This doesn’t really annoy me - very similar things have been said on PB. I think its right that there are no 'unsayable' things in such meetings. I also tend to doubt the accuracy of minutes/notes. We already know where Vallance stood on lockdown - clearly he was a hawk. We don't know why (a cynic could argue he liked the power), but it probably coloured his view.
As someone has already commented, what we should be doing with the enquiry is establishing whether we took the best approach to Covid in the round, and what should the policy be if similar circumstances arise again. It seems to be more an airing of tittle tattle, which is a pity.
Journalists may pick out certain parts because they make good headlines, but you can watch a live feed of the hearings, and it’s not about tittle tattle. They are doing detailed questioning of key figures. They have amassed huge volumes of evidence, This is a serious enterprise.
Seems a coalition of peacekeepers (Arab, US, UK etc) could be sent into Gaza post harrowing. I think we'd have to be mad to start patrolling the city, catching all the blowback/IEDs.
Where is that being suggested? Bonkers. No way the British Army should get involved there.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
It’s an emotionally manipulative question designed to frame the existence of the state of Israel as a wrong to set against the wrong of the holocaust.
It seems a perfectly reasonable question to me. It wasn't the Palestinians behind the Holocaust.
But it wasn't just the Holocaust which led to it. Jews had been moving back to the area for decades before then - and not through conquest but via land purchase - and some had been living there for centuries. The desire for a nation of their own had existed and grown long before the Holocaust.
Would it be embarrassing to mention the role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during WW2? He was perfectly prepared to exploit the Holocaust for his agenda. Palestinians have not been well served by their leaders. It is a tragedy. They keep turning to leaders or groups who use the tactics and language of the Nazis and then wonder why this revolts or turns off so many.
If Palestinians ask why they should suffer for European crimes against Jews it is also reasonable to ask them why they seem so keen to copy the attitudes and views which led to those crimes?
Seems a coalition of peacekeepers (Arab, US, UK etc) could be sent into Gaza post harrowing. I think we'd have to be mad to start patrolling the city, catching all the blowback/IEDs.
Where is that being suggested? Bonkers. No way the British Army should get involved there.
Sounds like the least-worst option.
How so?
None of the suggested peacekeepers would want to be there, it would not reduce tensions in any way, and so would just eat up men and materiel.
I'll grant I can't think of any good options right now either, which is why I have not been made Emperor of the Earth since anyone who could do it would deserve that accolade, but it still sounds nightmarish as an option.
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Ultimate privilege is not having your Coutts account cancelled.
I closed my Coutts account. It's not that good, it is living off the fact the Royals bank with them.
An offshore account with EFG is where it's at if you actually value people who understand money, rather than just want to flex your credit card.
Quiet and discreet are not words I would associate with Coutts, even before the Farage thing.
To be honest I value my AMEX Centurion Charge Card more.
Gets you more benefits than Coutts and their concierge service is the best.
Barclaycard sent me a Platinum which I cut up and returned. I had no desire to flaunt my wealth in front of check-out girls.
Nowadays I do my own checking out and the girl just stands there, poised to confirm my age at the critical moment.
Truly the past is another country.
" . . . no desire to flaunt my wealth in front of check-out girls."
Would you object, if yours truly flaunted your wealth? Maybe only on weekends?
Not sure my 'wealth' would last a whole weekend in Seattle.
We passed Hilary Clinton in the lobby when we checked into our hotel in 1994.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
I don't suppose anyone is going to make the same effort for the Palestinian kids currently at risk of being blown to bits in Gaza.
Hamas have said that no-one must leave, even foreign nationals trapped there.
If they changed their attitude, there would be plenty who would seek to help children at risk, including me. Currently I contribute to CAFOD, a Catholic relief charity which works in the area.
But Hamas don't want that do they? They want dead children to use them for propaganda purposes. That is why, as pointed out by an Egyptian journalist, Hamas have built lots of underground tunnels for their fighters but no bomb shelters for Gazan civilians.
I think CAFOD are calling for a ceasefire, like the demonstrators at Liverpool street Station.
As I have said before on here I have grave doubts about whether an invasion of Gaza is the right strategy - not just because of the suffering to innocents - but because I do not see what the answers are to 2 key questions: what does victory look like and what happens after.
This doesn’t really annoy me - very similar things have been said on PB. I think its right that there are no 'unsayable' things in such meetings. I also tend to doubt the accuracy of minutes/notes. We already know where Vallance stood on lockdown - clearly he was a hawk. We don't know why (a cynic could argue he liked the power), but it probably coloured his view.
As someone has already commented, what we should be doing with the enquiry is establishing whether we took the best approach to Covid in the round, and what should the policy be if similar circumstances arise again. It seems to be more an airing of tittle tattle, which is a pity.
