional power with by far the best military, and the Palestinians are a bunch of largely defenceless people living under an autocratic terrorist state, the only people who gain from that are the top echelons of Hamas and the Israeli right.
Anyway, for the record, your type of conflation of Israel and the Jewish religion as a whole marks you out as a reprehensible person, and a significant contributor towards the anti-semitism British Jews regularly face by morons who listen to your Israel = Judaism conclusions.
Holding Israel uniquely to a standard you don't hold anyone else to is recognised, rightly, as anti-Semitism.
Israel is not the only predominant power in the region. Iran is also a power in the region, a power that like Hamas doesn't recognise Israel's right to exist and seeks Israel's destruction. A power that funds and provides weaponry to Hamas and Hezbollah with the stated aim of wiping Israel off the map. So yes the Israelis are quite literally fighting for their very survival against powers that openly say they are seeking the destruction of the state of Israel from sea to sea.
So if you have a non anti-Semitic reason for thinking people who are literally seeking to destroy the only Jewish state in the world have zero responsibility for any deaths in this conflict and 100% of all deaths are solely Netanyahu's responsibility then I'd love to hear it.
In my experience, every time you have a debate with western Palestinian "supporters" it usually ends with a comment either explicitly or by implication stating that Israel has no right to exist. That just isn't realistic.
And the problem is that the more Israel feels under threat by its neighbours, the more it is going to "lash out".
If Britain was surrounded by enemies who literally wanted to wipe you out, you can rest assured our electorate would be desperate for security.
The media today really are fighting a war against the rolling back of lockdown.
Every scrap of anti-freeing evidence and rhetoric is being seized upon and pitched in to the worst kind of doom-laden headlines and articles.
The Mail's headline of '21 June hopes fade' is based solely on Peston's totally unattributed ITV report, which comes from a SAGE source anyway and not a government source.
Its quite remarkable stuff.
From the government? Nothing. Nothing except 'we rule nothing out'
IF I had put my body on the line for these cowards, I would be incensed.
The problem is because there's so many Israeli settlements in the West Bank now — that is near impossible.
That's why I said Israel should keep the "settlements" (which are primarily in areas that Israel annexed anyway) and the rest of the West Bank should return to Jordan.
But the Jordanians don't want that because easier to have the conflict with Israel than to resolve the problems they created by annexing the West Bank in 48.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
I don't think it is antisemitism (although some of it probably is). I actually think there is an element of holding democracies and, dare I say it, white people to higher standards.
As it happens I think the Israeli government is behaving pretty badly and stupidly. China generally gets a free pass because sadly it's priced in.
See also George Floyd and other victims of the US police, and Apartheid South Africa in decades gone by.
Both democracies, both held to a higher standard than non-democracies.
Too young to remember Apartheid South Africa, but it does annoy me how much American news we get. I guess it's because we (just about) share the same language.
The media today really are fighting a war against the rolling back of lockdown.
Every scrap of anti-freeing evidence and rhetoric is being pitched in to the worst kind of doom-laden headlines and articles
The Mail's headline of 21 June hopes fade' is based solely on Peston's totally unattributed ITV report, which comes from a SAGE source anyway and not a government source.
Its quite remarkable stuff.
So you've come around to recognising it's media bullshit and the unlocking is going to proceed?
The problem is because there's so many Israeli settlements in the West Bank now — that is near impossible.
That's why I said Israel should keep the "settlements" (which are primarily in areas that Israel annexed anyway) and the rest of the West Bank should return to Jordan.
But the Jordanians don't want that because easier to have the conflict with Israel than to resolve the problems they created by annexing the West Bank in 48.
It is however, completely unrealistic. It would be like expecting the Poles and Czechs to accept that millions of Germans should return to Pomerania, Silesia, and the Sudetenland.
Expecting the Palestinian problem simply to disappear is equally unrealistic.
The article might present no compelling solutions, but it does give a rather more balanced narrative about how we arrived at the present situation.
The best drama on this was Kominsky’s The Promise, which was shown on Channel Four about ten years back I believe, and is still available on DVD. It cleverly intersperses a narrative from the time of the end of the British mandate with a modern day story, to illustrate the source of many of the current day problems. It is particularly noteworthy how some of the behaviours of the Israelis - for example blowing up the family homes of known terrorists - originated from how the British army dealt with early Jewish terrorists.
Careful, you’ll be getting a visit from Dowden’s history police.
"Are you now or have you ever been woke? Answer me!"
That’s somewhat ironic when the McCartyhism is not coming from Dowden but the so called ‘woke’ brigade.
Thinking only of the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, do your own sympathies lie more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?
DK: 36% Neither: 34% Palestine: 24% Israel: 9% Breaking it down by politics, 19% of Con voters' sympathies lie with Israel, 16% of Leave, 22% of 65+.
And similar things are happening in the US, you can already see it in the Dem party. What happens when US support gets cut off?
So 76% don't know, don't care, or say Israel?
I think that Israel can live with that. Maybe British voters simply give a shit about issue that affect Britons? Maybe banging on about Israel isn't an election winning platform?
I agree that Israel/Palestine isn't the sort of platform that wins elections, or even really gets people aside in the UK (and have said so *many* times).
However the point I was making is that Israel exists at the mercy of the US, and if they want to retain that (increasingly wavering) support, maybe they should stop murdering hundreds of children because of an internal power struggle (coalition building).
Every death in this conflict, be they Palestinian or Israeli, can be laid directly at Netanyahu's feet.
Yes every death can be laid directly at Netanyahu's feet. Not the terrorist group Hamas that has been launching thousands of rockets at Israel, they're not a part of the story at all are they? Its all the evil Jew's fault isn't it to you? There's only one side in the wrong and it better be the Jew because terrorists firing thousands of rockets don't cause deaths.
Give it a break. Maybe terrorists should stop launching thousands of rockets at the only Jewish state in the world? Maybe those terrorists should recognise Israel's right to exist? Even Biden rightly recognises Israel has a right to defend its own existance.
Wow, that is an utterly disgraceful post, and I hope that the mods look at it, for accusing someone of anti-semitism with absolutely no grounds is reprehensible, and minimisation of the unfortunately very real anti-semitism issues that British Jews have to deal with day in, day out.
Your purposeful muddling up of criticism of Israel and Judaism as a whole is no better than those anti-semites who make the same conflation and start threatening British Jews in the UK.
Netanyahu provoked this conflict in order to collapse the change coalition that involved centrist Israeli parties and Israeli Arab parties that was a couple of days away from ousting him, that is an indisputable fact.
Israel absolutely has a right to exist, and a right to defend themselves, but they also have an obligation to be responsible. We're not in the 1960/70s where Israel is a small state fighting for survival against much larger enemies, Israel is now the predominant regional power, and part of being a responsible regional power isn't using provoking conflict with a desperately poor group of people in order to shore up your domestic position, and then deciding to murder hundreds of them in order to prove a point.
If the shoe fits. I stand by what I wrote and if the Mods want to look into it then let them.
If you're prepared to claim only one side is responsible for every single death in this conflict, rather than there being two sides to the story, then I can only see one reason to take that position.
Israel is a small state, a tiny state, fighting for its survival and Hamas (and it's backers like Iran) literally deny Israel's right to exist. If Israel acted like the Arabs and denied the Gazans right to exist this dispute would have ended decades ago.
In this conflict, i.e. the one that kicked off because Netanyahu needed to collapse the pan Arab-Israeli coalition assembled against him? Yes I can see how those brown people are to blame for it, rather than the person who instigated it, gains the most from it, and will likely cement himself in power because of it.
