Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Minding Our Manners – politicalbetting.com

123468

Comments

  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Sean_F said:

    There is a moral price to be paid when one refrains from speaking out, censors oneself, for fear that others will react violently.

    Most obviously, one is teaching people that violence is the way to prevent people from disagreeing with them.

    There absolutely is. There is also an absolutely terrible physical price to be paid for speaking out, in some circumstances. Those Jews died as hostages. Jewish hostages of Islamists do not get an easy death. There is therefore a trade off to be made: does the duty to speak freely outweigh, in this particular case, the duty not to cause people to be tortured to death?
    Except there was no causal link that led to people being tortured to death. No causal abetting of a crime.
    Just not right. The torture would not have happened but for the cartoons. We both know this.
    Likewise, the torture would not have happened if they were not Jews. Is their practice of Judaism a causative factor in their deaths?
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    boulay said:

    boulay said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Your approach has some curious implications. If, let's say, a cult of fanatics made it clear that they would attack any women they saw walking around who had hair, you'd be morally obliged to shave your wife and daughters' heads before they went out.
    Yes.

    Lots of attempts here to produce paradoxes which turn out to be nothing of the kind. That is pretty much the situation in Taliban controlled countries with trivial differences, and that's what you do unless you want them stoned to death. No paradox. Obviously over here you'd just advise them to stay at home for a bit while the police sorted it.
    No.

    You'd live your lives while the cult of fanatics are criminals to be dealt with. Any actions taken are responsibility of the fanatics, not the fact that someone's daughters went to a concert with their hair showing.
    OK

    I am not happy with the lack of agency allowed to women in this example, but anyway: you are saying unambiguously that you would send your womenfolk out to work in makeup and western dress in present day Kabul, because anything else would be Giving In. Because any resulting stoning no matter how foreseeable, would be 100% Not Your Fault.

    OK
    I would not "send my womenfolk out" anywhere, since "womenfolk" are not my chattel to send or otherwise.

    However the UK is not Kabul. The UK is subject to UK laws, not Taliban ones. When in Rome you may have to follow Roman laws, but I wouldn't go to Kabul because of that, but we're in the UK and UK laws apply. In Paris it is French laws, not Sharia laws that applies.
    OK

    if there is a lawful action you can do or not do, in France, where the reasonably foreseeable consequence of that action is that some random Jews will be tortured to death, should that affect your decision about the action?
    If a random Jew is tortured to death that is a consequence of any torturers, it is not a consequence of 'provocation'. That is where you're wrong, you're trying to excuse the actions of scum by blaming 'provocation' as being responsible for it being done.
    You seem to have discarded the whole concept of causation. The deaths would not have occurred but for the cartoons. Sure, the mindset of the torturers is part of the equation, but you can't shoot someone dead and then explain how the death was caused by the explosion of cordite in a confined space with a projectile in front of it, nothing to do with you guv.

    And what is this "excuse" shit? Is explaining the origins of the holocaust the same as excusing it?
    There is no concept of causation here. The deaths would not have occurred but for twisted individuals that think their beliefs are so sacred that they can kill those they dislike. We need to fight that belief, and provoking them is part of that fight.

    'this "excuse" shit' is you claiming that 'provocation' causes deaths, rather than killers causing deaths. People should be able to take provocation without leading to murder and if they can't, its not the provocateurs fault. The provocateur has no shared responsibility under any circumstances.
    I have to agree with Ishmael having briefly caught up.

    The ultimate responsibility for the act is the one who carries it out but there is still a responsibility of the “provocateur” in certain situations.

    If for example the Charlie Hebdo cartoons had been so so important to publish, that they exposed some absolutely heinous crime that was being carried out by islamists unknown to the world then it could be argued that publishing them was so important that the consequential murders were a price “worth paying” by society (although not likely for the victims and their families).

    The fact is that virtually everyone who would ever see the cartoons already had a perception of Islamic issues that the cartoons depicted or would declare them as blasphemy. So the cartoons whilst satirical didn’t actually achieve anything worthwhile except the deaths in revenge. Publishing was pure provocation without any great benefit to society.

    If it had been a German cartoonist publishing cartoons which exposed Auschwitz et al before anyone else knew it and a band of Hitler Youth had gone on a murderous rampage then the publication would be brave and necessary and the consequences less on the “provocateur” and more on the actors.

    If you decided today to join the Ukrainian Army and had discovered that the families of Brits who have been captured by the Russians and identified were being tracked down and poisoned by the Russians in the UK (despite the preposterousness of this) and then you were captured, identified and your family killed do you not think that, despite your good motives, you would carry some of the blame for causing deaths by doing something you did not absolutely need to do?

    Would you, afterwards, not feel that had you not carried out your actions knowing the potential consequences/backlash, that maybe you should not have done what you did?

    No.

    The cartoons did produce something
    worthwhile, they provoked discussion and engaged in free speech. That is a good in
    its own right. See my post at 12:54 which brought Hebdo into the conversation.

    Free speech isn't only valuable when its
    what you deem to be "important" because
    "reasons" it is always important. It is a good thing in and of itself, and people provoking
    discussions and pushing the boundaries are doing a good thing by doing so.

    In your example where Russia is murdering
    the families of Brits that all the more justifies people volunteering to go fight that evil, it
    doesn't mean that those who do so are doing the wrong thing because of any
    potential backlash.

    You and Ishmael seem to be saying that in
    the face of evil we should do nothing that might provoke that evil. That is repugnant to me, we should be provoking and fighting
    that evil, not surrendering to it.
    It amuses me when Billy Big Balls talk about “fighting evil and not surrendering to it” from their home office where they have never had to actually face an evil, deal with an evil and take personal risks in defeating an evil.

    There are people who fight these evils every day, people who do it quietly and do it well at great risk who would likely rather the likes of Charlie Hebdo didn’t stir matters up further and make their job harder. They didn’t “provoke a discussion” because that discussion had already been going on for a long time (see Salman Rushdie) and a pissant magazine publishing these was not going to change the views of the west in any way.

    How did you fight Islamist or Russian evil today? Or over the last ten years even?
    We all do our own little bits. Some more than others, but every little helps.

    How did I fight evil today? By standing up to apologists for it like you and Ishmael who argue in further of surrendering hard-won free speech in order to not provoke reprisals.

    On a cosmic scale that may be inconsequential, but all it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing.
    I don't know whether to be more in awe of you, or those poor jews. With whom I am sure you would trade places in an instant.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Is this as bad as it looks? Any PB energy experts?


    This time last year, German year-ahead power was about €85 per MWh.

    Yikes.
    If energy prices quintuple - or worse - I don’t see how we avoid economic depression. Or am I missing something?
    China is currently slowing, mainly thanks to their zero covid approach, and that is taking the heat off oil, which is falling. I suspect if the world goes into recession/depression, prices will drop too.

    Not great, and it shows the issues with being part of a global world market for everything, with no back up plan.
    But we don't need oil anymore. We can't burn it for power, and in 10 years time we won't need it for cars.
    About 40% of a barrel of oil is used for stuff other than energy. We are no where near being able to replace that with alternatives. Your electric car still need lubricants and coolants which include oil by-products. It will contain about 10% by weight of plastic in its construction but that is about 50% by volume. Our whole life is based on the use of petrochemical products and I will repeat my old joke. If this gives you a headache then take an Asprin - it is made from petrochemical derivatives.
    Yes. The madness is that oil is far too valuable to burn, because we need it for so much else.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,156
    edited August 2022
    IshmaelZ said:

    boulay said:

    boulay said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Your approach has some curious implications. If, let's say, a cult of fanatics made it clear that they would attack any women they saw walking around who had hair, you'd be morally obliged to shave your wife and daughters' heads before they went out.
    Yes.

    Lots of attempts here to produce paradoxes which turn out to be nothing of the kind. That is pretty much the situation in Taliban controlled countries with trivial differences, and that's what you do unless you want them stoned to death. No paradox. Obviously over here you'd just advise them to stay at home for a bit while the police sorted it.
    No.

    You'd live your lives while the cult of fanatics are criminals to be dealt with. Any actions taken are responsibility of the fanatics, not the fact that someone's daughters went to a concert with their hair showing.
    OK

    I am not happy with the lack of agency allowed to women in this example, but anyway: you are saying unambiguously that you would send your womenfolk out to work in makeup and western dress in present day Kabul, because anything else would be Giving In. Because any resulting stoning no matter how foreseeable, would be 100% Not Your Fault.

    OK
    I would not "send my womenfolk out" anywhere, since "womenfolk" are not my chattel to send or otherwise.

    However the UK is not Kabul. The UK is subject to UK laws, not Taliban ones. When in Rome you may have to follow Roman laws, but I wouldn't go to Kabul because of that, but we're in the UK and UK laws apply. In Paris it is French laws, not Sharia laws that applies.
    OK

    if there is a lawful action you can do or not do, in France, where the reasonably foreseeable consequence of that action is that some random Jews will be tortured to death, should that affect your decision about the action?
    If a random Jew is tortured to death that is a consequence of any torturers, it is not a consequence of 'provocation'. That is where you're wrong, you're trying to excuse the actions of scum by blaming 'provocation' as being responsible for it being done.
    You seem to have discarded the whole concept of causation. The deaths would not have occurred but for the cartoons. Sure, the mindset of the torturers is part of the equation, but you can't shoot someone dead and then explain how the death was caused by the explosion of cordite in a confined space with a projectile in front of it, nothing to do with you guv.

    And what is this "excuse" shit? Is explaining the origins of the holocaust the same as excusing it?
    There is no concept of causation here. The deaths would not have occurred but for twisted individuals that think their beliefs are so sacred that they can kill those they dislike. We need to fight that belief, and provoking them is part of that fight.

    'this "excuse" shit' is you claiming that 'provocation' causes deaths, rather than killers causing deaths. People should be able to take provocation without leading to murder and if they can't, its not the provocateurs fault. The provocateur has no shared responsibility under any circumstances.
    I have to agree with Ishmael having briefly caught up.

    The ultimate responsibility for the act is the one who carries it out but there is still a responsibility of the “provocateur” in certain situations.

    If for example the Charlie Hebdo cartoons had been so so important to publish, that they exposed some absolutely heinous crime that was being carried out by islamists unknown to the world then it could be argued that publishing them was so important that the consequential murders were a price “worth paying” by society (although not likely for the victims and their families).

    The fact is that virtually everyone who would ever see the cartoons already had a perception of Islamic issues that the cartoons depicted or would declare them as blasphemy. So the cartoons whilst satirical didn’t actually achieve anything worthwhile except the deaths in revenge. Publishing was pure provocation without any great benefit to society.

    If it had been a German cartoonist publishing cartoons which exposed Auschwitz et al before anyone else knew it and a band of Hitler Youth had gone on a murderous rampage then the publication would be brave and necessary and the consequences less on the “provocateur” and more on the actors.

    If you decided today to join the Ukrainian Army and had discovered that the families of Brits who have been captured by the Russians and identified were being tracked down and poisoned by the Russians in the UK (despite the preposterousness of this) and then you were captured, identified and your family killed do you not think that, despite your good motives, you would carry some of the blame for causing deaths by doing something you did not absolutely need to do?

    Would you, afterwards, not feel that had you not carried out your actions knowing the potential consequences/backlash, that maybe you should not have done what you did?

    What you advocate is letting the extremists win and living in fear of their violence. That is thankfully anathema to most people.
    It’s absolutely not what I advocate - I am advocating people thinking about the consequences of their actions. I do not live in fear of their violence in the slightest.

    Publishing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons achieved absolutely f all that wasn’t already in the minds of people who buy Charlie Hebdo. Charlie Hebdo had plenty of prior examples that if you publish things critical of Islam and Mohammed then radicalised Muslims are likely to take violent action.

    When the decision was made to publish the cartoons either the publisher was naive and stupid (they weren’t) or wanted to push the boundaries and cause a storm.

    That moment they decided to publish them was the moment the clock started ticking on some nasty reprisals. Therefore the “provocateur” knowingly did something that was frankly “unecessary” for reasons which did not outweigh the damage caused.

    We know that extreme Islamism is a disease but things like Charlie Hebdo feed it not defeat it. They become a flag to rally round and stir up shit and attract converts for absolutely no value to those who hate radical Islam and those who are trying to fight it.

    Sad to see a second apologist for evil here along with Ishmael, though I defend your right to share your awful views.

    Hebdo cartoon achieved plenty, provoking discussions is a public good in and of itself, even if those offended by the provocation react violently to it.

    The way to fight evils like Islamism isn't to pull back our hard-won freedoms like free expression, it is to double down the fight for them. Hebdo are doing more to fight that good fight than you and Ishmael are, for they they are absolutely doing a very good thing that is commendable in its own right.

    Fighting for free speech is a "necessity" in and of itself.
    Being against Jews being tortured to death is to be an apologist for evil. Course it is.

    I'm against Jews being tortured to death.

