I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
Again, as I have said before, the attacks of Hamas on civilians are despicable and morally reprehensible. But they happened for a reason, and that reason is not just the hatred of Jewish people. Indeed, many Jewish people are also pointing out why the reaction that the Israeli government is taking is counterproductive and illegal, and indeed that the acts of the Israeli government is what, in part, led to this situation - including literal pieces published in Israeli newspapers by Israeli journalists. If 1,000 people were killed in London by a modern IRA splinter cell I wouldn't expect us to start carpet bombing Ireland. Hell, we know looking at everything post 9/11 that even if it allows you to vent you bloodlust it makes everything much much much worse - for the people you massacre, the region, and everyone else. Yes, I can understand the visceral reaction on an attack on Israeli soil, but that doesn't mean you get a free reign to do war crimes or treat 2 million civilians as all liable for the attacks of terrorist insurgents!
Off topic I reckon Suella Braverman is now more likely. And also more impressive (even if you despise her views)
Agree. I think she’s a thick as two short planks, but she has really WORKED on her presentation, and it has paid off.
Tory members just won’t be able to help themselves.
I don’t believe she’s “thick as two short planks”
“She attended the Uxendon Manor Primary School in Brent and the fee-paying Heathfield School, Pinner, on a partial scholarship,[1][9] after which she read law at Queens' College, Cambridge. During her undergraduate studies, she was chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association.[10]
Braverman lived in France for two years, as an Erasmus Programme student and then as an Entente Cordiale Scholar, where she studied for a master's degree in European and French law at Panthéon-Sorbonne University.[11]”
Then became a highly qualified lawyer AND passed the US bar
The fact that she has brains makes the crap she comes out with all the more alarming.
If anyone fancies a bet on the first party leader or CoE of West African descent (not that there’s a market yet) then Miatta Fahnbulleh might be a good choice. Inheriting a rock solid safe seat, and with strong economic credentials. I saw her speak at an event in Liverpool and she was very impressive.
Miatta is great, super smart and a nice person too. Although if you're looking for the first CoE of West African descent Kwasi Kwarteng got there first, surely?
Only time I’ve seen Badenoch speak live she was rather underwhelming. Just a lot of predictable culture warry comments thrown out scattergun in an attempt at humour. It was jarring and not even slickly done, just seemed childish. It was at an event celebrating the UK-Aus trade deal and followed a series of very diplomatic and non political speeches by others from both countries.
Indeed. She is deeply unimpressive if you actually focus on what she says. Maybe she will develop with age and experience, but she was obviously a too-soon in the last leadership race and I see little sign she has developed since.
When Zac Goldsmith criticised the Conservatives' pulling back from Net Zero pledges, Badenoch said he was out of touch because he has "way more money than pretty much everyone in the UK". That may be true about Zac, but it seems a silly thing to say when Rishi Sunak is your leader.
Also a bit silly if you're an ex associate director of Coutts and your husband is a big cheese at Deutsche Bank. The various stratifications of out-of-touchedness in the Tory party are a wonder to behold.
That’s a bit unfair.
I don’t think the Badenochs are super wealthy in the way Sunak, Goldsmith, or even Johnson or Cameron are. Standard London professional class, and no reason to think it unmerited, either.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
You have assessed that they are not in an existential war and you are as entitled to make that judgement as they are to make theirs. We should probably look at what would happen if you and they were wrong and right respectively.
I mean I am a fan of people taking the knee. A visible action against racism, of which there continues to be a fuckload at footie matches and which was beyond endemic in times gone by.
Equally it gives me great pleasure to see a typical PL footie match wherein there is a united nations of races, creeds, colours (not sexuality yet but I'm sure it is coming) and I believe the game is truly colour blind. You only have to see celebrations after a goal to confirm this at least amongst the players.
However, the pickle that the FA and indeed all football clubs finds itself in wrt Israel/Gaza is as a consequence of these gestures.
Like you I have no issue with taking the knee. It’s a harmless gesture against racism and helps raise awareness so where’s the downside ?
Soccer is also happy to have players wear rainbow laces. Again. No problem there.
When people complained about the taking of the knee or the laces the FA and twitterati were quick to condemn. They’re silent now a and this silence shames them.
They’ve made a major error here. They have a chance to rectify it. They need to do it ASAP.
Their reasoning is clear. They don’t want to offend the sort of people who believe 6MWNE.
Off topic I reckon Suella Braverman is now more likely. And also more impressive (even if you despise her views)
Agree. I think she’s a thick as two short planks, but she has really WORKED on her presentation, and it has paid off.
Tory members just won’t be able to help themselves.
I don’t believe she’s “thick as two short planks”
“She attended the Uxendon Manor Primary School in Brent and the fee-paying Heathfield School, Pinner, on a partial scholarship,[1][9] after which she read law at Queens' College, Cambridge. During her undergraduate studies, she was chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association.[10]
Braverman lived in France for two years, as an Erasmus Programme student and then as an Entente Cordiale Scholar, where she studied for a master's degree in European and French law at Panthéon-Sorbonne University.[11]”
Then became a highly qualified lawyer AND passed the US bar
The fact that she has brains makes the crap she comes out with all the more alarming.
If she had brain, which clearly she must have had at some level, she has let them rot into mush. She presents as aggressively un-cerebral.
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Warrington is not a model that can be transposed on to more densely populated parts of the country, particularly not the south east. You can't just build 10 lane motorways through AONB's and National Parks, which is what would happen if you try and fulfil the demand for car use through building new roads, at some point you need to start reducing the demand for car use and developing other options (public transport) - something we realised about 30-40 years ago.
Also the situation in Warrington and this part of the north west is a product of town planning, not something that has happened because town planning has been swept away. All the roads, infrastructure to go with the housing have to be planned and co-ordinated, along with policies that direct growth to certain areas. You don't just create it by throwing up a few motorways and letting people build wherever they want on vaguely defined zones. Even if you create a zonal system, like Japan and many other countries in Europe, it still has to be planned, it is just a slightly different type of planning.
Yes. I haven't ever advocated anarchy, I advocate zonal planning. Which contrary to what @Richard_Tyndall keeps claiming is not what we have in this country.
In a sensible zonal system, like Japan, you can build whatever you want subject without asking permission first if three conditions are met.
1. You own the land (obviously) 2. It is already zoned for housing. 3. You build to building codes.
Neighbours or Councils don't get a say if you want to demolish your home and rebuild it to something else as it's already zoned.
Plan the public infrastructure absolutely. But the land zoned for housing is NOT the public infrastructure land. Leave that to fill in with whatever people want.
The comment I have is that you purport to be in favour of a radical reform of planning in your posts but when it comes down to it, all you are actually arguing for is for more land to be released for housing (something almost everyone who works in the area agrees with- but subject to it being the right land in the right place which is more difficult to resolve) and a different delivery mechanism - a code based system rather than a discretionary system - something that is also not that controversial to deal with in principle, until you start trying to work out what the code should and shouldn't allow, and how deviations are resolved.
The problem with the last 13 years of planning policy is that the government don't want to tackle difficult decisions about where growth goes, they just keep avoiding it - palming it off to someone else, local authorities, civil servants etc... the Labour party seem to be making the right noises , but lets see.
I don't consider zonal planning a radical concept whatsoever.
But to switch from our current system where politicians and neighbours and assorted NIMBYs get a say in blocking development, to one where they don't, would have radical consequences.
It would end the oligopoly of developers that can play the system to acquire and sit on consent (especially but not only if done in conjunction with a switch to LVT). It would allow more variety in what is built, rather than what is It would allow adaptability as if higher density housing for example were desired people could bulldoze low density housing and rebuild to higher density, without having to get their neighbours or Councillors to approve. It would mean politicians would no longer have to appeal or pander to NIMBYs as codes being set nationally and zoning being approved locally means they have no more input after its zoned.
You may be interested to hear that our house in Finland is in a zoning system. We cannot cut down a tree in the garden without permission. The guy across the road is trying to do a self build and has been waiting for 10 months for permission to knock down the existing building and because the new house is 1m higher than the code allows. And of course, in these established built up areas there are exactly the same grievances and arguments between neighbours, they don't disappear with a code system.
The code system works and it doesn't. On the other hand a relative built an entire housing estate on his farm over the course of about 5 years through a code based system selling the plots off individually. But the latter happened not just because of the code system, also because there is unlimited land in Finland to build on and a low population density and no opposition, also because the Finns keep on top of building new infrastructure, unlike the UK. They've also made mistakes in Finland with too liberal code based systems on similar estates, there are estates where opportunistic developers have crammed in too many single storey houses with no space/gardens, it is the cheapest, poor quality type of development, something must have gone wrong with the plot/space ratios. In our relatives case he thinks it worked better because he employed a landscape architect to design the layout, but that was his choice (and expense)
If its already zoned for residential then I'm proposing abolishing seeking permission [except for special circumstances, like listed buildings]. So if the guy across the road is waiting for permission, then that's not a pure zonal system like I propose.
Absolutely agreed that low density is better, hence the parallel conversation about transport. Some people prefer high density though, so if they do then there should be freedom to do that too.
Of course if we have enough houses able to be built, and a liberal zone/code based system then situations where some developments are badly designed while others are well designed, may mean that the well designed developments are sold and lived in while the badly designed ones may end up vacant and be a burden on the owner who badly designed them as nobody is forced to buy or let them given better alternatives and the stupid owner who screwed up needs to continue paying all taxes on the land himself rather than getting an income from those who have no better alternative.
But is there a code or no code in your preferred zoning system? If there is a code then there has to be a method of dealing with situations that breach the code, hence the requirement for permission. I am not aware of any zoning system in a developed country that does not have some sort of building code that sets out limits that must be followed. The examples you use in support of your proposal all have this characteristic.
Why do you need permission? They don't in Japan.
Yes there should be a code, no there should not be a requirement for permission.
Build to code. If you break the code, then you should face consequences, same as breaking any other law, but if you are operating legally you shouldn't need to ask permission first.
So you want to have a code where there are no exceptions. It sounds to me like this would ultimately be a more restrictive system than that which exists at the moment, where you can apply for anything you want.
No, I want a code where if you build to code you don't need to ask permission, its automatic, for normal zoned appropriately land buildings which are not listed.
Want to build an extension to your property? If its to code, build it. Want to knock down your property and rebuild it? If its to code, do it. Want to buy undeveloped land (that is zoned appropriately) buy it and start building on it. No consultations, no discussions with neighbours, no politicians getting involved.
If you want an exemption? Then apply for one. If you want to convert land not zoned for housing to land zoned for housing? Then apply for it.
But only those outside of code, or outside of what is already zoned, would be going through a permission process.
Ok. But in terms of extensions, you are arguing for the system that we already have. Because you can already extend and alter your property without planning permission under permitted development rules that are very liberal already. It is only when you go beyond PD that you have to apply for permission.
Regarding the idea that you effectively grant permission for new buildings upfront at the time of making a plan, subject to compliance with a code... few people working in the industry would find that idea controversial. But the difficulty of implementing it is that you would have to do a lot more upfront work in making the plan that allocates the land in the first place. Already it takes 5 years to make a plan that allocates sites to resolve all the issues that come with allocating land. If you have to go further and work out where the roads are going and allocate sites all the way down to plot level and write a building code it will just take longer and be much more expensive = it won't ever happen.
The problem ultimately comes down to it being difficult to get anything done because of some strange disorder in the english bureaucratic state. The tories have spent 13 years trying to blast their way through it and bring the blob in to order but somehow they have managed only to make it even more dysfunctional.
The answer to this is to adopt one of the Dutch systems.
There the local Government allocate land for building. They then undertake all the preliminary work, archaeology, environmental etc. They then put in all the services, roads etc. They then allow people to buy plots - paying their share of all the previous costs to date and build their houses (or rather usually get a builder to do it for them) according to any of twenty or more designs previously agreed by the local Goverment.
It is a system as old as the Romans. We know that they often built street plans well in advance of putting in the buildings as we have found lots of examples where the building bit never happened.
Under this system you can still have all the planning rules etc but it is the council who are meeting them not a developer.
Of course developers would hate the system as it leaves nothing for them to do.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
Again, as I have said before, the attacks of Hamas on civilians are despicable and morally reprehensible. But they happened for a reason, and that reason is not just the hatred of Jewish people. Indeed, many Jewish people are also pointing out why the reaction that the Israeli government is counterproductive and illegal, and indeed that the acts of the Israeli government is what, in part, led to this situation - including literal pieces published in Israeli newspapers by Israeli journalists. If 1,000 people were killed in London by a modern IRA splinter cell I wouldn't expect us to start carpet bombing Ireland. Hell, we know looking at everything post 9/11 that even if it allows you to vent you bloodlust it makes everything much much much worse - for the people you massacre, the region, and everyone else. Yes, I can understand the visceral reaction on an attack on Israeli soil, but that doesn't mean you get a free reign to do war crimes or treat 2 million civilians as all liable for the attacks of terrorist insurgents!
The equivalent death toll in the UK would be:
8,400 dead 18,900 injured
With most of them civilians, babies burned and chopped, old people stabbed, hundreds of rapes, nearly a thousand kidnapped, many beheadings
And all of this done in ONE day and by a political organisation dedicated to killing every British person in the world
In that event, I suggest the British people would be screaming for bloody revenge and the total elimination of this enemy: and the UK government would oblige
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Warrington is not a model that can be transposed on to more densely populated parts of the country, particularly not the south east. You can't just build 10 lane motorways through AONB's and National Parks, which is what would happen if you try and fulfil the demand for car use through building new roads, at some point you need to start reducing the demand for car use and developing other options (public transport) - something we realised about 30-40 years ago.
Also the situation in Warrington and this part of the north west is a product of town planning, not something that has happened because town planning has been swept away. All the roads, infrastructure to go with the housing have to be planned and co-ordinated, along with policies that direct growth to certain areas. You don't just create it by throwing up a few motorways and letting people build wherever they want on vaguely defined zones. Even if you create a zonal system, like Japan and many other countries in Europe, it still has to be planned, it is just a slightly different type of planning.
Yes. I haven't ever advocated anarchy, I advocate zonal planning. Which contrary to what @Richard_Tyndall keeps claiming is not what we have in this country.
In a sensible zonal system, like Japan, you can build whatever you want subject without asking permission first if three conditions are met.
1. You own the land (obviously) 2. It is already zoned for housing. 3. You build to building codes.
Neighbours or Councils don't get a say if you want to demolish your home and rebuild it to something else as it's already zoned.
Plan the public infrastructure absolutely. But the land zoned for housing is NOT the public infrastructure land. Leave that to fill in with whatever people want.
The comment I have is that you purport to be in favour of a radical reform of planning in your posts but when it comes down to it, all you are actually arguing for is for more land to be released for housing (something almost everyone who works in the area agrees with- but subject to it being the right land in the right place which is more difficult to resolve) and a different delivery mechanism - a code based system rather than a discretionary system - something that is also not that controversial to deal with in principle, until you start trying to work out what the code should and shouldn't allow, and how deviations are resolved.
The problem with the last 13 years of planning policy is that the government don't want to tackle difficult decisions about where growth goes, they just keep avoiding it - palming it off to someone else, local authorities, civil servants etc... the Labour party seem to be making the right noises , but lets see.
I don't consider zonal planning a radical concept whatsoever.
But to switch from our current system where politicians and neighbours and assorted NIMBYs get a say in blocking development, to one where they don't, would have radical consequences.
It would end the oligopoly of developers that can play the system to acquire and sit on consent (especially but not only if done in conjunction with a switch to LVT). It would allow more variety in what is built, rather than what is It would allow adaptability as if higher density housing for example were desired people could bulldoze low density housing and rebuild to higher density, without having to get their neighbours or Councillors to approve. It would mean politicians would no longer have to appeal or pander to NIMBYs as codes being set nationally and zoning being approved locally means they have no more input after its zoned.
You may be interested to hear that our house in Finland is in a zoning system. We cannot cut down a tree in the garden without permission. The guy across the road is trying to do a self build and has been waiting for 10 months for permission to knock down the existing building and because the new house is 1m higher than the code allows. And of course, in these established built up areas there are exactly the same grievances and arguments between neighbours, they don't disappear with a code system.