Israel isn't a small state fighting for their survival anymore, they're the predominant regional power with by far the best military, and the Palestinians are a bunch of largely defenceless people living under an autocratic terrorist state, the only people who gain from that are the top echelons of Hamas and the Israeli right.
Anyway, for the record, your type of conflation of Israel and the Jewish religion as a whole marks you out as a reprehensible person, and a significant contributor towards the anti-semitism British Jews regularly face by morons who listen to your Israel = Judaism conclusions.
Holding Israel uniquely to a standard you don't hold anyone else to is recognised, rightly, as anti-Semitism.
Israel is not the only predominant power in the region. Iran is also a power in the region, a power that like Hamas doesn't recognise Israel's right to exist and seeks Israel's destruction. A power that funds and provides weaponry to Hamas and Hezbollah with the stated aim of wiping Israel off the map. So yes the Israelis are quite literally fighting for their very survival against powers that openly say they are seeking the destruction of the state of Israel from sea to sea.
So if you have a non anti-Semitic reason for thinking people who are literally seeking to destroy the only Jewish state in the world have zero responsibility for any deaths in this conflict and 100% of all deaths are solely Netanyahu's responsibility then I'd love to hear it.
In my experience, every time you have a debate with western Palestinian "supporters" it usually ends with a comment either explicitly or by implication stating that Israel has no right to exist. That just isn't realistic.
And the problem is that the more Israel feels under threat by its neighbours, the more it is going to "lash out".
If Britain was surrounded by enemies who literally wanted to wipe you out, you can rest assured our electorate would be desperate for security.
Of course.
Recognise Israel's right to exist and this situation could be de-escalated dramatically.
Manufactured ignorance like that adds very little to the debate.
If you are selected as Labour candidate for Bootle or Tory candidate for Sevenoaks, I’d say your job is as good as sewn up for life. Your voters will never be canvassed and will count themselves lucky if they ever see an election leaflet, probably just the one delivered by the Royal Mail at taxpayers’ expense.
As someone in Bootle, I can confirm that in 2019 we received zero leaflets except the taxpayers expense one, no one knocked on the door and excepting a few posters in a very few windows, you wouldn't have known there was an election on at all during December 2019.
Indeed, earlier this month was the same. The local Lib Dem lady put in a huge effort (three leaflets and a personal visit), Labour did nothing and the Lib Dems got wiped out again, managing second. And this was in Victoria ward (Sefton) which isn't even deepest darkest Bootle proper.
The media today really are fighting a war against the rolling back of lockdown.
Every scrap of anti-freeing evidence and rhetoric is being pitched in to the worst kind of doom-laden headlines and articles
The Mail's headline of 21 June hopes fade' is based solely on Peston's totally unattributed ITV report, which comes from a SAGE source anyway and not a government source.
Its quite remarkable stuff.
So you've come around to recognising it's media bullshit and the unlocking is going to proceed?
Welcome aboard. Glad we can finally agree.
The government is ruling nothing out.
Perhaps it is time they started ruling things out....?
The problem is because there's so many Israeli settlements in the West Bank now — that is near impossible.
That's why I said Israel should keep the "settlements" (which are primarily in areas that Israel annexed anyway) and the rest of the West Bank should return to Jordan.
But the Jordanians don't want that because easier to have the conflict with Israel than to resolve the problems they created by annexing the West Bank in 48.
Logical solution to me is that the wall becomes the new border.
And what about all those Israeli settlements beyond the "wall"?
They would if I was in charge have the option of living in Jordan, like the Palestinians living in Israel, or moving.
The fact that Israel chose not to extend the wall to their community should have been a warning that was coming.
I think that's a fair compromise. The issue is that Israelis are moving to the West Bank specifically to prevent a continuous Palestinian state in the "West Bank".
This isn't new. My mum went to a Jewish school in London in the 70s and they were basically indoctrinated to believe that they should move to Israel, more specifically settlements in the West Bank.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
If you’re in Eurovision, you should be held to a higher standard - FACT. I don’t think I’m even joking.
Some people think it was NATO that ended the Balkan wars, but it was actually being able to give each other douze points at Eurovision.
Maybe that can resolve the Scottish question and get the tanks from the Essix Massiv to stand down.
Scotland can have a second independence referendum whenever they choose, but if they leave they commit to giving us douze points for douze years.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
Is it really to the exclusion of all else ? There's pretty regular discussion of both China and the Saudi/Yemen situation, and there were extremely extended discussions of Syria back when intervention was a realistic possibility.
Apart from the blindspot for a great deal of what goes on in sub-Saharan Africa, I think you're setting up a straw man.
The media today really are fighting a war against the rolling back of lockdown.
Every scrap of anti-freeing evidence and rhetoric is being pitched in to the worst kind of doom-laden headlines and articles
The Mail's headline of 21 June hopes fade' is based solely on Peston's totally unattributed ITV report, which comes from a SAGE source anyway and not a government source.
Its quite remarkable stuff.
So you've come around to recognising it's media bullshit and the unlocking is going to proceed?
Welcome aboard. Glad we can finally agree.
No, I think there's a subtle distinction here. It's media bullshit <> unlocking is going to proceed. If enough media pressure can be brought to bear, unlocking will not proceed. We are in thrall to media bullshit.
From Friday Denmark's opening up begins in earnest - we are well behind on vaccinations but there is a clear agreement across parties that now the vaccinations are happening we need to be free again - our 'coronapas' system for using restaurants etc will be withdrawn by August (except for travel), masks are going and there are sunset clauses for all corona related regulations - there is a determination to normalise, the only people opposed to the pace of unlocking are the Nye Borgerlige - the people who think the Dansk Folkparti aren't nationalist enough and want all rules removed now.
The UK mustn't allow itself to be scared into throwing away the benefit of a great vaccination programme by overreacting to new variants.
Most of us aren't, but sadly we are nowhere near the levers of power...
It's all very well to attack the Americans for their weird systems, but in the UK in 2019 the SNP got 1.25 m votes and 48 seats; the LDs got 3.67 m votes and 11 seats.
Gerrymandering takes many forms. I am sure Nicola thinks something should be done about it.
Whilst that is, imo at least, undemocratic as well, the fact it is the unfair result of a legacy system not designed by the beneficiary puts it in a completely different category to a new system designed by and for the beneficiary.
It's also a concentration of resources thing. If the Lib Dems had been able to concentrate all of their resources south of Watford Gap then they might have won more seats. Of course they can't because they have aspirations to be a national party in the way the SNP don't
The SNP are a national party. The clue's in the name.
Careful, by that logic you'll be saying the LDs are liberal and democratic, the Conservatives conservative and Labour working class!
(Plus all the 'Democratic' Republic of... countries...)
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
Is it really to the exclusion of all else ? There's pretty regular discussion of both China and the Saudi/Yemen situation, and there were extremely extended discussions of Syria back when intervention was a realistic possibility.
Apart from the blindspot for a great deal of what goes on in sub-Saharan Africa, I think you're setting up a straw man.
When it kicks off in Israel, our media turn up and present the news from Jerusalem. I don't see that happening with the other examples.
The problem is because there's so many Israeli settlements in the West Bank now — that is near impossible.
That's why I said Israel should keep the "settlements" (which are primarily in areas that Israel annexed anyway) and the rest of the West Bank should return to Jordan.
But the Jordanians don't want that because easier to have the conflict with Israel than to resolve the problems they created by annexing the West Bank in 48.
Logical solution to me is that the wall becomes the new border.
And what about all those Israeli settlements beyond the "wall"?
They would if I was in charge have the option of living in Jordan, like the Palestinians living in Israel, or moving.
The fact that Israel chose not to extend the wall to their community should have been a warning that was coming.
