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Sunak needs to move the voting polls or else he’s in trouble – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited January 2023 in General
imageSunak needs to move the voting polls or else he’s in trouble – politicalbetting.com

Sunak has got better personal ratings than his two predecessors Johnson and Truss but the voting polls remain very poor and unless there is some improvement then the Tories will be out at the next general election.

Read the full story here

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  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    edited December 2022
    Second, like “Scottish” Labour.
  • - “Sunak has got better personal ratings than his two predecessors Johnson and Truss

    True. The Oaf and Truss were -60 or worse, Sunak is a mere -21, the same ballpark as his pro-Brexit, anti-nurse, British nationalist pal Keir Starmer.



    However, the problem isn’t Rishi Sunak, it is that the entire British Establishment is rotten to the core. Changing figurehead is not going to change the underlying problem.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,097

    - “Sunak has got better personal ratings than his two predecessors Johnson and Truss

    [...] the same ballpark as his pro-Brexit, anti-nurse, British nationalist pal Keir Starmer. [...]

    Stuart, I like you and your input but your hatred of Keir Starmer, whilst not quite as myopic as Big John from Sheffield, is pretty lopsided. A good example of the bias that creeps into your post is your mischievous sleight of hand here. The chart you have just posted is ONLY Scottish adults!!!!

    Keir's latest satisfaction rating is -6, although according to YouGov it is +5,. This is a fair bit different from Sunak's rating.

    https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/political-monitor-satisfaction-ratings-1997-present

    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/keir-starmer-approval-rating

    Starmer's ratings compare favourably with leaders going back 25 years.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,097
    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.
  • Heathener said:

    - “Sunak has got better personal ratings than his two predecessors Johnson and Truss

    [...] the same ballpark as his pro-Brexit, anti-nurse, British nationalist pal Keir Starmer. [...]

    Stuart, I like you and your input but your hatred of Keir Starmer, whilst not quite as myopic as Big John from Sheffield, is pretty lopsided. A good example of the bias that creeps into your post is your mischievous sleight of hand here. The chart you have just posted is ONLY Scottish adults!!!!

    Keir's latest satisfaction rating is -6, although according to YouGov it is +5,. This is a fair bit different from Sunak's rating.

    https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/political-monitor-satisfaction-ratings-1997-present

    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/keir-starmer-approval-rating

    Starmer's ratings compare favourably with leaders going back 25 years.
    Hardly “bias” or “sleight of hand” to cite Scottish polling. I never claimed it was anything else. Your bias is to assume that British is the norm. It isn’t.
  • ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence
  • Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,097

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,097
    edited December 2022

    Heathener said:

    - “Sunak has got better personal ratings than his two predecessors Johnson and Truss

    [...] the same ballpark as his pro-Brexit, anti-nurse, British nationalist pal Keir Starmer. [...]

    Stuart, I like you and your input but your hatred of Keir Starmer, whilst not quite as myopic as Big John from Sheffield, is pretty lopsided. A good example of the bias that creeps into your post is your mischievous sleight of hand here. The chart you have just posted is ONLY Scottish adults!!!!

    Keir's latest satisfaction rating is -6, although according to YouGov it is +5,. This is a fair bit different from Sunak's rating.

    https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/political-monitor-satisfaction-ratings-1997-present

    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/keir-starmer-approval-rating

    Starmer's ratings compare favourably with leaders going back 25 years.
    Hardly “bias” or “sleight of hand” to cite Scottish polling. I never claimed it was anything else. Your bias is to assume that British is the norm. It isn’t.
    No that's naughty.

    You compared national data to which Mike referred and posted up an image that only the most astute and eagle-eyed would spot was a Scottish sub-sample: written in tiny blurred writing in the bottom left-hand corner.

  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,097
    edited December 2022
    p.s. as it happens I agree with you about one thing on Starmer and it's really the reason for your loss of balance: his stance on Scottish nationalism.

    I find the defence of the union by a social democrat fairly unfathomable. Or, at least, the refusal to permit another referendum, when it is manifestly the case that the Brexit for which Scotland did NOT vote materially altered its constitution and infrastructure.

    Anyone who believes in democracy MUST believe in the right of Scotland for a second independence referendum.
  • Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,097

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    That's a great piece
  • Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    - “Sunak has got better personal ratings than his two predecessors Johnson and Truss

    [...] the same ballpark as his pro-Brexit, anti-nurse, British nationalist pal Keir Starmer. [...]

    Stuart, I like you and your input but your hatred of Keir Starmer, whilst not quite as myopic as Big John from Sheffield, is pretty lopsided. A good example of the bias that creeps into your post is your mischievous sleight of hand here. The chart you have just posted is ONLY Scottish adults!!!!

    Keir's latest satisfaction rating is -6, although according to YouGov it is +5,. This is a fair bit different from Sunak's rating.

    https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/political-monitor-satisfaction-ratings-1997-present

    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/keir-starmer-approval-rating

    Starmer's ratings compare favourably with leaders going back 25 years.
    Hardly “bias” or “sleight of hand” to cite Scottish polling. I never claimed it was anything else. Your bias is to assume that British is the norm. It isn’t.
    No that's naughty.

    You compared national data to which Mike referred and posted up an image that only the most astute and eagle-eyed would spot was a Scottish sub-sample: written in tiny blurred writing in the bottom left-hand corner.

    Not a sub-sample. That is from a bona fide, full-sample, correctly weighed poll.

    The UK is not a “nation”, it is a state. One hell of a state too.
  • Heathener said:

    p.s. as it happens I agree with you about one thing on Starmer and it's really the reason for your loss of balance: his stance on Scottish nationalism.

    I find the defence of the union by a social democrat fairly unfathomable. Or, at least, the refusal to permit another referendum, when it is manifestly the case that the Brexit for which Scotland did NOT vote materially altered its constitution and infrastructure.

    Anyone who believes in democracy MUST believe in the right of Scotland for a second independence referendum.

    You’ve softened my steely heart. Ok, I’ll stop being naughty. Sorry miss.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,097
    edited December 2022

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit
    Neither of those sentences is true.

    It's obvious that under Labour / LibDems Britain's relationship with Europe will be revisited. It simply cannot be a priority right now and it cannot be something made overt in the run up to the election, when there are other pressing matters.

    Starmer has to be savvy and electable. If he goes full tonto socialist he will never get the keys to No 10.

    There will be plenty of time later to lead the British public on a constructive journey.

    I think you know this full well, so I repeat that you are being mischievous.
  • Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit
    Neither of those sentences is true.

    It's obvious that under Labour / LibDems Britain's relationship with Europe will be revisited. It simply cannot be a priority right now and it cannot be something made overt in the run up to the election, when there are other pressing matters.

    Starmer has to be savvy and electable. If he goes full tonto socialist he will never get the keys to No 10.

    There will be plenty of time later to lead the British public on a constructive journey.

    I think you know this full well, so I repeat that you are being mischievous.
    “Cannot be made overt” to the electorate?!?

    Lying to the electorate created the mess. Honesty is required to clean up the mess.
    Which is one reason the mess will never be cleaned up, as Westminster and Whitehall are incapable of honesty.

    Stunning that you can accuse me of “sleight of hand” and then not realise that advocating covert behaviour is exactly that: sleight of hand.
  • Heathener said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    That's a great piece
    There have been many damning articles published in American, Swiss, German etc papers and magazines. Excruciating dissections of the rot at the very heart of the British state. Shame there are no sturdy titles or journalists left on the daft islands themselves to conduct their own self-analysis.