The code system works and it doesn't. On the other hand a relative built an entire housing estate on his farm over the course of about 5 years through a code based system selling the plots off individually. But the latter happened not just because of the code system, also because there is unlimited land in Finland to build on and a low population density and no opposition, also because the Finns keep on top of building new infrastructure, unlike the UK. They've also made mistakes in Finland with too liberal code based systems on similar estates, there are estates where opportunistic developers have crammed in too many single storey houses with no space/gardens, it is the cheapest, poor quality type of development, something must have gone wrong with the plot/space ratios. In our relatives case he thinks it worked better because he employed a landscape architect to design the layout, but that was his choice (and expense)
If its already zoned for residential then I'm proposing abolishing seeking permission [except for special circumstances, like listed buildings]. So if the guy across the road is waiting for permission, then that's not a pure zonal system like I propose.
Absolutely agreed that low density is better, hence the parallel conversation about transport. Some people prefer high density though, so if they do then there should be freedom to do that too.
Of course if we have enough houses able to be built, and a liberal zone/code based system then situations where some developments are badly designed while others are well designed, may mean that the well designed developments are sold and lived in while the badly designed ones may end up vacant and be a burden on the owner who badly designed them as nobody is forced to buy or let them given better alternatives and the stupid owner who screwed up needs to continue paying all taxes on the land himself rather than getting an income from those who have no better alternative.
But is there a code or no code in your preferred zoning system? If there is a code then there has to be a method of dealing with situations that breach the code, hence the requirement for permission. I am not aware of any zoning system in a developed country that does not have some sort of building code that sets out limits that must be followed. The examples you use in support of your proposal all have this characteristic.
Why do you need permission? They don't in Japan.
Yes there should be a code, no there should not be a requirement for permission.
Build to code. If you break the code, then you should face consequences, same as breaking any other law, but if you are operating legally you shouldn't need to ask permission first.
So you want to have a code where there are no exceptions. It sounds to me like this would ultimately be a more restrictive system than that which exists at the moment, where you can apply for anything you want.
No, I want a code where if you build to code you don't need to ask permission, its automatic, for normal zoned appropriately land buildings which are not listed.
Want to build an extension to your property? If its to code, build it. Want to knock down your property and rebuild it? If its to code, do it. Want to buy undeveloped land (that is zoned appropriately) buy it and start building on it. No consultations, no discussions with neighbours, no politicians getting involved.
If you want an exemption? Then apply for one. If you want to convert land not zoned for housing to land zoned for housing? Then apply for it.
But only those outside of code, or outside of what is already zoned, would be going through a permission process.
Ok. But in terms of extensions, you are arguing for the system that we already have. Because you can already extend and alter your property without planning permission under permitted development rules that are very liberal already. It is only when you go beyond PD that you have to apply for permission.
Regarding the idea that you effectively grant permission for new buildings upfront at the time of making a plan, subject to compliance with a code... few people working in the industry would find that idea controversial. But the difficulty of implementing it is that you would have to do a lot more upfront work in making the plan that allocates the land in the first place. Already it takes 5 years to make a plan that allocates sites to resolve all the issues that come with allocating land. If you have to go further and work out where the roads are going and allocate sites all the way down to plot level and write a building code it will just take longer and be much more expensive = it won't ever happen.
The problem ultimately comes down to it being difficult to get anything done because of some strange disorder in the english bureaucratic state. The tories have spent 13 years trying to blast their way through it and bring the blob in to order but somehow they have managed only to make it even more dysfunctional.
The answer to this is to adopt one of the Dutch systems.
There the local Government allocate land for building. They then undertake all the preliminary work, archaeology, environmental etc. They then put in all the services, roads etc. They then allow people to buy plots - paying their share of all the previous costs to date and build their houses (or rather usually get a builder to do it for them) according to any of twenty or more designs previously agreed by the local Goverment.
It is a system as old as the Romans. We know that they often built street plans well in advance of putting in the buildings as we have found lots of examples where the building bit never happened.
Under this system you can still have all the planning rules etc but it is the council who are meeting them not a developer.
Of course developers would hate the system as it leaves nothing for them to do.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
I might suggest events subsequent to 1948 have shown that this is still an existential war for Jews in Israel. This weekend's attack is not unique; just taking rocket attacks, it is a fairly constant thing. And remember, many of these attacks causes people to have to under cover. Israelis are as much under everyday attack as Palestinians.
In my twenty years of experiencing housing market dysfunction in the UK - and having heard every excuse under the sun, from evil landlords, to greedy foreigners, to lazy councils, to selfish nimbys - the essential issue is that Britain doesn’t zone enough space for housing.
Such zones do not need to be new land area. They could, and in the main should, be “up”, as Auckland has done successfully in the last several years.
But we need to mandate zoning and area plans for every local authority, and strong design codes as well.
And then after that, we need the planning system to let people get on with it, instead of strangling them with a thousand petty rules and a thousand opportunities for people object.
"They could, and in the main should, be “up”,"
A significant issue is that the British 'dream' is not a flat in a tall tower block. It is a detached or semi-detached house with garage and a garden. Hence that is what builders try to build, squeezing as many such houses onto as small a plot as possible.
It is a situation made worse by the tower block disasters of the 1960s and 1970s, reinforced by Grenfell and access to gardens during Covid lockdowns.
Perhaps this should change; but good luck with that.
Unless and until leasehold is abolished, flats will remain deeply undesirable.
On the hook for limitless service charges and major works, often overseen by crooked management companies, either padding invoices or simply purely on the take, and the only redress a wholly inadequate, expensive and time consuming "tribunal" process that allows the freeholder to tack their legal fees onto your service charges, even if you win!
All this without actually owning a single brick.
If you want people to want flats, abolish leasehold.
I mean I am a fan of people taking the knee. A visible action against racism, of which there continues to be a fuckload at footie matches and which was beyond endemic in times gone by.
Equally it gives me great pleasure to see a typical PL footie match wherein there is a united nations of races, creeds, colours (not sexuality yet but I'm sure it is coming) and I believe the game is truly colour blind. You only have to see celebrations after a goal to confirm this at least amongst the players.
However, the pickle that the FA and indeed all football clubs finds itself in wrt Israel/Gaza is as a consequence of these gestures.
Like you I have no issue with taking the knee. It’s a harmless gesture against racism and helps raise awareness so where’s the downside ?
Soccer is also happy to have players wear rainbow laces. Again. No problem there.
When people complained about the taking of the knee or the laces the FA and twitterati were quick to condemn. They’re silent now a and this silence shames them.
They’ve made a major error here. They have a chance to rectify it. They need to do it ASAP.
Their reasoning is clear. They don’t want to offend the sort of people who believe 6MWNE.
Only time I’ve seen Badenoch speak live she was rather underwhelming. Just a lot of predictable culture warry comments thrown out scattergun in an attempt at humour. It was jarring and not even slickly done, just seemed childish. It was at an event celebrating the UK-Aus trade deal and followed a series of very diplomatic and non political speeches by others from both countries.
Indeed. She is deeply unimpressive if you actually focus on what she says. Maybe she will develop with age and experience, but she was obviously a too-soon in the last leadership race and I see little sign she has developed since.
When Zac Goldsmith criticised the Conservatives' pulling back from Net Zero pledges, Badenoch said he was out of touch because he has "way more money than pretty much everyone in the UK". That may be true about Zac, but it seems a silly thing to say when Rishi Sunak is your leader.
Also a bit silly if you're an ex associate director of Coutts and your husband is a big cheese at Deutsche Bank. The various stratifications of out-of-touchedness in the Tory party are a wonder to behold.
That’s a bit unfair.
I don’t think the Badenochs are super wealthy in the way Sunak, Goldsmith, or even Johnson or Cameron are. Standard London professional class, and no reason to think it unmerited, either.
What would you say they are, top 5%ish? Haven't seen any evidence from Badenoch of being in touch with the proles except for the culture war guff, but if you have some happy to consider it.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges While the focus is on the FA I understand the anger from the Jewish community about the silence from Spurs and Arsenal is also growing.
I wonder if we will have sponsors withdrawing their support as a consequence.
Highly unlikely as there is no co-ordinated online twitter campaign bombarding their feed with threats to not use them.
The moral cowardice of the like of the FA and Arsenal and Spurs truly shames the beautiful game. Soccer was happy to take the knee for George Floyd yet it won't show solidarity with the nation that suffered, among other things, beheaded babies for fear of offending "communities"
Spinless trash
BLM UK seem to be on the side of the Palestinians. So is taking the knee tacit support for them?
Comment on the Twitter post by the FA said that their statement could.have been written by Jeremy Corbyn. They are spot on.
Anyone taking the knee is now, in effect, supporting Hamas.
Not wanting dead Palestinian civilians is not the same as supporting Hamas. What's the relative value of a Palestinian life versus an Israeli? 3? 5? 10? Do you want to say for every Israeli death they can kill 15 Palestinian kids, get the bloodlust out of the system? The average age in Gaza, as has been noted, is 18. 42% are under 15. Do you think every building bombed, every hospital shut due to power off, everyone starving or dying of thirst is magically going to be a member of Hamas, or a Hamas sympathiser? Everyone wringing their hands over the objectively horrific attacks on Israeli civilians is now happy to wade through waves of Palestinian blood for what - justice? Revenge? To make a point? This is the immediate post 9-11 bullshit again, where all that people have is a desire for blood, ignoring a) the original policy failures and violence that obviously caused this reaction in the first place and b) will lead to worse horrors beyond our thinking in the future. If Israel kills indiscriminately and no one flutters an eyelid, where's the moral high ground to say Russia or Ukraine shouldn't do the same? If Gaza is flattened and starved and pulverised with no recourse, what nation will look at war crimes and international law with any seriousness again? What is the lesson this will teach?
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
I suspect that, given her recent comments on here concerning the current crisis and her love of that quote (which I share) Cyclefree will hate you for having used it in this context.
But I think you are quite right.
How can you go to the Russians or any other country and accuse them of war crimes if you have supported the Israelis doing similar things?
I mean I am a fan of people taking the knee. A visible action against racism, of which there continues to be a fuckload at footie matches and which was beyond endemic in times gone by.
Equally it gives me great pleasure to see a typical PL footie match wherein there is a united nations of races, creeds, colours (not sexuality yet but I'm sure it is coming) and I believe the game is truly colour blind. You only have to see celebrations after a goal to confirm this at least amongst the players.
However, the pickle that the FA and indeed all football clubs finds itself in wrt Israel/Gaza is as a consequence of these gestures.
Like you I have no issue with taking the knee. It’s a harmless gesture against racism and helps raise awareness so where’s the downside ?
Soccer is also happy to have players wear rainbow laces. Again. No problem there.
When people complained about the taking of the knee or the laces the FA and twitterati were quick to condemn. They’re silent now a and this silence shames them.
They’ve made a major error here. They have a chance to rectify it. They need to do it ASAP.
Their reasoning is clear. They don’t want to offend the sort of people who believe 6MWNE.
Do not google 6MWNE at work!
So nothing to do with the North East then.
I was thinking that it might be the new name that Sunak came up with this morning for the transport plan.....
Only time I’ve seen Badenoch speak live she was rather underwhelming. Just a lot of predictable culture warry comments thrown out scattergun in an attempt at humour. It was jarring and not even slickly done, just seemed childish. It was at an event celebrating the UK-Aus trade deal and followed a series of very diplomatic and non political speeches by others from both countries.
Indeed. She is deeply unimpressive if you actually focus on what she says. Maybe she will develop with age and experience, but she was obviously a too-soon in the last leadership race and I see little sign she has developed since.
When Zac Goldsmith criticised the Conservatives' pulling back from Net Zero pledges, Badenoch said he was out of touch because he has "way more money than pretty much everyone in the UK". That may be true about Zac, but it seems a silly thing to say when Rishi Sunak is your leader.
Also a bit silly if you're an ex associate director of Coutts and your husband is a big cheese at Deutsche Bank. The various stratifications of out-of-touchedness in the Tory party are a wonder to behold.
That’s a bit unfair.
I don’t think the Badenochs are super wealthy in the way Sunak, Goldsmith, or even Johnson or Cameron are. Standard London professional class, and no reason to think it unmerited, either.
What would you say they are, top 5%ish? Haven't seen any evidence from Badenoch of being in touch with the proles except for the culture war guff, but if you have some happy to consider it.
You cold apply the same argument equally to Starmer to be honest.
We do not tend to draw our political leadership from the zero hours contractors working in Tescos.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
And no longer is under any circumstances. We were a signatory in 1949 to the 4th Geneva Convention and we were clear that it applied to us as much as anyone else. Under those laws that we keep purporting to support and try to impose on others, firebombing cities is no longer a legitimate act. Just like the use of chemical weapons or the murder of POWs.
Using the acts of the Allies 80 years ago as support for the current actions of countries is not a defendable argument.
You are speaking from the safety and security of a country that, please Odin, will never again face an existential threat. Israel does not believe it is in that position.
Signatories to this, that, or the other is meaningless. Of course we signed any old document in 1949 as we were at the peak of our powers and had just won a world war. That is not to say that Israel has chucked the Geneva Convention out of the window, according to news reports. Do you think that Israel as we speak is ignoring it? How difficult do you think it would be for Israel literally to level Gaza in an afternoon? Not very is my guess and Gaza is still standing.
The "rules of war" are a logical impossibility. I'm not going to roll out the "if your family were...." type of analogies but none of us can really understand what an existential war means and what you might be prepared to do if you were engaged in one.
In my twenty years of experiencing housing market dysfunction in the UK - and having heard every excuse under the sun, from evil landlords, to greedy foreigners, to lazy councils, to selfish nimbys - the essential issue is that Britain doesn’t zone enough space for housing.
Such zones do not need to be new land area. They could, and in the main should, be “up”, as Auckland has done successfully in the last several years.
But we need to mandate zoning and area plans for every local authority, and strong design codes as well.
And then after that, we need the planning system to let people get on with it, instead of strangling them with a thousand petty rules and a thousand opportunities for people object.
"They could, and in the main should, be “up”,"
A significant issue is that the British 'dream' is not a flat in a tall tower block. It is a detached or semi-detached house with garage and a garden. Hence that is what builders try to build, squeezing as many such houses onto as small a plot as possible.
It is a situation made worse by the tower block disasters of the 1960s and 1970s, reinforced by Grenfell and access to gardens during Covid lockdowns.
Perhaps this should change; but good luck with that.
Unless and until leasehold is abolished, flats will remain deeply undesirable.
On the hook for limitless service charges and major works, often overseen by crooked management companies, either padding invoices or simply purely on the take, and the only redress a wholly inadequate, expensive and time consuming "tribunal" process that allows the freeholder to tack their legal fees onto your service charges, even if you win!
All this without actually owning a single brick.
If you want people to want flats, abolish leasehold.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges While the focus is on the FA I understand the anger from the Jewish community about the silence from Spurs and Arsenal is also growing.
I wonder if we will have sponsors withdrawing their support as a consequence.
Highly unlikely as there is no co-ordinated online twitter campaign bombarding their feed with threats to not use them.
The moral cowardice of the like of the FA and Arsenal and Spurs truly shames the beautiful game. Soccer was happy to take the knee for George Floyd yet it won't show solidarity with the nation that suffered, among other things, beheaded babies for fear of offending "communities"
Spinless trash
BLM UK seem to be on the side of the Palestinians. So is taking the knee tacit support for them?
Comment on the Twitter post by the FA said that their statement could.have been written by Jeremy Corbyn. They are spot on.
Anyone taking the knee is now, in effect, supporting Hamas.
Not wanting dead Palestinian civilians is not the same as supporting Hamas. What's the relative value of a Palestinian life versus an Israeli? 3? 5? 10? Do you want to say for every Israeli death they can kill 15 Palestinian kids, get the bloodlust out of the system? The average age in Gaza, as has been noted, is 18. 42% are under 15. Do you think every building bombed, every hospital shut due to power off, everyone starving or dying of thirst is magically going to be a member of Hamas, or a Hamas sympathiser? Everyone wringing their hands over the objectively horrific attacks on Israeli civilians is now happy to wade through waves of Palestinian blood for what - justice? Revenge? To make a point? This is the immediate post 9-11 bullshit again, where all that people have is a desire for blood, ignoring a) the original policy failures and violence that obviously caused this reaction in the first place and b) will lead to worse horrors beyond our thinking in the future. If Israel kills indiscriminately and no one flutters an eyelid, where's the moral high ground to say Russia or Ukraine shouldn't do the same? If Gaza is flattened and starved and pulverised with no recourse, what nation will look at war crimes and international law with any seriousness again? What is the lesson this will teach?