    You've not demonstrated any causal link between people standing up to evil and that evil though. Instead you're trying to justify and excuse evil by saying it was "provoked", using the "she was wearing a short skirt" line of thinking.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    I have to say having a debate from Sydney with someone from Essex about what is and isn't a big deal in Australian politics is certainly novel!

    Do you Wikipedia an overseas nations' political parties to find the right wing one before taking a stance on an issue?
    You appear not to have realised yet there is absolutely no point debating with @HYUFD. The fact he is entirely ignorant about 99% of human knowledge only encourages him.

    Same with BartyBobbins.

    Amusingly the two often argue amongst themselves, each refusing to give way, each totally bewildered by fact.
    Says the man who spent much of his life in NZ, now is based in New York and spends half the time arguing about UK politics
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Sean_F said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Sean_F said:

    There is a moral price to be paid when one refrains from speaking out, censors oneself, for fear that others will react violently.

    Most obviously, one is teaching people that violence is the way to prevent people from disagreeing with them.

    There absolutely is. There is also an absolutely terrible physical price to be paid for speaking out, in some circumstances. Those Jews died as hostages. Jewish hostages of Islamists do not get an easy death. There is therefore a trade off to be made: does the duty to speak freely outweigh, in this particular case, the duty not to cause people to be tortured to death?
    Except there was no causal link that led to people being tortured to death. No causal abetting of a crime.
    Just not right. The torture would not have happened but for the cartoons. We both know this.
    Likewise, the torture would not have happened if they were not Jews. Is their practice of Judaism a causative factor in their deaths?
    Yes. So what?
  • IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Sean_F said:

    There is a moral price to be paid when one refrains from speaking out, censors oneself, for fear that others will react violently.

    Most obviously, one is teaching people that violence is the way to prevent people from disagreeing with them.

    There absolutely is. There is also an absolutely terrible physical price to be paid for speaking out, in some circumstances. Those Jews died as hostages. Jewish hostages of Islamists do not get an easy death. There is therefore a trade off to be made: does the duty to speak freely outweigh, in this particular case, the duty not to cause people to be tortured to death?
    Except there was no causal link that led to people being tortured to death. No causal abetting of a crime.
    Just not right. The torture would not have happened but for the cartoons. We both know this.
    No we don't. Without the cartoons some other thing would have caused offence instead, because people looking for offence will find it.

    So you're not just shameful, but you're wrong too.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    edited August 2022
    dixiedean said:

    Liz Truss.

    "We’re still in the leadership contest at the moment. Now, my priority is reducing taxes so people can keep more of their own money at the same time as making sure we boost energy supply.

    It is wrong to just keep sticking plasters on this problem. What we actually need to do is make sure we are unleashing more energy, for example, from the North Sea.

    We’re investing in technologies like nuclear, and we’re finding more renewable energy as well."

    Reads like I'm not answering till I've won.

    Indeed.
    The Times seemed to suggest she favours direct support to the most in need. Basically an extension of the Rishi dishout from May.
    I mean the production side etc i think we all agree is longer term essential and lovely protectionist stuff but its like a nuclear reactor has exploded in Rutland, and she is solely focussed on building a replacement whilst not doing anything about the irradiated grannies in Oakham.
    We need energy security and we must put in place the means to make that journey now. But we also have to survive the journey there. Thats the tricky bit
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    IshmaelZ said:

    Sean_F said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Sean_F said:

    There is a moral price to be paid when one refrains from speaking out, censors oneself, for fear that others will react violently.

    Most obviously, one is teaching people that violence is the way to prevent people from disagreeing with them.

    There absolutely is. There is also an absolutely terrible physical price to be paid for speaking out, in some circumstances. Those Jews died as hostages. Jewish hostages of Islamists do not get an easy death. There is therefore a trade off to be made: does the duty to speak freely outweigh, in this particular case, the duty not to cause people to be tortured to death?
    Except there was no causal link that led to people being tortured to death. No causal abetting of a crime.
    Just not right. The torture would not have happened but for the cartoons. We both know this.
    Likewise, the torture would not have happened if they were not Jews. Is their practice of Judaism a causative factor in their deaths?
    Yes. So what?
    So, is it something that they should avoid doing, so as not to be targeted by Islamists?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I don't see how Barty R by his own lights is not just free, but positively obliged, to do exactly that. That'll show 'em!
    Yes I'm trying to get at the possible hierarchy where the person doing that would slot in.

    1. A doughty battler for Free Speech who should be supported to the hilt?
    2. A nasty troll who nevertheless should be legally protected on Free Speech grounds.
    3. A criminal.

    I reckon we have all 3 views on here. Me I think I'm a 3 but I see the arguments for 2.

    And btw which is it in the law as it stands? I don't know without researching it.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    No, for the same reason that Jerry Sadowitz won’t be booked by Live at the Apollo any time soon.

    You should have the right to buy the cartoons in a satirical magazine though, just as Sadowitz should have the right to perform his act in a comedy club.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited August 2022
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    I have to say having a debate from Sydney with someone from Essex about what is and isn't a big deal in Australian politics is certainly novel!

    Do you Wikipedia an overseas nations' political parties to find the right wing one before taking a stance on an issue?
    You appear not to have realised yet there is absolutely no point debating with @HYUFD. The fact he is entirely ignorant about 99% of human knowledge only encourages him.

    Same with BartyBobbins.

    Amusingly the two often argue amongst themselves, each refusing to give way, each totally bewildered by fact.
    Says the man who spent much of his life in NZ, now is based in New York and spends half the time arguing about UK politics
    True, but you subsist in a small bedsit in Essex, breathing through the mouth and wanking furiously over pictures you’ve cut out of Nadine Dorries’s head, pasted onto the bodies of weightlifters.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,574
    Taz said:

    ping said:

    From the MSE energy forum;

    “I’ve been watching SP (Scottish Power) prices since i joined in jan
    today they have wacked there 1 year fixed prices right up

    Electric Standing charge
    43.14p
    Primary unit rate
    79.18p
    Gas Standing charge
    21.46p
    Primary unit rate
    23.44p”

    https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6379908/sp-massive-increase

    Yes, you read that right. 79p/kWh for leccy.

    ....They were quoting me just over £5,000 a year.

    A few weeks ago a fix was £3,500 a year.

    This is insane. We live in a modest 3 bed detached, insulated, two of us. Our use is modest.

    @Leon This, repeated across Europe this winter will bring about some sort of accommodation with Russia.
    Will it ?
    An 'accommodation' just means the prospect of this year repeated, but starting from a worse position. And not guarantee of his playing ball on gas supplies, either.


  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    boulay said:

    boulay said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Your approach has some curious implications. If, let's say, a cult of fanatics made it clear that they would attack any women they saw walking around who had hair, you'd be morally obliged to shave your wife and daughters' heads before they went out.
    Yes.

    Lots of attempts here to produce paradoxes which turn out to be nothing of the kind. That is pretty much the situation in Taliban controlled countries with trivial differences, and that's what you do unless you want them stoned to death. No paradox. Obviously over here you'd just advise them to stay at home for a bit while the police sorted it.
    No.

    You'd live your lives while the cult of fanatics are criminals to be dealt with. Any actions taken are responsibility of the fanatics, not the fact that someone's daughters went to a concert with their hair showing.
    OK

    I am not happy with the lack of agency allowed to women in this example, but anyway: you are saying unambiguously that you would send your womenfolk out to work in makeup and western dress in present day Kabul, because anything else would be Giving In. Because any resulting stoning no matter how foreseeable, would be 100% Not Your Fault.

    OK
    I would not "send my womenfolk out" anywhere, since "womenfolk" are not my chattel to send or otherwise.

    However the UK is not Kabul. The UK is subject to UK laws, not Taliban ones. When in Rome you may have to follow Roman laws, but I wouldn't go to Kabul because of that, but we're in the UK and UK laws apply. In Paris it is French laws, not Sharia laws that applies.
    OK

    if there is a lawful action you can do or not do, in France, where the reasonably foreseeable consequence of that action is that some random Jews will be tortured to death, should that affect your decision about the action?
    If a random Jew is tortured to death that is a consequence of any torturers, it is not a consequence of 'provocation'. That is where you're wrong, you're trying to excuse the actions of scum by blaming 'provocation' as being responsible for it being done.
    You seem to have discarded the whole concept of causation. The deaths would not have occurred but for the cartoons. Sure, the mindset of the torturers is part of the equation, but you can't shoot someone dead and then explain how the death was caused by the explosion of cordite in a confined space with a projectile in front of it, nothing to do with you guv.

    And what is this "excuse" shit? Is explaining the origins of the holocaust the same as excusing it?
    There is no concept of causation here. The deaths would not have occurred but for twisted individuals that think their beliefs are so sacred that they can kill those they dislike. We need to fight that belief, and provoking them is part of that fight.

    'this "excuse" shit' is you claiming that 'provocation' causes deaths, rather than killers causing deaths. People should be able to take provocation without leading to murder and if they can't, its not the provocateurs fault. The provocateur has no shared responsibility under any circumstances.
    I have to agree with Ishmael having briefly caught up.

    The ultimate responsibility for the act is the one who carries it out but there is still a responsibility of the “provocateur” in certain situations.

    If for example the Charlie Hebdo cartoons had been so so important to publish, that they exposed some absolutely heinous crime that was being carried out by islamists unknown to the world then it could be argued that publishing them was so important that the consequential murders were a price “worth paying” by society (although not likely for the victims and their families).

    The fact is that virtually everyone who would ever see the cartoons already had a perception of Islamic issues that the cartoons depicted or would declare them as blasphemy. So the cartoons whilst satirical didn’t actually achieve anything worthwhile except the deaths in revenge. Publishing was pure provocation without any great benefit to society.

    If it had been a German cartoonist publishing cartoons which exposed Auschwitz et al before anyone else knew it and a band of Hitler Youth had gone on a murderous rampage then the publication would be brave and necessary and the consequences less on the “provocateur” and more on the actors.

    If you decided today to join the Ukrainian Army and had discovered that the families of Brits who have been captured by the Russians and identified were being tracked down and poisoned by the Russians in the UK (despite the preposterousness of this) and then you were captured, identified and your family killed do you not think that, despite your good motives, you would carry some of the blame for causing deaths by doing something you did not absolutely need to do?

    Would you, afterwards, not feel that had you not carried out your actions knowing the potential consequences/backlash, that maybe you should not have done what you did?

    What you advocate is letting the extremists win and living in fear of their violence. That is thankfully anathema to most people.
    It’s absolutely not what I advocate - I am advocating people thinking about the consequences of their actions. I do not live in fear of their violence in the slightest.

    Publishing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons achieved absolutely f all that wasn’t already in the minds of people who buy Charlie Hebdo. Charlie Hebdo had plenty of prior examples that if you publish things critical of Islam and Mohammed then radicalised Muslims are likely to take violent action.

    When the decision was made to publish the cartoons either the publisher was naive and stupid (they weren’t) or wanted to push the boundaries and cause a storm.

    That moment they decided to publish them was the moment the clock started ticking on some nasty reprisals. Therefore the “provocateur” knowingly did something that was frankly “unecessary” for reasons which did not outweigh the damage caused.

    We know that extreme Islamism is a disease but things like Charlie Hebdo feed it not defeat it. They become a flag to rally round and stir up shit and attract converts for absolutely no value to those who hate radical Islam and those who are trying to fight it.

    Sad to see a second apologist for evil here along with Ishmael, though I defend your right to share your awful views.

    Hebdo cartoon achieved plenty, provoking discussions is a public good in and of itself, even if those offended by the provocation react violently to it.

    The way to fight evils like Islamism isn't to pull back our hard-won freedoms like free expression, it is to double down the fight for them. Hebdo are doing more to fight that good fight than you and Ishmael are, for they they are absolutely doing a very good thing that is commendable in its own right.

    Fighting for free speech is a "necessity" in and of itself.
    Being against Jews being tortured to death is to be an apologist for evil. Course it is.

    I'm against Jews being tortured to death.

    You've not demonstrated any causal link between people standing up to evil and that evil though. Instead you're trying to justify and excuse evil by saying it was "provoked", using the "she was wearing a short skirt" line of thinking.
    No I am not, Barty. Very much not. I am saying nothing about the Hebdo people who got shot, which is the only area where that would be even vaguely analogous.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    MISTY said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Kenya election 2022: Raila Odinga rejects Kenya president election results"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-62559899

    Meanwhile in America

    2020 Presidential election.....almost zero ballot irregularities

    2022 recall of radical Democrat DA in LA county......huge ballot irregularities. Massive. Almost 200,00 signatures rejected.

    So the US voting system is fine. Or it isn't.
    Recall petition: it's literally just a petition. You can write Micky Moose as your name. Every name needs to be checked it is a real person.

    Election by mail: each individual voter is sent a ballot.