I think that's a fair compromise. The issue is that Israelis are moving to the West Bank specifically to prevent a continuous Palestinian state in the "West Bank".
This isn't new. My mum went to a Jewish school in London in the 70s and they were basically indoctrinated to believe that they should move to Israel, more specifically settlements in the West Bank.
From a strategic PoV the "settlements" make sense, especially in and around East Jerusalem. Which of course Israel has annexed, so from their persective calling them settlements is really pejorative, as far as they're concerned its no more a settlement than Persimmon Homes in the red wall turning seats blue in the UK.
But the Israeli government chose the location of the wall and they did so for strategic reasons too. Anything on the wrong side of the wall really isn't the right place to be building a settlement.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
Is it really to the exclusion of all else ? There's pretty regular discussion of both China and the Saudi/Yemen situation, and there were extremely extended discussions of Syria back when intervention was a realistic possibility.
Apart from the blindspot for a great deal of what goes on in sub-Saharan Africa, I think you're setting up a straw man.
So when did you last see people driving around with Uighur flags on their cars?
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
If you’re in Eurovision, you should be held to a higher standard - FACT. I don’t think I’m even joking.
Some people think it was NATO that ended the Balkan wars, but it was actually being able to give each other douze points at Eurovision.
Maybe that can resolve the Scottish question and get the tanks from the Essix Massiv to stand down.
Scotland can have a second independence referendum whenever they choose, but if they leave they commit to giving us douze points for douze years.
Eurovision Transition period.
We only got 3 points from Ireland in 2019, even Italy got 5 points from the Irish, so no guarantees there
Manufactured ignorance like that adds very little to the debate.
If you are selected as Labour candidate for Bootle or Tory candidate for Sevenoaks, I’d say your job is as good as sewn up for life. Your voters will never be canvassed and will count themselves lucky if they ever see an election leaflet, probably just the one delivered by the Royal Mail at taxpayers’ expense.
As someone in Bootle, I can confirm that in 2019 we received zero leaflets except the taxpayers expense one, no one knocked on the door and excepting a few posters in a very few windows, you wouldn't have known there was an election on at all during December 2019.
Indeed, earlier this month was the same. The local Lib Dem lady put in a huge effort (three leaflets and a personal visit), Labour did nothing and the Lib Dems got wiped out again, managing second. And this was in Victoria ward (Sefton) which isn't even deepest darkest Bootle proper.
If you live in a safe ward or safe parliamentary seat you won't get anything beyond the election address as the activists will all be leafletting and canvassing in the marginal wards and marginal seats. If you want more you need to move to a marginal seat, or hope we eventually get PR.
Though IanB2 was wrong about Sevenoaks, the LDs won the Sevenoaks town seat in the county council elections even if rural Sevenoaks stayed Tory
The media today really are fighting a war against the rolling back of lockdown.
Every scrap of anti-freeing evidence and rhetoric is being pitched in to the worst kind of doom-laden headlines and articles
The Mail's headline of 21 June hopes fade' is based solely on Peston's totally unattributed ITV report, which comes from a SAGE source anyway and not a government source.
Its quite remarkable stuff.
So you've come around to recognising it's media bullshit and the unlocking is going to proceed?
Welcome aboard. Glad we can finally agree.
The government is ruling nothing out.
Perhaps it is time they started ruling things out....?
Lets just wait for the data. If in three weeks time cases are spiraling out of control and hospitals are filling up, I'll be happy (ish) to see the next opening on hold for a while. If not, then go ahead. Post 21st June I think the government wants to replace law with guidance for ALL situations. But we shall see.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
If you’re in Eurovision, you should be held to a higher standard - FACT. I don’t think I’m even joking.
Some people think it was NATO that ended the Balkan wars, but it was actually being able to give each other douze points at Eurovision.
Maybe that can resolve the Scottish question and get the tanks from the Essix Massiv to stand down.
Scotland can have a second independence referendum whenever they choose, but if they leave they commit to giving us douze points for douze years.
Eurovision Transition period.
We only got 3 points from Ireland in 2019, even Italy got 5 points from the Irish, so no guarantees there
No wonder the NI protocol doesn't work. With duplicity like that how can you build a relationship?
interesting piece on our current position wrt plague and unlocking.
"SAGE remains seemingly over-influenced by a group of Left-leaning scientists who have been quietly advocating a Zero Covid approach, with little regard for the consequences."
"many have called for a new committee to weigh Sage advice on the risks of lockdown easing against the costs of roadmap delays. It has never materialised."
I see journalist Laura Dodsworth has just published her book "A State of Fear" on how fear was used by the UK government to control us during COVID. I'll download it later but I'm hoping it shines a much-needed light on what I think is the most sinister and worrying aspect of all of this i.e. how behavioral psychology is now embedded in government as a tool to manipulate people to comply in all sorts of policy areas. Another example will no doubt be compliance with the draconian climate change measures to come.
There needs to be much more scrutiny of this IMO. We need a wider range of advisors with differing expert opinion advising government and we need much more transparency on what's behind government messaging. I appreciate that will defeat the effectiveness of the "nudge" but better that than tyranny by the back door.
Disingenuous, there's no index on that image of what the green land refers to, nor on the image in the article. It doesn't show coloured in what areas the settlements compose.
All that land to the East of the Palestinian lands between them and Jordan is it settlements? Or is it empty(ish) providing a buffer between the lands and Jordan - a buffer that wouldn't need to exist in a Palestinian state.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
If you’re in Eurovision, you should be held to a higher standard - FACT. I don’t think I’m even joking.
Some people think it was NATO that ended the Balkan wars, but it was actually being able to give each other douze points at Eurovision.
Maybe that can resolve the Scottish question and get the tanks from the Essix Massiv to stand down.
Scotland can have a second independence referendum whenever they choose, but if they leave they commit to giving us douze points for douze years.
Eurovision Transition period.
We only got 3 points from Ireland in 2019, even Italy got 5 points from the Irish, so no guarantees there
If you don’t encourage us into an uprising after which you execute The Proclaimers on Edinburgh Castle esplanade followed by a bloody war of independence and civil war, we’ll see what we can do on the points front.
Scottish nationalist accuses "peas-in-the-pod" Brexiteers of being "deranged" ho ho. That said, that is a particularly unpleasant tweet even by nationalist (of all stripes) standards.
How do you feel, incidentally, of supporting a party that is so unpleasant that it used to have a leader (and one that got it to where it is today) that was described as a "bully and sex-pest" by his own QC?
Disingenuous, there's no index on that image of what the green land refers to, nor on the image in the article. It doesn't show coloured in what areas the settlements compose.
All that land to the East of the Palestinian lands between them and Jordan is it settlements? Or is it empty(ish) providing a buffer between the lands and Jordan - a buffer that wouldn't need to exist in a Palestinian state.
It might be disingenuous, but it does give a realistic picture of the lands the Israeli state does de facto control.
The buffer between the lands and the Jordan river is not just a "buffer", it's full of Israeli settlements.
It seems to me that what we want from boundaries is the exact opposite of what politicians want. We want more marginal or swing seats so that our representatives are more accountable and changes in the national mood have practical effect. Safe seats are anathema to meaningful democracy.
What politicians want is job security and the ability to build a career over a couple of decades with a reasonably secure income. How many of us would want to run the risk of getting chucked out of our profession every 4-5 years? I actually have just the tiniest bit of sympathy to our political masters here. Politics has enough trouble attracting talent without increasing this variable.
In Scotland we have the list system. So Mungo Fraser lost to John Swinney in South Perthshire but is still an MSP anyway. Is this a pure democracy? Not really, if you define democracy by the ability to kick the bastards out. But it does allow a form of proportional representation for those that voted for Fraser and it does allow him some degree of certainty in his career.