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
I suspect that, given her recent comments on here concerning the current crisis and her love of that quote (which I share) Cyclefree will hate you for having used it in this context.
But I think you are quite right.
How can you go to the Russians or any other country and accuse them of war crimes if you have supported the Israelis doing similar things?
That might be a good point if there were any danger of Putin et al giving a fuck about war crimes and international law.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
And no longer is under any circumstances. We were a signatory in 1949 to the 4th Geneva Convention and we were clear that it applied to us as much as anyone else. Under those laws that we keep purporting to support and try to impose on others, firebombing cities is no longer a legitimate act. Just like the use of chemical weapons or the murder of POWs.
Using the acts of the Allies 80 years ago as support for the current actions of countries is not a defendable argument.
You are speaking from the safety and security of a country that, please Odin, will never again face an existential threat. Israel does not believe it is in that position.
Signatories to this, that, or the other is meaningless. Of course we signed any old document in 1949 as we were at the peak of our powers and had just won a world war. That is not to say that Israel has chucked the Geneva Convention out of the window, according to news reports. Do you think that Israel as we speak is ignoring it? How difficult do you think it would be for Israel literally to level Gaza in an afternoon? Not that very is my guess and Gaza is still standing.
The "rules of war" are a logical impossibility. I'm not going to roll out the "if your family were...." type of analogies but none of us can really understand what an existential war really means and what you might be prepared to do if you were engaged in one.
So you regard treaties and laws as something that should only be obeyed when it is convenient for countries to do so or that should be imposed on others but not on ourselves? That is an interesting interpretation to say the least.
So you can have no cause for complaint (nor should have any recourse in law) when other countries do not obey them.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges While the focus is on the FA I understand the anger from the Jewish community about the silence from Spurs and Arsenal is also growing.
I wonder if we will have sponsors withdrawing their support as a consequence.
Highly unlikely as there is no co-ordinated online twitter campaign bombarding their feed with threats to not use them.
The moral cowardice of the like of the FA and Arsenal and Spurs truly shames the beautiful game. Soccer was happy to take the knee for George Floyd yet it won't show solidarity with the nation that suffered, among other things, beheaded babies for fear of offending "communities"
Spinless trash
BLM UK seem to be on the side of the Palestinians. So is taking the knee tacit support for them?
Comment on the Twitter post by the FA said that their statement could.have been written by Jeremy Corbyn. They are spot on.
Anyone taking the knee is now, in effect, supporting Hamas.
Not wanting dead Palestinian civilians is not the same as supporting Hamas. What's the relative value of a Palestinian life versus an Israeli? 3? 5? 10? Do you want to say for every Israeli death they can kill 15 Palestinian kids, get the bloodlust out of the system? The average age in Gaza, as has been noted, is 18. 42% are under 15. Do you think every building bombed, every hospital shut due to power off, everyone starving or dying of thirst is magically going to be a member of Hamas, or a Hamas sympathiser? Everyone wringing their hands over the objectively horrific attacks on Israeli civilians is now happy to wade through waves of Palestinian blood for what - justice? Revenge? To make a point? This is the immediate post 9-11 bullshit again, where all that people have is a desire for blood, ignoring a) the original policy failures and violence that obviously caused this reaction in the first place and b) will lead to worse horrors beyond our thinking in the future. If Israel kills indiscriminately and no one flutters an eyelid, where's the moral high ground to say Russia or Ukraine shouldn't do the same? If Gaza is flattened and starved and pulverised with no recourse, what nation will look at war crimes and international law with any seriousness again? What is the lesson this will teach?
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
I've said before but studying that play at school persuaded me to take law at University. I may forgive Bolt one day.
The real Moore allowed all kinds of dodgy evidence as a judge, and was involved with illegally imprisoning a man (for example), who’d pled not guilty to heresy and then had the impudence to be acquitted at trial. “To save the Bishop’s credit” was the phrase used.
13.47 BST Diplomats in Brussels have said that defence ministers at today’s Nato meeting were left stunned after the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, showed them “shocking” and “horrific” video from the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians.
Reuters reports that Gallant, who remotely attended the one-hour Nato session about Israel, briefed ministers on the attack and showed them an “uncensored video of Hamas atrocities”.
“It was horrific. It brought home to everyone the reality of what happened,” one western diplomat said.
Another source spoke of “graphic and shocking footage” and described Nato allies as united in their support for Israel.
The video had “graphic elements” with “some blurring to protect the dignity of victims”, an official in the room said.
+++
The videos already out there are bad enough. What are THESE like?
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
My personal relationship to Jewishness is pretty distant - I am aware that my (paternal) grandfather's parents were Jewish refugees from either Russian or Polish pogroms, but as he died when I was quite young and I was not brought up with any relationship to Jewishness at all I don't claim any understanding of it nor identify with Jewishness; but I have tried to learn as much as I can. Strangely, as a teen, many people assumed I was Jewish (long curly hair, a large nose and a propensity to turn down pork if offered) as was my maternal grandfather when he was that age (despite him apparently not having any Jewish decent) and both of us have experienced abuse based on this assumption (situations I would call based in anti-Semitism that was not aimed at Jewish people). As an antifascist and left winger who is on the anarchist side of the political spectrum, I look at many Jewish groups and much of the history of the Jewish diaspora as very interesting and informative, with many great examples of political and philosophical thought. I enjoy Jewish art and music; I was quoting from a klezner band the other day in relation to some anti-Zionist Jewish sentiment. I enjoy yiddish, and the impact it has had specifically on London and English slang. I have, in my life, done things that were insensitive to Jewish people I knew, in a way I'm sure many of us have, and have tried to learn from that and be better.
Jewishness and Israeliness are not the same. Sure, even some anti-Zionist Jewish people have related to these attacks due to their Jewishness and the Jewishness of some of the victims (we do not know that all the victims were Jewish Israelis) but many have not. In my work, in my friendship group, in my activism - many Jewish people I know do not support the state of Israel nor do they want the lives of their families to be used as an excuse for the treatment of Palestinians now or in the past. I make it very clear that I am talking about the state of Israel, not Jewish people or even general Israeli citizens, because it is the state of Israel permits and exacerbates the violence in the region, not Jews and not even a majority of Israeli citizens. To cast criticism of Israel and the project of Zionism as anti-Semitism is, in and of itself, an anti-Semitic trope that goes back to discussions of dual loyalties (indeed, one of the insensitive things I had done in my past was automatically a Jewish person I knew at the time cared about Israel either way, when they didn't give a fig). When talking about Israel going to war or committing war crimes it is important to note that Israel is a state - it does not represent Jewishness or Jewish people.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges While the focus is on the FA I understand the anger from the Jewish community about the silence from Spurs and Arsenal is also growing.
I wonder if we will have sponsors withdrawing their support as a consequence.
Highly unlikely as there is no co-ordinated online twitter campaign bombarding their feed with threats to not use them.
The moral cowardice of the like of the FA and Arsenal and Spurs truly shames the beautiful game. Soccer was happy to take the knee for George Floyd yet it won't show solidarity with the nation that suffered, among other things, beheaded babies for fear of offending "communities"
Spinless trash
BLM UK seem to be on the side of the Palestinians. So is taking the knee tacit support for them?
Comment on the Twitter post by the FA said that their statement could.have been written by Jeremy Corbyn. They are spot on.
Anyone taking the knee is now, in effect, supporting Hamas.
Not wanting dead Palestinian civilians is not the same as supporting Hamas. What's the relative value of a Palestinian life versus an Israeli? 3? 5? 10? Do you want to say for every Israeli death they can kill 15 Palestinian kids, get the bloodlust out of the system? The average age in Gaza, as has been noted, is 18. 42% are under 15. Do you think every building bombed, every hospital shut due to power off, everyone starving or dying of thirst is magically going to be a member of Hamas, or a Hamas sympathiser? Everyone wringing their hands over the objectively horrific attacks on Israeli civilians is now happy to wade through waves of Palestinian blood for what - justice? Revenge? To make a point? This is the immediate post 9-11 bullshit again, where all that people have is a desire for blood, ignoring a) the original policy failures and violence that obviously caused this reaction in the first place and b) will lead to worse horrors beyond our thinking in the future. If Israel kills indiscriminately and no one flutters an eyelid, where's the moral high ground to say Russia or Ukraine shouldn't do the same? If Gaza is flattened and starved and pulverised with no recourse, what nation will look at war crimes and international law with any seriousness again? What is the lesson this will teach?
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
I've said before but studying that play at school persuaded me to take law at University. I may forgive Bolt one day.
The real Moore allowed all kinds of dodgy evidence as a judge, and was involved with illegally imprisoning a man (for example), who’d pled not guilty to heresy and then had the impudence to be acquitted at trial. “To save the Bishop’s credit” was the phrase used.
That's a new one to me in the euphemism line. I look forward to someone on PB using it. Very learned humour.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
Again, as I have said before, the attacks of Hamas on civilians are despicable and morally reprehensible. But they happened for a reason, and that reason is not just the hatred of Jewish people. Indeed, many Jewish people are also pointing out why the reaction that the Israeli government is counterproductive and illegal, and indeed that the acts of the Israeli government is what, in part, led to this situation - including literal pieces published in Israeli newspapers by Israeli journalists. If 1,000 people were killed in London by a modern IRA splinter cell I wouldn't expect us to start carpet bombing Ireland. Hell, we know looking at everything post 9/11 that even if it allows you to vent you bloodlust it makes everything much much much worse - for the people you massacre, the region, and everyone else. Yes, I can understand the visceral reaction on an attack on Israeli soil, but that doesn't mean you get a free reign to do war crimes or treat 2 million civilians as all liable for the attacks of terrorist insurgents!
The equivalent death toll in the UK would be:
8,400 dead 18,900 injured
With most of them civilians, babies burned and chopped, old people stabbed, hundreds of rapes, nearly a thousand kidnapped, many beheadings
And all of this done in ONE day and by a political organisation dedicated to killing every British person in the world
In that event, I suggest the British people would be screaming for bloody revenge and the total elimination of this enemy: and the UK government would oblige
But the FA doesn’t want to stand in solidarity with the victims for fear of offending ‘some communities’
Only time I’ve seen Badenoch speak live she was rather underwhelming. Just a lot of predictable culture warry comments thrown out scattergun in an attempt at humour. It was jarring and not even slickly done, just seemed childish. It was at an event celebrating the UK-Aus trade deal and followed a series of very diplomatic and non political speeches by others from both countries.
Indeed. She is deeply unimpressive if you actually focus on what she says. Maybe she will develop with age and experience, but she was obviously a too-soon in the last leadership race and I see little sign she has developed since.
When Zac Goldsmith criticised the Conservatives' pulling back from Net Zero pledges, Badenoch said he was out of touch because he has "way more money than pretty much everyone in the UK". That may be true about Zac, but it seems a silly thing to say when Rishi Sunak is your leader.
Also a bit silly if you're an ex associate director of Coutts and your husband is a big cheese at Deutsche Bank. The various stratifications of out-of-touchedness in the Tory party are a wonder to behold.
That’s a bit unfair.
I don’t think the Badenochs are super wealthy in the way Sunak, Goldsmith, or even Johnson or Cameron are. Standard London professional class, and no reason to think it unmerited, either.
What would you say they are, top 5%ish? Haven't seen any evidence from Badenoch of being in touch with the proles except for the culture war guff, but if you have some happy to consider it.
They would be well inside the top 1%, probably inside the top 0.1%, of the income distribution. But by definition even the latter means there are 67,000 people with similar levels of household income or above, that's quite a lot of people especially as the vast majority will live in London or a few other places in southern England so the Badenochs wouldn't feel especially rich compared to others they know in their community. If people haven't grown up rich I can well imagine that they aren't particularly out of touch with the rest of the population even if they are inside the 0.1%, but certainly over time a certain level of income starts to insulate people from the concerns and worries that most people have. Being somewhat upwardly mobile myself I have seen first hand how this works. This is of course why people become rich in the first place!
Only time I’ve seen Badenoch speak live she was rather underwhelming. Just a lot of predictable culture warry comments thrown out scattergun in an attempt at humour. It was jarring and not even slickly done, just seemed childish. It was at an event celebrating the UK-Aus trade deal and followed a series of very diplomatic and non political speeches by others from both countries.
Indeed. She is deeply unimpressive if you actually focus on what she says. Maybe she will develop with age and experience, but she was obviously a too-soon in the last leadership race and I see little sign she has developed since.
When Zac Goldsmith criticised the Conservatives' pulling back from Net Zero pledges, Badenoch said he was out of touch because he has "way more money than pretty much everyone in the UK". That may be true about Zac, but it seems a silly thing to say when Rishi Sunak is your leader.
Has achieved bugger all in office. Like Mordaunt in that respect.
She ditched the retained EU law bill, which, if it turns out that we can't do Rwanda because of retained EU law, is going to bite her, hard.
Don’t know why she's above Braverman in the betting.
I mean I am a fan of people taking the knee. A visible action against racism, of which there continues to be a fuckload at footie matches and which was beyond endemic in times gone by.
Equally it gives me great pleasure to see a typical PL footie match wherein there is a united nations of races, creeds, colours (not sexuality yet but I'm sure it is coming) and I believe the game is truly colour blind. You only have to see celebrations after a goal to confirm this at least amongst the players.
However, the pickle that the FA and indeed all football clubs finds itself in wrt Israel/Gaza is as a consequence of these gestures.
Like you I have no issue with taking the knee. It’s a harmless gesture against racism and helps raise awareness so where’s the downside ?
Soccer is also happy to have players wear rainbow laces. Again. No problem there.
When people complained about the taking of the knee or the laces the FA and twitterati were quick to condemn. They’re silent now a and this silence shames them.
They’ve made a major error here. They have a chance to rectify it. They need to do it ASAP.
Their reasoning is clear. They don’t want to offend the sort of people who believe 6MWNE.
Possibly. But I suspect they also fear it might 'provoke' attacks against Jews.
6MWNE is obviously a problem but there are a whole more who don't believe it ever happened.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges While the focus is on the FA I understand the anger from the Jewish community about the silence from Spurs and Arsenal is also growing.
I wonder if we will have sponsors withdrawing their support as a consequence.
Highly unlikely as there is no co-ordinated online twitter campaign bombarding their feed with threats to not use them.
The moral cowardice of the like of the FA and Arsenal and Spurs truly shames the beautiful game. Soccer was happy to take the knee for George Floyd yet it won't show solidarity with the nation that suffered, among other things, beheaded babies for fear of offending "communities"
Spinless trash
BLM UK seem to be on the side of the Palestinians. So is taking the knee tacit support for them?
Comment on the Twitter post by the FA said that their statement could.have been written by Jeremy Corbyn. They are spot on.
Anyone taking the knee is now, in effect, supporting Hamas.
Not wanting dead Palestinian civilians is not the same as supporting Hamas. What's the relative value of a Palestinian life versus an Israeli? 3? 5? 10? Do you want to say for every Israeli death they can kill 15 Palestinian kids, get the bloodlust out of the system? The average age in Gaza, as has been noted, is 18. 42% are under 15. Do you think every building bombed, every hospital shut due to power off, everyone starving or dying of thirst is magically going to be a member of Hamas, or a Hamas sympathiser? Everyone wringing their hands over the objectively horrific attacks on Israeli civilians is now happy to wade through waves of Palestinian blood for what - justice? Revenge? To make a point? This is the immediate post 9-11 bullshit again, where all that people have is a desire for blood, ignoring a) the original policy failures and violence that obviously caused this reaction in the first place and b) will lead to worse horrors beyond our thinking in the future. If Israel kills indiscriminately and no one flutters an eyelid, where's the moral high ground to say Russia or Ukraine shouldn't do the same? If Gaza is flattened and starved and pulverised with no recourse, what nation will look at war crimes and international law with any seriousness again? What is the lesson this will teach?
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
I suspect that, given her recent comments on here concerning the current crisis and her love of that quote (which I share) Cyclefree will hate you for having used it in this context.
But I think you are quite right.
How can you go to the Russians or any other country and accuse them of war crimes if you have supported the Israelis doing similar things?
That might be a good point if there were any danger of Putin et al giving a fuck about war crimes and international law.
There are plenty of them who have been convicted and imprisoned. Not least the Serb leadership from the Yugoslav war and various African leaders.
Maybe we should just shut the ICC down and send them home.
In my twenty years of experiencing housing market dysfunction in the UK - and having heard every excuse under the sun, from evil landlords, to greedy foreigners, to lazy councils, to selfish nimbys - the essential issue is that Britain doesn’t zone enough space for housing.