    (Alastair Campbell keeps hyping ‘The New European’ as the sole such sturdy title, but I’m afraid it has a circulation lower than ‘The Scotsman’, which is dead in the water.)
  • ‘How the British Press Got Almost Everything Wrong In 2022’
    - If you want to know what happens next in the UK, you’d be better off flipping a coin than listening to most political pundits

    Similar studies conducted in the UK proved to be even worse for the pundits. In the run up to the 2010, 2015 and 2017 general elections, well known British commentators were asked by the Political Studies Association to give their predictions for each result. In each case, the pundits were wildly wrong, with tossing a coin turning out to be a significantly better way of predicting election outcomes.

    https://bylinetimes.com/2022/12/23/worst-predictions-2022-uk-politics-liz-truss-boris-johnson-brexit/
  • Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    - “Sunak has got better personal ratings than his two predecessors Johnson and Truss

    [...] the same ballpark as his pro-Brexit, anti-nurse, British nationalist pal Keir Starmer. [...]

    Stuart, I like you and your input but your hatred of Keir Starmer, whilst not quite as myopic as Big John from Sheffield, is pretty lopsided. A good example of the bias that creeps into your post is your mischievous sleight of hand here. The chart you have just posted is ONLY Scottish adults!!!!

    Keir's latest satisfaction rating is -6, although according to YouGov it is +5,. This is a fair bit different from Sunak's rating.

    https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/political-monitor-satisfaction-ratings-1997-present

    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/keir-starmer-approval-rating

    Starmer's ratings compare favourably with leaders going back 25 years.
    Hardly “bias” or “sleight of hand” to cite Scottish polling. I never claimed it was anything else. Your bias is to assume that British is the norm. It isn’t.
    No that's naughty.

    You compared national data to which Mike referred and posted up an image that only the most astute and eagle-eyed would spot was a Scottish sub-sample: written in tiny blurred writing in the bottom left-hand corner.

    Not a sub-sample. That is from a bona fide, full-sample, correctly weighed poll.

    The UK is not a “nation”, it is a state. One hell of a state too.
    We are in a state!!!!
  • TresTres Posts: 2,163
    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,068

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
  • A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit
    Not really, expect closer EU ties straight away.

    "A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit"
    No it's a vote for rejoining when the country can be taken with them, so maybe not immediately.

    "A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership"
    ... but only for Scotland
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,068
    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit
    Neither of those sentences is true.

    It's obvious that under Labour / LibDems Britain's relationship with Europe will be revisited. It simply cannot be a priority right now and it cannot be something made overt in the run up to the election, when there are other pressing matters.

    Starmer has to be savvy and electable. If he goes full tonto socialist he will never get the keys to No 10.

    There will be plenty of time later to lead the British public on a constructive journey.

    I think you know this full well, so I repeat that you are being mischievous.
    Indeed, as I have pointed out a number of times to Stuart, the Lib Dem policy on the EU is a stepwise progression to Rejoin, accepting that there is no quick path.

    https://www.libdems.org.uk/news/article/rebuilding-trade-cooperation-with-europe

  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124
    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,068
    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
  • TresTres Posts: 2,163

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit
    Not really, expect closer EU ties straight away.

    "A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit"
    No it's a vote for rejoining when the country can be taken with them, so maybe not immediately.

    "A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership"
    ... but only for Scotland

    Only the Scottish can vote SNP though.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    A vote for the SNP is a vote to leave the UK and subsequently apply for EU membership. Which is utterly different from what you claim in your increasingly unhinged ranting.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,068
    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    Foxy said:

    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
    It can't be 2000, it was only founded in 2003!
  • Foxy said:

    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
    I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall.
    I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales. It also means that the waiting time for a Tesla has dropped significantly which is good for the company. Tesla make around $10,000 on each sale whereas other companies struggle to make any profit on EVs, this means that Tesla could afford to drop their prices in order to maintain demand. They may not have to for a while at least in the US as they will be eligible for a $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act subsidy.
    Twitter was a big mistake for Musk but Tesla is still a huge success and will continue to be.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124
    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    Doesn't alter my point. Not sure many would claim everything about any country's past did not bear some crticism. I would questiion the motive of any Historian on a 20 year anti-British mission. The 'rantings of Mr Dickson on these matters are something quite different - unless of course one accepts that no Scot ever played any part in the UK governments since the Act of Union.
  • felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Who ever said Britain had a reputation for decency? Not counting the British.
  • felix said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    Doesn't alter my point. Not sure many would claim everything about any country's past did not bear some crticism. I would questiion the motive of any Historian on a 20 year anti-British mission. The 'rantings of Mr Dickson on these matters are something quite different - unless of course one accepts that no Scot ever played any part in the UK governments since the Act of Union.
    That's journalistic gloss not her own mission statement.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Even on the worst polls for Brexit at least 36%+ support it still which would still be 10% more than the Tories often are polling now. When the question is about rejoin that is even higher.

    The problem is some Leavers have gone to RefUK and some back to
    Labour. Though Sunak is doing a bit better in the bluewall with Remainers than Boris was
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,703
    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    You missed off ‘surprisingly down to earth’
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739

    I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall.
    I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales.

    Shares in Tesla fell sharply yesterday after a report that the electric carmaker plans to extend a reduced production schedule at its Shanghai factory into the new year.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tesla-hits-skids-over-china-factory-20qbr26x6
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited December 2022
    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    No mention of the Mau Mau atrocities then

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49251428

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880

    Foxy said:

    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
    I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall.
    I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales. It also means that the waiting time for a Tesla has dropped significantly which is good for the company. Tesla make around $10,000 on each sale whereas other companies struggle to make any profit on EVs, this means that Tesla could afford to drop their prices in order to maintain demand. They may not have to for a while at least in the US as they will be eligible for a $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act subsidy.
    Twitter was a big mistake for Musk but Tesla is still a huge success and will continue to be.
    The car business lives and dies on new models. Tesla's product lifecycles are too long and the new model pipeline is constipated. Model S is now ten years old with no replacement in sight. Taycan outsells it 2:1 and is getting a mid-lifecycle upgrade next year before being completely replaced in 2025. That's the speed Tesla needs.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    Or a vote for the SNP, Starmer Labour, the LDs or Greens is a vote for gender recognition legislation for sex changes without even doctors approval.

    A vote for the Conservatives, Alba or RefUK is not
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,703

    Foxy said:

    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
    I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall.
    I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales. It also means that the waiting time for a Tesla has dropped significantly which is good for the company. Tesla make around $10,000 on each sale whereas other companies struggle to make any profit on EVs, this means that Tesla could afford to drop their prices in order to maintain demand. They may not have to for a while at least in the US as they will be eligible for a $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act subsidy.
    Twitter was a big mistake for Musk but Tesla is still a huge success and will continue to be.
    Tesla is not alone in tech stocks for taking a battering this year. Valuations have been stratospheric and are now coming back down to a more reasonable position based on the expected recession. Just look at the performance of Arrk innovations performance..

    I suspect you are right. Tesla is for the long haul.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,703
    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    Or a vote for the SNP, Starmer Labour, the LDs or Greens is a vote for gender recognition legislation for sex changes without even doctors approval.

    A vote for the Conservatives, Alba or RefUK is not
    Yet many Tories also support it. Michael Fabricant was on Twitter extolling the virtues of the legislation yesterday.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,068
    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    No mention of the Mau Mau atrocities then

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49251428

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html
    No these are well covered in the book. You should read it and learn something.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    Or a vote for the SNP, Starmer Labour, the LDs or Greens is a vote for gender recognition legislation for sex changes without even doctors approval.

    A vote for the Conservatives, Alba or RefUK is not
    Yet many Tories also support it. Michael Fabricant was on Twitter extolling the virtues of the legislation yesterday.
    Michael Fabricant supporting something is not necessarily a sign it is a good policy. Rather the reverse, in fact.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,703
    ydoethur said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    Or a vote for the SNP, Starmer Labour, the LDs or Greens is a vote for gender recognition legislation for sex changes without even doctors approval.