Tittle tattle seems to be the general point of interest in enquiries unfortunately. Too many scores to be settled, so even when the enquirers try not to go down that route it is what we mostly get.
Hopefully you get some useful stuff out of an enquiry alongside the headline bickering stuff as well.
Govt policy at the time was explicitly to 'flatten the curve'. In other words, to delay inevitable deaths so they didn't all happen at the same time.
What the Inquiry is showing is a much more complicated picture and considerable debate within government. The policy earlier on was herd immunity. Then the policy moved to flatten the curve. Cummings and others have complained of a lack of consistency in planning.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
It’s an emotionally manipulative question designed to frame the existence of the state of Israel as a wrong to set against the wrong of the holocaust.
It seems a perfectly reasonable question to me. It wasn't the Palestinians behind the Holocaust.
But it wasn't just the Holocaust which led to it. Jews had been moving back to the area for decades before then - and not through conquest but via land purchase - and some had been living there for centuries. The desire for a nation of their own had existed and grown long before the Holocaust.
Would it be embarrassing to mention the role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during WW2? He was perfectly prepared to exploit the Holocaust for his agenda. Palestinians have not been well served by their leaders. It is a tragedy. They keep turning to leaders or groups who use the tactics and language of the Nazis and then wonder why this revolts or turns off so many.
If Palestinians ask why they should suffer for European crimes against Jews it is also reasonable to ask them why they seem so keen to copy the attitudes and views which led to those crimes?
3,452 Palestinian children killed by the IDF since the 7th.
The matter of fact way the IDF confirmed that they hit the refugee camp with zero contrition for civilian deaths was depressing.
A hardening of attitudes has definitely occurred in the aftermath of the massacres. I would imagine it will be quite some time before that changes, and may have further to go, given their opponents started out still more extreme than that.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
It’s an emotionally manipulative question designed to frame the existence of the state of Israel as a wrong to set against the wrong of the holocaust.
It seems a perfectly reasonable question to me. It wasn't the Palestinians behind the Holocaust.
But it wasn't just the Holocaust which led to it. Jews had been moving back to the area for decades before then - and not through conquest but via land purchase - and some had been living there for centuries. The desire for a nation of their own had existed and grown long before the Holocaust.
Would it be embarrassing to mention the role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during WW2? He was perfectly prepared to exploit the Holocaust for his agenda. Palestinians have not been well served by their leaders. It is a tragedy. They keep turning to leaders or groups who use the tactics and language of the Nazis and then wonder why this revolts or turns off so many.
If Palestinians ask why they should suffer for European crimes against Jews it is also reasonable to ask them why they seem so keen to copy the attitudes and views which led to those crimes?
It is not reasonable to treat all Palestinians (or Israelis) as a homogeneous group who must carry the guilt of the worst among them.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
The Mandate was (roughly) 67% Arab and 33% Jew in 1947.
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Especially given how hard it is to even get hold of a £50 note these days.
Some friends gave me a framed £50 note as a present (tarted up by former PB cartoonist Marf, as it happens) but had not realised the Turing note was in general circulation. They thought it was a one-off special (as with stamps and 50p pieces) so bought one at a high premium from Ebay.
I've never seen a £50 note. What would it look like? How would I know if it was real?
Do they still print 500 Euro notes as a convenience for gangsters?
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
I don't suppose anyone is going to make the same effort for the Palestinian kids currently at risk of being blown to bits in Gaza.
Hamas have said that no-one must leave, even foreign nationals trapped there.
If they changed their attitude, there would be plenty who would seek to help children at risk, including me. Currently I contribute to CAFOD, a Catholic relief charity which works in the area.
But Hamas don't want that do they? They want dead children to use them for propaganda purposes. That is why, as pointed out by an Egyptian journalist, Hamas have built lots of underground tunnels for their fighters but no bomb shelters for Gazan civilians.
I think CAFOD are calling for a ceasefire, like the demonstrators at Liverpool street Station.
As I have said before on here I have grave doubts about whether an invasion of Gaza is the right strategy - not just because of the suffering to innocents - but because I do not see what the answers are to 2 key questions: what does victory look like and what happens after.
In the absence of a viable Palestinian State*, which has been rejected by Netanyahu, the only alternatives are the destruction/expulsion of the Palestinians as a people or continued oppressive occupation by the IDF.
*I see this as the only solution, but one needing to be tempered by a UN Mandate and peace keeping force, for the security of both Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
Seems a coalition of peacekeepers (Arab, US, UK etc) could be sent into Gaza post harrowing. I think we'd have to be mad to start patrolling the city, catching all the blowback/IEDs.