Such zones do not need to be new land area. They could, and in the main should, be “up”, as Auckland has done successfully in the last several years.
But we need to mandate zoning and area plans for every local authority, and strong design codes as well.
And then after that, we need the planning system to let people get on with it, instead of strangling them with a thousand petty rules and a thousand opportunities for people object.
"They could, and in the main should, be “up”,"
A significant issue is that the British 'dream' is not a flat in a tall tower block. It is a detached or semi-detached house with garage and a garden. Hence that is what builders try to build, squeezing as many such houses onto as small a plot as possible.
It is a situation made worse by the tower block disasters of the 1960s and 1970s, reinforced by Grenfell and access to gardens during Covid lockdowns.
Perhaps this should change; but good luck with that.
Unless and until leasehold is abolished, flats will remain deeply undesirable.
On the hook for limitless service charges and major works, often overseen by crooked management companies, either padding invoices or simply purely on the take, and the only redress a wholly inadequate, expensive and time consuming "tribunal" process that allows the freeholder to tack their legal fees onto your service charges, even if you win!
All this without actually owning a single brick.
If you want people to want flats, abolish leasehold.
Clearly with a house the brickwork & bits you don't live in are part of the house. How would you propose to sort common areas in flat blocks ? When you buy a flat you gain 1/40th (Say if there are 40 flats in the block) of the common area freehold ?
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
Again, as I have said before, the attacks of Hamas on civilians are despicable and morally reprehensible. But they happened for a reason, and that reason is not just the hatred of Jewish people. Indeed, many Jewish people are also pointing out why the reaction that the Israeli government is counterproductive and illegal, and indeed that the acts of the Israeli government is what, in part, led to this situation - including literal pieces published in Israeli newspapers by Israeli journalists. If 1,000 people were killed in London by a modern IRA splinter cell I wouldn't expect us to start carpet bombing Ireland. Hell, we know looking at everything post 9/11 that even if it allows you to vent you bloodlust it makes everything much much much worse - for the people you massacre, the region, and everyone else. Yes, I can understand the visceral reaction on an attack on Israeli soil, but that doesn't mean you get a free reign to do war crimes or treat 2 million civilians as all liable for the attacks of terrorist insurgents!
The equivalent death toll in the UK would be:
8,400 dead 18,900 injured
With most of them civilians, babies burned and chopped, old people stabbed, hundreds of rapes, nearly a thousand kidnapped, many beheadings
And all of this done in ONE day and by a political organisation dedicated to killing every British person in the world
In that event, I suggest the British people would be screaming for bloody revenge and the total elimination of this enemy: and the UK government would oblige
And that still wouldn't be a justification for war crimes or genocide or collective punishment or the purposeful targeting of civilians. Things which Israel is doing or threatening to do right now.
Stand by for calls of shes the wrong kind of black or Starmer saying shes got a penis.
Your desperate attempts to find something, anything, positive for the moribund Tories is a continuous source of amusement.
I dont defend the Tories I criticise Labour I am by nature an ABL.
However we now have the prospect of the Tories on their 4th woman leader, and second BAME all while "progressive" Labour stay in the nineteenth century. Even the DUP have had a woman leader which shows just how neanderthal Labour is. And from that list of candidates above the one white guy has no chance.
So perhaps you as a Labourite would like to explain what your party has against women or non-whites. ? Why is there a glass ceiling that none can pierce ?
Trouble is, it's a small sample size. It's hard to be convincing that Labour is biased without a bigger sample, more leaders, more PMs. Of course, if Labour starts emulating the Tories in terms of replacing leaders, they'll get there soon enough.
Well of course you clung on to Jezza like a frightened child and all said how wonderful he was and then suddenly he wasnt wonderful any more. Maybe a bit of sorting out the chaff would help with your woman problem.
You appear to have a vivid fantasy life. I am not a Labour supporter. I have never been a Labour supporter. I've never voted for Labour. I am not intending to vote for Labour at the next general election. (I have given Labour my second vote in some London Mayoral contests under SV.) I have not "clung on to Jezza". I think Corbyn was a disaster for Labour and a disaster for the country.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
My personal relationship to Jewishness is pretty distant - I am aware that my (paternal) grandfather's parents were Jewish refugees from either Russian or Polish pogroms, but as he died when I was quite young and I was not brought up with any relationship to Jewishness at all I don't claim any understanding of it nor identify with Jewishness; but I have tried to learn as much as I can. Strangely, as a teen, many people assumed I was Jewish (long curly hair, a large nose and a propensity to turn down pork if offered) as was my maternal grandfather when he was that age (despite him apparently not having any Jewish decent) and both of us have experienced abuse based on this assumption (situations I would call based in anti-Semitism that was not aimed at Jewish people). As an antifascist and left winger who is on the anarchist side of the political spectrum, I look at many Jewish groups and much of the history of the Jewish diaspora as very interesting and informative, with many great examples of political and philosophical thought. I enjoy Jewish art and music; I was quoting from a klezner band the other day in relation to some anti-Zionist Jewish sentiment. I enjoy yiddish, and the impact it has had specifically on London and English slang. I have, in my life, done things that were insensitive to Jewish people I knew, in a way I'm sure many of us have, and have tried to learn from that and be better.
Jewishness and Israeliness are not the same. Sure, even some anti-Zionist Jewish people have related to these attacks due to their Jewishness and the Jewishness of some of the victims (we do not know that all the victims were Jewish Israelis) but many have not. In my work, in my friendship group, in my activism - many Jewish people I know do not support the state of Israel nor do they want the lives of their families to be used as an excuse for the treatment of Palestinians now or in the past. I make it very clear that I am talking about the state of Israel, not Jewish people or even general Israeli citizens, because it is the state of Israel permits and exacerbates the violence in the region, not Jews and not even a majority of Israeli citizens. To cast criticism of Israel and the project of Zionism as anti-Semitism is, in and of itself, an anti-Semitic trope that goes back to discussions of dual loyalties (indeed, one of the insensitive things I had done in my past was automatically a Jewish person I knew at the time cared about Israel either way, when they didn't give a fig). When talking about Israel going to war or committing war crimes it is important to note that Israel is a state - it does not represent Jewishness or Jewish people.
Eloquently put but I still think you’re ignoring the emotional reality in Israel. See my other comments
In my twenty years of experiencing housing market dysfunction in the UK - and having heard every excuse under the sun, from evil landlords, to greedy foreigners, to lazy councils, to selfish nimbys - the essential issue is that Britain doesn’t zone enough space for housing.
Such zones do not need to be new land area. They could, and in the main should, be “up”, as Auckland has done successfully in the last several years.
But we need to mandate zoning and area plans for every local authority, and strong design codes as well.
And then after that, we need the planning system to let people get on with it, instead of strangling them with a thousand petty rules and a thousand opportunities for people object.
"They could, and in the main should, be “up”,"
A significant issue is that the British 'dream' is not a flat in a tall tower block. It is a detached or semi-detached house with garage and a garden. Hence that is what builders try to build, squeezing as many such houses onto as small a plot as possible.
It is a situation made worse by the tower block disasters of the 1960s and 1970s, reinforced by Grenfell and access to gardens during Covid lockdowns.
Perhaps this should change; but good luck with that.
Unless and until leasehold is abolished, flats will remain deeply undesirable.
On the hook for limitless service charges and major works, often overseen by crooked management companies, either padding invoices or simply purely on the take, and the only redress a wholly inadequate, expensive and time consuming "tribunal" process that allows the freeholder to tack their legal fees onto your service charges, even if you win!
All this without actually owning a single brick.
If you want people to want flats, abolish leasehold.
Clearly with a house the brickwork & bits you don't live in are part of the house. How would you propose to sort common areas in flat blocks ? When you buy a flat you gain 1/40th (Say if there are 40 flats in the block) of the common area freehold ?
Why not ask a Scots lawyer? They do it all the time. No, seriously.
Though to answer the obviouys rejoinder, @DavidL IIRC did disclaim expertise in that field (apart from scoring the notable achievement of knowing the only SF novel ever written which hinges on questions of feudal law in conveyancing, a complication now mercifully gone).
(I don't have a tenement flat so can't advise even as a laic.)
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges While the focus is on the FA I understand the anger from the Jewish community about the silence from Spurs and Arsenal is also growing.
I wonder if we will have sponsors withdrawing their support as a consequence.
Highly unlikely as there is no co-ordinated online twitter campaign bombarding their feed with threats to not use them.
The moral cowardice of the like of the FA and Arsenal and Spurs truly shames the beautiful game. Soccer was happy to take the knee for George Floyd yet it won't show solidarity with the nation that suffered, among other things, beheaded babies for fear of offending "communities"
Spinless trash
BLM UK seem to be on the side of the Palestinians. So is taking the knee tacit support for them?
Comment on the Twitter post by the FA said that their statement could.have been written by Jeremy Corbyn. They are spot on.
Anyone taking the knee is now, in effect, supporting Hamas.
Not wanting dead Palestinian civilians is not the same as supporting Hamas. What's the relative value of a Palestinian life versus an Israeli? 3? 5? 10? Do you want to say for every Israeli death they can kill 15 Palestinian kids, get the bloodlust out of the system? The average age in Gaza, as has been noted, is 18. 42% are under 15. Do you think every building bombed, every hospital shut due to power off, everyone starving or dying of thirst is magically going to be a member of Hamas, or a Hamas sympathiser? Everyone wringing their hands over the objectively horrific attacks on Israeli civilians is now happy to wade through waves of Palestinian blood for what - justice? Revenge? To make a point? This is the immediate post 9-11 bullshit again, where all that people have is a desire for blood, ignoring a) the original policy failures and violence that obviously caused this reaction in the first place and b) will lead to worse horrors beyond our thinking in the future. If Israel kills indiscriminately and no one flutters an eyelid, where's the moral high ground to say Russia or Ukraine shouldn't do the same? If Gaza is flattened and starved and pulverised with no recourse, what nation will look at war crimes and international law with any seriousness again? What is the lesson this will teach?
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
I've said before but studying that play at school persuaded me to take law at University. I may forgive Bolt one day.
The real Moore allowed all kinds of dodgy evidence as a judge, and was involved with illegally imprisoning a man (for example), who’d pled not guilty to heresy and then had the impudence to be acquitted at trial. “To save the Bishop’s credit” was the phrase used.
Fiction can be more inspiring than reality - doesn't stop the fiction making a point.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
Again, as I have said before, the attacks of Hamas on civilians are despicable and morally reprehensible. But they happened for a reason, and that reason is not just the hatred of Jewish people. Indeed, many Jewish people are also pointing out why the reaction that the Israeli government is counterproductive and illegal, and indeed that the acts of the Israeli government is what, in part, led to this situation - including literal pieces published in Israeli newspapers by Israeli journalists. If 1,000 people were killed in London by a modern IRA splinter cell I wouldn't expect us to start carpet bombing Ireland. Hell, we know looking at everything post 9/11 that even if it allows you to vent you bloodlust it makes everything much much much worse - for the people you massacre, the region, and everyone else. Yes, I can understand the visceral reaction on an attack on Israeli soil, but that doesn't mean you get a free reign to do war crimes or treat 2 million civilians as all liable for the attacks of terrorist insurgents!
The equivalent death toll in the UK would be:
8,400 dead 18,900 injured
With most of them civilians, babies burned and chopped, old people stabbed, hundreds of rapes, nearly a thousand kidnapped, many beheadings
And all of this done in ONE day and by a political organisation dedicated to killing every British person in the world
In that event, I suggest the British people would be screaming for bloody revenge and the total elimination of this enemy: and the UK government would oblige
But the FA doesn’t want to stand in solidarity with the victims for fear of offending ‘some communities’
Hamas terrorists 'raped girls over their friends' bodies' as they carried out 'a second Holocaust', British family members of Israeli captives seized by gunmen alleged today at a London press conference.
No thread on Lisa Cameron defecting from the SNP to the Tories?
I'd seen this news but wasn't quite sure who Lisa Cameron was. I'm slightly taken aback to find she's an MP and that East Kilbride now has a Conservative member of parliament. (To be fair, East Kilbride Strathaven and Lesmahagow does contain quite a bit of territory which wouldn't look incongruous with a SCon MP, but still.)
Stand by for calls of shes the wrong kind of black or Starmer saying shes got a penis.
Your desperate attempts to find something, anything, positive for the moribund Tories is a continuous source of amusement.
I dont defend the Tories I criticise Labour I am by nature an ABL.
However we now have the prospect of the Tories on their 4th woman leader, and second BAME all while "progressive" Labour stay in the nineteenth century. Even the DUP have had a woman leader which shows just how neanderthal Labour is. And from that list of candidates above the one white guy has no chance.
So perhaps you as a Labourite would like to explain what your party has against women or non-whites. ? Why is there a glass ceiling that none can pierce ?
Trouble is, it's a small sample size. It's hard to be convincing that Labour is biased without a bigger sample, more leaders, more PMs. Of course, if Labour starts emulating the Tories in terms of replacing leaders, they'll get there soon enough.
Well of course you clung on to Jezza like a frightened child and all said how wonderful he was and then suddenly he wasnt wonderful any more. Maybe a bit of sorting out the chaff would help with your woman problem.
You appear to have a vivid fantasy life. I am not a Labour supporter. I have never been a Labour supporter. I've never voted for Labour. I am not intending to vote for Labour at the next general election. (I have given Labour my second vote in some London Mayoral contests under SV.) I have not "clung on to Jezza". I think Corbyn was a disaster for Labour and a disaster for the country.
And why should you get off ?
I get called a conservative member all the time on this board despite the fact I criticise them as much as anyone and will on the rare occasions Labour do something positive give them credit for it.
Suella Braverman is pushing for a ban on American bully XL dogs, arguing they are a “clear and lethal danger”, particularly to children.
The home secretary announced she has commissioned urgent advice on outlawing the dogs after she highlighted an “appalling” attack on an 11-year-old girl in Birmingham.
However, adding dogs to the banned list is the responsibility of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) under the environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey. The PA news agency understands there are concerns within Defra over the feasibility of adding the American bully.
The dog is not recognised as a specific breed by the Kennel Club. It could be hard to define and a ban could inadvertently outlaw a range of other dogs, some fear.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges While the focus is on the FA I understand the anger from the Jewish community about the silence from Spurs and Arsenal is also growing.
I wonder if we will have sponsors withdrawing their support as a consequence.
Highly unlikely as there is no co-ordinated online twitter campaign bombarding their feed with threats to not use them.
The moral cowardice of the like of the FA and Arsenal and Spurs truly shames the beautiful game. Soccer was happy to take the knee for George Floyd yet it won't show solidarity with the nation that suffered, among other things, beheaded babies for fear of offending "communities"
Spinless trash
BLM UK seem to be on the side of the Palestinians. So is taking the knee tacit support for them?
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
I might suggest events subsequent to 1948 have shown that this is still an existential war for Jews in Israel. This weekend's attack is not unique; just taking rocket attacks, it is a fairly constant thing. And remember, many of these attacks causes people to have to under cover. Israelis are as much under everyday attack as Palestinians.
Yes, both sides have been under everyday attacks for decades. So, what's the solution? The official position of the UK government and many world governments is that (a) everyone should respect international law and (b) a 2-state solution. I would hope we can all agree on (a), although clearly many here and elsewhere can't.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
Again, as I have said before, the attacks of Hamas on civilians are despicable and morally reprehensible. But they happened for a reason, and that reason is not just the hatred of Jewish people. Indeed, many Jewish people are also pointing out why the reaction that the Israeli government is taking is counterproductive and illegal, and indeed that the acts of the Israeli government is what, in part, led to this situation - including literal pieces published in Israeli newspapers by Israeli journalists. If 1,000 people were killed in London by a modern IRA splinter cell I wouldn't expect us to start carpet bombing Ireland. Hell, we know looking at everything post 9/11 that even if it allows you to vent you bloodlust it makes everything much much much worse - for the people you massacre, the region, and everyone else. Yes, I can understand the visceral reaction on an attack on Israeli soil, but that doesn't mean you get a free reign to do war crimes or treat 2 million civilians as all liable for the attacks of terrorist insurgents!
Hamas isn't simply a terrorist group. It is the de facto government of Gaza. That make the comparison with the post-Treaty IRA difficult.
You can't go to war with Hamas without going to war against Gaza as a whole.