    Do you really not understand the difference?
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,336
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    "Apart from anything else, it's not in the interests of the Liberal Party — a by-election at the moment, in a very safe seat — particularly as in the state of New South Wales we will face a state election in the early part of next year," he said."
    As well but you missed out the part where Howard said Morrison had reasons for doing it, the context needed to be looked at and it was not illegal
    Wasn't Churchill both PM and Defence Minister during WW2?
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594

    dixiedean said:

    Liz Truss.

    "We’re still in the leadership contest at the moment. Now, my priority is reducing taxes so people can keep more of their own money at the same time as making sure we boost energy supply.

    It is wrong to just keep sticking plasters on this problem. What we actually need to do is make sure we are unleashing more energy, for example, from the North Sea.

    We’re investing in technologies like nuclear, and we’re finding more renewable energy as well."

    Reads like I'm not answering till I've won.

    Indeed.
    The Times seemed to suggest she favours direct support to the most in need. Basically an extension of the Rishi dishout from May.
    I mean the production side etc i think we all agree is longer term essential and lovely protectionist stuff but its like a nuclear reactor has exploded in Rutland, and she is solely focussed on building a replacement whilst not doing anything about the irradiated grannies in Oakham.
    We need energy security and we must put in place the means to make that journey now. But we also have to survive the journey there. Thats the tricky bit
    The Times has conducted a campaign to try to herd Truss into the tax and spend tent along with Sunak. Shock polling, etc.

    Truss has resisted so far.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,574
    From a couple of hours ago.

    https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1559502129689239552
    All Ukraine under an air raid alert now. Explosions as a result from missile strikes reported in the northern Zhytomyr region, bordering Belarus. In the last days, Russia brought a lot of equipment and weapons to Belarusian airfields with a plan to launch more missiles on Ukraine
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    IshmaelZ said:

    boulay said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Your approach has some curious implications. If, let's say, a cult of fanatics made it clear that they would attack any women they saw walking around who had hair, you'd be morally obliged to shave your wife and daughters' heads before they went out.
    Yes.

    Lots of attempts here to produce paradoxes which turn out to be nothing of the kind. That is pretty much the situation in Taliban controlled countries with trivial differences, and that's what you do unless you want them stoned to death. No paradox. Obviously over here you'd just advise them to stay at home for a bit while the police sorted it.
    No.

    You'd live your lives while the cult of fanatics are criminals to be dealt with. Any actions taken are responsibility of the fanatics, not the fact that someone's daughters went to a concert with their hair showing.
    OK

    I am not happy with the lack of agency allowed to women in this example, but anyway: you are saying unambiguously that you would send your womenfolk out to work in makeup and western dress in present day Kabul, because anything else would be Giving In. Because any resulting stoning no matter how foreseeable, would be 100% Not Your Fault.

    OK
    I would not "send my womenfolk out" anywhere, since "womenfolk" are not my chattel to send or otherwise.

    However the UK is not Kabul. The UK is subject to UK laws, not Taliban ones. When in Rome you may have to follow Roman laws, but I wouldn't go to Kabul because of that, but we're in the UK and UK laws apply. In Paris it is French laws, not Sharia laws that applies.
    OK

    if there is a lawful action you can do or not do, in France, where the reasonably foreseeable consequence of that action is that some random Jews will be tortured to death, should that affect your decision about the action?
    If a random Jew is tortured to death that is a consequence of any torturers, it is not a consequence of 'provocation'. That is where you're wrong, you're trying to excuse the actions of scum by blaming 'provocation' as being responsible for it being done.
    You seem to have discarded the whole concept of causation. The deaths would not have occurred but for the cartoons. Sure, the mindset of the torturers is part of the equation, but you can't shoot someone dead and then explain how the death was caused by the explosion of cordite in a confined space with a projectile in front of it, nothing to do with you guv.

    And what is this "excuse" shit? Is explaining the origins of the holocaust the same as excusing it?
    There is no concept of causation here. The deaths would not have occurred but for twisted individuals that think their beliefs are so sacred that they can kill those they dislike. We need to fight that belief, and provoking them is part of that fight.

    'this "excuse" shit' is you claiming that 'provocation' causes deaths, rather than killers causing deaths. People should be able to take provocation without leading to murder and if they can't, its not the provocateurs fault. The provocateur has no shared responsibility under any circumstances.
    I have to agree with Ishmael having briefly caught up.

    The ultimate responsibility for the act is the one who carries it out but there is still a responsibility of the “provocateur” in certain situations.

    If for example the Charlie Hebdo cartoons had been so so important to publish, that they exposed some absolutely heinous crime that was being carried out by islamists unknown to the world then it could be argued that publishing them was so important that the consequential murders were a price “worth paying” by society (although not likely for the victims and their families).

    The fact is that virtually everyone who would ever see the cartoons already had a perception of Islamic issues that the cartoons depicted or would declare them as blasphemy. So the cartoons whilst satirical didn’t actually achieve anything worthwhile except the deaths in revenge. Publishing was pure provocation without any great benefit to society.

    If it had been a German cartoonist publishing cartoons which exposed Auschwitz et al before anyone else knew it and a band of Hitler Youth had gone on a murderous rampage then the publication would be brave and necessary and the consequences less on the “provocateur” and more on the actors.

    If you decided today to join the Ukrainian Army and had discovered that the families of Brits who have been captured by the Russians and identified were being tracked down and poisoned by the Russians in the UK (despite the preposterousness of this) and then you were captured, identified and your family killed do you not think that, despite your good motives, you would carry some of the blame for causing deaths by doing something you did not absolutely need to do?

    Would you, afterwards, not feel that had you not carried out your actions knowing the potential consequences/backlash, that maybe you should not have done what you did?

    What you advocate is letting the extremists win and living in fear of their violence. That is thankfully anathema to most people.
    It really is not letting the extremists win. And oyur position is that the deaths of innocents are never a moral consideration.
    If the extremists want you to stop criticising them and their religion then by staying silent because of fear of their response you are absolutely letting them win. Anything else from you is sophistry.
    My own view is that there is great deal more subtlety to this argument. On the one hand my purist side agrees with you Richard, but then my pragmatist side reminds me that as with so much in society there is often a case for not standing on principle and trying hard to antagonise the easily antagonised for the good of all. It is rather like the difference between police enforcement and the keeping of the peace; the former is an absolute upholding of the law, the latter is a sometimes uncomfortable pragmatic approach that might sometimes mean that uncomfortable accommodations have to be made. The other analogy is international diplomacy. If we only ever did what was "right" then we would find ourselves in a lot more wars than we might want to fight.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    I have to say having a debate from Sydney with someone from Essex about what is and isn't a big deal in Australian politics is certainly novel!

    Do you Wikipedia an overseas nations' political parties to find the right wing one before taking a stance on an issue?
    You appear not to have realised yet there is absolutely no point debating with @HYUFD. The fact he is entirely ignorant about 99% of human knowledge only encourages him.

    Same with BartyBobbins.

    Amusingly the two often argue amongst themselves, each refusing to give way, each totally bewildered by fact.
    Says the man who spent much of his life in NZ, now is based in New York and spends half the time arguing about UK politics
    True, but you subsist in a small bedsit in Essex, breathing through the mouth and wanking furiously over pictures you’ve cut out of Nadine Dorries’s head, pasted onto the bodies of weightlifters.
    For your information we are actually moving to a 4 bed house in more rural Essex later this year, not that I care where or how posters live
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653
    edited August 2022
    Great header @Cyclefree

    I don't think it's the zeitgeist generally, though it certainly is in much of the media and in places of most power.

    In a lib dem we have the freedom to challenge and offend. If you move away from fact and science and promote non-fact and belief in its place, then this does constitute a move away from the crux of the enlightenment, as @Leon points out regularly (though not always effectively IMO).
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454
    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I don't see how Barty R by his own lights is not just free, but positively obliged, to do exactly that. That'll show 'em!
    Yes I'm trying to get at the possible hierarchy where the person doing that would slot in.

    1. A doughty battler for Free Speech who should be supported to the hilt?
    2. A nasty troll who nevertheless should be legally protected on Free Speech grounds.
    3. A criminal.

    I reckon we have all 3 views on here. Me I think I'm a 3 but I see the arguments for 2.

    And btw which is it in the law as it stands? I don't know without researching it.
    Deliberately seeking out and distributing your opinions onto people who you know would be offended is quite different from publishing something to people who want to listen to them. The former is sometimes going to be harrassment so we have competing freedoms at battle and the law will have to decide which has priority, the latter is a simpler question of free speech and should not be an issue for the law.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    dixiedean said:

    For some CoL porn i've just checked my deal. Im at the back end of a fixed deal till November, my leccy is about 20p/kwh, gas 4p/kwh, current quotes 71p leccy and 18p gas with daily charge double current.
    2 bed flat live alone, frugal ish use (cooker hob gas, heating set to 21c central heat, hot water maintained throughout day, standard electricity use, 1 fridge, 1 freezer, oven occasionally, TVs, lights, kettle etc plus 'tech'. I've built up 260 in credit on an 86/month DD.
    My fag packet says im looking at 250/month from November?
    I exist on benefits.
    As the fella says in The Great Escape 'Gooooood luck'
    And im a single fella who doesnt like too much warmth, wears a jumper rather than crank it up etc
    People with kids or bigger properties but the same benefit or low income are truly screwed arent they?
    Somethings gotta give.

    Yeah.
    The numbers just don't add up for millions of folk.
    A family with three teenagers in a large, Victorian house? It doesn't have to be low income. It can be moderate and still ruinous.
    Status quo cannot hold. Not convinced it can hold till September 5th either, but that looks like the line.
    26th when the new price cap is announced is when the pressure to break silence will be maximum.
    Id like to see the '22 bring forward closing date to the 25th or thereabouts but if not, at bare minimum a joint statement that the winning candidate or their CofE will set out the new govts plan to address the issue before parliament on (say) Sept 7th with associated vote to follow. At bare minimum they must commit to that.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I would say inserting inflammatory literature into someone's house is pushing the boundaries of freedom of speech etc a little.
    I happen to agree.

    But then you could flex it to test where your limits are - eg not leaflets through letterboxes now but on a tee shirt standing outside a Mosque.

    Still not ok? Or maybe maybe not depending on context?

    Point is, Free Speech absolutism is - imo - a load of tripe and very much NOT the noble muscular belief its virtue-signalling proponents always seek to portray it as.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited August 2022
    Morrison was presumably worried that key ministers might become incapacitated during the pandemic, but by acting in secret and amassing quasi-presidential power, it looks like the act of a would-be tyrant.

    Like his fellow traveller, Boris, he was obviously deeply unfit for senior public office.

    I don’t see the point in his resigning his seat though, unless Albanese’s investigation reveals more maladministration.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Nigelb said:

    From a couple of hours ago.

    https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1559502129689239552
    All Ukraine under an air raid alert now. Explosions as a result from missile strikes reported in the northern Zhytomyr region, bordering Belarus. In the last days, Russia brought a lot of equipment and weapons to Belarusian airfields with a plan to launch more missiles on Ukraine

    Yes, I’ve got family and friends in Zhytomyr, they’ve had sirens all afternoon and a couple of missiles possibly shot down close to the city.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,574

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    "Apart from anything else, it's not in the interests of the Liberal Party — a by-election at the moment, in a very safe seat — particularly as in the state of New South Wales we will face a state election in the early part of next year," he said."
    As well but you missed out the part where Howard said Morrison had reasons for doing it, the context needed to be looked at and it was not illegal
    Wasn't Churchill both PM and Defence Minister during WW2?
    I don't think he appointed himself in secret, and kept it quiet until after he left office, though.
  • kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I don't see how Barty R by his own lights is not just free, but positively obliged, to do exactly that. That'll show 'em!
    Yes I'm trying to get at the possible hierarchy where the person doing that would slot in.

    1. A doughty battler for Free Speech who should be supported to the hilt?
    2. A nasty troll who nevertheless should be legally protected on Free Speech grounds.
    3. A criminal.

    I reckon we have all 3 views on here. Me I think I'm a 3 but I see the arguments for 2.

    And btw which is it in the law as it stands? I don't know without researching it.
    Since your scenario involves trespassing on other people's private property that quite possibly is criminal.

    If someone prints lewd cartoons and puts them on a placard and walks around with them on the pavement in a general protest that would be free speech. Trespass isn't necessarily.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    I have to say having a debate from Sydney with someone from Essex about what is and isn't a big deal in Australian politics is certainly novel!

    Do you Wikipedia an overseas nations' political parties to find the right wing one before taking a stance on an issue?
    You appear not to have realised yet there is absolutely no point debating with @HYUFD. The fact he is entirely ignorant about 99% of human knowledge only encourages him.

    Same with BartyBobbins.