Where is that being suggested? Bonkers. No way the British Army should get involved there.
Sounds like the least-worst option.
How so?
None of the suggested peacekeepers would want to be there, it would not reduce tensions in any way, and so would just eat up men and materiel.
I'll grant I can't think of any good options right now either, which is why I have not been made Emperor of the Earth since anyone who could do it would deserve that accolade, but it still sounds nightmarish as an option.
Whether it would reduce tensions depends what the alternative is. Gaza policed by Hamas sounds like a tense affair because they'd be constantly at war with their much more military powerful neighbour, and Gaza policed by Israel would be awkward because the Gazans know that the Israelis who are policing them are trying to steal their territory, which would also not be relaxing.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
A future German irredentist leader could make the same argument. Would you support him or her or should Germany accept that what's done is done?
Dom looking a bit flabby, the lean and hungry look suited him more. Peak maverick posho though; crumpled linen jacket, un-ironed shirt with gold cuff links (no doubt heirlooms), black tie probably avec soup stains.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
A future German irredentist leader could make the same argument. Would you support him or her or should Germany accept that what's done is done?
What's the German equivalent of Gaza or the West Bank?
The IDF should be judged by a different standard . Hamas are a terrorist group and no one is disputing they are evil . The IDF are not a terrorist group and should be held to a higher standard .
Criticism of their actions is perfectly legitimate.
The IDF seem to be blaming civilians for not heading south to alleged safety . The victim blaming might have been less nauseating if the IDF hadn’t bombed the south or provided an incentive as in allowing sufficient aid in .
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
I don't suppose anyone is going to make the same effort for the Palestinian kids currently at risk of being blown to bits in Gaza.
Hamas have said that no-one must leave, even foreign nationals trapped there.
If they changed their attitude, there would be plenty who would seek to help children at risk, including me. Currently I contribute to CAFOD, a Catholic relief charity which works in the area.
But Hamas don't want that do they? They want dead children to use them for propaganda purposes. That is why, as pointed out by an Egyptian journalist, Hamas have built lots of underground tunnels for their fighters but no bomb shelters for Gazan civilians.
I think CAFOD are calling for a ceasefire, like the demonstrators at Liverpool street Station.
As I have said before on here I have grave doubts about whether an invasion of Gaza is the right strategy - not just because of the suffering to innocents - but because I do not see what the answers are to 2 key questions: what does victory look like and what happens after.
In the absence of a viable Palestinian State*, which has been rejected by Netanyahu, the only alternatives are the destruction/expulsion of the Palestinians as a people or continued oppressive occupation by the IDF.
*I see this as the only solution, but one needing to be tempered by a UN Mandate and peace keeping force, for the security of both Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
The alternative:
So I have sympathy for the terrible choices that Israel’s government faced after the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. But it was precisely because I closely followed Singh’s unique reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attack that I immediately advocated a much more targeted, fully thought-through response by Israel. It should have called this Operation Save Our Hostages and focused on capturing and killing the kidnappers of children and grandparents. Every parent could understand that.
Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government immediately raced into a plan to, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it, “wipe out” Hamas “from the face of the earth.” And in three weeks Israel has inflicted easily more than triple the number of civilian casualties and caused far more destruction in Gaza than Israel suffered, while committing itself to taking military control of Gaza — an operation, on a relative population basis, that is roughly equivalent to the United States deciding almost overnight to occupy half of Mexico.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
A future German irredentist leader could make the same argument. Would you support him or her or should Germany accept that what's done is done?
What's the German equivalent of Gaza or the West Bank?
They were expelled from them long ago, which perhaps shows that changing the facts on the ground is a route to a long-term solution.
Seems a coalition of peacekeepers (Arab, US, UK etc) could be sent into Gaza post harrowing. I think we'd have to be mad to start patrolling the city, catching all the blowback/IEDs.
Where is that being suggested? Bonkers. No way the British Army should get involved there.
Sounds like the least-worst option.
How so?
None of the suggested peacekeepers would want to be there, it would not reduce tensions in any way, and so would just eat up men and materiel.
I'll grant I can't think of any good options right now either, which is why I have not been made Emperor of the Earth since anyone who could do it would deserve that accolade, but it still sounds nightmarish as an option.
Whether it would reduce tensions depends what the alternative is. Gaza policed by Hamas sounds like a tense affair because they'd be constantly at war with their much more military powerful neighbour, and Gaza policed by Israel would be awkward because the Gazans know that the Israelis who are policing them are trying to steal their territory, which would also not be relaxing.
Peacekeeping seems to be a fairly wretched and pointless endeavour. There are supposedly Irish peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, alongside some poor soldiers from other countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia, and every time Hezbollah and Israel start shooting at each other the peacekeepers have to hunker down in their bunkers until it's over.