    A vote for the Conservatives, Alba or RefUK is not
    Yet many Tories also support it. Michael Fabricant was on Twitter extolling the virtues of the legislation yesterday.
    Michael Fabricant supporting something is not necessarily a sign it is a good policy. Rather the reverse, in fact.
    Maybe, but the gender recognition law changes in Scotland are not clearly opposed by the Tories and who knows what Tory policy will be in 2024/5 when we have the election ? A significant chunk of the PCP supports it.

  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674
    Taz said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    You missed off ‘surprisingly down to earth’
    Morning Taz, have read some bollox but Heathener sure takes the biscuit, up with the best Tory surfers on here and they are prolific.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Taz said:

    ydoethur said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    Or a vote for the SNP, Starmer Labour, the LDs or Greens is a vote for gender recognition legislation for sex changes without even doctors approval.

    A vote for the Conservatives, Alba or RefUK is not
    Yet many Tories also support it. Michael Fabricant was on Twitter extolling the virtues of the legislation yesterday.
    Michael Fabricant supporting something is not necessarily a sign it is a good policy. Rather the reverse, in fact.
    Maybe, but the gender recognition law changes in Scotland are not clearly opposed by the Tories and who knows what Tory policy will be in 2024/5 when we have the election ? A significant chunk of the PCP supports it.

    90% of Scottish Conservative MSPs voted against the gender recognition Bill and Alistair Jack is seeking to reverse it from Westminster too
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    Kane Williamson seems to be enjoying life after captaincy.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited December 2022
    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    No mention of the Mau Mau atrocities then

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49251428

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html
    No these are well covered in the book. You should read it and learn something.
    Yes pregnant women on farms being murdered after their unborn babies cut out and fed to them just some of the delights of the Mau Mau. As well as killing thousands of their fellow black Africans not just Kenyan whites
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,703
    malcolmg said:

    Taz said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    You missed off ‘surprisingly down to earth’
    Morning Taz, have read some bollox but Heathener sure takes the biscuit, up with the best Tory surfers on here and they are prolific.
    Morning Malc. Hope all is well with you and yours.

    Yes, she does seem a little over the place . I’m guessing we’re only a post or two,from a rant about white men and a flounce.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    No mention of the Mau Mau atrocities then

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49251428

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html
    No these are well covered in the book. You should read it and learn something.
    Yes pregnant women on farms being murdered after their unborn babies cut out and fed to them just some of the delights of the Mau Mau. As well as killing thousands of their fellow Africans not just Kenyan whites
    Caroline Elkins is a dogmatist and far more comfortable as a journalist, rather than a great historian (her publication record is pretty ordinary, like her fellow Harvard dogmatist Goldhagen) but that's just silly whataboutery. The Mau Mau being violent scum doesn't excuse the British from committing crimes.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,703
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    ydoethur said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    Or a vote for the SNP, Starmer Labour, the LDs or Greens is a vote for gender recognition legislation for sex changes without even doctors approval.

    A vote for the Conservatives, Alba or RefUK is not
    Yet many Tories also support it. Michael Fabricant was on Twitter extolling the virtues of the legislation yesterday.
    Michael Fabricant supporting something is not necessarily a sign it is a good policy. Rather the reverse, in fact.
    Maybe, but the gender recognition law changes in Scotland are not clearly opposed by the Tories and who knows what Tory policy will be in 2024/5 when we have the election ? A significant chunk of the PCP supports it.

    90% of Scottish Conservative MSPs voted against the gender recognition Bill and Alistair Jack is seeking to reverse it from Westminster too
    Do you really think that is wise given the relationship between the SNP govt and Westminster. It just plays into their arguments.

    I was also,talking about the PCP support not SCON. I’m not saying it is overwhelming but certainly a sizeable chunk.
  • Dura_Ace said:

    Foxy said:

    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
    I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall.
    I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales. It also means that the waiting time for a Tesla has dropped significantly which is good for the company. Tesla make around $10,000 on each sale whereas other companies struggle to make any profit on EVs, this means that Tesla could afford to drop their prices in order to maintain demand. They may not have to for a while at least in the US as they will be eligible for a $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act subsidy.
    Twitter was a big mistake for Musk but Tesla is still a huge success and will continue to be.
    The car business lives and dies on new models. Tesla's product lifecycles are too long and the new model pipeline is constipated. Model S is now ten years old with no replacement in sight. Taycan outsells it 2:1 and is getting a mid-lifecycle upgrade next year before being completely replaced in 2025. That's the speed Tesla needs.
    Tesla upgrades its cars all the time for example the use of giga castings and earlier the introduction of the heat pump and 'chrome delete'. Those are just the hardware changes, there's also the Over The Air software changes. You could wake up and find that your 3 year old Tesla has new improved functions.
    Some people will never buy anything other than a Porsche and I'm glad that Porsche are producing electric cars. It's worth noting that the "Tesla Model S has significantly better mileage. The Tesla Model S gets 124 MPGe in the city and 115 MPGe on the highway. Comparatively, the Porsche Taycan gets 76 MPGe in the city and 84 MPGe on the highway". Neither of those cars are mass market, the Model 3 and Model Y are, but are still a bit big and expensive for me.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    The stands at the P/NZ test are sadly emptier than a list of Stuart's positive comments on the English.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    No mention of the Mau Mau atrocities then

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49251428

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html
    No these are well covered in the book. You should read it and learn something.
    Yes pregnant women on farms being murdered after their unborn babies cut out and fed to them just some of the delights of the Mau Mau. As well as killing thousands of their fellow Africans not just Kenyan whites
    Caroline Elkins is a dogmatist and far more comfortable as a journalist, rather than a great historian (her publication record is pretty ordinary, like her fellow Harvard dogmatist Goldhagen) but that's just silly whataboutery. The Mau Mau being violent scum doesn't excuse the British from committing crimes.
    On another occasion ninety women and children were sealed in their village homes. The thatched roofs were then covered in petrol and set alight by the Mau Mau and those who escaped were cut down.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html

    Given the Mau Mau sometimes made the Nazis look mild it is hardly surprising the British authorities at the time took tough action against them
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    No mention of the Mau Mau atrocities then

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49251428

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html
    No these are well covered in the book. You should read it and learn something.
    Yes pregnant women on farms being murdered after their unborn babies cut out and fed to them just some of the delights of the Mau Mau. As well as killing thousands of their fellow Africans not just Kenyan whites
    Caroline Elkins is a dogmatist and far more comfortable as a journalist, rather than a great historian (her publication record is pretty ordinary, like her fellow Harvard dogmatist Goldhagen) but that's just silly whataboutery. The Mau Mau being violent scum doesn't excuse the British from committing crimes.
    On another occasion ninety women and children were sealed in their village homes. The thatched roofs were then covered in petrol and set alight by the Mau Mau and those who escaped were cut down.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html

    Given the Mau Mau sometimes made the Nazis look mild it is hardly surprising the British authorities at the time took tough action against them
    Just to extend your analogy, are you suggesting that if we had herded the inhabitants of Nuremberg into gas chambers in 1946 that would have been OK because of the Holocaust?

    Again, the Mau Mau's actions don't excuse British soldiers in breaking the law and committing atrocities of their own. That was a point of contention even in the 1950s and was well documented long before Elkins came along.
  • The Rest is Politics, 15 minutes of 2023 forecasts.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5M4cjDApOs
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    ydoethur said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    Or a vote for the SNP, Starmer Labour, the LDs or Greens is a vote for gender recognition legislation for sex changes without even doctors approval.