    Amusingly the two often argue amongst themselves, each refusing to give way, each totally bewildered by fact.
    Says the man who spent much of his life in NZ, now is based in New York and spends half the time arguing about UK politics
    True, but you subsist in a small bedsit in Essex, breathing through the mouth and wanking furiously over pictures you’ve cut out of Nadine Dorries’s head, pasted onto the bodies of weightlifters.
    I am only "liking", not because I agree, but because it is one of the funniest insults I have seen on PB. Even better than some of the ones that @Leon has thrown at me (and I to him perhaps)
  • kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I would say inserting inflammatory literature into someone's house is pushing the boundaries of freedom of speech etc a little.
    I happen to agree.

    But then you could flex it to test where your limits are - eg not leaflets through letterboxes now but on a tee shirt standing outside a Mosque.

    Still not ok? Or maybe maybe not depending on context?

    Point is, Free Speech absolutism is - imo - a load of tripe and very much NOT the noble muscular belief its virtue-signalling proponents always seek to portray it as.
    Outside a Mosque is free speech.

    Inside the Mosque is trespassing.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    I have to say having a debate from Sydney with someone from Essex about what is and isn't a big deal in Australian politics is certainly novel!

    Do you Wikipedia an overseas nations' political parties to find the right wing one before taking a stance on an issue?
    You appear not to have realised yet there is absolutely no point debating with @HYUFD. The fact he is entirely ignorant about 99% of human knowledge only encourages him.

    Same with BartyBobbins.

    Amusingly the two often argue amongst themselves, each refusing to give way, each totally bewildered by fact.
    Says the man who spent much of his life in NZ, now is based in New York and spends half the time arguing about UK politics
    True, but you subsist in a small bedsit in Essex, breathing through the mouth and wanking furiously over pictures you’ve cut out of Nadine Dorries’s head, pasted onto the bodies of weightlifters.
    For your information we are actually moving to a 4 bed house in more rural Essex later this year, not that I care where or how posters live
    You don't seem to be denying the more important aspect of the post though?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,574
    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    From a couple of hours ago.

    https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1559502129689239552
    All Ukraine under an air raid alert now. Explosions as a result from missile strikes reported in the northern Zhytomyr region, bordering Belarus. In the last days, Russia brought a lot of equipment and weapons to Belarusian airfields with a plan to launch more missiles on Ukraine

    Yes, I’ve got family and friends in Zhytomyr, they’ve had sirens all afternoon and a couple of missiles possibly shot down close to the city.
    I think old Dynamo was suggesting Belarus had no involvement in the war, a few days back.

    Meantime.

    https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1559535168850886658
    Black smoke over another military air base in Crimea

    Military air base in the village of Hvardiyske in Simferopol district is on fire, Kommersant writes referring to locals https://t.me/kommersant/37638
    Bellingcat head writes that 12 Russian SU-24M and 12 SU-25SM aircraft at airbase
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    I have to say having a debate from Sydney with someone from Essex about what is and isn't a big deal in Australian politics is certainly novel!

    Do you Wikipedia an overseas nations' political parties to find the right wing one before taking a stance on an issue?
    You appear not to have realised yet there is absolutely no point debating with @HYUFD. The fact he is entirely ignorant about 99% of human knowledge only encourages him.

    Same with BartyBobbins.

    Amusingly the two often argue amongst themselves, each refusing to give way, each totally bewildered by fact.
    Says the man who spent much of his life in NZ, now is based in New York and spends half the time arguing about UK politics
    True, but you subsist in a small bedsit in Essex, breathing through the mouth and wanking furiously over pictures you’ve cut out of Nadine Dorries’s head, pasted onto the bodies of weightlifters.
    For your information we are actually moving to a 4 bed house in more rural Essex later this year, not that I care where or how posters live
    So, no denial of the furious wanking over Nadine Dorries. PBers will take note.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    ping said:

    Wholesale gas up another 12.8% today.

    Sept delivery 477p/therm (16.3p/kWh)

    Dec delivery 613p/therm (20.9p/kWh)

    Surely we’re at a price level that guarantees some level of demand destruction?

    https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-Natural-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5253323

    Not if the government subsidises the price so that there is no increase in the price level.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,046
    Dura_Ace said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    ScoMo is a pathological liar of some pedigree. As Macron observed, I don’t think, I KNOW he's a liar.
    It takes one etc.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I don't see how Barty R by his own lights is not just free, but positively obliged, to do exactly that. That'll show 'em!
    Yes I'm trying to get at the possible hierarchy where the person doing that would slot in.

    1. A doughty battler for Free Speech who should be supported to the hilt?
    2. A nasty troll who nevertheless should be legally protected on Free Speech grounds.
    3. A criminal.

    I reckon we have all 3 views on here. Me I think I'm a 3 but I see the arguments for 2.

    And btw which is it in the law as it stands? I don't know without researching it.
    Since your scenario involves trespassing on other people's private property that quite possibly is criminal.

    If someone prints lewd cartoons and puts them on a placard and walks around with them on the pavement in a general protest that would be free speech. Trespass isn't necessarily.
    Yes, sorry, the "trespass" point unnecessarily clutters up what I'm trying to get at.

    Pls see my follow up post to Davey - which refs your example although slightly different.
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    edited August 2022
    On topic, thank you cyclefree.

    I broadly agree with your argument/position, but personally I think there are limits.

    We previously dingdonged over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons being shown in Batley. You took the absolutist free speech side of the argument, I thought what the school/teacher did was unnecessarily offensive.

    I’ve thought and read a lot about it, since, and I haven’t changed my mind.

    You’re clearly very smart and eloquent, but I think you take your principles too far sometimes, as I think you did re: Batley/Charlie Hebdo.

    Being outrageously and deliberately offensive is, and should be a punishable offence by pupils and teachers in schools. In wider society it should be reluctantly allowed, although frowned upon.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    As an example of how no politician seems to get how screwed we are, yesterday Rosena Allin Khan MP linked to an admittedly harrowing story of a lady with 6 months to live who can barely afford her energy bills and its taking up all her income so she cannot afford to build some memories in her time left with and to leave her grandchildren. Khan remarked on the governments failure to address CoL and the energy crisis letting this lady down. Fair point, but her own party that very day had released their 29 billion pound solution which would itself do absolutely nothing to help this lady. It would freeze her bills at the very level denying her those memories etc.
    They are all living in cloudcuckoobury, in complete denial of whats here, now.
    Powder keg.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,248
    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    From a couple of hours ago.

    https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1559502129689239552
    All Ukraine under an air raid alert now. Explosions as a result from missile strikes reported in the northern Zhytomyr region, bordering Belarus. In the last days, Russia brought a lot of equipment and weapons to Belarusian airfields with a plan to launch more missiles on Ukraine

    Yes, I’ve got family and friends in Zhytomyr, they’ve had sirens all afternoon and a couple of missiles possibly shot down close to the city.
    That's awful

    I am still waiting for Putin's Potemkin military to collapse. I can't see any sign of it, much as I hope it is true
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I don't see how Barty R by his own lights is not just free, but positively obliged, to do exactly that. That'll show 'em!
    Yes I'm trying to get at the possible hierarchy where the person doing that would slot in.

    1. A doughty battler for Free Speech who should be supported to the hilt?
    2. A nasty troll who nevertheless should be legally protected on Free Speech grounds.
    3. A criminal.

    I reckon we have all 3 views on here. Me I think I'm a 3 but I see the arguments for 2.

    And btw which is it in the law as it stands? I don't know without researching it.
    Deliberately seeking out and distributing your opinions onto people who you know would be offended is quite different from publishing something to people who want to listen to them. The former is sometimes going to be harrassment so we have competing freedoms at battle and the law will have to decide which has priority, the latter is a simpler question of free speech and should not be an issue for the law.
    Yes, it can't be "trolling" unless it's aimed at people who *don't* want to hear it.

    I don't agree that publishing ANYTHING should be legal so long as the target audience will lap it up. But almost anything, yes.
  • ping said:

    On topic, thank you cyclefree.

    I broadly agree with your argument/position, but personally I think there are limits.

    We previously dingdonged over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons being shown in Batley. You took the absolutist free speech side of the argument, I thought what the school/teacher did was unnecessarily offensive.

    I’ve thought and read a lot about it, since, and I haven’t changed my mind.

    You’re clearly very smart and eloquent, but I think you take your principles too far sometimes, as I think you did re: Batley/Charlie Hebdo.

    Being outrageously and deliberately offensive is, and should be a punishable offence in schools. In wider society it should be reluctantly allowed, although frowned upon.

    I think what the teacher did was necessarily offensive and until this problem is resolved the cartoons should be added to the curriculum to be shown and taught in all schools as part of education. It is a relevant thing to be educating people about.
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346

    As an example of how no politician seems to get how screwed we are, yesterday Rosena Allin Khan MP linked to an admittedly harrowing story of a lady with 6 months to live who can barely afford her energy bills and its taking up all her income so she cannot afford to build some memories in her time left with and to leave her grandchildren. Khan remarked on the governments failure to address CoL and the energy crisis letting this lady down. Fair point, but her own party that very day had released their 29 billion pound solution which would itself do absolutely nothing to help this lady. It would freeze her bills at the very level denying her those memories etc.
    They are all living in cloudcuckoobury, in complete denial of whats here, now.
    Powder keg.

    What would you suggest be done?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,248
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I would say inserting inflammatory literature into someone's house is pushing the boundaries of freedom of speech etc a little.
    I happen to agree.

    But then you could flex it to test where your limits are - eg not leaflets through letterboxes now but on a tee shirt standing outside a Mosque.

    Still not ok? Or maybe maybe not depending on context?

    Point is, Free Speech absolutism is - imo - a load of tripe and very much NOT the noble muscular belief its virtue-signalling proponents always seek to portray it as.
    And yet if it was American Christians beheading brown people for depicting Jesus I suspect you'd be very much a free speech absolutist. Funny, that
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346
    edited August 2022

    ping said:

    Wholesale gas up another 12.8% today.

    Sept delivery 477p/therm (16.3p/kWh)

    Dec delivery 613p/therm (20.9p/kWh)

    Surely we’re at a price level that guarantees some level of demand destruction?

    https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-Natural-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5253323

    Not if the government subsidises the price so that there is no increase in the price level.
    Exactly!!!!
    Labour's policy annoucement yesterday has caused todays increase.
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594
    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Kenya election 2022: Raila Odinga rejects Kenya president election results"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-62559899

    Meanwhile in America

    2020 Presidential election.....almost zero ballot irregularities

    2022 recall of radical Democrat DA in LA county......huge ballot irregularities. Massive. Almost 200,00 signatures rejected.

    So the US voting system is fine. Or it isn't.
    Recall petition: it's literally just a petition. You can write Micky Moose as your name. Every name needs to be checked it is a real person.

    Election by mail: each individual voter is sent a ballot.

    Do you really not understand the difference?
    Yeah in the Newsom ballot recall last year it looks like 400,000 out of 2.1m got rejected. About 19%.

    In this case it was more than 25%.

  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    boulay said:

    boulay said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Your approach has some curious implications. If, let's say, a cult of fanatics made it clear that they would attack any women they saw walking around who had hair, you'd be morally obliged to shave your wife and daughters' heads before they went out.
    Yes.

    Lots of attempts here to produce paradoxes which turn out to be nothing of the kind. That is pretty much the situation in Taliban controlled countries with trivial differences, and that's what you do unless you want them stoned to death. No paradox. Obviously over here you'd just advise them to stay at home for a bit while the police sorted it.
    No.

    You'd live your lives while the cult of fanatics are criminals to be dealt with. Any actions taken are responsibility of the fanatics, not the fact that someone's daughters went to a concert with their hair showing.
    OK

    I am not happy with the lack of agency allowed to women in this example, but anyway: you are saying unambiguously that you would send your womenfolk out to work in makeup and western dress in present day Kabul, because anything else would be Giving In. Because any resulting stoning no matter how foreseeable, would be 100% Not Your Fault.

    OK
    I would not "send my womenfolk out" anywhere, since "womenfolk" are not my chattel to send or otherwise.

    However the UK is not Kabul. The UK is subject to UK laws, not Taliban ones. When in Rome you may have to follow Roman laws, but I wouldn't go to Kabul because of that, but we're in the UK and UK laws apply. In Paris it is French laws, not Sharia laws that applies.
    OK

    if there is a lawful action you can do or not do, in France, where the reasonably foreseeable consequence of that action is that some random Jews will be tortured to death, should that affect your decision about the action?
    If a random Jew is tortured to death that is a consequence of any torturers, it is not a consequence of 'provocation'. That is where you're wrong, you're trying to excuse the actions of scum by blaming 'provocation' as being responsible for it being done.
    You seem to have discarded the whole concept of causation. The deaths would not have occurred but for the cartoons. Sure, the mindset of the torturers is part of the equation, but you can't shoot someone dead and then explain how the death was caused by the explosion of cordite in a confined space with a projectile in front of it, nothing to do with you guv.