It's not obvious what good they are doing by being there.
This doesn’t really annoy me - very similar things have been said on PB. I think its right that there are no 'unsayable' things in such meetings. I also tend to doubt the accuracy of minutes/notes. We already know where Vallance stood on lockdown - clearly he was a hawk. We don't know why (a cynic could argue he liked the power), but it probably coloured his view.
As someone has already commented, what we should be doing with the enquiry is establishing whether we took the best approach to Covid in the round, and what should the policy be if similar circumstances arise again. It seems to be more an airing of tittle tattle, which is a pity.
Journalists may pick out certain parts because they make good headlines, but you can watch a live feed of the hearings, and it’s not about tittle tattle. They are doing detailed questioning of key figures. They have amassed huge volumes of evidence, This is a serious enterprise.
Quantity does not equal quality. If we get solid, data-backed conclusions on whether the major policies of our Government and the way they were implemented by the civil service were effective, timely and non-damaging, I will be shocked.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
Which was the plan with UN 181. Which the Arab world rejected.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
The idea that Palestinians are latecomers to the area compared to the Jews is dubious, and a line that can be pushed by those who want to “other” the Palestinians. Numerous genetic studies show that the Palestinians, by and large, are not later immigrants. They are the descendants of the same historical population as today’s Jewish population. The Palestinians are the Jews that stayed in the area, but converted to Christianity and then Islam. The likes of David Ben-Gurion was saying this in the early 20th century, when he presumed, with a certain naive colonialist optimism, that the local population would embrace the Zionists as brothers.
Wikipedia quotes some recent papers: “According to a study published in June 2017 by Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler, Mehdi Pirooznia, and Eran Elhaik in Frontiers in Genetics, "in a principal component analysis (PCA) [of DNA], the ancient Levantines [from the Natufian and Neolithic periods] clustered predominantly with modern-day Palestinians and Bedouins..."[87] In a study published in August 2017 by Marc Haber et al. in The American Journal of Human Genetics, the authors concluded that "The overlap between the Bronze Age and present-day Levantines suggests a degree of genetic continuity in the region."[88]”
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
It’s an emotionally manipulative question designed to frame the existence of the state of Israel as a wrong to set against the wrong of the holocaust.
It seems a perfectly reasonable question to me. It wasn't the Palestinians behind the Holocaust.
But it wasn't just the Holocaust which led to it. Jews had been moving back to the area for decades before then - and not through conquest but via land purchase - and some had been living there for centuries. The desire for a nation of their own had existed and grown long before the Holocaust.
Would it be embarrassing to mention the role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during WW2? He was perfectly prepared to exploit the Holocaust for his agenda. Palestinians have not been well served by their leaders. It is a tragedy. They keep turning to leaders or groups who use the tactics and language of the Nazis and then wonder why this revolts or turns off so many.
If Palestinians ask why they should suffer for European crimes against Jews it is also reasonable to ask them why they seem so keen to copy the attitudes and views which led to those crimes?
Even talking about "European crimes against the Jews" is misleading. The Arab world - including the Palestinians - were allied with those Europeans whilst said crimes were being committed (presuming we are specifically talking about the Holocaust, not the various other crimes of the last millennium), gleefully celebrated them, and has been actively looking for an opportunity to go one step further ever since.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
Which is precisely why a 2-state solution was offered.And why this needs to be put back on the table now.As I suggested in one of my very early posts on this here some 3 weeks ago. Not that my views matter.
But the Jews were the people of that land too - indeed indigenous to that land - and denying this is wrong. And the Palestinians need to accept the consequences of their own fatefully stupid decision to reject the state created for them all those years ago.
We are not starting from 1948 any more. But from where we are now. It is going to a hell of a lot to persuade Israel to give up land for peace. Look what it got them before 7 October. Now add 7 October into the mix. Plus the pain of Palestinians.
I might - before I go to bed - suggest to Palestinians and their supporters that celebrating barbaric murders as "inspirational" is not the way to go. I would not want to have such people as neighbours. Would you?
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
Which was the plan with UN 181. Which the Arab world rejected.
Do the actions of people 70 years ago remove right of self determination of Palestinians today?
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Especially given how hard it is to even get hold of a £50 note these days.
Some friends gave me a framed £50 note as a present (tarted up by former PB cartoonist Marf, as it happens) but had not realised the Turing note was in general circulation. They thought it was a one-off special (as with stamps and 50p pieces) so bought one at a high premium from Ebay.
I've never seen a £50 note. What would it look like? How would I know if it was real?
Do they still print 500 Euro notes as a convenience for gangsters?