There's nothing that makes any seat intrinsically safe. Every vote is up for grabs for a Party with the right policies.
Manufactured ignorance like that adds very little to the debate.
If you are selected as Labour candidate for Bootle or Tory candidate for Sevenoaks, I’d say your job is as good as sewn up for life. Your voters will never be canvassed and will count themselves lucky if they ever see an election leaflet, probably just the one delivered by the Royal Mail at taxpayers’ expense.
Yes, in Leicester we have 3 safe Labour seats, in Leics 6 safe Tory seats, only Loughborough ever changes. So we don't get either active campaigns or a slice of the pork barrel being doled out in marginals. It is bad politics. Not least because much of the county works in the city, and vice versa.
Leicester South and Leicester East have both been Tory -held in recent decades. The former was held by former Industry Minister Tom Boardman and only fell to Labour in October 1974 - though the Tories very narrowly took the seat again in 1983. Peter Bruinvels held Leicester East 1983 - 1987.
Scottish nationalist accuses "peas-in-the-pod" Brexiteers of being "deranged" ho ho. That said, that is a particularly unpleasant tweet even by nationalist (of all stripes) standards.
How do you feel, incidentally, of supporting a party that is so unpleasant that it used to have a leader (and one that got it to where it is today) that was described as a "bully and sex-pest" by his own QC?
I feel like once again the pub bore has lurched up to me and started his dumb buttonholing patter.
It seems to me that what we want from boundaries is the exact opposite of what politicians want. We want more marginal or swing seats so that our representatives are more accountable and changes in the national mood have practical effect. Safe seats are anathema to meaningful democracy.
What politicians want is job security and the ability to build a career over a couple of decades with a reasonably secure income. How many of us would want to run the risk of getting chucked out of our profession every 4-5 years? I actually have just the tiniest bit of sympathy to our political masters here. Politics has enough trouble attracting talent without increasing this variable.
In Scotland we have the list system. So Mungo Fraser lost to John Swinney in South Perthshire but is still an MSP anyway. Is this a pure democracy? Not really, if you define democracy by the ability to kick the bastards out. But it does allow a form of proportional representation for those that voted for Fraser and it does allow him some degree of certainty in his career.
There's nothing that makes any seat intrinsically safe. Every vote is up for grabs for a Party with the right policies.
Manufactured ignorance like that adds very little to the debate.
If you are selected as Labour candidate for Bootle or Tory candidate for Sevenoaks, I’d say your job is as good as sewn up for life. Your voters will never be canvassed and will count themselves lucky if they ever see an election leaflet, probably just the one delivered by the Royal Mail at taxpayers’ expense.
Yes, in Leicester we have 3 safe Labour seats, in Leics 6 safe Tory seats, only Loughborough ever changes. So we don't get either active campaigns or a slice of the pork barrel being doled out in marginals. It is bad politics. Not least because much of the county works in the city, and vice versa.
Leicester South and Leicester East have both been Tory -held in recent decades. The former was held by former Industry Minister Tom Boardman and only fell to Labour in October 1974 - though the Tories very narrowly took the seat again in 1983. Peter Bruinvels held Leicester East 1983 - 1987.
The media today really are fighting a war against the rolling back of lockdown.
Every scrap of anti-freeing evidence and rhetoric is being pitched in to the worst kind of doom-laden headlines and articles
The Mail's headline of 21 June hopes fade' is based solely on Peston's totally unattributed ITV report, which comes from a SAGE source anyway and not a government source.
Its quite remarkable stuff.
So you've come around to recognising it's media bullshit and the unlocking is going to proceed?
Welcome aboard. Glad we can finally agree.
No, I think there's a subtle distinction here. It's media bullshit <> unlocking is going to proceed. If enough media pressure can be brought to bear, unlocking will not proceed. We are in thrall to media bullshit.
We are however protected by the inevitable (and surely obvious to the government) media response if there was any delay:
BORIS CANCELS SUMMER! ALI-CAN'T-E SAYS BORIS IN U-TURN SHOCKER MAG-ALOOF! FREEBIE HOLIDAYS BORIS DENIES BRITS THEIR MOMENT IN THE SUN
There wouldn't be any COURAGEOUS BORIS SAVES THE COUNTRY WITH NEW LOCKDOWN, would there?
It is however, completely unrealistic. It would be like expecting the Poles and Czechs to accept that millions of Germans should return to Pomerania, Silesia, and the Sudetenland.
Expecting the Palestinian problem simply to disappear is equally unrealistic.
The article might present no compelling solutions, but it does give a rather more balanced narrative about how we arrived at the present situation.
The best drama on this was Kominsky’s The Promise, which was shown on Channel Four about ten years back I believe, and is still available on DVD. It cleverly intersperses a narrative from the time of the end of the British mandate with a modern day story, to illustrate the source of many of the current day problems. It is particularly noteworthy how some of the behaviours of the Israelis - for example blowing up the family homes of known terrorists - originated from how the British army dealt with early Jewish terrorists.
Careful, you’ll be getting a visit from Dowden’s history police.
Does Nicola have such people? Oh, sorry, they would be known as "Fake History Police", and their remit would be to indoctrinate children in Scotland so that they understand fake grievances and believe that Scots were not enthusiastic colonisers but the colonised.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
I don't think it is antisemitism (although some of it probably is). I actually think there is an element of holding democracies and, dare I say it, white people to higher standards.
As it happens I think the Israeli government is behaving pretty badly and stupidly. China generally gets a free pass because sadly it's priced in.
I would agree with that up to a point. Jews are like us. They should know better. There is an underlying racism in the value judgments but the obsessive focus on the problems of that benighted land also seems to be driven by anti-Semitism.
And I agree about the Israeli government. They are acting like a domestic abuser: "look what you made me do now".
Are not Arabs Semitic? That's why the Iranians always insist they are 'not Arabs".
You want to be careful with that phrasing....
"Arabs are Semites, therefor we can't be anti-semitic" is the line used by some truly awful people in the region.
Indeed. And as others here are demonstrating, as the man said 'words mean what I want them' to mean. Apart from the remark about 'whose responsibility' going back at least 100 years, and probably a lot longer, I'm watching a private fight. AIUI, too, under the Ottoman Empire, apart from rates of taxation varying, Jews Christians (of whatever sort) and Moslems (ditto) got along reasonably well.
More like - if the Jews and Christians kept their mouths shut, sat at the back of the bus and paid extra taxes. Oh, and didn't do anything especially noticeable... They were generally not robbed/attacked etc. Except when someone in power need a scapegoat.
Disingenuous, there's no index on that image of what the green land refers to, nor on the image in the article. It doesn't show coloured in what areas the settlements compose.
All that land to the East of the Palestinian lands between them and Jordan is it settlements? Or is it empty(ish) providing a buffer between the lands and Jordan - a buffer that wouldn't need to exist in a Palestinian state.
It might be disingenuous, but it does give a realistic picture of the lands the Israeli state does de facto control.
The buffer between the lands and the Jordan river is not just a "buffer", it's full of Israeli settlements.
The dark purple is "settlements" and there's very, very little of that it seems to the East of the wall.
Yes there's "muncipal boundaries" spreading past settlements, but any Palestinian state sweeping up that land could change those boundaries quite easily.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
If you’re in Eurovision, you should be held to a higher standard - FACT. I don’t think I’m even joking.
Some people think it was NATO that ended the Balkan wars, but it was actually being able to give each other douze points at Eurovision.
Maybe that can resolve the Scottish question and get the tanks from the Essix Massiv to stand down.
Scotland can have a second independence referendum whenever they choose, but if they leave they commit to giving us douze points for douze years.
Eurovision Transition period.