    And what is this "excuse" shit? Is explaining the origins of the holocaust the same as excusing it?
    There is no concept of causation here. The deaths would not have occurred but for twisted individuals that think their beliefs are so sacred that they can kill those they dislike. We need to fight that belief, and provoking them is part of that fight.

    'this "excuse" shit' is you claiming that 'provocation' causes deaths, rather than killers causing deaths. People should be able to take provocation without leading to murder and if they can't, its not the provocateurs fault. The provocateur has no shared responsibility under any circumstances.
    I have to agree with Ishmael having briefly caught up.

    The ultimate responsibility for the act is the one who carries it out but there is still a responsibility of the “provocateur” in certain situations.

    If for example the Charlie Hebdo cartoons had been so so important to publish, that they exposed some absolutely heinous crime that was being carried out by islamists unknown to the world then it could be argued that publishing them was so important that the consequential murders were a price “worth paying” by society (although not likely for the victims and their families).

    The fact is that virtually everyone who would ever see the cartoons already had a perception of Islamic issues that the cartoons depicted or would declare them as blasphemy. So the cartoons whilst satirical didn’t actually achieve anything worthwhile except the deaths in revenge. Publishing was pure provocation without any great benefit to society.

    If it had been a German cartoonist publishing cartoons which exposed Auschwitz et al before anyone else knew it and a band of Hitler Youth had gone on a murderous rampage then the publication would be brave and necessary and the consequences less on the “provocateur” and more on the actors.

    If you decided today to join the Ukrainian Army and had discovered that the families of Brits who have been captured by the Russians and identified were being tracked down and poisoned by the Russians in the UK (despite the preposterousness of this) and then you were captured, identified and your family killed do you not think that, despite your good motives, you would carry some of the blame for causing deaths by doing something you did not absolutely need to do?

    Would you, afterwards, not feel that had you not carried out your actions knowing the potential consequences/backlash, that maybe you should not have done what you did?

    No.

    The cartoons did produce something
    worthwhile, they provoked discussion and engaged in free speech. That is a good in
    its own right. See my post at 12:54 which brought Hebdo into the conversation.

    Free speech isn't only valuable when its
    what you deem to be "important" because
    "reasons" it is always important. It is a good thing in and of itself, and people provoking
    discussions and pushing the boundaries are doing a good thing by doing so.

    In your example where Russia is murdering
    the families of Brits that all the more justifies people volunteering to go fight that evil, it
    doesn't mean that those who do so are doing the wrong thing because of any
    potential backlash.

    You and Ishmael seem to be saying that in
    the face of evil we should do nothing that might provoke that evil. That is repugnant to me, we should be provoking and fighting
    that evil, not surrendering to it.
    It amuses me when Billy Big Balls talk about “fighting evil and not surrendering to it” from their home office where they have never had to actually face an evil, deal with an evil and take personal risks in defeating an evil.

    There are people who fight these evils every day, people who do it quietly and do it well at great risk who would likely rather the likes of Charlie Hebdo didn’t stir matters up further and make their job harder. They didn’t “provoke a discussion” because that discussion had already been going on for a long time (see Salman Rushdie) and a pissant magazine publishing these was not going to change the views of the west in any way.

    How did you fight Islamist or Russian evil today? Or over the last ten years even?
    I imagine about the only brave thing Barty has ever done is go on one of the children's rides at a theme park. Even then he probably had to have a lie down for about a week.
  • ping said:

    On topic, thank you cyclefree.

    I broadly agree with your argument/position, but personally I think there are limits.

    We previously dingdonged over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons being shown in Batley. You took the absolutist free speech side of the argument, I thought what the school/teacher did was unnecessarily offensive.

    I’ve thought and read a lot about it, since, and I haven’t changed my mind.

    You’re clearly very smart and eloquent, but I think you take your principles too far sometimes, as I think you did re: Batley/Charlie Hebdo.

    Being outrageously and deliberately offensive is, and should be a punishable offence in schools. In wider society it should be reluctantly allowed, although frowned upon.

    The problem is that once you set the principle, who decides on what constitutes outrageous and deliberate offensiveness. Which is exactly why we are having this argument. Because whilst it is easy to talk about extreme examples most situations are not at the extremes, they are the borderline cases where you are relying upon the authorities to decide - something they are clearly incapable of doing in a reasonable manner.

    The only answer to prevent this is to defend the principle of freedom to offend even in the most extreme examples and retain rules only for specific incitement to violence or endangerment.

  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    I have to say having a debate from Sydney with someone from Essex about what is and isn't a big deal in Australian politics is certainly novel!

    Do you Wikipedia an overseas nations' political parties to find the right wing one before taking a stance on an issue?
    You appear not to have realised yet there is absolutely no point debating with @HYUFD. The fact he is entirely ignorant about 99% of human knowledge only encourages him.

    Same with BartyBobbins.

    Amusingly the two often argue amongst themselves, each refusing to give way, each totally bewildered by fact.
    Says the man who spent much of his life in NZ, now is based in New York and spends half the time arguing about UK politics
    True, but you subsist in a small bedsit in Essex, breathing through the mouth and wanking furiously over pictures you’ve cut out of Nadine Dorries’s head, pasted onto the bodies of weightlifters.
    For your information we are actually moving to a 4 bed house in more rural Essex later this year, not that I care where or how posters live
    So, no denial of the furious wanking over Nadine Dorries. PBers will take note.
    He does have a choice of rooms in which to do it now though.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I would say inserting inflammatory literature into someone's house is pushing the boundaries of freedom of speech etc a little.
    I happen to agree.

    But then you could flex it to test where your limits are - eg not leaflets through letterboxes now but on a tee shirt standing outside a Mosque.

    Still not ok? Or maybe maybe not depending on context?

    Point is, Free Speech absolutism is - imo - a load of tripe and very much NOT the noble muscular belief its virtue-signalling proponents always seek to portray it as.
    Outside a Mosque is free speech.

    Inside the Mosque is trespassing.
    Hmm, not sure about either.

    But anyway, just out of (my) curiosity, can you give me an example of where somebody saying something - ie just words no actions - should IYO be a criminal offence?
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    ping said:

    On topic, thank you cyclefree.

    I broadly agree with your argument/position, but personally I think there are limits.

    We previously dingdonged over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons being shown in Batley. You took the absolutist free speech side of the argument, I thought what the school/teacher did was unnecessarily offensive.

    I’ve thought and read a lot about it, since, and I haven’t changed my mind.

    You’re clearly very smart and eloquent, but I think you take your principles too far sometimes, as I think you did re: Batley/Charlie Hebdo.

    Being outrageously and deliberately offensive is, and should be a punishable offence in schools. In wider society it should be reluctantly allowed, although frowned upon.

    I think what the teacher did was necessarily offensive and until this problem is resolved the cartoons should be added to the curriculum to be shown and taught in all schools as part of education. It is a relevant thing to be educating people about.
    And no doubt you think they ought to teaching kids it is OK to use the N-word because that is free speech too?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    edited August 2022
    @Richard_Tyndall - I don't think it's 40% of a barrel of oil used for non energy purposes, I think it's more like 20-25%.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Anyhoo, hustings tonight in Perth where hopefully the Calvine photo will be a hot topic.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    ping said:

    Wholesale gas up another 12.8% today.

    Sept delivery 477p/therm (16.3p/kWh)

    Dec delivery 613p/therm (20.9p/kWh)

    Surely we’re at a price level that guarantees some level of demand destruction?

    https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-Natural-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5253323

    Not if the government subsidises the price so that there is no increase in the price level.
    Exactly!!!!
    Labour's policy annoucement yesterday has caused todays increase.
    Are you sure ?

    Dutch TTF are up broadly the same amount.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    edited August 2022
    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    No, for the same reason that Jerry Sadowitz won’t be booked by Live at the Apollo any time soon.

    You should have the right to buy the cartoons in a satirical magazine though, just as Sadowitz should have the right to perform his act in a comedy club.
    What about on a tee-shirt outside a Mosque?
  • Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Is this as bad as it looks? Any PB energy experts?


    This time last year, German year-ahead power was about €85 per MWh.

    Yikes.
    If energy prices quintuple - or worse - I don’t see how we avoid economic depression. Or am I missing something?
    China is currently slowing, mainly thanks to their zero covid approach, and that is taking the heat off oil, which is falling. I suspect if the world goes into recession/depression, prices will drop too.

    Not great, and it shows the issues with being part of a global world market for everything, with no back up plan.
    But we don't need oil anymore. We can't burn it for power, and in 10 years time we won't need it for cars.
    About 40% of a barrel of oil is used for stuff other than energy. We are no where near being able to replace that with alternatives. Your electric car still need lubricants and coolants which include oil by-products. It will contain about 10% by weight of plastic in its construction but that is about 50% by volume. Our whole life is based on the use of petrochemical products and I will repeat my old joke. If this gives you a headache then take an Asprin - it is made from petrochemical derivatives.
    Yes. The madness is that oil is far too valuable to burn, because we need it for so much else.
    100% agree.
  • kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I would say inserting inflammatory literature into someone's house is pushing the boundaries of freedom of speech etc a little.
    I happen to agree.

    But then you could flex it to test where your limits are - eg not leaflets through letterboxes now but on a tee shirt standing outside a Mosque.

    Still not ok? Or maybe maybe not depending on context?

    Point is, Free Speech absolutism is - imo - a load of tripe and very much NOT the noble muscular belief its virtue-signalling proponents always seek to portray it as.
    Outside a Mosque is free speech.

    Inside the Mosque is trespassing.
    Hmm, not sure about either.

    But anyway, just out of (my) curiosity, can you give me an example of where somebody saying something - ie just words no actions - should IYO be a criminal offence?
    3 examples:

    Incitement to violence.
    Threats of violence.
    Harassment of an individual.

    Protest, even offensive protest, doesn't meet the threshold of that. Simply being offensive should not be illegal, immoral but not illegal.
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    I have to say having a debate from Sydney with someone from Essex about what is and isn't a big deal in Australian politics is certainly novel!

    Do you Wikipedia an overseas nations' political parties to find the right wing one before taking a stance on an issue?
    You appear not to have realised yet there is absolutely no point debating with @HYUFD. The fact he is entirely ignorant about 99% of human knowledge only encourages him.

    Same with BartyBobbins.

    Amusingly the two often argue amongst themselves, each refusing to give way, each totally bewildered by fact.
    Says the man who spent much of his life in NZ, now is based in New York and spends half the time arguing about UK politics
    True, but you subsist in a small bedsit in Essex, breathing through the mouth and wanking furiously over pictures you’ve cut out of Nadine Dorries’s head, pasted onto the bodies of weightlifters.
    For your information we are actually moving to a 4 bed house in more rural Essex later this year, not that I care where or how posters live
    So, no denial of the furious wanking over Nadine Dorries. PBers will take note.
    I have many disagreements with @HYUFD but your comment is uncalled for and frankly in bad taste
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    MISTY said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Kenya election 2022: Raila Odinga rejects Kenya president election results"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-62559899

    Meanwhile in America

    2020 Presidential election.....almost zero ballot irregularities

    2022 recall of radical Democrat DA in LA county......huge ballot irregularities. Massive. Almost 200,00 signatures rejected.

    So the US voting system is fine. Or it isn't.
    Recall petition: it's literally just a petition. You can write Micky Moose as your name. Every name needs to be checked it is a real person.

    Election by mail: each individual voter is sent a ballot.

    Do you really not understand the difference?
    Yeah in the Newsom ballot recall last year it looks like 400,000 out of 2.1m got rejected. About 19%.

    In this case it was more than 25%.

    Whoosh.

    That was the sound of a point going over your head.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,248

    https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1559543142239637506?s=20&t=dfhhC1Gt4Ij2tAgNF4w3DQ


    "EXCLUSIVE: The RAF has effectively paused making job offers to white male recruits in favour of women & ethnic minorities to meet "impossible" diversity targets, sources claim. The head of
    @RoyalAirForce recruitment has resigned in protest, they said"


    The madness spreads. It really isn't getting better, it's getting worse
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 3,055
    A blast from the past, this morning, reading a letter in The Times from one Francis Bown - an Anglo-Catholic priest, who lead protests against women's ordination in the 1990s.

    He has, presumably, a huge amount of family money, and spends his time reviewing fancy restaurants and hotels in a very Web 1.0 way, with no obvious monetization, which is where I realised I recognised the name from:

    https://www.bownsbest.com

    Has any PBer come across this man in real life?
  • Is it correct that 3 weeks tomorrow it will be the first Truss v Starmer pmqs ( assuming she wins)

    I just heard her speaking in Elgin and she is giving nothing away on how she will deal with the energy price cap despite intense pressure
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841

    As an example of how no politician seems to get how screwed we are, yesterday Rosena Allin Khan MP linked to an admittedly harrowing story of a lady with 6 months to live who can barely afford her energy bills and its taking up all her income so she cannot afford to build some memories in her time left with and to leave her grandchildren. Khan remarked on the governments failure to address CoL and the energy crisis letting this lady down. Fair point, but her own party that very day had released their 29 billion pound solution which would itself do absolutely nothing to help this lady. It would freeze her bills at the very level denying her those memories etc.
    They are all living in cloudcuckoobury, in complete denial of whats here, now.
    Powder keg.