    A vote for the Conservatives, Alba or RefUK is not
    Yet many Tories also support it. Michael Fabricant was on Twitter extolling the virtues of the legislation yesterday.
    Michael Fabricant supporting something is not necessarily a sign it is a good policy. Rather the reverse, in fact.
    Maybe, but the gender recognition law changes in Scotland are not clearly opposed by the Tories and who knows what Tory policy will be in 2024/5 when we have the election ? A significant chunk of the PCP supports it.

    90% of Scottish Conservative MSPs voted against the gender recognition Bill and Alistair Jack is seeking to reverse it from Westminster too
    Do you really think that is wise given the relationship between the SNP govt and Westminster. It just plays into their arguments.

    I was also,talking about the PCP support not SCON. I’m not saying it is overwhelming but certainly a sizeable chunk.
    68% of Scots think the gender recognition bill poses a threat to womens' safety

    https://wingsoverscotland.com/why-do-snp-voters-hate-women/
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited December 2022
    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    No mention of the Mau Mau atrocities then

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49251428

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html
    No these are well covered in the book. You should read it and learn something.
    Yes pregnant women on farms being murdered after their unborn babies cut out and fed to them just some of the delights of the Mau Mau. As well as killing thousands of their fellow Africans not just Kenyan whites
    Caroline Elkins is a dogmatist and far more comfortable as a journalist, rather than a great historian (her publication record is pretty ordinary, like her fellow Harvard dogmatist Goldhagen) but that's just silly whataboutery. The Mau Mau being violent scum doesn't excuse the British from committing crimes.
    On another occasion ninety women and children were sealed in their village homes. The thatched roofs were then covered in petrol and set alight by the Mau Mau and those who escaped were cut down.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html

    Given the Mau Mau sometimes made the Nazis look mild it is hardly surprising the British authorities at the time took tough action against them
    Just to extend your analogy, are you suggesting that if we had herded the inhabitants of Nuremberg into gas chambers in 1946 that would have been OK because of the Holocaust?

    Again, the Mau Mau's actions don't excuse British soldiers in breaking the law and committing atrocities of their own. That was a point of contention even in the 1950s and was well documented long before Elkins came along.
    Well we hung leading Nazis at Nuremberg. We also bombed Dresden and its inhabitants to bits. The Americans sent atomic bombs to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

    War is often brutal
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    No mention of the Mau Mau atrocities then

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49251428

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html
    No these are well covered in the book. You should read it and learn something.
    Yes pregnant women on farms being murdered after their unborn babies cut out and fed to them just some of the delights of the Mau Mau. As well as killing thousands of their fellow Africans not just Kenyan whites
    Caroline Elkins is a dogmatist and far more comfortable as a journalist, rather than a great historian (her publication record is pretty ordinary, like her fellow Harvard dogmatist Goldhagen) but that's just silly whataboutery. The Mau Mau being violent scum doesn't excuse the British from committing crimes.
    On another occasion ninety women and children were sealed in their village homes. The thatched roofs were then covered in petrol and set alight by the Mau Mau and those who escaped were cut down.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html

    Given the Mau Mau sometimes made the Nazis look mild it is hardly surprising the British authorities at the time took tough action against them
    Just to extend your analogy, are you suggesting that if we had herded the inhabitants of Nuremberg into gas chambers in 1946 that would have been OK because of the Holocaust?

    Again, the Mau Mau's actions don't excuse British soldiers in breaking the law and committing atrocities of their own. That was a point of contention even in the 1950s and was well documented long before Elkins came along.
    Well we hung leading Nazis at Nuremberg. We also bombed Dresden and its inhabitants to bits. The Americans sent atomic bombs to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

    War is often brutal
    And there were certainly contemporary concerns about both of the latter actions. George Bell, for example, condemned Dresden in the Lords. Even leaving aside Nazi nutters like Irving, there continues to be a strong debate about how far the bombing of Dresden and the 25,000 deaths it caused were justified, given the only meaningful strategic advantage it conferred was to shut the railway line for four days.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880



    Tesla upgrades its cars all the time for example the use of giga castings and earlier the introduction of the heat pump and 'chrome delete'. Those are just the hardware changes, there's also the Over The Air software changes. You could wake up and find that your 3 year old Tesla has new improved functions.

    That's great for people who've bought one but it doesn't help sell new ones because it looks almost exactly the same, inside and out, as it did in 2012.

    It also means there is less incentive for people who have one to buy a new one.

    I don't think Tesla are completely fucked but their product line is very stale with no replacements in sight in an industry which richly rewards continuous renewal. Simply being Tesla isn't enough any more.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Dura_Ace said:

    I don't think Tesla are completely fucked but their product line is very stale with no replacements in sight in an industry which richly rewards continuous renewal. Simply being Tesla isn't enough any more.

    Their advantage in charging infrastructure is also being eroded
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,703
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    ydoethur said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    Or a vote for the SNP, Starmer Labour, the LDs or Greens is a vote for gender recognition legislation for sex changes without even doctors approval.

    A vote for the Conservatives, Alba or RefUK is not
    Yet many Tories also support it. Michael Fabricant was on Twitter extolling the virtues of the legislation yesterday.
    Michael Fabricant supporting something is not necessarily a sign it is a good policy. Rather the reverse, in fact.
    Maybe, but the gender recognition law changes in Scotland are not clearly opposed by the Tories and who knows what Tory policy will be in 2024/5 when we have the election ? A significant chunk of the PCP supports it.

    90% of Scottish Conservative MSPs voted against the gender recognition Bill and Alistair Jack is seeking to reverse it from Westminster too
    Do you really think that is wise given the relationship between the SNP govt and Westminster. It just plays into their arguments.

    I was also,talking about the PCP support not SCON. I’m not saying it is overwhelming but certainly a sizeable chunk.
    68% of Scots think the gender recognition bill poses a threat to womens' safety

    https://wingsoverscotland.com/why-do-snp-voters-hate-women/
    That doesn’t really address either point.

    Also your former leader is onboard

    https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/gender-recognition-reform-bill-theresa-may-disappointed-scotland-changes-not-considered-for-england-3966348
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    No mention of the Mau Mau atrocities then

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49251428

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html
    No these are well covered in the book. You should read it and learn something.
    Yes pregnant women on farms being murdered after their unborn babies cut out and fed to them just some of the delights of the Mau Mau. As well as killing thousands of their fellow Africans not just Kenyan whites
    Caroline Elkins is a dogmatist and far more comfortable as a journalist, rather than a great historian (her publication record is pretty ordinary, like her fellow Harvard dogmatist Goldhagen) but that's just silly whataboutery. The Mau Mau being violent scum doesn't excuse the British from committing crimes.
    On another occasion ninety women and children were sealed in their village homes. The thatched roofs were then covered in petrol and set alight by the Mau Mau and those who escaped were cut down.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html

    Given the Mau Mau sometimes made the Nazis look mild it is hardly surprising the British authorities at the time took tough action against them
    Just to extend your analogy, are you suggesting that if we had herded the inhabitants of Nuremberg into gas chambers in 1946 that would have been OK because of the Holocaust?