We only got 3 points from Ireland in 2019, even Italy got 5 points from the Irish, so no guarantees there
If you don’t encourage us into an uprising after which you execute The Proclaimers on Edinburgh Castle esplanade followed by a bloody war of independence and civil war, we’ll see what we can do on the points front.
England could enter Elvis with the Heavenly Choir on harmonies conducted by a resurrected Mozart and the Scots would still back the novelty death metal act from Belarus.
Disingenuous, there's no index on that image of what the green land refers to, nor on the image in the article. It doesn't show coloured in what areas the settlements compose.
All that land to the East of the Palestinian lands between them and Jordan is it settlements? Or is it empty(ish) providing a buffer between the lands and Jordan - a buffer that wouldn't need to exist in a Palestinian state.
It might be disingenuous, but it does give a realistic picture of the lands the Israeli state does de facto control.
The buffer between the lands and the Jordan river is not just a "buffer", it's full of Israeli settlements.
The dark purple is "settlements" and there's very, very little of that it seems to the East of the wall.
Yes there's "muncipal boundaries" spreading past settlements, but any Palestinian state sweeping up that land could change those boundaries quite easily.
I don't disagree, I'm just giving you the picture from Israeli political reality. The more the settlements grow, the harder it is going to be to tell them they all have to leave if they want to stay part of Israel.
Just look at Northern Ireland. The protestants seceded rather than become part of the Irish Free State.
Scottish nationalist accuses "peas-in-the-pod" Brexiteers of being "deranged" ho ho. That said, that is a particularly unpleasant tweet even by nationalist (of all stripes) standards.
How do you feel, incidentally, of supporting a party that is so unpleasant that it used to have a leader (and one that got it to where it is today) that was described as a "bully and sex-pest" by his own QC?
I feel like once again the pub bore has lurched up to me and started his dumb buttonholing patter.
Unable to answer the question, so a poor attempt at personal abuse. Typical Nat.
I see you also have the same problem as Malcolmg, and not just the gullibility to believe in fake grievances, but the big problem of psychological projection. I think you might be worthy of PB's Pub Bore of the Year award (were it to be in existence) due to the boring monotony of your only topic of conversation being Scottish independence and your very boring use of the word "Scotch" to suggest that English people (whom you clearly despise) have no right to comment on your views of Little Scotlander Scottish exceptionalism.
Disingenuous, there's no index on that image of what the green land refers to, nor on the image in the article. It doesn't show coloured in what areas the settlements compose.
All that land to the East of the Palestinian lands between them and Jordan is it settlements? Or is it empty(ish) providing a buffer between the lands and Jordan - a buffer that wouldn't need to exist in a Palestinian state.
It might be disingenuous, but it does give a realistic picture of the lands the Israeli state does de facto control.
The buffer between the lands and the Jordan river is not just a "buffer", it's full of Israeli settlements.
The dark purple is "settlements" and there's very, very little of that it seems to the East of the wall.
Yes there's "muncipal boundaries" spreading past settlements, but any Palestinian state sweeping up that land could change those boundaries quite easily.
I don't disagree, I'm just giving you the picture from Israeli political reality. The more the settlements grow, the harder it is going to be to tell them they all have to leave if they want to stay part of Israel.
Just look at Northern Ireland. The protestants seceded rather than become part of the Irish Free State.
Indeed but the reality is the wall is where it is and there's negligible population East of the wall. Any state that took the wall as its boundaries would be viable and the settlements would suddenly become a very isolated minority.
"Settlements" to the west of the wall aren't really settlements. The wall is the inevitable border and people are in denial of that. There's a reason there's so much more solid purple to the west of the wall - any notion that land is going to a future state of Palestine is for the birds.
It is however, completely unrealistic. It would be like expecting the Poles and Czechs to accept that millions of Germans should return to Pomerania, Silesia, and the Sudetenland.
Expecting the Palestinian problem simply to disappear is equally unrealistic.
The article might present no compelling solutions, but it does give a rather more balanced narrative about how we arrived at the present situation.
The best drama on this was Kominsky’s The Promise, which was shown on Channel Four about ten years back I believe, and is still available on DVD. It cleverly intersperses a narrative from the time of the end of the British mandate with a modern day story, to illustrate the source of many of the current day problems. It is particularly noteworthy how some of the behaviours of the Israelis - for example blowing up the family homes of known terrorists - originated from how the British army dealt with early Jewish terrorists.
Careful, you’ll be getting a visit from Dowden’s history police.
Does Nicola have such people? Oh, sorry, they would be known as "Fake History Police", and their remit would be to indoctrinate children in Scotland so that they understand fake grievances and believe that Scots were not enthusiastic colonisers but the colonised.
Yes, it’s often overlooked that the Scots came cap in hand begging to join with the English.
Still, the Nats needs to keep believing they’re victims.
It seems to me that what we want from boundaries is the exact opposite of what politicians want. We want more marginal or swing seats so that our representatives are more accountable and changes in the national mood have practical effect. Safe seats are anathema to meaningful democracy.
What politicians want is job security and the ability to build a career over a couple of decades with a reasonably secure income. How many of us would want to run the risk of getting chucked out of our profession every 4-5 years? I actually have just the tiniest bit of sympathy to our political masters here. Politics has enough trouble attracting talent without increasing this variable.
In Scotland we have the list system. So Mungo Fraser lost to John Swinney in South Perthshire but is still an MSP anyway. Is this a pure democracy? Not really, if you define democracy by the ability to kick the bastards out. But it does allow a form of proportional representation for those that voted for Fraser and it does allow him some degree of certainty in his career.
There's nothing that makes any seat intrinsically safe. Every vote is up for grabs for a Party with the right policies.
Manufactured ignorance like that adds very little to the debate.
If you are selected as Labour candidate for Bootle or Tory candidate for Sevenoaks, I’d say your job is as good as sewn up for life. Your voters will never be canvassed and will count themselves lucky if they ever see an election leaflet, probably just the one delivered by the Royal Mail at taxpayers’ expense.
Yes, in Leicester we have 3 safe Labour seats, in Leics 6 safe Tory seats, only Loughborough ever changes. So we don't get either active campaigns or a slice of the pork barrel being doled out in marginals. It is bad politics. Not least because much of the county works in the city, and vice versa.
Leicester South and Leicester East have both been Tory -held in recent decades. The former was held by former Industry Minister Tom Boardman and only fell to Labour in October 1974 - though the Tories very narrowly took the seat again in 1983. Peter Bruinvels held Leicester East 1983 - 1987.
1974 is nearly 50 years ago mate.
Seems like only yesterday to me. Well, maybe a bit longer, but 50 years......Nah.
Manufactured ignorance like that adds very little to the debate.
If you are selected as Labour candidate for Bootle or Tory candidate for Sevenoaks, I’d say your job is as good as sewn up for life. Your voters will never be canvassed and will count themselves lucky if they ever see an election leaflet, probably just the one delivered by the Royal Mail at taxpayers’ expense.
As someone in Bootle, I can confirm that in 2019 we received zero leaflets except the taxpayers expense one, no one knocked on the door and excepting a few posters in a very few windows, you wouldn't have known there was an election on at all during December 2019.
Indeed, earlier this month was the same. The local Lib Dem lady put in a huge effort (three leaflets and a personal visit), Labour did nothing and the Lib Dems got wiped out again, managing second. And this was in Victoria ward (Sefton) which isn't even deepest darkest Bootle proper.
If you live in a safe ward or safe parliamentary seat you won't get anything beyond the election address as the activists will all be leafletting and canvassing in the marginal wards and marginal seats. If you want more you need to move to a marginal seat, or hope we eventually get PR.