    What would you suggest be done?
    My preferred approach is long term energy protectoinism and security with plans put in place now to achieve that in as short order as possible - potentially using investment in it as a keynesian style growth through investment to also address the impending recession. The old infrastructure investment solution.
    This leaves the current crisis and the short to medium term. My oreference is a furlough style solution aimed at the energy market and skewed to the worst off but its becoming obvious no sticking plaster is big enough and there is no end in sight. Its a big enough crisis that maybe it does now require a UK energy summit and an approach for the short and medium term that the main parties and the devolved admins sign up to.
    All the solutions proposed have major issues and national debt implications, lets get a unified approach on at least this critical issue.

    Something like that for me
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    I have to say having a debate from Sydney with someone from Essex about what is and isn't a big deal in Australian politics is certainly novel!

    Do you Wikipedia an overseas nations' political parties to find the right wing one before taking a stance on an issue?
    You appear not to have realised yet there is absolutely no point debating with @HYUFD. The fact he is entirely ignorant about 99% of human knowledge only encourages him.

    Same with BartyBobbins.

    Amusingly the two often argue amongst themselves, each refusing to give way, each totally bewildered by fact.
    Says the man who spent much of his life in NZ, now is based in New York and spends half the time arguing about UK politics
    True, but you subsist in a small bedsit in Essex, breathing through the mouth and wanking furiously over pictures you’ve cut out of Nadine Dorries’s head, pasted onto the bodies of weightlifters.
    For your information we are actually moving to a 4 bed house in more rural Essex later this year, not that I care where or how posters live
    So, no denial of the furious wanking over Nadine Dorries. PBers will take note.
    I have many disagreements with @HYUFD but your comment is uncalled for and frankly in bad taste
    It was very funny though, and while in bad taste, I applaud his right to offend you (much as I rather like you Big_G)
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    I have to say having a debate from Sydney with someone from Essex about what is and isn't a big deal in Australian politics is certainly novel!

    Do you Wikipedia an overseas nations' political parties to find the right wing one before taking a stance on an issue?
    You appear not to have realised yet there is absolutely no point debating with @HYUFD. The fact he is entirely ignorant about 99% of human knowledge only encourages him.

    Same with BartyBobbins.

    Amusingly the two often argue amongst themselves, each refusing to give way, each totally bewildered by fact.
    Says the man who spent much of his life in NZ, now is based in New York and spends half the time arguing about UK politics
    True, but you subsist in a small bedsit in Essex, breathing through the mouth and wanking furiously over pictures you’ve cut out of Nadine Dorries’s head, pasted onto the bodies of weightlifters.
    For your information we are actually moving to a 4 bed house in more rural Essex later this year, not that I care where or how posters live
    So, no denial of the furious wanking over Nadine Dorries. PBers will take note.
    I have many disagreements with @HYUFD but your comment is uncalled for and frankly in bad taste
    Ironic on this thread, but I guess pearl clutchers gonna clutch.
  • theProletheProle Posts: 948
    rcs1000 said:

    @Richard_Tyndall - I don't think it's 40% of a barrel of oil used for non energy purposes, I think it's not like 20-25%.

    Does it depend a lot on if one is counting weight or volume?
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    First Lady has the rona
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,248
    edited August 2022
    I'm in a Primrose Hill pub full of parents, especially loud wealthy boring fathers talking about their investments and/or their cricketing trips to Australia, and every single annoying small boy seems to be called "Leo" or "Theo"

    I sometimes understand why the world hates north Londoners
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346
    edited August 2022
    Pulpstar said:

    ping said:

    Wholesale gas up another 12.8% today.

    Sept delivery 477p/therm (16.3p/kWh)

    Dec delivery 613p/therm (20.9p/kWh)

    Surely we’re at a price level that guarantees some level of demand destruction?

    https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-Natural-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5253323

    Not if the government subsidises the price so that there is no increase in the price level.
    Exactly!!!!
    Labour's policy annoucement yesterday has caused todays increase.
    Are you sure ?

    Dutch TTF are up broadly the same amount.
    Its like a run on a currency, traders think that Governments will meet the mad cost of Gas and will keep pushing the costs higher, Labour's policy annoucement caused major headlines and look whats happened.

    Traders know that normal people cannot afford these prices and if Governments withdrew the support plans then prices would collapse.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578

    Spot on @Leon. Or if it was abortion activists "shouting out their abortions" outside a Catholic Church, we would be hearing how outrageous it was that parishioners were offended. To be fair though, @Kinablu doesn't even try and hide their hypocrisy.


    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I would say inserting inflammatory literature into someone's house is pushing the boundaries of freedom of speech etc a little.
    I happen to agree.

    But then you could flex it to test where your limits are - eg not leaflets through letterboxes now but on a tee shirt standing outside a Mosque.

    Still not ok? Or maybe maybe not depending on context?

    Point is, Free Speech absolutism is - imo - a load of tripe and very much NOT the noble muscular belief its virtue-signalling proponents always seek to portray it as.
    And yet if it was American Christians beheading brown people for depicting Jesus I suspect you'd be very much a free speech absolutist. Funny, that
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    Leon said:

    I'm in a Primrose Hill pub full of parents, especially loud wealthy boring fathers talking about their investments and/or their cricketing trips to Australia, and every single annoying small boy seems to be called "Leo" or "Theo"

    I sometimes understand why the world hates north Londoners

    They've all got Verisure alarms and tons of Echelon gear. The blokes all have mixing desks.
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594
    edited August 2022
    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Kenya election 2022: Raila Odinga rejects Kenya president election results"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-62559899

    Meanwhile in America

    2020 Presidential election.....almost zero ballot irregularities

    2022 recall of radical Democrat DA in LA county......huge ballot irregularities. Massive. Almost 200,00 signatures rejected.

    So the US voting system is fine. Or it isn't.
    Recall petition: it's literally just a petition. You can write Micky Moose as your name. Every name needs to be checked it is a real person.

    Election by mail: each individual voter is sent a ballot.

    Do you really not understand the difference?
    Yeah in the Newsom ballot recall last year it looks like 400,000 out of 2.1m got rejected. About 19%.

    In this case it was more than 25%.

    Whoosh.

    That was the sound of a point going over your head.
    Yeah some people in America got sent more than one ballot for the presidential right? and yet a rejection rate of less than one per cent in the counting in California.

    The same people that f8ck about in recall ballots sure do play by the book in presidentials....!
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I would say inserting inflammatory literature into someone's house is pushing the boundaries of freedom of speech etc a little.
    I happen to agree.

    But then you could flex it to test where your limits are - eg not leaflets through letterboxes now but on a tee shirt standing outside a Mosque.

    Still not ok? Or maybe maybe not depending on context?

    Point is, Free Speech absolutism is - imo - a load of tripe and very much NOT the noble muscular belief its virtue-signalling proponents always seek to portray it as.
    Outside a Mosque is free speech.

    Inside the Mosque is trespassing.
    Hmm, not sure about either.

    But anyway, just out of (my) curiosity, can you give me an example of where somebody saying something - ie just words no actions - should IYO be a criminal offence?
    3 examples:

    Incitement to violence.
    Threats of violence.
    Harassment of an individual.

    Protest, even offensive protest, doesn't meet the threshold of that. Simply being offensive should not be illegal, immoral but not illegal.
    Thanks. First 2 are slam dunk, I think. The 3rd less so because individuals can be harassed with words only and without threats of physical violence.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    edited August 2022
    theProle said:

    rcs1000 said:

    @Richard_Tyndall - I don't think it's 40% of a barrel of oil used for non energy purposes, I think it's not like 20-25%.

    Does it depend a lot on if one is counting weight or volume?
    That's a fair point: it tends to be the lighter elements that are burnt. It's also the case that we crack the oil (i.e. break down the hydrocarbon molecules, so they become shorter chains) to make more petrol than would naturally be available, and that may also explain the difference.
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594

    Is it correct that 3 weeks tomorrow it will be the first Truss v Starmer pmqs ( assuming she wins)

    I just heard her speaking in Elgin and she is giving nothing away on how she will deal with the energy price cap despite intense pressure

    Tax cuts won't put money in people's pockets?

  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    Leon said:

    I'm in a Primrose Hill pub full of parents, especially loud wealthy boring fathers talking about their investments and/or their cricketing trips to Australia, and every single annoying small boy seems to be called "Leo" or "Theo"

    I sometimes understand why the world hates north Londoners

    Yeah I know that one - it makes you want to execute a few rabbit punches doesn't it.
  • MonkeysMonkeys Posts: 755
    Midway through last December I decided to see what it would be like if I just turned the heating off and kept it off. I'm physically able enough to do it, and mentally infirm enough to want to try. We had a few nights of below zero temperatures but it wasn't the coldest winter. For anyone thinking of the same, I needed good thick socks - there's a danger of chilblains. I used lots of blankets and hoodies. Scarves might be useful. If you're physically healthy and can keep your toes warm, it's fine. I also spent a week or so at a friend's cottage who has to do the same, not through choice, but they had a fireplace they could utilise.

    For older, or more physically infirm people, all of that is a bit "if you get covid drink a cup of hot broth," and of course it doesn't beat the standing charge which will on its own must be going to cost more than all of the energy I used last winter. For the physically able it's perfectly possible and I suspect will be necessary for a lot both here and across Europe.

    On renewable energy - is it too mentally infirm to suggest mining BTC when there's excess production?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    MISTY said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Kenya election 2022: Raila Odinga rejects Kenya president election results"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-62559899

    Meanwhile in America

    2020 Presidential election.....almost zero ballot irregularities

    2022 recall of radical Democrat DA in LA county......huge ballot irregularities. Massive. Almost 200,00 signatures rejected.

    So the US voting system is fine. Or it isn't.
    Recall petition: it's literally just a petition. You can write Micky Moose as your name. Every name needs to be checked it is a real person.

    Election by mail: each individual voter is sent a ballot.

    Do you really not understand the difference?
    Yeah in the Newsom ballot recall last year it looks like 400,000 out of 2.1m got rejected. About 19%.

    In this case it was more than 25%.

    Whoosh.

    That was the sound of a point going over your head.
    Yeah some people in America got sent more than one ballot for the presidential right? and yet a rejection rate of less than one per cent in the counting in California.

    The same people that f8ck about in recall ballots sure do play by the book in presidentials....!
    Just as a matter of interest, do you not understand the difference between being sent a ballot, with your name on, to your registered address, and a guy standing on a corner with a petition to be signed?

    Not only that, but your example proves the system broadly works.

    The names on petition were individually checked to make sure that they were of registered California voters, and then a subset were checked to make sure that signatures matched those on record.

    For the mail in ballots, there have been *extensive* investigations. And yet even though the people doing the investigations had set out to prove fraud (which, in general, doesn't suggest they were impartial), they found negligible levels for mail in ballots.

  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,156
    edited August 2022

    ping said:

    On topic, thank you cyclefree.

    I broadly agree with your argument/position, but personally I think there are limits.

    We previously dingdonged over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons being shown in Batley. You took the absolutist free speech side of the argument, I thought what the school/teacher did was unnecessarily offensive.

    I’ve thought and read a lot about it, since, and I haven’t changed my mind.

    You’re clearly very smart and eloquent, but I think you take your principles too far sometimes, as I think you did re: Batley/Charlie Hebdo.

    Being outrageously and deliberately offensive is, and should be a punishable offence in schools. In wider society it should be reluctantly allowed, although frowned upon.

    I think what the teacher did was necessarily offensive and until this problem is resolved the cartoons should be added to the curriculum to be shown and taught in all schools as part of education. It is a relevant thing to be educating people about.
    And no doubt you think they ought to teaching kids it is OK to use the N-word because that is free speech too?
    No, of course that's not what I'm saying, but I do think text including the N-word absolutely should be taught and studied too.

    In school we studied To Kill A Mockingbird which includes more than its fair share of n-words but is an entirely appropriate book to study. Quite comparable to the cartoons, it too would be an appropriate book for schools in my view.

    To censor the cartoons from study because they're offensive would be no more appropriate than censoring To Kill A Mockingbird from study because the N-word is offensive.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    I agree with Cyclefree's view of most of the examples of the header, but I disagree with the underlying premise that it's a problem that people are too fearful of expressing their thoughts frankly and afraid of giving offence. We see examples here every day of people expressing a defensible view in a needlessly aggressive way, and IMO that's a common problem in Britain, much more common than people being afraid to express their views at all. Moreover, it's seen as pathetic, wimpish and even anti-democratic for anyone to take offence at anything.