    Again, the Mau Mau's actions don't excuse British soldiers in breaking the law and committing atrocities of their own. That was a point of contention even in the 1950s and was well documented long before Elkins came along.
    Well we hung leading Nazis at Nuremberg. We also bombed Dresden and its inhabitants to bits. The Americans sent atomic bombs to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

    War is often brutal
    And there were certainly contemporary concerns about both of the latter actions. George Bell, for example, condemned Dresden in the Lords. Even leaving aside Nazi nutters like Irving, there continues to be a strong debate about how far the bombing of Dresden and the 25,000 deaths it caused were justified, given the only meaningful strategic advantage it conferred was to shut the railway line for four days.
    I’m loath to get sucked in on Dresden again, especially before breakfast, but the point is Harris set out to do Dresden every time. He wanted to kill enough Germans that the war would be won without the need for any British soldiers to fight. Dresden just happened to be the most successful, along with Hamburg and a few other raids.
    We should be grateful not to be in those times, although of course the Ukrainians are.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    Taz said:

    Foxy said:

    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
    I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall.
    I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales. It also means that the waiting time for a Tesla has dropped significantly which is good for the company. Tesla make around $10,000 on each sale whereas other companies struggle to make any profit on EVs, this means that Tesla could afford to drop their prices in order to maintain demand. They may not have to for a while at least in the US as they will be eligible for a $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act subsidy.
    Twitter was a big mistake for Musk but Tesla is still a huge success and will continue to be.
    Tesla is not alone in tech stocks for taking a battering this year. Valuations have been stratospheric and are now coming back down to a more reasonable position based on the expected recession. Just look at the performance of Arrk innovations performance..

    I suspect you are right. Tesla is for the long haul.
    TSLA is bargainicious right now. It might get even cheaper but equally it might snap back quickly. If you are a long term investor rather than trader then fill your boots.

    Silly that people are surprised the sales backlog drops when they suddenly double production capacity - new factories in Germany, Texas and increased capacity in China.

    Now it might be that in 2023 a deep recession really does finally cause a demand problem for Tesla. But one has to question whether long term that is actually a bad or a good thing for Tesla’s market share. Because Tesla has market leading gross margins and no debt (and a zero advertising budget). So if even Tesla are unable to pull a few levers to balance demand with its supply capacity, think what a pickle the rest of the industry would have to be in, given Tesla are thought to be pretty much the only ones with a positive gross margin on EVs (segmental disclosure tends to be poor).

    From where it’s valued today, I wager it’s an 8-10 bagger within 5 years. DYOR etc…
  • Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    How is a vote for a party opposed to Brexit a vote for Brexit? You sound like a Swedish Sean Connery - telling everyone how the answer to literally everything is independence, whilst not actually bothering to live in Scotland.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    No mention of the Mau Mau atrocities then

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49251428

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html
    No these are well covered in the book. You should read it and learn something.
    Yes pregnant women on farms being murdered after their unborn babies cut out and fed to them just some of the delights of the Mau Mau. As well as killing thousands of their fellow Africans not just Kenyan whites
    Caroline Elkins is a dogmatist and far more comfortable as a journalist, rather than a great historian (her publication record is pretty ordinary, like her fellow Harvard dogmatist Goldhagen) but that's just silly whataboutery. The Mau Mau being violent scum doesn't excuse the British from committing crimes.
    On another occasion ninety women and children were sealed in their village homes. The thatched roofs were then covered in petrol and set alight by the Mau Mau and those who escaped were cut down.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html

    Given the Mau Mau sometimes made the Nazis look mild it is hardly surprising the British authorities at the time took tough action against them
    Just to extend your analogy, are you suggesting that if we had herded the inhabitants of Nuremberg into gas chambers in 1946 that would have been OK because of the Holocaust?

    Again, the Mau Mau's actions don't excuse British soldiers in breaking the law and committing atrocities of their own. That was a point of contention even in the 1950s and was well documented long before Elkins came along.
    Well we hung leading Nazis at Nuremberg. We also bombed Dresden and its inhabitants to bits. The Americans sent atomic bombs to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

    War is often brutal
    And there were certainly contemporary concerns about both of the latter actions. George Bell, for example, condemned Dresden in the Lords. Even leaving aside Nazi nutters like Irving, there continues to be a strong debate about how far the bombing of Dresden and the 25,000 deaths it caused were justified, given the only meaningful strategic advantage it conferred was to shut the railway line for four days.
    I’m loath to get sucked in on Dresden again, especially before breakfast, but the point is Harris set out to do Dresden every time. He wanted to kill enough Germans that the war would be won without the need for any British soldiers to fight. Dresden just happened to be the most successful, along with Hamburg and a few other raids.
    We should be grateful not to be in those times, although of course the Ukrainians are.
    I'm just annoyed I got sucked into yet another argument with Hyufd :smile:

    The difference with Dresden as against Hamburg or Cologne or even Pforzheim, is that the war was won by the time it happened. And it had largely been won without area bombing having made a significant difference. Which made the Dresden raid, in RJ Evans' words, 'extremely hard to justify, to put it no more strongly than that.'
  • HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    No mention of the Mau Mau atrocities then

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49251428

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html
    No these are well covered in the book. You should read it and learn something.
    Yes pregnant women on farms being murdered after their unborn babies cut out and fed to them just some of the delights of the Mau Mau. As well as killing thousands of their fellow Africans not just Kenyan whites
    Caroline Elkins is a dogmatist and far more comfortable as a journalist, rather than a great historian (her publication record is pretty ordinary, like her fellow Harvard dogmatist Goldhagen) but that's just silly whataboutery. The Mau Mau being violent scum doesn't excuse the British from committing crimes.
    On another occasion ninety women and children were sealed in their village homes. The thatched roofs were then covered in petrol and set alight by the Mau Mau and those who escaped were cut down.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html

    Given the Mau Mau sometimes made the Nazis look mild it is hardly surprising the British authorities at the time took tough action against them
    I don't doubt that elements of British forces sometimes took the gloves off when dealing with insurrections or violent disorder.

    That does not make them Nazis.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    Doesn't alter my point. Not sure many would claim everything about any country's past did not bear some crticism. I would questiion the motive of any Historian on a 20 year anti-British mission. The 'rantings of Mr Dickson on these matters are something quite different - unless of course one accepts that no Scot ever played any part in the UK governments since the Act of Union.
    All regimes establish themselves through violence. If you want to find evidence of political violence, and then go on to make judgements about an entire system (ie the British empire) then fair enough, but it is probably because you are disposed to a particular point of view on the subject in the first place.
    Quite often, the same people who condemn the abuses of empire are sympathetic to acts of political violence in pursuit of popular 'progressive' causes.
    I think that the academic study of history works best if it is disentangled from politics and op-ed polemics.

    In the end, if I wanted to read a professional history of a genocide like the holocaust; I would just want to know how it happened.
  • O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    O/T Some good news for a change.

    Europe is surviving without Russian gas. That’s impressive considering last year 45% of European gas came from Russia.

    https://twitter.com/JumanaSaleheen/status/1608016726649618432?s=20&t=fvS3Ko_AypdcFYN5GPGywg

    The Dutch TTF gas future for the coming month, the benchmark European contract, dropped as much as 7.4 per cent on Wednesday to €76.78 per megawatt hour — its lowest level in 10 months.

    https://twitter.com/JumanaSaleheen/status/1608200321808961536?s=20&t=fvS3Ko_AypdcFYN5GPGywg
  • Good morning, everyone.

    Mr. Observer, I agree entirely. Just letting the Chinese in with neither restrictions nor testing is just asking for a greater chance of trouble.
  • Dura_Ace said:

    Foxy said:

    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
    I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall.
    I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales. It also means that the waiting time for a Tesla has dropped significantly which is good for the company. Tesla make around $10,000 on each sale whereas other companies struggle to make any profit on EVs, this means that Tesla could afford to drop their prices in order to maintain demand. They may not have to for a while at least in the US as they will be eligible for a $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act subsidy.
    Twitter was a big mistake for Musk but Tesla is still a huge success and will continue to be.
    The car business lives and dies on new models. Tesla's product lifecycles are too long and the new model pipeline is constipated. Model S is now ten years old with no replacement in sight. Taycan outsells it 2:1 and is getting a mid-lifecycle upgrade next year before being completely replaced in 2025. That's the speed Tesla needs.
    I'm not sure that EVs need the cost of replacements every 5-7 years. The new S - when it launches here - is a fundamentally different car to the old one - the battery, motors, on-board tech, body panels and interior have completely changed. Its got the same silhouette and the same name, that's about it.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281

    O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?