If the IRA had seized power in Dublin and were launching massive attacks across the Irish Sea, then that would lead to an outcome very similar to that which we see between Israel and Gaza.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
And no longer is under any circumstances. We were a signatory in 1949 to the 4th Geneva Convention and we were clear that it applied to us as much as anyone else. Under those laws that we keep purporting to support and try to impose on others, firebombing cities is no longer a legitimate act. Just like the use of chemical weapons or the murder of POWs.
Using the acts of the Allies 80 years ago as support for the current actions of countries is not a defendable argument.
You are speaking from the safety and security of a country that, please Odin, will never again face an existential threat. Israel does not believe it is in that position.
Signatories to this, that, or the other is meaningless. Of course we signed any old document in 1949 as we were at the peak of our powers and had just won a world war. That is not to say that Israel has chucked the Geneva Convention out of the window, according to news reports. Do you think that Israel as we speak is ignoring it? How difficult do you think it would be for Israel literally to level Gaza in an afternoon? Not that very is my guess and Gaza is still standing.
The "rules of war" are a logical impossibility. I'm not going to roll out the "if your family were...." type of analogies but none of us can really understand what an existential war really means and what you might be prepared to do if you were engaged in one.
So you regard treaties and laws as something that should only be obeyed when it is convenient for countries to do so or that should be imposed on others but not on ourselves? That is an interesting interpretation to say the least.
So you can have no cause for complaint (nor should have any recourse in law) when other countries do not obey them.
First off as I noted, it doesn't look like Gaza is the subject of an aggressor that ignores treaties and laws.
But to address your question, treaties and laws in war are problematic. Proper wars, that is, not asymmetric wars like our Middle East campaigns. We are in an environment whereby we - the west - can impose our treaties and laws on the battlefield because, at the end of the day, we know we are going to win or we know that we can decide when to lose.
Israel seems to believe that it is in an existential war. Let's imagine if there were no Israeli army and a ban on guns. What do you suppose the outcome of last Saturday would have been. Which treaties and laws would have been observed and which ignored. Which brings us back to Israel's retaliation. Almost from the moment the first jet took off to bomb (Hamas targets in) Gaza people have said "hold on now treaties and laws stop that".
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges While the focus is on the FA I understand the anger from the Jewish community about the silence from Spurs and Arsenal is also growing.
I wonder if we will have sponsors withdrawing their support as a consequence.
Highly unlikely as there is no co-ordinated online twitter campaign bombarding their feed with threats to not use them.
The moral cowardice of the like of the FA and Arsenal and Spurs truly shames the beautiful game. Soccer was happy to take the knee for George Floyd yet it won't show solidarity with the nation that suffered, among other things, beheaded babies for fear of offending "communities"
Spinless trash
BLM UK seem to be on the side of the Palestinians. So is taking the knee tacit support for them?
Comment on the Twitter post by the FA said that their statement could.have been written by Jeremy Corbyn. They are spot on.
Anyone taking the knee is now, in effect, supporting Hamas.
Not wanting dead Palestinian civilians is not the same as supporting Hamas. What's the relative value of a Palestinian life versus an Israeli? 3? 5? 10? Do you want to say for every Israeli death they can kill 15 Palestinian kids, get the bloodlust out of the system? The average age in Gaza, as has been noted, is 18. 42% are under 15. Do you think every building bombed, every hospital shut due to power off, everyone starving or dying of thirst is magically going to be a member of Hamas, or a Hamas sympathiser? Everyone wringing their hands over the objectively horrific attacks on Israeli civilians is now happy to wade through waves of Palestinian blood for what - justice? Revenge? To make a point? This is the immediate post 9-11 bullshit again, where all that people have is a desire for blood, ignoring a) the original policy failures and violence that obviously caused this reaction in the first place and b) will lead to worse horrors beyond our thinking in the future. If Israel kills indiscriminately and no one flutters an eyelid, where's the moral high ground to say Russia or Ukraine shouldn't do the same? If Gaza is flattened and starved and pulverised with no recourse, what nation will look at war crimes and international law with any seriousness again? What is the lesson this will teach?
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
I suspect that, given her recent comments on here concerning the current crisis and her love of that quote (which I share) Cyclefree will hate you for having used it in this context.
But I think you are quite right.
How can you go to the Russians or any other country and accuse them of war crimes if you have supported the Israelis doing similar things?
That might be a good point if there were any danger of Putin et al giving a fuck about war crimes and international law.
There are plenty of them who have been convicted and imprisoned. Not least the Serb leadership from the Yugoslav war and various African leaders.
Maybe we should just shut the ICC down and send them home.
They have to lose first. Plenty of civilians were killed in Serbia to bring Milosevic to justice.
On topic: Suella is value here. She should be the favourite IMHO.
I like Mordaunt, but I don’t see her getting it. Maybe if the party recovers a bit in opposition and they come to their senses, she might be a good choice for a next-but-one leader.
I think Badenoch will be eclipsed by Braverman on the right.
Stand by for calls of shes the wrong kind of black or Starmer saying shes got a penis.
Your desperate attempts to find something, anything, positive for the moribund Tories is a continuous source of amusement.
I dont defend the Tories I criticise Labour I am by nature an ABL.
However we now have the prospect of the Tories on their 4th woman leader, and second BAME all while "progressive" Labour stay in the nineteenth century. Even the DUP have had a woman leader which shows just how neanderthal Labour is. And from that list of candidates above the one white guy has no chance.
So perhaps you as a Labourite would like to explain what your party has against women or non-whites. ? Why is there a glass ceiling that none can pierce ?
Trouble is, it's a small sample size. It's hard to be convincing that Labour is biased without a bigger sample, more leaders, more PMs. Of course, if Labour starts emulating the Tories in terms of replacing leaders, they'll get there soon enough.
Well of course you clung on to Jezza like a frightened child and all said how wonderful he was and then suddenly he wasnt wonderful any more. Maybe a bit of sorting out the chaff would help with your woman problem.
You appear to have a vivid fantasy life. I am not a Labour supporter. I have never been a Labour supporter. I've never voted for Labour. I am not intending to vote for Labour at the next general election. (I have given Labour my second vote in some London Mayoral contests under SV.) I have not "clung on to Jezza". I think Corbyn was a disaster for Labour and a disaster for the country.
There is an issue with left wing politics that women and non white people are automatically considered by the (majority white) electorate to be more "radical" than they are. So when women, for example, make their way up left wing parties, even if they are quite moderate, they are not assumed to be. This phenomenon is better studied in the US - Clinton and Obama were pretty centrist, and yet most people (including people who liked them and voted for them) assumed they were more left wing than they were. This isn't typical of white male politicians. This then leads to a problem where, for the left specifically, the issue of "electability" becomes an assumption that white male politicians are more "electable" because they are viewed as more moderate. And so women, and non white people, are less likely to head up things like the Labour Party. (There is also a good case to be made about the misogyny of the British labour union movement, and how many of the leaders in that space have historically been men).
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
When talking about Israel going to war or committing war crimes it is important to note that Israel is a state - it does not represent Jewishness or Jewish people.
Stand by for calls of shes the wrong kind of black or Starmer saying shes got a penis.
Your desperate attempts to find something, anything, positive for the moribund Tories is a continuous source of amusement.
I dont defend the Tories I criticise Labour I am by nature an ABL.
However we now have the prospect of the Tories on their 4th woman leader, and second BAME all while "progressive" Labour stay in the nineteenth century. Even the DUP have had a woman leader which shows just how neanderthal Labour is. And from that list of candidates above the one white guy has no chance.
So perhaps you as a Labourite would like to explain what your party has against women or non-whites. ? Why is there a glass ceiling that none can pierce ?
Trouble is, it's a small sample size. It's hard to be convincing that Labour is biased without a bigger sample, more leaders, more PMs. Of course, if Labour starts emulating the Tories in terms of replacing leaders, they'll get there soon enough.
Well of course you clung on to Jezza like a frightened child and all said how wonderful he was and then suddenly he wasnt wonderful any more. Maybe a bit of sorting out the chaff would help with your woman problem.
You appear to have a vivid fantasy life. I am not a Labour supporter. I have never been a Labour supporter. I've never voted for Labour. I am not intending to vote for Labour at the next general election. (I have given Labour my second vote in some London Mayoral contests under SV.) I have not "clung on to Jezza". I think Corbyn was a disaster for Labour and a disaster for the country.
And why should you get off ?
I get called a conservative member all the time on this board despite the fact I criticise them as much as anyone and will on the rare occasions Labour do something positive give them credit for it.
So because you are falsely accused, it’s ok to falsely accuse others?
Last week you suggested I was a “sheep farmer” which was obviously some kind of sub-racist slur.
Your thread header a while back was good, but your contributions below the line suggest you’re just an arsehole who trolls here for kicks.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
When talking about Israel going to war or committing war crimes it is important to note that Israel is a state - it does not represent Jewishness or Jewish people.
It is, explicitly, a Jewish State.
That's what all the fuss and bother is about.
That doesn't mean every Jewish person accepts that. Catholicism would claim to be the one true Christianity - so what?
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
And no longer is under any circumstances. We were a signatory in 1949 to the 4th Geneva Convention and we were clear that it applied to us as much as anyone else. Under those laws that we keep purporting to support and try to impose on others, firebombing cities is no longer a legitimate act. Just like the use of chemical weapons or the murder of POWs.
Using the acts of the Allies 80 years ago as support for the current actions of countries is not a defendable argument.
You are speaking from the safety and security of a country that, please Odin, will never again face an existential threat. Israel does not believe it is in that position.
Signatories to this, that, or the other is meaningless. Of course we signed any old document in 1949 as we were at the peak of our powers and had just won a world war. That is not to say that Israel has chucked the Geneva Convention out of the window, according to news reports. Do you think that Israel as we speak is ignoring it? How difficult do you think it would be for Israel literally to level Gaza in an afternoon? Not that very is my guess and Gaza is still standing.
The "rules of war" are a logical impossibility. I'm not going to roll out the "if your family were...." type of analogies but none of us can really understand what an existential war really means and what you might be prepared to do if you were engaged in one.
So you regard treaties and laws as something that should only be obeyed when it is convenient for countries to do so or that should be imposed on others but not on ourselves? That is an interesting interpretation to say the least.
So you can have no cause for complaint (nor should have any recourse in law) when other countries do not obey them.
First off as I noted, it doesn't look like Gaza is the subject of an aggressor that ignores treaties and laws.
But to address your question, treaties and laws in war are problematic. Proper wars, that is, not asymmetric wars like our Middle East campaigns. We are in an environment whereby we - the west - can impose our treaties and laws on the battlefield because, at the end of the day, we know we are going to win or we know that we can decide when to lose.
Israel seems to believe that it is in an existential war. Let's imagine if there were no Israeli army and a ban on guns. What do you suppose the outcome of last Saturday would have been. Which treaties and laws would have been observed and which ignored. Which brings us back to Israel's retaliation. Almost from the moment the first jet took off to bomb (Hamas targets in) Gaza people have said "hold on now treaties and laws stop that".
What is Israel to do?
It’s like a man trying to beat his wife to death to get out of their marriage and as the wife reaches for the carving knife, he says “whoa dear, I think we need to speak to the lawyers about a divorce”.
Stand by for calls of shes the wrong kind of black or Starmer saying shes got a penis.
Your desperate attempts to find something, anything, positive for the moribund Tories is a continuous source of amusement.
I dont defend the Tories I criticise Labour I am by nature an ABL.
However we now have the prospect of the Tories on their 4th woman leader, and second BAME all while "progressive" Labour stay in the nineteenth century. Even the DUP have had a woman leader which shows just how neanderthal Labour is. And from that list of candidates above the one white guy has no chance.
So perhaps you as a Labourite would like to explain what your party has against women or non-whites. ? Why is there a glass ceiling that none can pierce ?
Trouble is, it's a small sample size. It's hard to be convincing that Labour is biased without a bigger sample, more leaders, more PMs. Of course, if Labour starts emulating the Tories in terms of replacing leaders, they'll get there soon enough.
Well of course you clung on to Jezza like a frightened child and all said how wonderful he was and then suddenly he wasnt wonderful any more. Maybe a bit of sorting out the chaff would help with your woman problem.
You appear to have a vivid fantasy life. I am not a Labour supporter. I have never been a Labour supporter. I've never voted for Labour. I am not intending to vote for Labour at the next general election. (I have given Labour my second vote in some London Mayoral contests under SV.) I have not "clung on to Jezza". I think Corbyn was a disaster for Labour and a disaster for the country.
There is an issue with left wing politics that women and non white people are automatically considered by the (majority white) electorate to be more "radical" than they are. So when women, for example, make their way up left wing parties, even if they are quite moderate, they are not assumed to be. This phenomenon is better studied in the US - Clinton and Obama were pretty centrist, and yet most people (including people who liked them and voted for them) assumed they were more left wing than they were. This isn't typical of white male politicians. This then leads to a problem where, for the left specifically, the issue of "electability" becomes an assumption that white male politicians are more "electable" because they are viewed as more moderate. And so women, and non white people, are less likely to head up things like the Labour Party. (There is also a good case to be made about the misogyny of the British labour union movement, and how many of the leaders in that space have historically been men).
Guff. Just about every UK party bar Labour has had a woman leader. Cons, LDs, SNP, DUP. SF, Greens .
Stand by for calls of shes the wrong kind of black or Starmer saying shes got a penis.
Your desperate attempts to find something, anything, positive for the moribund Tories is a continuous source of amusement.
I dont defend the Tories I criticise Labour I am by nature an ABL.
However we now have the prospect of the Tories on their 4th woman leader, and second BAME all while "progressive" Labour stay in the nineteenth century. Even the DUP have had a woman leader which shows just how neanderthal Labour is. And from that list of candidates above the one white guy has no chance.
So perhaps you as a Labourite would like to explain what your party has against women or non-whites. ? Why is there a glass ceiling that none can pierce ?
The Conservatives have had three women leaders - none of them lost an election. Why did the Conservatives turn on three women whom they chose and one of whom was arguably the most successful PM since 1945?
What has the Conservative Party got against women such that they choose them and then stick a knife in their backs?
LibDem woman leader had the decency to lose her seat to save unseemly stabbing in the back.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
And no longer is under any circumstances. We were a signatory in 1949 to the 4th Geneva Convention and we were clear that it applied to us as much as anyone else. Under those laws that we keep purporting to support and try to impose on others, firebombing cities is no longer a legitimate act. Just like the use of chemical weapons or the murder of POWs.
Using the acts of the Allies 80 years ago as support for the current actions of countries is not a defendable argument.
You are speaking from the safety and security of a country that, please Odin, will never again face an existential threat. Israel does not believe it is in that position.
Signatories to this, that, or the other is meaningless. Of course we signed any old document in 1949 as we were at the peak of our powers and had just won a world war. That is not to say that Israel has chucked the Geneva Convention out of the window, according to news reports. Do you think that Israel as we speak is ignoring it? How difficult do you think it would be for Israel literally to level Gaza in an afternoon? Not that very is my guess and Gaza is still standing.
The "rules of war" are a logical impossibility. I'm not going to roll out the "if your family were...." type of analogies but none of us can really understand what an existential war really means and what you might be prepared to do if you were engaged in one.
So you regard treaties and laws as something that should only be obeyed when it is convenient for countries to do so or that should be imposed on others but not on ourselves? That is an interesting interpretation to say the least.
So you can have no cause for complaint (nor should have any recourse in law) when other countries do not obey them.
First off as I noted, it doesn't look like Gaza is the subject of an aggressor that ignores treaties and laws.
But to address your question, treaties and laws in war are problematic. Proper wars, that is, not asymmetric wars like our Middle East campaigns. We are in an environment whereby we - the west - can impose our treaties and laws on the battlefield because, at the end of the day, we know we are going to win or we know that we can decide when to lose.
Israel seems to believe that it is in an existential war. Let's imagine if there were no Israeli army and a ban on guns. What do you suppose the outcome of last Saturday would have been. Which treaties and laws would have been observed and which ignored. Which brings us back to Israel's retaliation. Almost from the moment the first jet took off to bomb (Hamas targets in) Gaza people have said "hold on now treaties and laws stop that".
What is Israel to do?
It’s like a man trying to beat his wife to death to get out of their marriage and as the wife reaches for the carving knife, he says “whoa dear, I think we need to speak to the lawyers about a divorce”.
Who is who in this analogy - because I think people sympathetic to the oppression of Palestinians would cast them as the wife, and people sympathetic to the cause of the Israeli state would cast them as the wife...