It's odd. A £20 in my youth is worth about £50 in today's money, and they were common. I wonder why the £50 never became common.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
Which is precisely why a 2-state solution was offered.And why this needs to be put back on the table now.As I suggested in one of my very early posts on this here some 3 weeks ago. Not that my views matter.
But the Jews were the people of that land too - indeed indigenous to that land - and denying this is wrong. And the Palestinians need to accept the consequences of their own fatefully stupid decision to reject the state created for them all those years ago.
We are not starting from 1948 any more. But from where we are now. It is going to a hell of a lot to persuade Israel to give up land for peace. Look what it got them before 7 October. Now add 7 October into the mix. Plus the pain of Palestinians.
I might - before I go to bed - suggest to Palestinians and their supporters that celebrating barbaric murders as "inspirational" is not the way to go. I would not want to have such people as neighbours. Would you?
"We are not starting from 1948 any more. But from where we are now."
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
The idea that Palestinians are latecomers to the area compared to the Jews is dubious, and a line that can be pushed by those who want to “other” the Palestinians. Numerous genetic studies show that the Palestinians, by and large, are not later immigrants. They are the descendants of the same historical population as today’s Jewish population. The Palestinians are the Jews that stayed in the area, but converted to Christianity and then Islam. The likes of David Ben-Gurion was saying this in the early 20th century, when he presumed, with a certain naive colonialist optimism, that the local population would embrace the Zionists as brothers.
Wikipedia quotes some recent papers: “According to a study published in June 2017 by Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler, Mehdi Pirooznia, and Eran Elhaik in Frontiers in Genetics, "in a principal component analysis (PCA) [of DNA], the ancient Levantines [from the Natufian and Neolithic periods] clustered predominantly with modern-day Palestinians and Bedouins..."[87] In a study published in August 2017 by Marc Haber et al. in The American Journal of Human Genetics, the authors concluded that "The overlap between the Bronze Age and present-day Levantines suggests a degree of genetic continuity in the region."[88]”
This brings to mind 'From Time Immemorial' - probably the most notorious historical hoax on this subject.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
Which was the plan with UN 181. Which the Arab world rejected.
Jews were only 33% of the Mandate population, but UN 181 gave them 56% of the land.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
Which is precisely why a 2-state solution was offered.And why this needs to be put back on the table now.As I suggested in one of my very early posts on this here some 3 weeks ago. Not that my views matter.
But the Jews were the people of that land too - indeed indigenous to that land - and denying this is wrong. And the Palestinians need to accept the consequences of their own fatefully stupid decision to reject the state created for them all those years ago.
We are not starting from 1948 any more. But from where we are now. It is going to a hell of a lot to persuade Israel to give up land for peace. Look what it got them before 7 October. Now add 7 October into the mix. Plus the pain of Palestinians.
I might - before I go to bed - suggest to Palestinians and their supporters that celebrating barbaric murders as "inspirational" is not the way to go. I would not want to have such people as neighbours. Would you?
I agree that we have to start from where we are now. You cannot punish the younger generation for the sins of their fathers. Israel should stop illegal settlements in the West Bank, but you can’t just dismantle decades-old towns now. Everything would be simpler had those settlements not been built, if the Oslo accords had worked, if the Arab states hadn’t attacked in 1967, etc. But we are where we are. We can’t just forget the history, and we shouldn’t distort the history, but a peace has to be based in the now.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
Which is precisely why a 2-state solution was offered.And why this needs to be put back on the table now.As I suggested in one of my very early posts on this here some 3 weeks ago. Not that my views matter.
But the Jews were the people of that land too - indeed indigenous to that land - and denying this is wrong. And the Palestinians need to accept the consequences of their own fatefully stupid decision to reject the state created for them all those years ago.
We are not starting from 1948 any more. But from where we are now. It is going to a hell of a lot to persuade Israel to give up land for peace. Look what it got them before 7 October. Now add 7 October into the mix. Plus the pain of Palestinians.
I might - before I go to bed - suggest to Palestinians and their supporters that celebrating barbaric murders as "inspirational" is not the way to go. I would not want to have such people as neighbours. Would you?
3,452 Palestinian children killed by the IDF since the 7th 2,187 Palestinian women killed by the IDF since the 7th
Seems a coalition of peacekeepers (Arab, US, UK etc) could be sent into Gaza post harrowing. I think we'd have to be mad to start patrolling the city, catching all the blowback/IEDs.
Hmmh… British soldiers with an international mandate to keep the peace race in Palestine…
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Ultimate privilege is not having your Coutts account cancelled.
I closed my Coutts account. It's not that good, it is living off the fact the Royals bank with them.