    UK immunity levels.

    But yeah, abundance of caution etc. I can't see the downside of insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China.

    (On reflection, maybe we don't have the capacity to implement such a requirement, given the UK Border Force is somewhat f*cked by all accounts.)

  • A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    Vote SNP, get Sunak!
  • Taz said:

    Foxy said:

    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
    I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall.
    I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales. It also means that the waiting time for a Tesla has dropped significantly which is good for the company. Tesla make around $10,000 on each sale whereas other companies struggle to make any profit on EVs, this means that Tesla could afford to drop their prices in order to maintain demand. They may not have to for a while at least in the US as they will be eligible for a $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act subsidy.
    Twitter was a big mistake for Musk but Tesla is still a huge success and will continue to be.
    Tesla is not alone in tech stocks for taking a battering this year. Valuations have been stratospheric and are now coming back down to a more reasonable position based on the expected recession. Just look at the performance of Arrk innovations performance..

    I suspect you are right. Tesla is for the long haul.
    The Tesla share price was ludicrous. As have been so many of these tech stocks, and even non-tech operators like Beyond Meat ended up with a mahoosive share price as American moron investors decided they were a tech stock kinda and sent the price to the moon. Prices coming back to reality is only a disaster to the idiots who bought the bubble - the fundamentals of these companies remain solid and the valuation will grow accordingly.
  • checklist said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Who ever said Britain had a reputation for decency? Not counting the British.
    The polling does. The UK is ranked first for overall attractiveness and second for trust in the G20:

    https://www.britishcouncil.org/research-policy-insight/insight-articles/global-britain-uk-soft-power-advantage

    https://www.visitbritain.org/britain’s-image-overseas

    I'm struggling to find it but there's also a poll in the last 18 months that shows that the country that trusts us most after their own is.... India.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281

    Dura_Ace said:

    Foxy said:

    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
    I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall.
    I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales. It also means that the waiting time for a Tesla has dropped significantly which is good for the company. Tesla make around $10,000 on each sale whereas other companies struggle to make any profit on EVs, this means that Tesla could afford to drop their prices in order to maintain demand. They may not have to for a while at least in the US as they will be eligible for a $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act subsidy.
    Twitter was a big mistake for Musk but Tesla is still a huge success and will continue to be.
    The car business lives and dies on new models. Tesla's product lifecycles are too long and the new model pipeline is constipated. Model S is now ten years old with no replacement in sight. Taycan outsells it 2:1 and is getting a mid-lifecycle upgrade next year before being completely replaced in 2025. That's the speed Tesla needs.
    I'm not sure that EVs need the cost of replacements every 5-7 years. The new S - when it launches here - is a fundamentally different car to the old one - the battery, motors, on-board tech, body panels and interior have completely changed. Its got the same silhouette and the same name, that's about it.
    Surely, Dura has a point? Why would EVs succeed with fewer refreshes than conventional cars?
  • checklist said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Who ever said Britain had a reputation for decency? Not counting the British.
    The polling does. The UK is ranked first for overall attractiveness and second for trust in the G20:

    https://www.britishcouncil.org/research-policy-insight/insight-articles/global-britain-uk-soft-power-advantage

    https://www.visitbritain.org/britain’s-image-overseas

    I'm struggling to find it but there's also a poll in the last 18 months that shows that the country that trusts us most after their own is.... India.
    "the data from European countries reveals an enduring negative impact from the UK’s exit from the EU"
  • Mr. Boy, it'd be interesting to compare European polling regarding the UK from countries like Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic tigers (perhaps also Sweden/Finland) and countries such as Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, etc (ie those who fear Russian aggression and those unlikely to be worried about it affecting their country directly).
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    ydoethur said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    Or a vote for the SNP, Starmer Labour, the LDs or Greens is a vote for gender recognition legislation for sex changes without even doctors approval.

    A vote for the Conservatives, Alba or RefUK is not
    Yet many Tories also support it. Michael Fabricant was on Twitter extolling the virtues of the legislation yesterday.
    Michael Fabricant supporting something is not necessarily a sign it is a good policy. Rather the reverse, in fact.
    Maybe, but the gender recognition law changes in Scotland are not clearly opposed by the Tories and who knows what Tory policy will be in 2024/5 when we have the election ? A significant chunk of the PCP supports it.

    90% of Scottish Conservative MSPs voted against the gender recognition Bill and Alistair Jack is seeking to reverse it from Westminster too
    Do you really think that is wise given the relationship between the SNP govt and Westminster. It just plays into their arguments.

    I was also,talking about the PCP support not SCON. I’m not saying it is overwhelming but certainly a sizeable chunk.
    68% of Scots think the gender recognition bill poses a threat to womens' safety

    https://wingsoverscotland.com/why-do-snp-voters-hate-women/
    That doesn’t really address either point.

    Also your former leader is onboard

    https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/gender-recognition-reform-bill-theresa-may-disappointed-scotland-changes-not-considered-for-england-3966348
    Given Mrs May led the Tories to just 9% in the 2019 European elections having failed to deliver Brexit I don't
    think she is the best person to advise on voting winning policies for her party!

    Plenty of women have concerns about allowing men to change sex without even a medical diagnosis, not just Tory women
  • Dura_Ace said:



    Tesla upgrades its cars all the time for example the use of giga castings and earlier the introduction of the heat pump and 'chrome delete'. Those are just the hardware changes, there's also the Over The Air software changes. You could wake up and find that your 3 year old Tesla has new improved functions.

    That's great for people who've bought one but it doesn't help sell new ones because it looks almost exactly the same, inside and out, as it did in 2012.

    It also means there is less incentive for people who have one to buy a new one.

    I don't think Tesla are completely fucked but their product line is very stale with no replacements in sight in an industry which richly rewards continuous renewal. Simply being Tesla isn't enough any more.
    Hang on, are you saying a 2023 Model S - when it actually goes on sale - is almost exactly the same as a 2013 used one?
    Battery is different - much bigger range and much faster charging
    Motors are different - more power, less consumption
    Hardware is different - big computer upgrade allows huge new features, autopilot in a different galaxy to the original iteration
    Bodyshell is different - one big and one small facelift make the cars look different in everything bar silhouette
    Interior is radically different - a completely new internal design architecture.

    I think the door handles are the same. Even if you had one of the run-out cars of the previous generation, the changes for the new one are still huge. OK, the chassis remains. How many "new" cars use an existing chassis? They last for a long long time even for the global car manufacturers.
  • Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    The author fails to divulge that she is a prominent political activist on behalf of the people she writes about, the remnants of Mau Mau.

    David Anderson's book from 2006 is much more balanced.
  • Mr. Boy, it'd be interesting to compare European polling regarding the UK from countries like Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic tigers (perhaps also Sweden/Finland) and countries such as Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, etc (ie those who fear Russian aggression and those unlikely to be worried about it affecting their country directly).

    Those are two entirely separate issues. I'm sure those countries are happy about our excellent and resolute support for Ukraine, but that doesn't alter the fact that we've soiled our reputation with many Europeans (including many Scandis, I can tell you from personal interactions) as a result of Brexit.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878
    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.

    Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya https://amzn.eu/d/0SgE4mc

    Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.