    To take an older religious example than the Satanic Verses: I remember an art exhibition displaying a crucifix in a glass or urine, called IIRC something like PissChrist. I've never been a Christian. Nor would I want to make it illegal to do that, let alone attack the artist.

    But it was a pointless provocation to something that many people value, and as such self-indulgent and unpleasant. By all means disagree with Christianity, or Islam, or socialism, or Brexit. But if you don't do it in a reasonably polite and respectful way, you're just gratifying your own sense of importance at the expense of other people. Should be it be illegal? No. But not everything that's legal is desirable, and even-tempered, civilised, friendly debate is really important in itself, and usually the only way to persuade others to change their minds.

    Of course there's a place for derision and contempt. But I think we as a society use them too much, rather than too little, and highlighting the extreme examples of suppression as the header does should not mean that we're fine with routine aggression towards each other.

    Completely disagreed with your notion of "pointless provocation".

    Leon has already said what the point of that art piece was, so it by definition wasn't pointless, but even without that then provocation for provocation's sake can in the right circumstances be a good thing.

    It is good for society sometimes to make fun of that which "many people value" because otherwise you end up with protected and untouchable shibboleths which isn't a good thing.

    The role of the 'fool' or 'jester' mocking those which can not normally be mocked is something that societies have had, not just in Medieval times but Roman, Chinese, Aztec etc too.

    Artists can play the same role today, whether it be in things like PissChrist, or Charlie Hebdo, or South Park or anything else. Absolutely nothing should be beyond mockery or entertainment. If you're putting what you value as sacred and beyond the realms of "pointless provocation" then you've already gone too far.
    A lot of collateral dead people as a result of the Charlie Hebdo thing. One hopes they saw the funny side.
    Still apologising for murder. You really are a cesspit.
    This has driven you mad, has it not?

    Which set of murders do you derangedly think I am apologising for, the Hebdo lot or the bystanding policemen/Jews? The reality is that I am saying I rather wish they had not happened, but you are coming pretty close to celebrating them because in your head you are a pot valiant Champion Of Free Speech, John Hampden crossed with Voltaire hero, never mind the consequences.*

    *To other people.
    I’m often sympathetic to your perspective, and you are refreshingly open minded on many things - but you have become quite eccentric of late. And also unusually opaque. By that I mean: you used to be pithy and lucid, but recently you’ve resorted to peculiar mumbling. eg I’m still not exactly sure what your position is on Islamist violence, let alone whether I agree with it or not

    I’m ascribing this to the hot weather, or a season of breakfast beer sessions, and I hope you will return to normal soon
    It is really straightforward and I think I am being fairly lucid

    1. Islamist violence is the pits. As bad as Nazism. Violent islamists are the mad axemen in the metaphor.

    2. BUT there are constraints on provoking it, and there is no moral free pass for people who provoke it merely to troll, or gain fame or publicity. People get tortured to death as the direct and foreseeable result of these activities, and I would prefer that not to happen. Especially when the torture victims are not identical with the trolls.

    3. it is fustian nonsense to proclaim oneself a Champion Of Free Speech Above All Else as if the deaths of people in 2. above did not matter.
    2 is totally wrong.

    There are no constraints on "provoking" it and there absolutely is a complete moral free pass for people who provoke it. Indeed we don't provoke it remotely enough, the right response to the Hebdo attacks shouldn't have been for people to say "Je Suis Charlie" it should have been for every newspaper around the world that believes in a free press to reprint the Hebdo cartoons on their front pages the next day.

    Any sheltered dickheads that think their views either are or should be above provocation needs to be denuded of that idea.
    And tortured-to-death Jews in an obscure french supermarket are, to you, an acceptable price to pay.

    I don't agree.
    Are you in favour of a Trump-style entry ban?
    Doesn't really help in France.
    How much further would you be prepared to go to avoid having blood on your hands? Repatriation?
    There's more than enough indigenous muslims.

    Not sure what point you are making here.
    I'm suggesting that you too regard the deaths of innocent people as an acceptable price to pay.
    Yes, in some circumstances.
    Then your outrage is completely synthetic.
    Don't be bloody stupid. I am not clear what I am meant to be outraged about, but freedoms including freedom of speech and movement should in principle be protected. there are however edge cases where freedom of speech becomes freedom to troll, and its consequences become the murder of the innocent, and we should proceed a bit cautiously.
    People should be free to troll. What a silly idea that they shouldn't be.
    Let me float one -

    I print some lewd cartoons of Mohammed and go around a heavily Muslim neighbourhood sticking them through letterboxes.

    Should I be free to do that under the law?
    I would say inserting inflammatory literature into someone's house is pushing the boundaries of freedom of speech etc a little.
    I happen to agree.

    But then you could flex it to test where your limits are - eg not leaflets through letterboxes now but on a tee shirt standing outside a Mosque.

    Still not ok? Or maybe maybe not depending on context?

    Point is, Free Speech absolutism is - imo - a load of tripe and very much NOT the noble muscular belief its virtue-signalling proponents always seek to portray it as.
    And yet if it was American Christians beheading brown people for depicting Jesus I suspect you'd be very much a free speech absolutist. Funny, that
    You suspect wrong Sherlock. Change the pipe.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    "Apart from anything else, it's not in the interests of the Liberal Party — a by-election at the moment, in a very safe seat — particularly as in the state of New South Wales we will face a state election in the early part of next year," he said."
    As well but you missed out the part where Howard said Morrison had reasons for doing it, the context needed to be looked at and it was not illegal
    Wasn't Churchill both PM and Defence Minister during WW2?
    Surely the example of combining PM and minister for the Union demonstrates the value of these arrangements.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    Another one for you Leon

    https://nypost.com/2022/08/16/white-minnesota-teachers-would-be-laid-off-first-under-new-contract/

    Imagine being part of a union that throws you under the bus.
    Leon said:


    https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1559543142239637506?s=20&t=dfhhC1Gt4Ij2tAgNF4w3DQ


    "EXCLUSIVE: The RAF has effectively paused making job offers to white male recruits in favour of women & ethnic minorities to meet "impossible" diversity targets, sources claim. The head of
    @RoyalAirForce recruitment has resigned in protest, they said"


    The madness spreads. It really isn't getting better, it's getting worse

  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594
    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Kenya election 2022: Raila Odinga rejects Kenya president election results"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-62559899

    Meanwhile in America

    2020 Presidential election.....almost zero ballot irregularities

    2022 recall of radical Democrat DA in LA county......huge ballot irregularities. Massive. Almost 200,00 signatures rejected.

    So the US voting system is fine. Or it isn't.
    Recall petition: it's literally just a petition. You can write Micky Moose as your name. Every name needs to be checked it is a real person.

    Election by mail: each individual voter is sent a ballot.

    Do you really not understand the difference?
    Yeah in the Newsom ballot recall last year it looks like 400,000 out of 2.1m got rejected. About 19%.

    In this case it was more than 25%.

    Whoosh.

    That was the sound of a point going over your head.
    Yeah some people in America got sent more than one ballot for the presidential right? and yet a rejection rate of less than one per cent in the counting in California.

    The same people that f8ck about in recall ballots sure do play by the book in presidentials....!
    Just as a matter of interest, do you not understand the difference between being sent a ballot, with your name on, to your registered address, and a guy standing on a corner with a petition to be signed?

    Not only that, but your example proves the system broadly works.

    The names on petition were individually checked to make sure that they were of registered California voters, and then a subset were checked to make sure that signatures matched those on record.

    For the mail in ballots, there have been *extensive* investigations. And yet even though the people doing the investigations had set out to prove fraud (which, in general, doesn't suggest they were impartial), they found negligible levels for mail in ballots.

    Plenty of people in America were sent two ballots. I am reading an article by ABC from October 2020 saying, 'what to do if you receive two ballots.'

    And yet clearly, by the rejection rate in the presidential, the temptation to take the p8ss was almost non-existent. Less than one per cent out of millions.

    Uncanny.

    In the recall poll, the temptation to take the P*ss by a subset of of the same voters, was enormous. Almost endemic.

    Hmmn.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    Pulpstar said:

    ping said:

    Wholesale gas up another 12.8% today.

    Sept delivery 477p/therm (16.3p/kWh)

    Dec delivery 613p/therm (20.9p/kWh)

    Surely we’re at a price level that guarantees some level of demand destruction?

    https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-Natural-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5253323

    Not if the government subsidises the price so that there is no increase in the price level.
    Exactly!!!!
    Labour's policy annoucement yesterday has caused todays increase.
    Are you sure ?

    Dutch TTF are up broadly the same amount.
    Its like a run on a currency, traders think that Governments will meet the mad cost of Gas and will keep pushing the costs higher, Labour's policy annoucement caused major headlines and look whats happened.

    Traders know that normal people cannot afford these prices and if Governments withdrew the support plans then prices would collapse.
    While there's an element of that, the fundamental issue is that 10-15% of world gas export capacity has disappeared. And - due to the lack of LNG vessels - there is limited ability for other producers to respond.

    The world - outside Russia - needs to use less gas.

    And that's very painful.

  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    White people under attack! You don't atone for slavery and centuries of racist oppression by accepting a diminution in job prospects!
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,156
    edited August 2022
    MISTY said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Kenya election 2022: Raila Odinga rejects Kenya president election results"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-62559899

    Meanwhile in America

    2020 Presidential election.....almost zero ballot irregularities

    2022 recall of radical Democrat DA in LA county......huge ballot irregularities. Massive. Almost 200,00 signatures rejected.

    So the US voting system is fine. Or it isn't.
    Recall petition: it's literally just a petition. You can write Micky Moose as your name. Every name needs to be checked it is a real person.

    Election by mail: each individual voter is sent a ballot.

    Do you really not understand the difference?
    Yeah in the Newsom ballot recall last year it looks like 400,000 out of 2.1m got rejected. About 19%.

    In this case it was more than 25%.

    Whoosh.

    That was the sound of a point going over your head.
    Yeah some people in America got sent more than one ballot for the presidential right? and yet a rejection rate of less than one per cent in the counting in California.

    The same people that f8ck about in recall ballots sure do play by the book in presidentials....!
    Just as a matter of interest, do you not understand the difference between being sent a ballot, with your name on, to your registered address, and a guy standing on a corner with a petition to be signed?

    Not only that, but your example proves the system broadly works.

    The names on petition were individually checked to make sure that they were of registered California voters, and then a subset were checked to make sure that signatures matched those on record.

    For the mail in ballots, there have been *extensive* investigations. And yet even though the people doing the investigations had set out to prove fraud (which, in general, doesn't suggest they were impartial), they found negligible levels for mail in ballots.

    Plenty of people in America were sent two ballots. I am reading an article by ABC from October 2020 saying, 'what to do if you receive two ballots.'

    And yet clearly, by the rejection rate in the presidential, the temptation to take the p8ss was almost non-existent. Less than one per cent out of millions.

    Uncanny.

    In the recall poll, the temptation to take the P*ss by a subset of of the same voters, was enormous. Almost endemic.

    Hmmn.
    What percentage of people were sent two ballots in the Presidential?

    And what percentage of those cast both of them?

    Signing petitions with Mickey Mouse names has always been more common than committing electoral fraud.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    MISTY said:

    Is it correct that 3 weeks tomorrow it will be the first Truss v Starmer pmqs ( assuming she wins)

    I just heard her speaking in Elgin and she is giving nothing away on how she will deal with the energy price cap despite intense pressure

    Tax cuts won't put money in people's pockets?
    Hey c'mon don't sell it short - tax cuts put people's OWN money back in their pockets.
  • kinabalu said:

    White people under attack! You don't atone for slavery and centuries of racist oppression by accepting a diminution in job prospects!

    White people don't need to atone for slavery for the same reason that Jews don't need to atone for the crucifixion of Christ.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    Leon said:

    I'm in a Primrose Hill pub full of parents, especially loud wealthy boring fathers talking about their investments and/or their cricketing trips to Australia, and every single annoying small boy seems to be called "Leo" or "Theo"

    I sometimes understand why the world hates north Londoners

    Why are people so conformist when it comes to names?
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,168

    Taz said:

    Sandpit said:

    HYUFD said:

    3 things that make us most proud to be British according to Mori

    1 The NHS
    2 Our history
    3 The Royal family

    https://twitter.com/benatipsos/status/1559497777952051210?s=20&t=KIvuzJKzEyEWfVU2BAKhfg

    It’s definitely not a religion, remember. It’s just that no other Western country understands the benefits of having the State employ the doctors and nurses.
    The envy of the world we are told The world being so envious no other developed nation has such a system.

    Of course its not a religion as we clapped on our doorsteps every Thursday
    Multiple other countries have similar systems, even down to being called “national health service”: https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/why-has-the-nhs-not-been-copied-spoiler-it-has
    So they are the same except for all the ways in which they are different.

    One of the main ways in which they are different of course is that they are so much better than our system at the basic things like keeping people alive and making them better. Something the NHS seems to be particularly poor at compared with its peers.
    They are not absolutely identical, but they are very similar.