An offshore account with EFG is where it's at if you actually value people who understand money, rather than just want to flex your credit card.
Quiet and discreet are not words I would associate with Coutts, even before the Farage thing.
To be honest I value my AMEX Centurion Charge Card more.
Gets you more benefits than Coutts and their concierge service is the best.
It's also outrageously expensive, and you need to do an awful lot of travel to make the benefits worth the cost.
You’re forgetting the huge value ascribed to boasting about it on an obscure website
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Ultimate privilege is not having your Coutts account cancelled.
I closed my Coutts account. It's not that good, it is living off the fact the Royals bank with them.
An offshore account with EFG is where it's at if you actually value people who understand money, rather than just want to flex your credit card.
Quiet and discreet are not words I would associate with Coutts, even before the Farage thing.
To be honest I value my AMEX Centurion Charge Card more.
Gets you more benefits than Coutts and their concierge service is the best.
It's also outrageously expensive, and you need to do an awful lot of travel to make the benefits worth the cost.
You’re forgetting the huge value ascribed to boasting about it on an obscure website
I have a friend with the £595 version. Used to be good for getting into airport lounges, but then they made cardholders pay for guests.
NEW: Blackburn Councillors who left the Labour Party over @Keir_Starmer's comments on Gaza have formed a new political party. The new group of 9 consists of:
Suleman Khonat Salim Sidat Salma Patel Akhtar Hussain Irfan Malik Shamim Desai Saj Ali Mustafa Desai Abdul Patel
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Especially given how hard it is to even get hold of a £50 note these days.
Some friends gave me a framed £50 note as a present (tarted up by former PB cartoonist Marf, as it happens) but had not realised the Turing note was in general circulation. They thought it was a one-off special (as with stamps and 50p pieces) so bought one at a high premium from Ebay.
I've never seen a £50 note. What would it look like? How would I know if it was real?
Do they still print 500 Euro notes as a convenience for gangsters?
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
Which is precisely why a 2-state solution was offered.And why this needs to be put back on the table now.As I suggested in one of my very early posts on this here some 3 weeks ago. Not that my views matter.
But the Jews were the people of that land too - indeed indigenous to that land - and denying this is wrong. And the Palestinians need to accept the consequences of their own fatefully stupid decision to reject the state created for them all those years ago.
We are not starting from 1948 any more. But from where we are now. It is going to a hell of a lot to persuade Israel to give up land for peace. Look what it got them before 7 October. Now add 7 October into the mix. Plus the pain of Palestinians.
I might - before I go to bed - suggest to Palestinians and their supporters that celebrating barbaric murders as "inspirational" is not the way to go. I would not want to have such people as neighbours. Would you?
3,452 Palestinian children killed by the IDF since the 7th 2,187 Palestinian women killed by the IDF since the 7th
They're only Palestinians though. No-one gives a fuck about them. Go IDF!
Liz Truss is slowly winning the argument - let's just rejoice at that news.
Her problem was she slashed tax with Kwarteng without also deep cuts to spending, hence the markets crashed and inflation and interest rates and borrowing grew
"Nowcast The net of all this is that my sense is that if there were an election tomorrow, Labour would get in the order of 425–450 seats and the Conservatives 110–135 seats."
This one in particular appears to repudiate the previous thirty.
Liz Truss is slowly winning the argument - let's just rejoice at that news.
Her problem was she slashed tax with Kwarteng without also deep cuts to spending, hence the markets crashed and inflation and interest rates and borrowing grew
She rushed at her entire agenda as if she only had around nine days to implement the whole lot.
Seems a coalition of peacekeepers (Arab, US, UK etc) could be sent into Gaza post harrowing. I think we'd have to be mad to start patrolling the city, catching all the blowback/IEDs.
Where is that being suggested? Bonkers. No way the British Army should get involved there.
Sounds like the least-worst option.
How so?
None of the suggested peacekeepers would want to be there, it would not reduce tensions in any way, and so would just eat up men and materiel.
I'll grant I can't think of any good options right now either, which is why I have not been made Emperor of the Earth since anyone who could do it would deserve that accolade, but it still sounds nightmarish as an option.
Whether it would reduce tensions depends what the alternative is. Gaza policed by Hamas sounds like a tense affair because they'd be constantly at war with their much more military powerful neighbour, and Gaza policed by Israel would be awkward because the Gazans know that the Israelis who are policing them are trying to steal their territory, which would also not be relaxing.
Peacekeeping seems to be a fairly wretched and pointless endeavour. There are supposedly Irish peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, alongside some poor soldiers from other countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia, and every time Hezbollah and Israel start shooting at each other the peacekeepers have to hunker down in their bunkers until it's over.