Stand by for calls of shes the wrong kind of black or Starmer saying shes got a penis.
Your desperate attempts to find something, anything, positive for the moribund Tories is a continuous source of amusement.
I dont defend the Tories I criticise Labour I am by nature an ABL.
However we now have the prospect of the Tories on their 4th woman leader, and second BAME all while "progressive" Labour stay in the nineteenth century. Even the DUP have had a woman leader which shows just how neanderthal Labour is. And from that list of candidates above the one white guy has no chance.
So perhaps you as a Labourite would like to explain what your party has against women or non-whites. ? Why is there a glass ceiling that none can pierce ?
Trouble is, it's a small sample size. It's hard to be convincing that Labour is biased without a bigger sample, more leaders, more PMs. Of course, if Labour starts emulating the Tories in terms of replacing leaders, they'll get there soon enough.
Well of course you clung on to Jezza like a frightened child and all said how wonderful he was and then suddenly he wasnt wonderful any more. Maybe a bit of sorting out the chaff would help with your woman problem.
You appear to have a vivid fantasy life. I am not a Labour supporter. I have never been a Labour supporter. I've never voted for Labour. I am not intending to vote for Labour at the next general election. (I have given Labour my second vote in some London Mayoral contests under SV.) I have not "clung on to Jezza". I think Corbyn was a disaster for Labour and a disaster for the country.
And why should you get off ?
I get called a conservative member all the time on this board despite the fact I criticise them as much as anyone and will on the rare occasions Labour do something positive give them credit for it.
So because you are falsely accused, it’s ok to falsely accuse others?
Last week you suggested I was a “sheep farmer” which was obviously some kind of sub-racist slur.
Your thread header a while back was good, but your contributions below the line suggest you’re just an arsehole who trolls here for kicks.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
And no longer is under any circumstances. We were a signatory in 1949 to the 4th Geneva Convention and we were clear that it applied to us as much as anyone else. Under those laws that we keep purporting to support and try to impose on others, firebombing cities is no longer a legitimate act. Just like the use of chemical weapons or the murder of POWs.
Using the acts of the Allies 80 years ago as support for the current actions of countries is not a defendable argument.
You are speaking from the safety and security of a country that, please Odin, will never again face an existential threat. Israel does not believe it is in that position.
Signatories to this, that, or the other is meaningless. Of course we signed any old document in 1949 as we were at the peak of our powers and had just won a world war. That is not to say that Israel has chucked the Geneva Convention out of the window, according to news reports. Do you think that Israel as we speak is ignoring it? How difficult do you think it would be for Israel literally to level Gaza in an afternoon? Not that very is my guess and Gaza is still standing.
The "rules of war" are a logical impossibility. I'm not going to roll out the "if your family were...." type of analogies but none of us can really understand what an existential war really means and what you might be prepared to do if you were engaged in one.
So you regard treaties and laws as something that should only be obeyed when it is convenient for countries to do so or that should be imposed on others but not on ourselves? That is an interesting interpretation to say the least.
So you can have no cause for complaint (nor should have any recourse in law) when other countries do not obey them.
First off as I noted, it doesn't look like Gaza is the subject of an aggressor that ignores treaties and laws.
But to address your question, treaties and laws in war are problematic. Proper wars, that is, not asymmetric wars like our Middle East campaigns. We are in an environment whereby we - the west - can impose our treaties and laws on the battlefield because, at the end of the day, we know we are going to win or we know that we can decide when to lose.
Israel seems to believe that it is in an existential war. Let's imagine if there were no Israeli army and a ban on guns. What do you suppose the outcome of last Saturday would have been. Which treaties and laws would have been observed and which ignored. Which brings us back to Israel's retaliation. Almost from the moment the first jet took off to bomb (Hamas targets in) Gaza people have said "hold on now treaties and laws stop that".
What is Israel to do?
Damned if I know.
Most of would, I think, take the view that salus populi suprema lex, and if a conflict really were existential, we would not let ourselves be restrained by the tenets of international law.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
Again, as I have said before, the attacks of Hamas on civilians are despicable and morally reprehensible. But they happened for a reason, and that reason is not just the hatred of Jewish people. Indeed, many Jewish people are also pointing out why the reaction that the Israeli government is taking is counterproductive and illegal, and indeed that the acts of the Israeli government is what, in part, led to this situation - including literal pieces published in Israeli newspapers by Israeli journalists. If 1,000 people were killed in London by a modern IRA splinter cell I wouldn't expect us to start carpet bombing Ireland. Hell, we know looking at everything post 9/11 that even if it allows you to vent you bloodlust it makes everything much much much worse - for the people you massacre, the region, and everyone else. Yes, I can understand the visceral reaction on an attack on Israeli soil, but that doesn't mean you get a free reign to do war crimes or treat 2 million civilians as all liable for the attacks of terrorist insurgents!
Hamas isn't simply a terrorist group. It is the de facto government of Gaza. That make the comparison with the post-Treaty IRA difficult.
You can't go to war with Hamas without going to war against Gaza as a whole.
If the IRA had seized power in Dublin and were launching massive attacks across the Irish Sea, then that would lead to an outcome very similar to that which we see between Israel and Gaza.
That analogy is better, but still doesn’t really capture the awfulness of Hamas. The IRA wanted Britain out of Ireland, and maybe some of them enjoyed violent revenge on the hated colonial master
Everyone in Hamas wants to kill Jews just for being Jews. As we saw at the weekend. They are suffused with a racist, genocidal bloodlust. And many Gazans vote for it as many Germans voted for Hitler
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges While the focus is on the FA I understand the anger from the Jewish community about the silence from Spurs and Arsenal is also growing.
I wonder if we will have sponsors withdrawing their support as a consequence.
Highly unlikely as there is no co-ordinated online twitter campaign bombarding their feed with threats to not use them.
The moral cowardice of the like of the FA and Arsenal and Spurs truly shames the beautiful game. Soccer was happy to take the knee for George Floyd yet it won't show solidarity with the nation that suffered, among other things, beheaded babies for fear of offending "communities"
Spinless trash
BLM UK seem to be on the side of the Palestinians. So is taking the knee tacit support for them?
Comment on the Twitter post by the FA said that their statement could.have been written by Jeremy Corbyn. They are spot on.
Anyone taking the knee is now, in effect, supporting Hamas.
Well I never!
For some bizarre reason I'm getting the urge to draw a CDC on that photo.
BLM UK do not speak for the sentiment of Black Lives Matter (a leaderless movement); indeed they are a in reality a tiny group with fairly extreme views who, like the blind squirrel with the occasional nut, have stumbled upon a brand they can exploit to amplify their voice.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
Again, as I have said before, the attacks of Hamas on civilians are despicable and morally reprehensible. But they happened for a reason, and that reason is not just the hatred of Jewish people. Indeed, many Jewish people are also pointing out why the reaction that the Israeli government is counterproductive and illegal, and indeed that the acts of the Israeli government is what, in part, led to this situation - including literal pieces published in Israeli newspapers by Israeli journalists. If 1,000 people were killed in London by a modern IRA splinter cell I wouldn't expect us to start carpet bombing Ireland. Hell, we know looking at everything post 9/11 that even if it allows you to vent you bloodlust it makes everything much much much worse - for the people you massacre, the region, and everyone else. Yes, I can understand the visceral reaction on an attack on Israeli soil, but that doesn't mean you get a free reign to do war crimes or treat 2 million civilians as all liable for the attacks of terrorist insurgents!
The equivalent death toll in the UK would be:
8,400 dead 18,900 injured
With most of them civilians, babies burned and chopped, old people stabbed, hundreds of rapes, nearly a thousand kidnapped, many beheadings
And all of this done in ONE day and by a political organisation dedicated to killing every British person in the world
In that event, I suggest the British people would be screaming for bloody revenge and the total elimination of this enemy: and the UK government would oblige
But the FA doesn’t want to stand in solidarity with the victims for fear of offending ‘some communities’
Maybe the Elders can liase with the Tribal Chiefs, I mean ‘Politicians negotiate with Community Leaders’
Why are the elderly and disabled patronised in this way? They are perfectly capable of using cashless. As has now been said ad infinitum, the key is to take steps to reduce digital exclusion, not persist with an outdated, flawed form of payment through some warped form of nostalgia.
The council has run a public consultation process which involved the Elders Council and Newcastle Disability Forum. The council's car parks are still accessible to those without a bank account or smart phone, neither are necessary to make a payment. We have staff available in our car parks during the roll out of the new machines and a drop in session at the City Library on October 23 to help people switch to alternative payment methods
Stand by for calls of shes the wrong kind of black or Starmer saying shes got a penis.
Your desperate attempts to find something, anything, positive for the moribund Tories is a continuous source of amusement.
I dont defend the Tories I criticise Labour I am by nature an ABL.
However we now have the prospect of the Tories on their 4th woman leader, and second BAME all while "progressive" Labour stay in the nineteenth century. Even the DUP have had a woman leader which shows just how neanderthal Labour is. And from that list of candidates above the one white guy has no chance.
So perhaps you as a Labourite would like to explain what your party has against women or non-whites. ? Why is there a glass ceiling that none can pierce ?
Trouble is, it's a small sample size. It's hard to be convincing that Labour is biased without a bigger sample, more leaders, more PMs. Of course, if Labour starts emulating the Tories in terms of replacing leaders, they'll get there soon enough.
Well of course you clung on to Jezza like a frightened child and all said how wonderful he was and then suddenly he wasnt wonderful any more. Maybe a bit of sorting out the chaff would help with your woman problem.
You appear to have a vivid fantasy life. I am not a Labour supporter. I have never been a Labour supporter. I've never voted for Labour. I am not intending to vote for Labour at the next general election. (I have given Labour my second vote in some London Mayoral contests under SV.) I have not "clung on to Jezza". I think Corbyn was a disaster for Labour and a disaster for the country.
There is an issue with left wing politics that women and non white people are automatically considered by the (majority white) electorate to be more "radical" than they are. So when women, for example, make their way up left wing parties, even if they are quite moderate, they are not assumed to be. This phenomenon is better studied in the US - Clinton and Obama were pretty centrist, and yet most people (including people who liked them and voted for them) assumed they were more left wing than they were. This isn't typical of white male politicians. This then leads to a problem where, for the left specifically, the issue of "electability" becomes an assumption that white male politicians are more "electable" because they are viewed as more moderate. And so women, and non white people, are less likely to head up things like the Labour Party. (There is also a good case to be made about the misogyny of the British labour union movement, and how many of the leaders in that space have historically been men).
Guff. Just about every UK party bar Labour has had a woman leader. Cons, LDs, SNP, DUP. SF, Greens .
I remember reading about this on 538 when it comes to the US, and similar articles have floated around in the UK, but I can't find a citation atm that explains it better than I...
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges While the focus is on the FA I understand the anger from the Jewish community about the silence from Spurs and Arsenal is also growing.
I wonder if we will have sponsors withdrawing their support as a consequence.
Highly unlikely as there is no co-ordinated online twitter campaign bombarding their feed with threats to not use them.
The moral cowardice of the like of the FA and Arsenal and Spurs truly shames the beautiful game. Soccer was happy to take the knee for George Floyd yet it won't show solidarity with the nation that suffered, among other things, beheaded babies for fear of offending "communities"
Spinless trash
BLM UK seem to be on the side of the Palestinians. So is taking the knee tacit support for them?
Comment on the Twitter post by the FA said that their statement could.have been written by Jeremy Corbyn. They are spot on.
Anyone taking the knee is now, in effect, supporting Hamas.
Well I never!
For some bizarre reason I'm getting the urge to draw a CDC on that photo.
BLM UK do not speak for the sentiment of Black Lives Matter (a leaderless movement); indeed they are a in reality a tiny group with fairly extreme views who, like the blind squirrel with the occasional nut, have stumbled upon a brand they can exploit to amplify their voice.
I mean I am a fan of people taking the knee. A visible action against racism, of which there continues to be a fuckload at footie matches and which was beyond endemic in times gone by.
Equally it gives me great pleasure to see a typical PL footie match wherein there is a united nations of races, creeds, colours (not sexuality yet but I'm sure it is coming) and I believe the game is truly colour blind. You only have to see celebrations after a goal to confirm this at least amongst the players.
However, the pickle that the FA and indeed all football clubs finds itself in wrt Israel/Gaza is as a consequence of these gestures.
Like you I have no issue with taking the knee. It’s a harmless gesture against racism and helps raise awareness so where’s the downside ?
Soccer is also happy to have players wear rainbow laces. Again. No problem there.
When people complained about the taking of the knee or the laces the FA and twitterati were quick to condemn. They’re silent now a and this silence shames them.
They’ve made a major error here. They have a chance to rectify it. They need to do it ASAP.
Their reasoning is clear. They don’t want to offend the sort of people who believe 6MWNE.
Possibly. But I suspect they also fear it might 'provoke' attacks against Jews.
6MWNE is obviously a problem but there are a whole more who don't believe it ever happened.
What is it with fascists and their cryptic initialisms?
In my twenty years of experiencing housing market dysfunction in the UK - and having heard every excuse under the sun, from evil landlords, to greedy foreigners, to lazy councils, to selfish nimbys - the essential issue is that Britain doesn’t zone enough space for housing.
Such zones do not need to be new land area. They could, and in the main should, be “up”, as Auckland has done successfully in the last several years.
But we need to mandate zoning and area plans for every local authority, and strong design codes as well.
And then after that, we need the planning system to let people get on with it, instead of strangling them with a thousand petty rules and a thousand opportunities for people object.
"They could, and in the main should, be “up”,"
A significant issue is that the British 'dream' is not a flat in a tall tower block. It is a detached or semi-detached house with garage and a garden. Hence that is what builders try to build, squeezing as many such houses onto as small a plot as possible.
It is a situation made worse by the tower block disasters of the 1960s and 1970s, reinforced by Grenfell and access to gardens during Covid lockdowns.
Perhaps this should change; but good luck with that.
Unless and until leasehold is abolished, flats will remain deeply undesirable.
On the hook for limitless service charges and major works, often overseen by crooked management companies, either padding invoices or simply purely on the take, and the only redress a wholly inadequate, expensive and time consuming "tribunal" process that allows the freeholder to tack their legal fees onto your service charges, even if you win!
All this without actually owning a single brick.
If you want people to want flats, abolish leasehold.
@148grss is a very welcome addition to the site, even if i disagree with much of what he/she posts.
If I had the teensiest comment to make I would say that paragraphs can sometimes be things of great wonder and utility.
I'm shit at formatting my thoughts outside of blocks of text... I have Orwell's rules for writing essay and love it to bits; does not mean I'm good at doing it.
Stand by for calls of shes the wrong kind of black or Starmer saying shes got a penis.
Your desperate attempts to find something, anything, positive for the moribund Tories is a continuous source of amusement.
I dont defend the Tories I criticise Labour I am by nature an ABL.
However we now have the prospect of the Tories on their 4th woman leader, and second BAME all while "progressive" Labour stay in the nineteenth century. Even the DUP have had a woman leader which shows just how neanderthal Labour is. And from that list of candidates above the one white guy has no chance.
So perhaps you as a Labourite would like to explain what your party has against women or non-whites. ? Why is there a glass ceiling that none can pierce ?
Trouble is, it's a small sample size. It's hard to be convincing that Labour is biased without a bigger sample, more leaders, more PMs. Of course, if Labour starts emulating the Tories in terms of replacing leaders, they'll get there soon enough.
Well of course you clung on to Jezza like a frightened child and all said how wonderful he was and then suddenly he wasnt wonderful any more. Maybe a bit of sorting out the chaff would help with your woman problem.
You appear to have a vivid fantasy life. I am not a Labour supporter. I have never been a Labour supporter. I've never voted for Labour. I am not intending to vote for Labour at the next general election. (I have given Labour my second vote in some London Mayoral contests under SV.) I have not "clung on to Jezza". I think Corbyn was a disaster for Labour and a disaster for the country.
There is an issue with left wing politics that women and non white people are automatically considered by the (majority white) electorate to be more "radical" than they are. So when women, for example, make their way up left wing parties, even if they are quite moderate, they are not assumed to be. This phenomenon is better studied in the US - Clinton and Obama were pretty centrist, and yet most people (including people who liked them and voted for them) assumed they were more left wing than they were. This isn't typical of white male politicians. This then leads to a problem where, for the left specifically, the issue of "electability" becomes an assumption that white male politicians are more "electable" because they are viewed as more moderate. And so women, and non white people, are less likely to head up things like the Labour Party. (There is also a good case to be made about the misogyny of the British labour union movement, and how many of the leaders in that space have historically been men).