Though IanB2 was wrong about Sevenoaks, the LDs won the Sevenoaks town seat in the county council elections even if rural Sevenoaks stayed Tory
Wrong in saying the Tory MP has a job for life? I think not. The new one is most unlikely to be caught molesting women, as well.
Scottish nationalist accuses "peas-in-the-pod" Brexiteers of being "deranged" ho ho. That said, that is a particularly unpleasant tweet even by nationalist (of all stripes) standards.
How do you feel, incidentally, of supporting a party that is so unpleasant that it used to have a leader (and one that got it to where it is today) that was described as a "bully and sex-pest" by his own QC?
I feel like once again the pub bore has lurched up to me and started his dumb buttonholing patter.
Let me make exactly the same point for the 213th time
It is however, completely unrealistic. It would be like expecting the Poles and Czechs to accept that millions of Germans should return to Pomerania, Silesia, and the Sudetenland.
Expecting the Palestinian problem simply to disappear is equally unrealistic.
The article might present no compelling solutions, but it does give a rather more balanced narrative about how we arrived at the present situation.
The best drama on this was Kominsky’s The Promise, which was shown on Channel Four about ten years back I believe, and is still available on DVD. It cleverly intersperses a narrative from the time of the end of the British mandate with a modern day story, to illustrate the source of many of the current day problems. It is particularly noteworthy how some of the behaviours of the Israelis - for example blowing up the family homes of known terrorists - originated from how the British army dealt with early Jewish terrorists.
Careful, you’ll be getting a visit from Dowden’s history police.
"Are you now or have you ever been woke? Answer me!"
Is he judging a Greta Thunberg lookalike competition?
Just saying: today has been gloriously sunny in my bit of the Lakes.
And it's a lovely evening too.
How was yesterday’s grand opening?
Also just finished Dark Towers if you want to get depressed about just how bad Deutsche was… a light read but quite fun
We had a pretty good rule of thumb in our team. Anytime someone was under investigation, it was almost invariably the case that they had worked at Deutsche Bank at some point. Some of the very worst came from there.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
I don't think it is antisemitism (although some of it probably is). I actually think there is an element of holding democracies and, dare I say it, white people to higher standards.
As it happens I think the Israeli government is behaving pretty badly and stupidly. China generally gets a free pass because sadly it's priced in.
I would agree with that up to a point. Jews are like us. They should know better. There is an underlying racism in the value judgments but the obsessive focus on the problems of that benighted land also seems to be driven by anti-Semitism.
And I agree about the Israeli government. They are acting like a domestic abuser: "look what you made me do now".
Are not Arabs Semitic? That's why the Iranians always insist they are 'not Arabs".
You want to be careful with that phrasing....
"Arabs are Semites, therefor we can't be anti-semitic" is the line used by some truly awful people in the region.
Indeed. And as others here are demonstrating, as the man said 'words mean what I want them' to mean. Apart from the remark about 'whose responsibility' going back at least 100 years, and probably a lot longer, I'm watching a private fight. AIUI, too, under the Ottoman Empire, apart from rates of taxation varying, Jews Christians (of whatever sort) and Moslems (ditto) got along reasonably well.
More like - if the Jews and Christians kept their mouths shut, sat at the back of the bus and paid extra taxes. Oh, and didn't do anything especially noticeable... They were generally not robbed/attacked etc. Except when someone in power need a scapegoat.
I did say taxes 'varied'. And there was, of course, the Armenian massacre.
It is however, completely unrealistic. It would be like expecting the Poles and Czechs to accept that millions of Germans should return to Pomerania, Silesia, and the Sudetenland.
Expecting the Palestinian problem simply to disappear is equally unrealistic.
The article might present no compelling solutions, but it does give a rather more balanced narrative about how we arrived at the present situation.
The best drama on this was Kominsky’s The Promise, which was shown on Channel Four about ten years back I believe, and is still available on DVD. It cleverly intersperses a narrative from the time of the end of the British mandate with a modern day story, to illustrate the source of many of the current day problems. It is particularly noteworthy how some of the behaviours of the Israelis - for example blowing up the family homes of known terrorists - originated from how the British army dealt with early Jewish terrorists.
Careful, you’ll be getting a visit from Dowden’s history police.
Does Nicola have such people? Oh, sorry, they would be known as "Fake History Police", and their remit would be to indoctrinate children in Scotland so that they understand fake grievances and believe that Scots were not enthusiastic colonisers but the colonised.
Yes, it’s often overlooked that the Scots came cap in hand begging to join with the English.
Still, the Nats needs to keep believing they’re victims.
Yes, the inconvenient truth for Scots Nats is that Scotland's attempts to be a colonial power failed, which was one of their main motivations (along with impending national bankruptcy) to join the Act of Union, which they, and their ruling class (and monarchy) did very well indeed from. One imagines that Nicola has ensured that this aspect of their history is blamed on the hated English no doubt.
The media today really are fighting a war against the rolling back of lockdown.
Every scrap of anti-freeing evidence and rhetoric is being pitched in to the worst kind of doom-laden headlines and articles
The Mail's headline of 21 June hopes fade' is based solely on Peston's totally unattributed ITV report, which comes from a SAGE source anyway and not a government source.
Its quite remarkable stuff.
So you've come around to recognising it's media bullshit and the unlocking is going to proceed?
Welcome aboard. Glad we can finally agree.
No, I think there's a subtle distinction here. It's media bullshit <> unlocking is going to proceed. If enough media pressure can be brought to bear, unlocking will not proceed. We are in thrall to media bullshit.
Yes, Round One is a clear victory for Indy Sage and the Zerovidians. The government has been completely outfoxed, outplayed and outrun, and we are heading for a rolling back of 21 June unless they can get in front of it now. Pagel et al have the media in the palm of their hands.
Manufactured ignorance like that adds very little to the debate.
If you are selected as Labour candidate for Bootle or Tory candidate for Sevenoaks, I’d say your job is as good as sewn up for life. Your voters will never be canvassed and will count themselves lucky if they ever see an election leaflet, probably just the one delivered by the Royal Mail at taxpayers’ expense.
As someone in Bootle, I can confirm that in 2019 we received zero leaflets except the taxpayers expense one, no one knocked on the door and excepting a few posters in a very few windows, you wouldn't have known there was an election on at all during December 2019.
Indeed, earlier this month was the same. The local Lib Dem lady put in a huge effort (three leaflets and a personal visit), Labour did nothing and the Lib Dems got wiped out again, managing second. And this was in Victoria ward (Sefton) which isn't even deepest darkest Bootle proper.
If you live in a safe ward or safe parliamentary seat you won't get anything beyond the election address as the activists will all be leafletting and canvassing in the marginal wards and marginal seats. If you want more you need to move to a marginal seat, or hope we eventually get PR.
Though IanB2 was wrong about Sevenoaks, the LDs won the Sevenoaks town seat in the county council elections even if rural Sevenoaks stayed Tory
Wrong in saying the Tory MP has a job for life? I think not. The new one is most unlikely to be caught molesting women, as well.
At general election level you may be right but Sevenoaks actually saw the Tory voteshare fall by 3% in 2019 from 2017, against the national trend
interesting piece on our current position wrt plague and unlocking.
"SAGE remains seemingly over-influenced by a group of Left-leaning scientists who have been quietly advocating a Zero Covid approach, with little regard for the consequences."
"many have called for a new committee to weigh Sage advice on the risks of lockdown easing against the costs of roadmap delays. It has never materialised."
It's interesting on the psychology of lockdown - there will not doubt be some people who actually find it quite hard to adjust back to normal life.