    The idea that the NHS is “particularly poor” is dubious. Even the IFS thinks the NHS is average: https://ifs.org.uk/uploads/HEAJ6319-How-good-is-the-NHS-180625-WEB.pdf This US think tank (don’t be confused by the name) thinks the NHS is among the best among its peers: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/documents/___media_files_publications_fund_report_2017_jul_pdf_schneider_mirror_mirror_exhibits.pdf
    Oh I am so glad you decided to quote the Commonwealth Fund report. It has been a source of much fun on here before.

    If you actually bothered to read it rather than just looking at the spin others put on it you would see that the NHS is a world leader on keeping records, telling people how long waiting lists are and counting paperclips. It is also very good at knowing how many drugs it has in the cupboard.

    Sadly when it comes to 'Health Care Outcomes' - keeping people alive, making them better when they are ill etc - the NHS ranks as 10th out of the 11 countries included in the report. The only one that is worse is the USA - which was kind of the point of the whole report.
    So, look at the IFS report.

    Or enjoy this webinar: https://www.health.org.uk/about-the-health-foundation/get-involved/events/webinar-health-system-reform-is-it-up-to-the-challenge

    Or read: Majeed A, Allwood D, Foley K, Bindman A. Healthcare outcomes and quality in the NHS: how do we compare and how might the NHS improve? BMJ 2018; 362 :k3036 doi:10.1136/bmj.k3036

    You can be picky about one report, but there's plenty saying the same. I'm not seeing any evidence that the NHS is "particularly poor", which is the claim made.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    MISTY said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MISTY said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Kenya election 2022: Raila Odinga rejects Kenya president election results"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-62559899

    Meanwhile in America

    2020 Presidential election.....almost zero ballot irregularities

    2022 recall of radical Democrat DA in LA county......huge ballot irregularities. Massive. Almost 200,00 signatures rejected.

    So the US voting system is fine. Or it isn't.
    Recall petition: it's literally just a petition. You can write Micky Moose as your name. Every name needs to be checked it is a real person.

    Election by mail: each individual voter is sent a ballot.

    Do you really not understand the difference?
    Yeah in the Newsom ballot recall last year it looks like 400,000 out of 2.1m got rejected. About 19%.

    In this case it was more than 25%.

    Whoosh.

    That was the sound of a point going over your head.
    Yeah some people in America got sent more than one ballot for the presidential right? and yet a rejection rate of less than one per cent in the counting in California.

    The same people that f8ck about in recall ballots sure do play by the book in presidentials....!
    Just as a matter of interest, do you not understand the difference between being sent a ballot, with your name on, to your registered address, and a guy standing on a corner with a petition to be signed?

    Not only that, but your example proves the system broadly works.

    The names on petition were individually checked to make sure that they were of registered California voters, and then a subset were checked to make sure that signatures matched those on record.

    For the mail in ballots, there have been *extensive* investigations. And yet even though the people doing the investigations had set out to prove fraud (which, in general, doesn't suggest they were impartial), they found negligible levels for mail in ballots.

    Plenty of people in America were sent two ballots. I am reading an article by ABC from October 2020 saying, 'what to do if you receive two ballots.'

    And yet clearly, by the rejection rate in the presidential, the temptation to take the p8ss was almost non-existent. Less than one per cent out of millions.

    Uncanny.

    In the recall poll, the temptation to take the P*ss by a subset of of the same voters, was enormous. Almost endemic.

    Hmmn.
    Plenty of people?

    You do know that you - yes you - can download lists of everyone who returned a ballot paper in every state.

    So, it would be publicly checkable to see if someone returned two. It would also mean there would be a discrepancy between votes cast and people who returned ballot papers.

    Tens of millions of dollars - perhaps hundreds of millions - have been spent with the express intention of proving fraud.

    And yet nothing has been found. Yeah, sure there are individuals who are guilty - but the numbers are absolutely tiny.

    Not only that, but simple statistical analysis can show if there are widespread irregularities. Either that, or they would show that cheating was so widespread, that it was done everywhere, even where it didn't need to happen.

  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    kinabalu said:

    White people under attack! You don't atone for slavery and centuries of racist oppression by accepting a diminution in job prospects!

    White people don't need to atone for slavery for the same reason that Jews don't need to atone for the crucifixion of Christ.
    Yep. We can 100% agree on this. Nice easy one.
  • kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    White people under attack! You don't atone for slavery and centuries of racist oppression by accepting a diminution in job prospects!

    White people don't need to atone for slavery for the same reason that Jews don't need to atone for the crucifixion of Christ.
    Yep. We can 100% agree on this. Nice easy one.
    Did you have a think about why "left fragility" (your words) is such a thing when it comes to antisemitism?

    I'd consider it the same as every other type of fragility by those who don't like being challenged about racism, but if you want to consider it a separate thing, did you think further on why such fragility can be so widespread?
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257
    MrEd said:

    Another one for you Leon

    https://nypost.com/2022/08/16/white-minnesota-teachers-would-be-laid-off-first-under-new-contract/

    Imagine being part of a union that throws you under the bus.


    Leon said:


    https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1559543142239637506?s=20&t=dfhhC1Gt4Ij2tAgNF4w3DQ


    "EXCLUSIVE: The RAF has effectively paused making job offers to white male recruits in favour of women & ethnic minorities to meet "impossible" diversity targets, sources claim. The head of
    @RoyalAirForce recruitment has resigned in protest, they said"


    The madness spreads. It really isn't getting better, it's getting worse

    These 'teachers of colour'... Art teachers, are they? Or physics teachers? I'm all for giving physicists extra job protections.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,145
    edited August 2022
    carnforth said:

    A blast from the past, this morning, reading a letter in The Times from one Francis Bown - an Anglo-Catholic priest, who lead protests against women's ordination in the 1990s.

    He has, presumably, a huge amount of family money, and spends his time reviewing fancy restaurants and hotels in a very Web 1.0 way, with no obvious monetization, which is where I realised I recognised the name from:

    https://www.bownsbest.com

    Has any PBer come across this man in real life?

    Hm. I see he lists Bath as in Somerset. (Never been in any of the places he lists, even for a drink and half a peanut.)

    Edit: a quick look at the Balmoral Hotel review in Edinburgh shows it's not dated - but precedes the building of the escalator at Waverly Steps, so some years now. But he is surprised that there is now no direct walk-in into the hotel from the station, which must have been closed for decades.
  • Andy_JS said:

    Leon said:

    I'm in a Primrose Hill pub full of parents, especially loud wealthy boring fathers talking about their investments and/or their cricketing trips to Australia, and every single annoying small boy seems to be called "Leo" or "Theo"

    I sometimes understand why the world hates north Londoners

    Why are people so conformist when it comes to names?
    🙋‍♂️

    When we named our daughters we spent a while discussing the names and we wanted to choose names that you could imagine doing any job when they're grown up. A name that you could imagine a doctor, or a lawyer, or a teacher an accountant or anything else having.

    Fair enough a lot of those people use surnames anyway, but using first names is increasingly common. We went for classic names as we didn't want anything that would stop them being taken seriously.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Too late for Boris to emulate ?

    Outrage as Australians discover former prime minister secretly gave himself five additional ministries
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-roles

    Granted we don't have the same system, but multiple redundancy payments might be possible ?

    What a bizarre story, with even most of the Cabinet unaware. If it was for the reasons he states, emergency safeguard, why wasn't it all completely in the open?
    It is bizarre. And it is his own Party who are lambasting him.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-serious-implications-of-morrison-s-shadow-grab-for-power-20220816-p5baax.html

    It sets an extremely dangerous precedent in a Westminster system.
    It's in effect giving yourself Presidential veto powers. In secret.
    No it isn't, the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has brushed off the issue and said Labor should be focusing on the day job, former Liberal PM John Howard has said Morrison should not resign. Turnbull and his ally the former Treasurer Frydenberg may have lambasted Morrison but they are on the other wing of the party and his former Home Minister if she was doing her job properly should have had no concerns about being checked up on during the Covid crisis.

    The PM is entitled under the Westminster system to run his Cabinet entirely as he wishes, he leads the executive branch effectively after all
    Please stop talking nonsense about Australian politics - You are correct in saying Turnbull has no love for Morrison, but Josh Frydenberg hasn't yet made a comment about the situation given he apparently didn't find out until today.

    John Howard was on the ABC and what he actually said was that Scott Morrison shouldn't resign as the Liberals could do without a by-election right now. It wasn't an endorsement of his behavior.

    As I've already said I can confirm this is a big story down under.
    Actually John Howard also said 'There are reasons why he did it. And part of the conservative tradition is to always understand the context," he said. Plus 'Mr Howard said he did not believe "any criticism can be offered at the Governor-General" for signing off on Mr Morrison's appointments to the ministries, because on the face of it, it was "nothing illegal".

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-16/john-howard-says-scott-morrison-should-remain-in-parliament/101339690

    John Howard is the Thatcher of the Australian Liberal Party in his influence on it, so that is that.
    I have to say having a debate from Sydney with someone from Essex about what is and isn't a big deal in Australian politics is certainly novel!

    Do you Wikipedia an overseas nations' political parties to find the right wing one before taking a stance on an issue?
    You appear not to have realised yet there is absolutely no point debating with @HYUFD. The fact he is entirely ignorant about 99% of human knowledge only encourages him.

    Same with BartyBobbins.

    Amusingly the two often argue amongst themselves, each refusing to give way, each totally bewildered by fact.
    Says the man who spent much of his life in NZ, now is based in New York and spends half the time arguing about UK politics
    True, but you subsist in a small bedsit in Essex, breathing through the mouth and wanking furiously over pictures you’ve cut out of Nadine Dorries’s head, pasted onto the bodies of weightlifters.
    For your information we are actually moving to a 4 bed house in more rural Essex later this year, not that I care where or how posters live
    Braintree, Witham or Saffron Walden constituencies?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,145
    Selebian said:

    MrEd said:

    Another one for you Leon

    https://nypost.com/2022/08/16/white-minnesota-teachers-would-be-laid-off-first-under-new-contract/

    Imagine being part of a union that throws you under the bus.


    Leon said:


    https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1559543142239637506?s=20&t=dfhhC1Gt4Ij2tAgNF4w3DQ


    "EXCLUSIVE: The RAF has effectively paused making job offers to white male recruits in favour of women & ethnic minorities to meet "impossible" diversity targets, sources claim. The head of
    @RoyalAirForce recruitment has resigned in protest, they said"


    The madness spreads. It really isn't getting better, it's getting worse

    These 'teachers of colour'... Art teachers, are they? Or physics teachers? I'm all for giving physicists extra job protections.
    Or English, tbf.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    White people under attack! You don't atone for slavery and centuries of racist oppression by accepting a diminution in job prospects!

    White people don't need to atone for slavery for the same reason that Jews don't need to atone for the crucifixion of Christ.
    Yep. We can 100% agree on this. Nice easy one.
    Did you have a think about why "left fragility" (your words) is such a thing when it comes to antisemitism?

    I'd consider it the same as every other type of fragility by those who don't like being challenged about racism, but if you want to consider it a separate thing, did you think further on why such fragility can be so widespread?
    Yes it's an ok term (imo) to describe a person of left wing bent with a blind spot on antisemitism who flies off the handle when asked to think about antisemitism. It wasn't particularly relevant to the Truss discussion and it isn't of anything like the scale of white fragility - the tendency of white people to lose their marbles when asked to think about embedded white supremacy post colonialism - but, yep, an ok term. Why does it happen? Like you say, same reason as white fragility. Either because the person IS racist or because they don't properly grasp the issue. Or that's my take anyway.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,703

    Nigelb said:

    Taz said:

    ping said:

    From the MSE energy forum;

    “I’ve been watching SP (Scottish Power) prices since i joined in jan
    today they have wacked there 1 year fixed prices right up

    Electric Standing charge
    43.14p
    Primary unit rate
    79.18p
    Gas Standing charge
    21.46p
    Primary unit rate
    23.44p”

    https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6379908/sp-massive-increase

    Yes, you read that right. 79p/kWh for leccy.

    I am with Scottish Power so just checked how it would affect us if we fixed

    We are currently on a 2 year fixed ending in December. Paying about 110 a month. Electric 16.69 p Primary Unit rate, Gas 2.91 p Primary Unit rate.

    They were quoting me just over £5,000 a year.

    A few weeks ago a fix was £3,500 a year.

    This is insane. We live in a modest 3 bed detached, insulated, two of us. Our use is modest.

    @Leon This, repeated across Europe this winter will bring about some sort of accomodation with Russia.
    Business quotes are equally horrific.
    Worse, if I understand correctly.

    Many businesses will simply pause trading for winter or close up completely.
    While not helping them or their employees this would help bring demand especially if it is quite a lot of businesses impacted.

    I could easily imagine some hospitality businesses shutting for January and February.
This discussion has been closed.