    No mention of the Mau Mau atrocities then

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49251428

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html
    No these are well covered in the book. You should read it and learn something.
    Yes pregnant women on farms being murdered after their unborn babies cut out and fed to them just some of the delights of the Mau Mau. As well as killing thousands of their fellow Africans not just Kenyan whites
    Caroline Elkins is a dogmatist and far more comfortable as a journalist, rather than a great historian (her publication record is pretty ordinary, like her fellow Harvard dogmatist Goldhagen) but that's just silly whataboutery. The Mau Mau being violent scum doesn't excuse the British from committing crimes.
    On another occasion ninety women and children were sealed in their village homes. The thatched roofs were then covered in petrol and set alight by the Mau Mau and those who escaped were cut down.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375967/Kenya-Mau-Mau-atrocities-1950s-dossier.html

    Given the Mau Mau sometimes made the Nazis look mild it is hardly surprising the British authorities at the time took tough action against them
    Just to extend your analogy, are you suggesting that if we had herded the inhabitants of Nuremberg into gas chambers in 1946 that would have been OK because of the Holocaust?

    Again, the Mau Mau's actions don't excuse British soldiers in breaking the law and committing atrocities of their own. That was a point of contention even in the 1950s and was well documented long before Elkins came along.
    Well we hung leading Nazis at Nuremberg. We also bombed Dresden and its inhabitants to bits. The Americans sent atomic bombs to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

    War is often brutal
    And there were certainly contemporary concerns about both of the latter actions. George Bell, for example, condemned Dresden in the Lords. Even leaving aside Nazi nutters like Irving, there continues to be a strong debate about how far the bombing of Dresden and the 25,000 deaths it caused were justified, given the only meaningful strategic advantage it conferred was to shut the railway line for four days.
    I’m loath to get sucked in on Dresden again, especially before breakfast, but the point is Harris set out to do Dresden every time. He wanted to kill enough Germans that the war would be won without the need for any British soldiers to fight. Dresden just happened to be the most successful, along with Hamburg and a few other raids.
    We should be grateful not to be in those times, although of course the Ukrainians are.
    I'm just annoyed I got sucked into yet another argument with Hyufd :smile:

    The difference with Dresden as against Hamburg or Cologne or even Pforzheim, is that the war was won by the time it happened. And it had largely been won without area bombing having made a significant difference. Which made the Dresden raid, in RJ Evans' words, 'extremely hard to justify, to put it no more strongly than that.'
    A fair point, but how many allied soldiers died after Dresden and before 8th May 1945? The war was over when Germany surrendered.
    The debate will rage forever about the air war. On the one hand, stupendous amounts of money, material and men were expended trying to win the war by bombing alone. On the other the effects of bombing on Germany did shorten the war, undeniably so. Take flak defences. Every 88mm gun not on the Eastern Front or in Normandy was a gain of bombing. The lack of fuel crippled the German Army - they attacked in the Ardennes without enough fuel to even reach the coast, needed to steal allied fuel to have any chance.

    Harris hated ‘panacea’ targets, but actually ball bearings and fuel did have effects.

    Max Hastings believes that the resources spent on bombing were wasted. He’s probably right. Yet to an allied soldier in Normandy the lack of worry about attack from the air is in stark contrast to the constant need for the Germans to move at night, keep under cover etc. That waif superiority was hard won, and mainly by bombing, forcing the Luftwaffe to fight.

  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    ydoethur said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    Or a vote for the SNP, Starmer Labour, the LDs or Greens is a vote for gender recognition legislation for sex changes without even doctors approval.

    A vote for the Conservatives, Alba or RefUK is not
    Yet many Tories also support it. Michael Fabricant was on Twitter extolling the virtues of the legislation yesterday.
    Michael Fabricant supporting something is not necessarily a sign it is a good policy. Rather the reverse, in fact.
    Maybe, but the gender recognition law changes in Scotland are not clearly opposed by the Tories and who knows what Tory policy will be in 2024/5 when we have the election ? A significant chunk of the PCP supports it.

    90% of Scottish Conservative MSPs voted against the gender recognition Bill and Alistair Jack is seeking to reverse it from Westminster too
    Do you really think that is wise given the relationship between the SNP govt and Westminster. It just plays into their arguments.

    I was also,talking about the PCP support not SCON. I’m not saying it is overwhelming but certainly a sizeable chunk.
    68% of Scots think the gender recognition bill poses a threat to womens' safety

    https://wingsoverscotland.com/why-do-snp-voters-hate-women/
    That doesn’t really address either point.

    Also your former leader is onboard

    https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/gender-recognition-reform-bill-theresa-may-disappointed-scotland-changes-not-considered-for-england-3966348
    Given Mrs May led the Tories to just 9% in the 2019 European elections having failed to deliver Brexit I don't
    think she is the best person to advise on voting winning policies for her party!

    Plenty of women have concerns about allowing men to change sex without even a medical diagnosis, not just Tory women
    Rather disloyal of you HYUFD. Do you drop your support for all previous Tory leaders that quickly?
  • checklist said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Who ever said Britain had a reputation for decency? Not counting the British.
    The polling does. The UK is ranked first for overall attractiveness and second for trust in the G20:

    https://www.britishcouncil.org/research-policy-insight/insight-articles/global-britain-uk-soft-power-advantage

    https://www.visitbritain.org/britain’s-image-overseas

    I'm struggling to find it but there's also a poll in the last 18 months that shows that the country that trusts us most after their own is.... India.
    "the data from European countries reveals an enduring negative impact from the UK’s exit from the EU"
    It's absolutely hilarious that you ignore the headline messages and selectively pluck out the one thing that accords with the firmly established views you already hold.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709

    Mr. Boy, it'd be interesting to compare European polling regarding the UK from countries like Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic tigers (perhaps also Sweden/Finland) and countries such as Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, etc (ie those who fear Russian aggression and those unlikely to be worried about it affecting their country directly).

    Those are two entirely separate issues. I'm sure those countries are happy about our excellent and resolute support for Ukraine, but that doesn't alter the fact that we've soiled our reputation with many Europeans (including many Scandis, I can tell you from personal interactions) as a result of Brexit.
    Norway and Iceland of course are not and never have been in the EU anyway
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,522

    O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?

    Nearly everyone in the UK is either vaccinated or has had the virus or both, which isn't true of China.

    Plus, quite possibly, people have started to realise that you can't actually stop a virus and it causes more damage to try.
  • Mr. Boy, if the UK political class had honoured its Lisbon referendum manifesto commitments we'd still be in. Likewise if the EU had offered Cameron something that was seen as an advantage rather than a detriment to the Remain campaign.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891

    checklist said:

    felix said:

    Foxy said:

    ‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’

    In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

    From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”


    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

    Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
    Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
    Who ever said Britain had a reputation for decency? Not counting the British.
    The polling does. The UK is ranked first for overall attractiveness and second for trust in the G20:

    https://www.britishcouncil.org/research-policy-insight/insight-articles/global-britain-uk-soft-power-advantage

    https://www.visitbritain.org/britain’s-image-overseas

    I'm struggling to find it but there's also a poll in the last 18 months that shows that the country that trusts us most after their own is.... India.
    Your link says 6th after Germany Japan Canada Italy and France.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,878

    O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?