Guff. Just about every UK party bar Labour has had a woman leader. Cons, LDs, SNP, DUP. SF, Greens .
I mean I am a fan of people taking the knee. A visible action against racism, of which there continues to be a fuckload at footie matches and which was beyond endemic in times gone by.
Equally it gives me great pleasure to see a typical PL footie match wherein there is a united nations of races, creeds, colours (not sexuality yet but I'm sure it is coming) and I believe the game is truly colour blind. You only have to see celebrations after a goal to confirm this at least amongst the players.
However, the pickle that the FA and indeed all football clubs finds itself in wrt Israel/Gaza is as a consequence of these gestures.
Like you I have no issue with taking the knee. It’s a harmless gesture against racism and helps raise awareness so where’s the downside ?
Soccer is also happy to have players wear rainbow laces. Again. No problem there.
When people complained about the taking of the knee or the laces the FA and twitterati were quick to condemn. They’re silent now a and this silence shames them.
They’ve made a major error here. They have a chance to rectify it. They need to do it ASAP.
Their reasoning is clear. They don’t want to offend the sort of people who believe 6MWNE.
Possibly. But I suspect they also fear it might 'provoke' attacks against Jews.
6MWNE is obviously a problem but there are a whole more who don't believe it ever happened.
What is it with fascists and their cryptic initialisms?
They get banned from everywhere when they show their power level, so instead of questioning the ideology that lots of people hate and complain about, they make acronyms and secret phrases. Which also lines up with the fascist love of syncretic conspiracism.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
And no longer is under any circumstances. We were a signatory in 1949 to the 4th Geneva Convention and we were clear that it applied to us as much as anyone else. Under those laws that we keep purporting to support and try to impose on others, firebombing cities is no longer a legitimate act. Just like the use of chemical weapons or the murder of POWs.
Using the acts of the Allies 80 years ago as support for the current actions of countries is not a defendable argument.
You are speaking from the safety and security of a country that, please Odin, will never again face an existential threat. Israel does not believe it is in that position.
Signatories to this, that, or the other is meaningless. Of course we signed any old document in 1949 as we were at the peak of our powers and had just won a world war. That is not to say that Israel has chucked the Geneva Convention out of the window, according to news reports. Do you think that Israel as we speak is ignoring it? How difficult do you think it would be for Israel literally to level Gaza in an afternoon? Not that very is my guess and Gaza is still standing.
The "rules of war" are a logical impossibility. I'm not going to roll out the "if your family were...." type of analogies but none of us can really understand what an existential war really means and what you might be prepared to do if you were engaged in one.
So you regard treaties and laws as something that should only be obeyed when it is convenient for countries to do so or that should be imposed on others but not on ourselves? That is an interesting interpretation to say the least.
So you can have no cause for complaint (nor should have any recourse in law) when other countries do not obey them.
First off as I noted, it doesn't look like Gaza is the subject of an aggressor that ignores treaties and laws.
But to address your question, treaties and laws in war are problematic. Proper wars, that is, not asymmetric wars like our Middle East campaigns. We are in an environment whereby we - the west - can impose our treaties and laws on the battlefield because, at the end of the day, we know we are going to win or we know that we can decide when to lose.
Israel seems to believe that it is in an existential war. Let's imagine if there were no Israeli army and a ban on guns. What do you suppose the outcome of last Saturday would have been. Which treaties and laws would have been observed and which ignored. Which brings us back to Israel's retaliation. Almost from the moment the first jet took off to bomb (Hamas targets in) Gaza people have said "hold on now treaties and laws stop that".
What is Israel to do?
Ukraine is in an existential war for its survival and it has been praised by UN human rights rapporteurs for the steps out has taken to comply with its human rights obligations during the war.
Doubtless it is easier for Ukraine to be motivated to do so when there are Ukrainian civilians in the territory occupied by Russia
@148grss is a very welcome addition to the site, even if i disagree with much of what he/she posts.
If I had the teensiest comment to make I would say that paragraphs can sometimes be things of great wonder and utility.
I'm shit at formatting my thoughts outside of blocks of text... I have Orwell's rules for writing essay and love it to bits; does not mean I'm good at doing it.
Just follow a general rule: three sentences per paragraph. Usually works. As you see here
And chuck in the occasional one sentence paragraph for a pleasant variation
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
When talking about Israel going to war or committing war crimes it is important to note that Israel is a state - it does not represent Jewishness or Jewish people.
It is, explicitly, a Jewish State.
That's what all the fuss and bother is about.
That doesn't mean every Jewish person accepts that. Catholicism would claim to be the one true Christianity - so what?
Indeed. England (UK?) is explicitly an Anglican Protestant state. I don't accept that in my name, in fact I think it's moronic and reject the concept unreservedly
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
And no longer is under any circumstances. We were a signatory in 1949 to the 4th Geneva Convention and we were clear that it applied to us as much as anyone else. Under those laws that we keep purporting to support and try to impose on others, firebombing cities is no longer a legitimate act. Just like the use of chemical weapons or the murder of POWs.
Using the acts of the Allies 80 years ago as support for the current actions of countries is not a defendable argument.
You are speaking from the safety and security of a country that, please Odin, will never again face an existential threat. Israel does not believe it is in that position.
Signatories to this, that, or the other is meaningless. Of course we signed any old document in 1949 as we were at the peak of our powers and had just won a world war. That is not to say that Israel has chucked the Geneva Convention out of the window, according to news reports. Do you think that Israel as we speak is ignoring it? How difficult do you think it would be for Israel literally to level Gaza in an afternoon? Not very is my guess and Gaza is still standing.
The "rules of war" are a logical impossibility. I'm not going to roll out the "if your family were...." type of analogies but none of us can really understand what an existential war means and what you might be prepared to do if you were engaged in one.
Rules of war date back at least to the Code of Hammurabi in 1750BC. The Torah/Old Testament puts forth rules of war, for another early example.
The UK signed the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. It is notable that the belligerents held to some rules of war, to some extent, through both World War I and World War II. The UK signed up to all four Geneva Conventions (adopted 1864, 1929 and 1949). Much of the modern conception of war crimes goes back to the 1945 London charter. War crimes have been incorporated into UK domestic law.
War crimes are almost inevitable in any major conflict, but we can reduce them. Most countries most of the time make some effort to follow the rules of war. It is ahistorical nonsense to act as if rules of war are only recent or unworkable.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
When talking about Israel going to war or committing war crimes it is important to note that Israel is a state - it does not represent Jewishness or Jewish people.
It is, explicitly, a Jewish State.
That's what all the fuss and bother is about.
That doesn't mean every Jewish person accepts that. Catholicism would claim to be the one true Christianity - so what?
Indeed. England (UK?) is explicitly an Anglican Protestant state. I don't accept that in my name, in fact I think its moronic and reject the concept unreservedly
Enfranchising people who are implicitly enemies of the state is surely asking for trouble though?
I mean I am a fan of people taking the knee. A visible action against racism, of which there continues to be a fuckload at footie matches and which was beyond endemic in times gone by.
Equally it gives me great pleasure to see a typical PL footie match wherein there is a united nations of races, creeds, colours (not sexuality yet but I'm sure it is coming) and I believe the game is truly colour blind. You only have to see celebrations after a goal to confirm this at least amongst the players.
However, the pickle that the FA and indeed all football clubs finds itself in wrt Israel/Gaza is as a consequence of these gestures.
Like you I have no issue with taking the knee. It’s a harmless gesture against racism and helps raise awareness so where’s the downside ?
Soccer is also happy to have players wear rainbow laces. Again. No problem there.
When people complained about the taking of the knee or the laces the FA and twitterati were quick to condemn. They’re silent now a and this silence shames them.
They’ve made a major error here. They have a chance to rectify it. They need to do it ASAP.
Their reasoning is clear. They don’t want to offend the sort of people who believe 6MWNE.
Possibly. But I suspect they also fear it might 'provoke' attacks against Jews.
6MWNE is obviously a problem but there are a whole more who don't believe it ever happened.
I don't think there's anyone who believes the Holocaust never happened.
Those who claim it just enjoy trolling Jews and/or recognise that the Holocaust is bad PR for their cause. But, the know full well that it happened, and they think it was a good thing.
Stand by for calls of shes the wrong kind of black or Starmer saying shes got a penis.
Your desperate attempts to find something, anything, positive for the moribund Tories is a continuous source of amusement.
I dont defend the Tories I criticise Labour I am by nature an ABL.
However we now have the prospect of the Tories on their 4th woman leader, and second BAME all while "progressive" Labour stay in the nineteenth century. Even the DUP have had a woman leader which shows just how neanderthal Labour is. And from that list of candidates above the one white guy has no chance.
So perhaps you as a Labourite would like to explain what your party has against women or non-whites. ? Why is there a glass ceiling that none can pierce ?
Trouble is, it's a small sample size. It's hard to be convincing that Labour is biased without a bigger sample, more leaders, more PMs. Of course, if Labour starts emulating the Tories in terms of replacing leaders, they'll get there soon enough.
Well of course you clung on to Jezza like a frightened child and all said how wonderful he was and then suddenly he wasnt wonderful any more. Maybe a bit of sorting out the chaff would help with your woman problem.
You appear to have a vivid fantasy life. I am not a Labour supporter. I have never been a Labour supporter. I've never voted for Labour. I am not intending to vote for Labour at the next general election. (I have given Labour my second vote in some London Mayoral contests under SV.) I have not "clung on to Jezza". I think Corbyn was a disaster for Labour and a disaster for the country.
And why should you get off ?
I get called a conservative member all the time on this board despite the fact I criticise them as much as anyone and will on the rare occasions Labour do something positive give them credit for it.
I am sorry you feel aggrieved at being called a Conservative when you are not. However, two wrongs don't make a right. I don't see why that gives you carte blanche to make stuff up.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
When Israel was founded, I can understand that feeling. Now, as the primary beneficiary of the world's only existing superpowers military largesse and political hegemonic power, no. If they believe it is an existential war it is only because they have propagandised it so to themselves. And I don't think those in the Israeli government do even view it as an existential war, because if you want a sure fire way to guarantee the entire Middle East will never normalise relations with you and may even go to war with you, start doing a genocide in Gaza.
On October 7 more Jews died than on any other day since the Holocaust. What’s more, nearly all of them were civilians - from tiny babies butchered in their cribs to 85 year old women shot in the head
I don’t lightly accuse someone of anti-Semitism but your inability to see how this impacts the Jewish psyche is alarming. I’ll leave it there
When talking about Israel going to war or committing war crimes it is important to note that Israel is a state - it does not represent Jewishness or Jewish people.
It is, explicitly, a Jewish State.
That's what all the fuss and bother is about.
That doesn't mean every Jewish person accepts that. Catholicism would claim to be the one true Christianity - so what?
Indeed. England (UK?) is explicitly an Anglican Protestant state. I don't accept that in my name, in fact I think its moronic and reject the concept unreservedly
Enfranchising people who are implicitly enemies of the state is surely asking for trouble though?
You've got it bass-ackwards. People don't have to earn the franchise. The state has to earn the power.
I am old enough to remember when Israel was being pressed to give up land for peace. Well it did that in Gaza. It gave up land. It removed the settlers. And what it got in return was Hamas and rockets and now massacres.
Israel has made many mistakes over the years. Netanyahu is unquestionably the wrong leader for it, especially at such a time. I fear that an invasion of Gaza now will be a strategic error and lead to all sorts of casualties for the innocent.
But the Palestinians have consistently made huge errors, the biggest one of all being their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Hamas seeks the elimination of Israel and the killing of every Jew everywhere - not just in Israel. This is explicitly genocidal. There is no negotiation with such a movement. Eliminating it is the only answer. Just as we sought to eliminate Nazism and ISIS and other similar genocidal movements.
Those who worry about what happens next need to provide an alternative to Israel, one that will not make that country prey to genocidal maniacs. Lots of people are willing to speak hard truths to Israel about obeying the laws of war and civilian deaths and the rest of it. Very few are telling Hamas that it is their genocidal ideology which has brought Gaza to the point it is, that it is their deliberate policy of hiding amongst civilians which is putting Palestinians at risk, it is their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist which means there is not the remotest hope of starting any peace talks.
There is plenty of pressure which needs putting on Israel but Hamas must first be eliminated. It cannot - until it changes what it wants - be a player. It has taken itself outside the universe of civilised decency. So if invasion of Gaza is not the solution, what is? And if we don't have an alternative solution, then we can hardly be surprised if Israel does what it thinks necessary to save itself. What would we do were we in their position?
I sometimes feel that commentators are unwilling to provide or even begin to think about what an alternative might be because - after all the condemnations of Hamas - they give up at expecting anything better from the Palestinians and it is, after all, so much easier and more comfortable to revert to criticising Israel.
I was saying something similar the other day. Gaza allows itself to be ruled by Hamas. It does this in the knowledge that Hamas is committed to the death of all Jews. The murderous assaults came from their territory and seem to have been a source of glee.
I fully get that the residents of Gaza have a terrible life, that they are economically repressed by Israel and made to beg for water and electricity. Israel’s policies have been unenlightened at best and self harming all too often. If I lived in Gaza I would hate the Israeli government and want to resist that oppression.
But if you want to be listened to, if you want things to change, you do not start with the beheading of babies because they are Jews.
It is 17 years since there was an election in Gaza. 17 years during which Hamas has done it's best to kill anyone who actively opposes them. The Palestinians there 'allow' themselves to be ruled by Hamas about as much as the inhabitants of Kabul 'allow' themselves to be ruled by the Taliban.
Or the Germans "allowed" themselves to be ruled by Hitler. Good point.
What is amusing is that I suspect you and I regard that comment in very different ways.
I regard it in a very simple way, Richard. According to Israel the country is at war. You may disagree and we can discuss the difference between a terrorist act and an act of war. Israel, as one of the belligerents, thinks it is war. An existential one, to boot. If it is war then it is war.
I would be very interested to know how you regard that comment.
I agree. Israel is at war. And I do not even think discussing whose fault it might be in the long term changes anything there.
The difference appears to be that you think that being at war means that Israel are allowed to do anything they like to the Palestinian population and sod the consequences. You are one of those who quote, either directly or by inference, a war that ended 78 years ago in defence of this idea.
I believe that, partly as a result of what happened during that war, the world has rightly moved on and certain actions are now considered no longer acceptable even in war and are legally proscribed as such. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whether by intent or negligence, is one of thoise things. This is the case whether we believe the faiult lies entirely with Israel, entirely with the Palestinians or with a mixture of the two.
I think the issue here is that we are not used to existential wars. We have wars with limited aims and at the end of them the Americans bug out. Er, I mean at the end of them either one side wins, or there is a working negotiated settlement, or the matter is resolved one way or another.
Israel believes that it is in an existential war, just like we did 80 years ago (and hence my Godwin). In an existential war there is no merit in saying well we lost but at least we played by the (new, victor-imposed) rules. Losing equals annihilation.
And hence under those circumstances I am prepared, as you might have noticed from my various posts on the subject, to cut Israel quite a bit of slack. You often mention the use of white phosphorous by Israel, a horrible weapon. But again, and here we go back to WWII, and our own existential war, firebombing of German cities was seen as a legitimate act of war.
And no longer is under any circumstances. We were a signatory in 1949 to the 4th Geneva Convention and we were clear that it applied to us as much as anyone else. Under those laws that we keep purporting to support and try to impose on others, firebombing cities is no longer a legitimate act. Just like the use of chemical weapons or the murder of POWs.
Using the acts of the Allies 80 years ago as support for the current actions of countries is not a defendable argument.
You are speaking from the safety and security of a country that, please Odin, will never again face an existential threat. Israel does not believe it is in that position.
Signatories to this, that, or the other is meaningless. Of course we signed any old document in 1949 as we were at the peak of our powers and had just won a world war. That is not to say that Israel has chucked the Geneva Convention out of the window, according to news reports. Do you think that Israel as we speak is ignoring it? How difficult do you think it would be for Israel literally to level Gaza in an afternoon? Not that very is my guess and Gaza is still standing.
The "rules of war" are a logical impossibility. I'm not going to roll out the "if your family were...." type of analogies but none of us can really understand what an existential war really means and what you might be prepared to do if you were engaged in one.