It's not obvious what good they are doing by being there.
An interesting thesis for a play. An Irish and Bangladeshi peacekeeper find themselves holed up in a bunker as Israeli and Palestinian rockets explode overhead. They ruminate about the partitions that created their own countries as the British empire receded in mid-20th century. Ireland and Bangladesh are now so peaceful they can afford to spare soldiers to keep the peace elsewhere. Why did it all go so badly wrong in Palestine?
NEW: Blackburn Councillors who left the Labour Party over @Keir_Starmer's comments on Gaza have formed a new political party. The new group of 9 consists of:
Suleman Khonat Salim Sidat Salma Patel Akhtar Hussain Irfan Malik Shamim Desai Saj Ali Mustafa Desai Abdul Patel
Taj Ali @Taj_Ali1 · 2h There are rumours of national coordination and an electoral challenge to the Labour Party in at least a dozen parliamentary constituencies.
NEW: Blackburn Councillors who left the Labour Party over @Keir_Starmer's comments on Gaza have formed a new political party. The new group of 9 consists of:
Suleman Khonat Salim Sidat Salma Patel Akhtar Hussain Irfan Malik Shamim Desai Saj Ali Mustafa Desai Abdul Patel
Taj Ali @Taj_Ali1 · 2h There are rumours of national coordination and an electoral challenge to the Labour Party in at least a dozen parliamentary constituencies.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
The idea that Palestinians are latecomers to the area compared to the Jews is dubious, and a line that can be pushed by those who want to “other” the Palestinians. Numerous genetic studies show that the Palestinians, by and large, are not later immigrants. They are the descendants of the same historical population as today’s Jewish population. The Palestinians are the Jews that stayed in the area, but converted to Christianity and then Islam. The likes of David Ben-Gurion was saying this in the early 20th century, when he presumed, with a certain naive colonialist optimism, that the local population would embrace the Zionists as brothers.
Wikipedia quotes some recent papers: “According to a study published in June 2017 by Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler, Mehdi Pirooznia, and Eran Elhaik in Frontiers in Genetics, "in a principal component analysis (PCA) [of DNA], the ancient Levantines [from the Natufian and Neolithic periods] clustered predominantly with modern-day Palestinians and Bedouins..."[87] In a study published in August 2017 by Marc Haber et al. in The American Journal of Human Genetics, the authors concluded that "The overlap between the Bronze Age and present-day Levantines suggests a degree of genetic continuity in the region."[88]”
It’s almost as if the two tribes were descended from half brothers…
Seems a coalition of peacekeepers (Arab, US, UK etc) could be sent into Gaza post harrowing. I think we'd have to be mad to start patrolling the city, catching all the blowback/IEDs.
Where is that being suggested? Bonkers. No way the British Army should get involved there.
Sounds like the least-worst option.
How so?
None of the suggested peacekeepers would want to be there, it would not reduce tensions in any way, and so would just eat up men and materiel.
I'll grant I can't think of any good options right now either, which is why I have not been made Emperor of the Earth since anyone who could do it would deserve that accolade, but it still sounds nightmarish as an option.
Whether it would reduce tensions depends what the alternative is. Gaza policed by Hamas sounds like a tense affair because they'd be constantly at war with their much more military powerful neighbour, and Gaza policed by Israel would be awkward because the Gazans know that the Israelis who are policing them are trying to steal their territory, which would also not be relaxing.
Peacekeeping seems to be a fairly wretched and pointless endeavour. There are supposedly Irish peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, alongside some poor soldiers from other countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia, and every time Hezbollah and Israel start shooting at each other the peacekeepers have to hunker down in their bunkers until it's over.
It's not obvious what good they are doing by being there.
An interesting thesis for a play. An Irish and Bangladeshi peacekeeper find themselves holed up in a bunker as Israeli and Palestinian rockets explode overhead. They ruminate about the partitions that created their own countries as the British empire receded in mid-20th century. Ireland and Bangladesh are now so peaceful they can afford to spare soldiers to keep the peace elsewhere. Why did it all go so badly wrong in Palestine?
They wouldn't let Jonathan Powell negotiate a peace deal?
Seems a coalition of peacekeepers (Arab, US, UK etc) could be sent into Gaza post harrowing. I think we'd have to be mad to start patrolling the city, catching all the blowback/IEDs.
Where is that being suggested? Bonkers. No way the British Army should get involved there.
Sounds like the least-worst option.
How so?
None of the suggested peacekeepers would want to be there, it would not reduce tensions in any way, and so would just eat up men and materiel.
I'll grant I can't think of any good options right now either, which is why I have not been made Emperor of the Earth since anyone who could do it would deserve that accolade, but it still sounds nightmarish as an option.