    The million plus U.K. residents currently with covid. Chinese imports will be a drop in the ocean.
  • Dura_Ace said:

    Foxy said:

    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
    I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall.
    I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales. It also means that the waiting time for a Tesla has dropped significantly which is good for the company. Tesla make around $10,000 on each sale whereas other companies struggle to make any profit on EVs, this means that Tesla could afford to drop their prices in order to maintain demand. They may not have to for a while at least in the US as they will be eligible for a $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act subsidy.
    Twitter was a big mistake for Musk but Tesla is still a huge success and will continue to be.
    The car business lives and dies on new models. Tesla's product lifecycles are too long and the new model pipeline is constipated. Model S is now ten years old with no replacement in sight. Taycan outsells it 2:1 and is getting a mid-lifecycle upgrade next year before being completely replaced in 2025. That's the speed Tesla needs.
    I'm not sure that EVs need the cost of replacements every 5-7 years. The new S - when it launches here - is a fundamentally different car to the old one - the battery, motors, on-board tech, body panels and interior have completely changed. Its got the same silhouette and the same name, that's about it.
    Surely, Dura has a point? Why would EVs succeed with fewer refreshes than conventional cars?
    His point is that he doesn't know what he is talking about on this particular subject. Bar the chassis the entire vehicle has been changed, most changes at fundamental level - completely new batteries / motors / automation. The new Model S which is finally coming to Europe next year has the same profile as the original car and thats it. He mentioned Porsche - famous for issuing new 911s that look the same as the old 911. So whats the point being made - that people don't buy the new car if it looks like the old car? Giving Porsche - who have done that doe decades - as the example?
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Dura_Ace said:

    Foxy said:

    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
    I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall.
    I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales. It also means that the waiting time for a Tesla has dropped significantly which is good for the company. Tesla make around $10,000 on each sale whereas other companies struggle to make any profit on EVs, this means that Tesla could afford to drop their prices in order to maintain demand. They may not have to for a while at least in the US as they will be eligible for a $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act subsidy.
    Twitter was a big mistake for Musk but Tesla is still a huge success and will continue to be.
    The car business lives and dies on new models. Tesla's product lifecycles are too long and the new model pipeline is constipated. Model S is now ten years old with no replacement in sight. Taycan outsells it 2:1 and is getting a mid-lifecycle upgrade next year before being completely replaced in 2025. That's the speed Tesla needs.
    I'm not sure that EVs need the cost of replacements every 5-7 years. The new S - when it launches here - is a fundamentally different car to the old one - the battery, motors, on-board tech, body panels and interior have completely changed. Its got the same silhouette and the same name, that's about it.
    Surely, Dura has a point? Why would EVs succeed with fewer refreshes than conventional cars?
    Sales will eventually drop as people want their new car to be different from their old car. Which is why companies now do mid lifecycle facelifts after 4 or so years so those who always buy new have something slightly different on the drive even if much of the interior is the same.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281

    Dura_Ace said:

    Foxy said:

    Tres said:

    Tommy Robinson been let back in Twitter now, Tesla share price back to where it was in summer 2000.

    Summer 2020 surely?



    Though losing $900 billion in shareholder value in a year is pretty spectacular. More trouble ahead too as Tesla production now exceeds sales.

    https://insideevs.com/news/628254/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-dec8-2022/
    I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall.
    I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales. It also means that the waiting time for a Tesla has dropped significantly which is good for the company. Tesla make around $10,000 on each sale whereas other companies struggle to make any profit on EVs, this means that Tesla could afford to drop their prices in order to maintain demand. They may not have to for a while at least in the US as they will be eligible for a $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act subsidy.
    Twitter was a big mistake for Musk but Tesla is still a huge success and will continue to be.
    The car business lives and dies on new models. Tesla's product lifecycles are too long and the new model pipeline is constipated. Model S is now ten years old with no replacement in sight. Taycan outsells it 2:1 and is getting a mid-lifecycle upgrade next year before being completely replaced in 2025. That's the speed Tesla needs.
    I'm not sure that EVs need the cost of replacements every 5-7 years. The new S - when it launches here - is a fundamentally different car to the old one - the battery, motors, on-board tech, body panels and interior have completely changed. Its got the same silhouette and the same name, that's about it.
    Surely, Dura has a point? Why would EVs succeed with fewer refreshes than conventional cars?
    His point is that he doesn't know what he is talking about on this particular subject. Bar the chassis the entire vehicle has been changed, most changes at fundamental level - completely new batteries / motors / automation. The new Model S which is finally coming to Europe next year has the same profile as the original car and thats it. He mentioned Porsche - famous for issuing new 911s that look the same as the old 911. So whats the point being made - that people don't buy the new car if it looks like the old car? Giving Porsche - who have done that doe decades - as the example?
    I've no skin in the game, I was simply responding to your statement that "I'm not sure that EVs need the cost of replacements every 5-7 years."

    I was wondering why EVs should be different from ICE cars in that respect.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited December 2022

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    ydoethur said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Heathener said:

    Heathener said:

    I was chatting recently with someone who had a small group meeting with Keir Starmer. They said he was lovely, warm, witty and completely different from the image some would have us believe.

    Just saying.

    Just what the planet needs, a lovely, warm, witty Brexiteer. Different packaging, same damaged goods.
    Sorry, Stuart, but when it comes to Starmer you seem to lose all balance.

    Keir Starmer isn't a Brexiteer. If you're basing that remark on his comments about not reversing Brexit then you surely understand and know that he doesn't want to open that can of worms in the run up to the election? The last thing he needs is to make the 2023 or 2024 General Election a Brexit re-run.

    I know you know this so you are being mischievous.
    A vote for the Conservatives = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Liberal Democrats = a vote for Brexit

    A vote for the Scottish National Party = a vote for EU membership

    That’s not “mischievous”, that’s a plain statement of fact.

    There’s an awful lot of “cans of worms” that Keir Starmer doesn’t want to open, like fair pay for nurses, democracy for Scots, and keeping 200 nuclear warheads just outside Glasgow.

    The Tories are about to remove equal pay for women. What’s the likelihood that Starmer won’t oppose it? Very high.

    The Tories have morphed into UKIP and Labour have morphed into the Tories. England has lurched tragically to the far right. It is an error of huge historical consequence, and this is just the start.
    Or a vote for the SNP, Starmer Labour, the LDs or Greens is a vote for gender recognition legislation for sex changes without even doctors approval.

    A vote for the Conservatives, Alba or RefUK is not
    Yet many Tories also support it. Michael Fabricant was on Twitter extolling the virtues of the legislation yesterday.
    Michael Fabricant supporting something is not necessarily a sign it is a good policy. Rather the reverse, in fact.
    Maybe, but the gender recognition law changes in Scotland are not clearly opposed by the Tories and who knows what Tory policy will be in 2024/5 when we have the election ? A significant chunk of the PCP supports it.

    90% of Scottish Conservative MSPs voted against the gender recognition Bill and Alistair Jack is seeking to reverse it from Westminster too
    Do you really think that is wise given the relationship between the SNP govt and Westminster. It just plays into their arguments.

    I was also,talking about the PCP support not SCON. I’m not saying it is overwhelming but certainly a sizeable chunk.
    68% of Scots think the gender recognition bill poses a threat to womens' safety

    https://wingsoverscotland.com/why-do-snp-voters-hate-women/
    That doesn’t really address either point.

    Also your former leader is onboard

    https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/gender-recognition-reform-bill-theresa-may-disappointed-scotland-changes-not-considered-for-england-3966348
    Given Mrs May led the Tories to just 9% in the 2019 European elections having failed to deliver Brexit I don't
    think she is the best person to advise on voting winning policies for her party!

    Plenty of women have concerns about allowing men to change sex without even a medical diagnosis, not just Tory women
    Rather disloyal of you HYUFD. Do you drop your support for all previous Tory leaders that quickly?
    I was one of the 9% who voted Tory even in that European election, so I don't think Mrs May can excuse me of disloyalty to her. Especially given most of her party's supporters voted for Farage and the Brexit Party at that election
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,771
    ydoethur said:

    Kane Williamson seems to be enjoying life after captaincy.

    195 is a terrific score and credit to his powers of concentration but a scoring rate of 50 on a pitch like this is not impressive. He has taken 65 overs worth of balls to get there. Pakistan might collapse in the second innings but I remain pretty confident of my forecast of a draw.
This discussion has been closed.