So you regard treaties and laws as something that should only be obeyed when it is convenient for countries to do so or that should be imposed on others but not on ourselves? That is an interesting interpretation to say the least.
So you can have no cause for complaint (nor should have any recourse in law) when other countries do not obey them.
First off as I noted, it doesn't look like Gaza is the subject of an aggressor that ignores treaties and laws.
But to address your question, treaties and laws in war are problematic. Proper wars, that is, not asymmetric wars like our Middle East campaigns. We are in an environment whereby we - the west - can impose our treaties and laws on the battlefield because, at the end of the day, we know we are going to win or we know that we can decide when to lose.
Israel seems to believe that it is in an existential war. Let's imagine if there were no Israeli army and a ban on guns. What do you suppose the outcome of last Saturday would have been. Which treaties and laws would have been observed and which ignored. Which brings us back to Israel's retaliation. Almost from the moment the first jet took off to bomb (Hamas targets in) Gaza people have said "hold on now treaties and laws stop that".
What is Israel to do?
Ukraine is in an existential war for its survival and it has been praised by UN human rights rapporteurs for the steps out has taken to comply with its human rights obligations during the war.
Doubtless it is easier for Ukraine to be motivated to do so when there are Ukrainian civilians in the territory occupied by Russia
Yet criticised for the use of cluster munitions, and for placing soldiers in built up areas, which, in the circumstances, seem like very small beer to me.
I mean I am a fan of people taking the knee. A visible action against racism, of which there continues to be a fuckload at footie matches and which was beyond endemic in times gone by.
Equally it gives me great pleasure to see a typical PL footie match wherein there is a united nations of races, creeds, colours (not sexuality yet but I'm sure it is coming) and I believe the game is truly colour blind. You only have to see celebrations after a goal to confirm this at least amongst the players.
However, the pickle that the FA and indeed all football clubs finds itself in wrt Israel/Gaza is as a consequence of these gestures.
Like you I have no issue with taking the knee. It’s a harmless gesture against racism and helps raise awareness so where’s the downside ?
Soccer is also happy to have players wear rainbow laces. Again. No problem there.
When people complained about the taking of the knee or the laces the FA and twitterati were quick to condemn. They’re silent now a and this silence shames them.
They’ve made a major error here. They have a chance to rectify it. They need to do it ASAP.
Their reasoning is clear. They don’t want to offend the sort of people who believe 6MWNE.
Possibly. But I suspect they also fear it might 'provoke' attacks against Jews.
6MWNE is obviously a problem but there are a whole more who don't believe it ever happened.
I don't think there's anyone who believes the Holocaust never happened.
Those who claim it just enjoy trolling Jews and/or recognise that the Holocaust is bad PR for their cause. But, the know full well that it happened, and they think it was a good thing.
Oh I'm sure there are. There are people who think the world is flat, that birds are actually government controlled drones, that the Covid Vaccine can control your thoughts etc etc.
Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn · 2h We should condemn the targeting of all civilian life, no matter who does it.
The best analogy I ever heard to the old "Black Lives Matter? How about All Lives Matter" thing was "it's like marching into someone's funeral and shouting 'My dad died too!'"
"Undecided voters prefer Rishi Sunak to “weak” Sir Keir Starmer – but are still more inclined to vote Labour at the next general election, a focus group has suggested.
The JL Partners polling firm spoke to those who are yet to make up their minds in Wimbledon, Rother Valley and Filton and Bradley Stoke, three Conservative-held constituencies.
Those surveyed said Sir Keir was “weak”, “drab” and “vanilla” and preferred Mr Sunak, who they thought performed better during the course of both parties’ recent conferences.
Speaking to Times Radio, which commissioned the focus groups, JL Partners co-founder James Johnson said: “One of the problems with Keir Starmer is that they feel he’s a bit of a ‘nothing man’, a direct group from a quote. They don’t necessarily feel he stands for anything.”
However, he added: “All of them said that they would vote Labour, come the next election ......................."
I mean I am a fan of people taking the knee. A visible action against racism, of which there continues to be a fuckload at footie matches and which was beyond endemic in times gone by.
Equally it gives me great pleasure to see a typical PL footie match wherein there is a united nations of races, creeds, colours (not sexuality yet but I'm sure it is coming) and I believe the game is truly colour blind. You only have to see celebrations after a goal to confirm this at least amongst the players.
However, the pickle that the FA and indeed all football clubs finds itself in wrt Israel/Gaza is as a consequence of these gestures.
Like you I have no issue with taking the knee. It’s a harmless gesture against racism and helps raise awareness so where’s the downside ?
Soccer is also happy to have players wear rainbow laces. Again. No problem there.
When people complained about the taking of the knee or the laces the FA and twitterati were quick to condemn. They’re silent now a and this silence shames them.
They’ve made a major error here. They have a chance to rectify it. They need to do it ASAP.
Their reasoning is clear. They don’t want to offend the sort of people who believe 6MWNE.
Possibly. But I suspect they also fear it might 'provoke' attacks against Jews.
6MWNE is obviously a problem but there are a whole more who don't believe it ever happened.
I don't think there's anyone who believes the Holocaust never happened.
Those who claim it just enjoy trolling Jews and/or recognise that the Holocaust is bad PR for their cause. But, the know full well that it happened, and they think it was a good thing.
I'll never forget seeing a discussion in 2004 on another forum where I became of the concept of Holocaust minimisation.
Apparently when you factor in the hype, and the gays and other undesirables only 2 million Jews died in the Holocaust which apparently is fine because it wasn't as bad as other genocides like the Great Leap Forward or some of Stalin's worst excesses or slightly worse than the Rwandan genocide.
Comments
Again, as I have said before, the attacks of Hamas on civilians are despicable and morally reprehensible. But they happened for a reason, and that reason is not just the hatred of Jewish people. Indeed, many Jewish people are also pointing out why the reaction that the Israeli government is taking is counterproductive and illegal, and indeed that the acts of the Israeli government is what, in part, led to this situation - including literal pieces published in Israeli newspapers by Israeli journalists. If 1,000 people were killed in London by a modern IRA splinter cell I wouldn't expect us to start carpet bombing Ireland. Hell, we know looking at everything post 9/11 that even if it allows you to vent you bloodlust it makes everything much much much worse - for the people you massacre, the region, and everyone else. Yes, I can understand the visceral reaction on an attack on Israeli soil, but that doesn't mean you get a free reign to do war crimes or treat 2 million civilians as all liable for the attacks of terrorist insurgents!
I don’t think the Badenochs are super wealthy in the way Sunak, Goldsmith, or even Johnson or Cameron are. Standard London professional class, and no reason to think it unmerited, either.
No Google Street view I'm afraid:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/oeZXWHmNCyDAjjmb9
A lot of Surrey probably looks like this but it is unusual in these parts.
Does stuff like this get built any more outside of 'exclusive' gated communities?
8,400 dead
18,900 injured
With most of them civilians, babies burned and chopped, old people stabbed, hundreds of rapes, nearly a thousand kidnapped, many beheadings
And all of this done in ONE day and by a political organisation dedicated to killing every British person in the world
In that event, I suggest the British people would be screaming for bloody revenge and the total elimination of this enemy: and the UK government would oblige
And at least in New York, there’s a lot of what Brits would call “neo-Georgian”. Brick, usually, if it’s modern.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel
Or other attacks:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/comprehensive-listing-of-terrorism-victims-in-israel
On the hook for limitless service charges and major works, often overseen by crooked management companies, either padding invoices or simply purely on the take, and the only redress a wholly inadequate, expensive and time consuming "tribunal" process that allows the freeholder to tack their legal fees onto your service charges, even if you win!
All this without actually owning a single brick.
If you want people to want flats, abolish leasehold.
Haven't seen any evidence from Badenoch of being in touch with the proles except for the culture war guff, but if you have some happy to consider it.
But I think you are quite right.
How can you go to the Russians or any other country and accuse them of war crimes if you have supported the Israelis doing similar things?
We do not tend to draw our political leadership from the zero hours contractors working in Tescos.
Signatories to this, that, or the other is meaningless. Of course we signed any old document in 1949 as we were at the peak of our powers and had just won a world war. That is not to say that Israel has chucked the Geneva Convention out of the window, according to news reports. Do you think that Israel as we speak is ignoring it? How difficult do you think it would be for Israel literally to level Gaza in an afternoon? Not very is my guess and Gaza is still standing.
The "rules of war" are a logical impossibility. I'm not going to roll out the "if your family were...." type of analogies but none of us can really understand what an existential war means and what you might be prepared to do if you were engaged in one.
So you can have no cause for complaint (nor should have any recourse in law) when other countries do not obey them.
13.47 BST
Diplomats in Brussels have said that defence ministers at today’s Nato meeting were left stunned after the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, showed them “shocking” and “horrific” video from the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians.
Reuters reports that Gallant, who remotely attended the one-hour Nato session about Israel, briefed ministers on the attack and showed them an “uncensored video of Hamas atrocities”.
“It was horrific. It brought home to everyone the reality of what happened,” one western diplomat said.
Another source spoke of “graphic and shocking footage” and described Nato allies as united in their support for Israel.
The video had “graphic elements” with “some blurring to protect the dignity of victims”, an official in the room said.
+++
The videos already out there are bad enough. What are THESE like?
Jewishness and Israeliness are not the same. Sure, even some anti-Zionist Jewish people have related to these attacks due to their Jewishness and the Jewishness of some of the victims (we do not know that all the victims were Jewish Israelis) but many have not. In my work, in my friendship group, in my activism - many Jewish people I know do not support the state of Israel nor do they want the lives of their families to be used as an excuse for the treatment of Palestinians now or in the past. I make it very clear that I am talking about the state of Israel, not Jewish people or even general Israeli citizens, because it is the state of Israel permits and exacerbates the violence in the region, not Jews and not even a majority of Israeli citizens. To cast criticism of Israel and the project of Zionism as anti-Semitism is, in and of itself, an anti-Semitic trope that goes back to discussions of dual loyalties (indeed, one of the insensitive things I had done in my past was automatically a Jewish person I knew at the time cared about Israel either way, when they didn't give a fig). When talking about Israel going to war or committing war crimes it is important to note that Israel is a state - it does not represent Jewishness or Jewish people.
Don’t know why she's above Braverman in the betting.
6MWNE is obviously a problem but there are a whole more who don't believe it ever happened.
Maybe we should just shut the ICC down and send them home.
Though to answer the obviouys rejoinder, @DavidL IIRC did disclaim expertise in that field (apart from scoring the notable achievement of knowing the only SF novel ever written which hinges on questions of feudal law in conveyancing, a complication now mercifully gone).
(I don't have a tenement flat so can't advise even as a laic.)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12623023/Israeli-girls-raped-friends-bodies-Hamas-terrorists-carried-second-Holocaust-British-relatives-reveal-condemn-celebrated-atrocities-Gaza-Iran-London.html
But we don't want to offend some communities....
I get called a conservative member all the time on this board despite the fact I criticise them as much as anyone and will on the rare occasions Labour do something positive give them credit for it.
Barclay or Tugendhat are more likely to get through MPs
Suella Braverman is pushing for a ban on American bully XL dogs, arguing they are a “clear and lethal danger”, particularly to children.
The home secretary announced she has commissioned urgent advice on outlawing the dogs after she highlighted an “appalling” attack on an 11-year-old girl in Birmingham.
However, adding dogs to the banned list is the responsibility of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) under the environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey. The PA news agency understands there are concerns within Defra over the feasibility of adding the American bully.
The dog is not recognised as a specific breed by the Kennel Club. It could be hard to define and a ban could inadvertently outlaw a range of other dogs, some fear.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/10/suella-braverman-pushes-for-ban-on-american-bully-xls-after-attack
You can't go to war with Hamas without going to war against Gaza as a whole.
If the IRA had seized power in Dublin and were launching massive attacks across the Irish Sea, then that would lead to an outcome very similar to that which we see between Israel and Gaza.
But to address your question, treaties and laws in war are problematic. Proper wars, that is, not asymmetric wars like our Middle East campaigns. We are in an environment whereby we - the west - can impose our treaties and laws on the battlefield because, at the end of the day, we know we are going to win or we know that we can decide when to lose.
Israel seems to believe that it is in an existential war. Let's imagine if there were no Israeli army and a ban on guns. What do you suppose the outcome of last Saturday would have been. Which treaties and laws would have been observed and which ignored. Which brings us back to Israel's retaliation. Almost from the moment the first jet took off to bomb (Hamas targets in) Gaza people have said "hold on now treaties and laws stop that".
What is Israel to do?
I like Mordaunt, but I don’t see her getting it. Maybe if the party recovers a bit in opposition and they come to their senses, she might be a good choice for a next-but-one leader.
I think Badenoch will be eclipsed by Braverman on the right.
That's what all the fuss and bother is about.
Last week you suggested I was a “sheep farmer” which was obviously some kind of sub-racist slur.
Your thread header a while back was good, but your contributions below the line suggest you’re just an arsehole who trolls here for kicks.
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/cashless-parking-switch-newcastle-could-27871973?fbclid=IwAR3o6gh4PIoBAW5F9sfBREfo98iHW1lyCeRCHNp9ew4wMo90Vfwglf10flI_aem_AaSaYsiPde7nVXl7A1jg-A0tC-Sw9miry9YUgIFEcJrUcG-3_iIY6Z6pynVTYx5ComI
Recall JRM being next leader favourite for months, if not years.
Ah, yes, I see the flaw in my thinking.
Most of would, I think, take the view that salus populi suprema lex, and if a conflict really were existential, we would not let ourselves be restrained by the tenets of international law.
Everyone in Hamas wants to kill Jews just for being Jews. As we saw at the weekend. They are suffused with a racist, genocidal bloodlust. And many Gazans vote for it as many Germans voted for Hitler
And I've been posting for a while (I want to say since the Brexit referendum, maybe?) but my interest and free time does fluctuate.
Edit: apparently my join date for the site was August 2017 - so I probably lurked here for a while before that prior to posting...
The council has run a public consultation process which involved the Elders Council and Newcastle Disability Forum. The council's car parks are still accessible to those without a bank account or smart phone, neither are necessary to make a payment. We have staff available in our car parks during the roll out of the new machines and a drop in session at the City Library on October 23 to help people switch to alternative payment methods
"Plans to abolish ‘feudal’ leasehold system in England and Wales dropped"
Jeremy Corbyn
@jeremycorbyn
·
2h
We should condemn the targeting of all civilian life, no matter who does it.
Why can't our politicians uphold this basic moral principle, and defend international law universally and equally?
How many innocent Palestinian lives should be erased in the name of self-defence?
Doubtless it is easier for Ukraine to be motivated to do so when there are Ukrainian civilians in the territory occupied by Russia
And chuck in the occasional one sentence paragraph for a pleasant variation
The UK signed the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. It is notable that the belligerents held to some rules of war, to some extent, through both World War I and World War II. The UK signed up to all four Geneva Conventions (adopted 1864, 1929 and 1949). Much of the modern conception of war crimes goes back to the 1945 London charter. War crimes have been incorporated into UK domestic law.
War crimes are almost inevitable in any major conflict, but we can reduce them. Most countries most of the time make some effort to follow the rules of war. It is ahistorical nonsense to act as if rules of war are only recent or unworkable.
Those who claim it just enjoy trolling Jews and/or recognise that the Holocaust is bad PR for their cause. But, the know full well that it happened, and they think it was a good thing.
"Undecided voters prefer Rishi Sunak to “weak” Sir Keir Starmer – but are still more inclined to vote Labour at the next general election, a focus group has suggested.
The JL Partners polling firm spoke to those who are yet to make up their minds in Wimbledon, Rother Valley and Filton and Bradley Stoke, three Conservative-held constituencies.
Those surveyed said Sir Keir was “weak”, “drab” and “vanilla” and preferred Mr Sunak, who they thought performed better during the course of both parties’ recent conferences.
Speaking to Times Radio, which commissioned the focus groups, JL Partners co-founder James Johnson said: “One of the problems with Keir Starmer is that they feel he’s a bit of a ‘nothing man’, a direct group from a quote. They don’t necessarily feel he stands for anything.”
However, he added: “All of them said that they would vote Labour, come the next election ......................."
Apparently when you factor in the hype, and the gays and other undesirables only 2 million Jews died in the Holocaust which apparently is fine because it wasn't as bad as other genocides like the Great Leap Forward or some of Stalin's worst excesses or slightly worse than the Rwandan genocide.