It's very light on evidence for some astonishing claims though, such as SAGE pushing zero Covid (any evidence at all - confusion with IndSAGE?) or the irrelevant bit about left-leaning scientists? Labour support (if that's the point) correlates with higher education so it wouldn't be suprising if there are more pro-Labour scientists than pro-Conservative scientists, but Labour and the government have been pretty close on lockdown policy. I don't see the relevance.
It also includes this shocking assertion: "A recent deep dive into vaccine uptake cites mobile data used to track the movements of the newly vaccinated". I'd love to see any actualy evidence of that as I can't see how it can be done practically, it would break data protection laws and you'd never get it through a research ethics committee. It could be something very general on anonymised data from network operators based on age, but anything specific on movements post-vaccination would require either obtaining individual mobile records (illegal, surely?) or something in the NHS app based on location tracking (Apple and Google will no doubt be weilding the ban hammer shortly)
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
Is it really to the exclusion of all else ? There's pretty regular discussion of both China and the Saudi/Yemen situation, and there were extremely extended discussions of Syria back when intervention was a realistic possibility.
Apart from the blindspot for a great deal of what goes on in sub-Saharan Africa, I think you're setting up a straw man.
When it kicks off in Israel, our media turn up and present the news from Jerusalem. I don't see that happening with the other examples.
Partly fair comment, but also because access is a great deal easier in Israel (which is of course to their credit). Presenting the news from, for example, the Yemen is a non trivial exercise.
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
If you’re in Eurovision, you should be held to a higher standard - FACT. I don’t think I’m even joking.
Some people think it was NATO that ended the Balkan wars, but it was actually being able to give each other douze points at Eurovision.
Maybe that can resolve the Scottish question and get the tanks from the Essix Massiv to stand down.
Scotland can have a second independence referendum whenever they choose, but if they leave they commit to giving us douze points for douze years.
Eurovision Transition period.
We only got 3 points from Ireland in 2019, even Italy got 5 points from the Irish, so no guarantees there
If you don’t encourage us into an uprising after which you execute The Proclaimers on Edinburgh Castle esplanade followed by a bloody war of independence and civil war, we’ll see what we can do on the points front.
England could enter Elvis with the Heavenly Choir on harmonies conducted by a resurrected Mozart and the Scots would still back the novelty death metal act from Belarus.
Rightly so, as that would hardly be an English entry...
Scottish nationalist accuses "peas-in-the-pod" Brexiteers of being "deranged" ho ho. That said, that is a particularly unpleasant tweet even by nationalist (of all stripes) standards.
How do you feel, incidentally, of supporting a party that is so unpleasant that it used to have a leader (and one that got it to where it is today) that was described as a "bully and sex-pest" by his own QC?
I feel like once again the pub bore has lurched up to me and started his dumb buttonholing patter.
Let me make exactly the same point for the 213th time
Couldn’t agree more.
OK, so as I didn't write that perhaps MODERATORS can please look at who did and attempted to make it look like I did.
Scottish nationalist accuses "peas-in-the-pod" Brexiteers of being "deranged" ho ho. That said, that is a particularly unpleasant tweet even by nationalist (of all stripes) standards.
How do you feel, incidentally, of supporting a party that is so unpleasant that it used to have a leader (and one that got it to where it is today) that was described as a "bully and sex-pest" by his own QC?
I feel like once again the pub bore has lurched up to me and started his dumb buttonholing patter.
Let me make exactly the same point for the 213th time
Couldn’t agree more.
OK, so as I didn't write that perhaps MODERATORS can please look at who did and attempted to make it look like I did.
OK, EVERYONE, THIS IS A LITTLE CONCERNING, SOMONE SOMEHOW HIJACKED MY NAME TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE I SAID SOMETHING I DIDN'T. I HOPE MODERATORS LOOK INTO WHO DID IT AND HOW
Disingenuous, there's no index on that image of what the green land refers to, nor on the image in the article. It doesn't show coloured in what areas the settlements compose.
All that land to the East of the Palestinian lands between them and Jordan is it settlements? Or is it empty(ish) providing a buffer between the lands and Jordan - a buffer that wouldn't need to exist in a Palestinian state.
It might be disingenuous, but it does give a realistic picture of the lands the Israeli state does de facto control.
The buffer between the lands and the Jordan river is not just a "buffer", it's full of Israeli settlements.
The dark purple is "settlements" and there's very, very little of that it seems to the East of the wall.
Yes there's "muncipal boundaries" spreading past settlements, but any Palestinian state sweeping up that land could change those boundaries quite easily.
I don't disagree, I'm just giving you the picture from Israeli political reality. The more the settlements grow, the harder it is going to be to tell them they all have to leave if they want to stay part of Israel.
Just look at Northern Ireland. The protestants seceded rather than become part of the Irish Free State.
Indeed but the reality is the wall is where it is and there's negligible population East of the wall. Any state that took the wall as its boundaries would be viable and the settlements would suddenly become a very isolated minority.
"Settlements" to the west of the wall aren't really settlements. The wall is the inevitable border and people are in denial of that. There's a reason there's so much more solid purple to the west of the wall - any notion that land is going to a future state of Palestine is for the birds.
I think you're in denial. Walls are planned around settlements deep in the West Bank. Have already been constructed near Salfit in one of the maps shared. The wall that's mostly been constructed near the existing Israel/West Bank border is just the start, and there are a lot more Israeli settlements deep in the West Bank then you make out. Excluding East Jerusalem, about one-eighth of the population of the West Bank are Israeli Settlers.
The idea that Israel would voluntarily withdraw to the wall is not credible. It might be a fallback position for them if the diplomatic and military balance goes very severely against them.
The media today really are fighting a war against the rolling back of lockdown.
Every scrap of anti-freeing evidence and rhetoric is being pitched in to the worst kind of doom-laden headlines and articles
The Mail's headline of 21 June hopes fade' is based solely on Peston's totally unattributed ITV report, which comes from a SAGE source anyway and not a government source.
Its quite remarkable stuff.
So you've come around to recognising it's media bullshit and the unlocking is going to proceed?
Welcome aboard. Glad we can finally agree.
No, I think there's a subtle distinction here. It's media bullshit <> unlocking is going to proceed. If enough media pressure can be brought to bear, unlocking will not proceed. We are in thrall to media bullshit.
Yes, Round One is a clear victory for Indy Sage and the Zerovidians. The government has been completely outfoxed, outplayed and outrun, and we are heading for a rolling back of 21 June unless they can get in front of it now. Pagel et al have the media in the palm of their hands.
Led by the data not the dates - if there is no evidence of much increase in hospitalisation/death arising from an uptick in cases/VOC cases, then the government proceed as planned. Evidence is starting to come in about the effectiveness of AZ and Pfz against the Indian vriant too. Ear;y signals are encouraging.
Dominic Cummings @Dominic2306 I’ve got the only copy of a crucial historical document from covid decision-making. Should I 1/ give it to the Cmte next week / put on blog, b/ auction it as an Ethereum NFT & give the ETH to a covid families charity?
PM's official spokesman with a hint of warning to Cummings on leaking docs: "I'm not going to be getting into individual cases. Obviously there are clear rules that are abided by in these situations."
Genocide of the Uighurs in China. Unspeakable barbarity by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. 400k dead and 2m refugees in the Sudan. Several million Syrians still in refugee camps.
But let's talk about Israel. Again. And again. To the exclusion of so much else. Why is that exactly?
Because slaughtering approximately 40 civilians a day about half women and children isn't acceptable in a so called civilised society who we are supposed to be allies of. An uncharacteristically stupid post from you
Comments
Israel isn't a small state fighting for their survival anymore, they're the predominant regional power with by far the best military, and the Palestinians are a bunch of largely defenceless people living under an autocratic terrorist state, the only people who gain from that are the top echelons of Hamas and the Israeli right.
Anyway, for the record, your type of conflation of Israel and the Jewish religion as a whole marks you out as a reprehensible person, and a significant contributor towards the anti-semitism British Jews regularly face by morons who listen to your Israel = Judaism conclusions.
"Arabs are Semites, therefor we can't be anti-semitic" is the line used by some truly awful people in the region.
I don’t think I’m even joking.
But the Jordanians don't want that because easier to have the conflict with Israel than to resolve the problems they created by annexing the West Bank in 48.
@Dominic2306
I’ve got the only copy of a crucial historical document from covid decision-making. Should I 1/ give it to the Cmte next week / put on blog, b/ auction it as an Ethereum NFT & give the ETH to a covid families charity?
https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1394594992920965126
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:West_Bank_Access_Restrictions.pdf
Both democracies, both held to a higher standard than non-democracies.
Israel is not the only predominant power in the region. Iran is also a power in the region, a power that like Hamas doesn't recognise Israel's right to exist and seeks Israel's destruction. A power that funds and provides weaponry to Hamas and Hezbollah with the stated aim of wiping Israel off the map. So yes the Israelis are quite literally fighting for their very survival against powers that openly say they are seeking the destruction of the state of Israel from sea to sea.
So if you have a non anti-Semitic reason for thinking people who are literally seeking to destroy the only Jewish state in the world have zero responsibility for any deaths in this conflict and 100% of all deaths are solely Netanyahu's responsibility then I'd love to hear it.
"Are you now or have you ever been woke? Answer me!"
Apart from the remark about 'whose responsibility' going back at least 100 years, and probably a lot longer, I'm watching a private fight.
AIUI, too, under the Ottoman Empire, apart from rates of taxation varying, Jews Christians (of whatever sort) and Moslems (ditto) got along reasonably well.
And the problem is that the more Israel feels under threat by its neighbours, the more it is going to "lash out".
If Britain was surrounded by enemies who literally wanted to wipe you out, you can rest assured our electorate would be desperate for security.
Every scrap of anti-freeing evidence and rhetoric is being seized upon and pitched in to the worst kind of doom-laden headlines and articles.
The Mail's headline of '21 June hopes fade' is based solely on Peston's totally unattributed ITV report, which comes from a SAGE source anyway and not a government source.
Its quite remarkable stuff.
From the government? Nothing. Nothing except 'we rule nothing out'
IF I had put my body on the line for these cowards, I would be incensed.
Welcome aboard. Glad we can finally agree.
The fact that Israel chose not to extend the wall to their community should have been a warning that was coming.
Recognise Israel's right to exist and this situation could be de-escalated dramatically.
Indeed, earlier this month was the same. The local Lib Dem lady put in a huge effort (three leaflets and a personal visit), Labour did nothing and the Lib Dems got wiped out again, managing second.
And this was in Victoria ward (Sefton) which isn't even deepest darkest Bootle proper.
Perhaps it is time they started ruling things out....?
This isn't new. My mum went to a Jewish school in London in the 70s and they were basically indoctrinated to believe that they should move to Israel, more specifically settlements in the West Bank.
https://twitter.com/suzanneevans1/status/1394551415012478977?s=21
Scotland can have a second independence referendum whenever they choose, but if they leave they commit to giving us douze points for douze years.
Eurovision Transition period.
There's pretty regular discussion of both China and the Saudi/Yemen situation, and there were extremely extended discussions of Syria back when intervention was a realistic possibility.
Apart from the blindspot for a great deal of what goes on in sub-Saharan Africa, I think you're setting up a straw man.
It's media bullshit <> unlocking is going to proceed. If enough media pressure can be brought to bear, unlocking will not proceed.
We are in thrall to media bullshit.
(Plus all the 'Democratic' Republic of... countries...)
Image from the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-map-of-israeli-settlements-that-shocked-barack-obama
But the Israeli government chose the location of the wall and they did so for strategic reasons too. Anything on the wrong side of the wall really isn't the right place to be building a settlement.
Though IanB2 was wrong about Sevenoaks, the LDs won the Sevenoaks town seat in the county council elections even if rural Sevenoaks stayed Tory
There needs to be much more scrutiny of this IMO. We need a wider range of advisors with differing expert opinion advising government and we need much more transparency on what's behind government messaging. I appreciate that will defeat the effectiveness of the "nudge" but better that than tyranny by the back door.
All that land to the East of the Palestinian lands between them and Jordan is it settlements? Or is it empty(ish) providing a buffer between the lands and Jordan - a buffer that wouldn't need to exist in a Palestinian state.
How do you feel, incidentally, of supporting a party that is so unpleasant that it used to have a leader (and one that got it to where it is today) that was described as a "bully and sex-pest" by his own QC?
The buffer between the lands and the Jordan river is not just a "buffer", it's full of Israeli settlements.
From the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-52756427
https://www.globalgive.finance/
I know, completely bonkers.
BORIS CANCELS SUMMER!
ALI-CAN'T-E SAYS BORIS IN U-TURN SHOCKER
MAG-ALOOF! FREEBIE HOLIDAYS BORIS DENIES BRITS THEIR MOMENT IN THE SUN
There wouldn't be any COURAGEOUS BORIS SAVES THE COUNTRY WITH NEW LOCKDOWN, would there?
Yes there's "muncipal boundaries" spreading past settlements, but any Palestinian state sweeping up that land could change those boundaries quite easily.
Just look at Northern Ireland. The protestants seceded rather than become part of the Irish Free State.
I see you also have the same problem as Malcolmg, and not just the gullibility to believe in fake grievances, but the big problem of psychological projection. I think you might be worthy of PB's Pub Bore of the Year award (were it to be in existence) due to the boring monotony of your only topic of conversation being Scottish independence and your very boring use of the word "Scotch" to suggest that English people (whom you clearly despise) have no right to comment on your views of Little Scotlander Scottish exceptionalism.
"Settlements" to the west of the wall aren't really settlements. The wall is the inevitable border and people are in denial of that. There's a reason there's so much more solid purple to the west of the wall - any notion that land is going to a future state of Palestine is for the birds.
Still, the Nats needs to keep believing they’re victims.
Plus there’s issues relating to AML which I expect this would trigger even before we look at the gift aid issues.
It's very light on evidence for some astonishing claims though, such as SAGE pushing zero Covid (any evidence at all - confusion with IndSAGE?) or the irrelevant bit about left-leaning scientists? Labour support (if that's the point) correlates with higher education so it wouldn't be suprising if there are more pro-Labour scientists than pro-Conservative scientists, but Labour and the government have been pretty close on lockdown policy. I don't see the relevance.
It also includes this shocking assertion: "A recent deep dive into vaccine uptake cites mobile data used to track the movements of the newly vaccinated". I'd love to see any actualy evidence of that as I can't see how it can be done practically, it would break data protection laws and you'd never get it through a research ethics committee. It could be something very general on anonymised data from network operators based on age, but anything specific on movements post-vaccination would require either obtaining individual mobile records (illegal, surely?) or something in the NHS app based on location tracking (Apple and Google will no doubt be weilding the ban hammer shortly)
Presenting the news from, for example, the Yemen is a non trivial exercise.
The idea that Israel would voluntarily withdraw to the wall is not credible. It might be a fallback position for them if the diplomatic and military balance goes very severely against them.
Hardly outfoxed.
Not sure its that obvious tho.
@JackElsom reports:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/14990949/dominic-cummings-threatens-to-release-bombshell-paper/
When he talks about "The Manhattan Project", you may suspect its because he has put a thermonuclear device under the PM's chair
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/dominic-cummings-release-crucial-covid-document-boris-johnson-b935777.html