Whether it would reduce tensions depends what the alternative is. Gaza policed by Hamas sounds like a tense affair because they'd be constantly at war with their much more military powerful neighbour, and Gaza policed by Israel would be awkward because the Gazans know that the Israelis who are policing them are trying to steal their territory, which would also not be relaxing.
Peacekeeping seems to be a fairly wretched and pointless endeavour. There are supposedly Irish peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, alongside some poor soldiers from other countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia, and every time Hezbollah and Israel start shooting at each other the peacekeepers have to hunker down in their bunkers until it's over.
It's not obvious what good they are doing by being there.
An interesting thesis for a play. An Irish and Bangladeshi peacekeeper find themselves holed up in a bunker as Israeli and Palestinian rockets explode overhead. They ruminate about the partitions that created their own countries as the British empire receded in mid-20th century. Ireland and Bangladesh are now so peaceful they can afford to spare soldiers to keep the peace elsewhere. Why did it all go so badly wrong in Palestine?
One side rejected the partition deal, and tried (repeatedly) to genocide the other side. It isn't complicated.
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Ultimate privilege is not having your Coutts account cancelled.
I closed my Coutts account. It's not that good, it is living off the fact the Royals bank with them.
An offshore account with EFG is where it's at if you actually value people who understand money, rather than just want to flex your credit card.
Quiet and discreet are not words I would associate with Coutts, even before the Farage thing.
To be honest I value my AMEX Centurion Charge Card more.
Gets you more benefits than Coutts and their concierge service is the best.
It's also outrageously expensive, and you need to do an awful lot of travel to make the benefits worth the cost.
You’re forgetting the huge value ascribed to boasting about it on an obscure website
I have a friend with the £595 version. Used to be good for getting into airport lounges, but then they made cardholders pay for guests.
The Centurion Lounges are generally excellent, and you also get access to the Priority Pass network. So, if you travel a lot (like flying every week) and don't get airline lounge access, then the Platinum Card makes a lot of sense. I've also managed to snag some seriously discounted business class flights.
But you get all that for £600 with the Platinum card; there's not a lot extra for the additional £3,000 for the Centurion.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library there were just 5 000 Jews in a population of around 300 000 in 1517, and only 60 000 in a population of 600 000 in 1918.
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
A future German irredentist leader could make the same argument. Would you support him or her or should Germany accept that what's done is done?
What's the German equivalent of Gaza or the West Bank?
They were expelled from them long ago, which perhaps shows that changing the facts on the ground is a route to a long-term solution.
If the only way to redraw boundaries is through violence changing the facts on the ground, then one is agreeing with the fanatics on both sides.
If the answer is genocide then we are asking the wrong question.
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Ultimate privilege is not having your Coutts account cancelled.
I closed my Coutts account. It's not that good, it is living off the fact the Royals bank with them.
An offshore account with EFG is where it's at if you actually value people who understand money, rather than just want to flex your credit card.
Quiet and discreet are not words I would associate with Coutts, even before the Farage thing.
To be honest I value my AMEX Centurion Charge Card more.
Gets you more benefits than Coutts and their concierge service is the best.
It's also outrageously expensive, and you need to do an awful lot of travel to make the benefits worth the cost.
You’re forgetting the huge value ascribed to boasting about it on an obscure website
I have a friend with the £595 version. Used to be good for getting into airport lounges, but then they made cardholders pay for guests.
The Centurion Lounges are generally excellent, and you also get access to the Priority Pass network. So, if you travel a lot (like flying every week) and don't get airline lounge access, then the Platinum Card makes a lot of sense. I've also managed to snag some seriously discounted business class flights.
But you get all that for £600 with the Platinum card; there's not a lot extra for the additional £3,000 for the Centurion.
I have the standard Priority Pass membership. £60 a year gets you £20 lounge access, so 5 lounges a year puts you in profit.
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Ultimate privilege is not having your Coutts account cancelled.
I closed my Coutts account. It's not that good, it is living off the fact the Royals bank with them.
An offshore account with EFG is where it's at if you actually value people who understand money, rather than just want to flex your credit card.
Quiet and discreet are not words I would associate with Coutts, even before the Farage thing.
To be honest I value my AMEX Centurion Charge Card more.
Gets you more benefits than Coutts and their concierge service is the best.
It's also outrageously expensive, and you need to do an awful lot of travel to make the benefits worth the cost.
You’re forgetting the huge value ascribed to boasting about it on an obscure website
I have a friend with the £595 version. Used to be good for getting into airport lounges, but then they made cardholders pay for guests.
The Centurion Lounges are generally excellent, and you also get access to the Priority Pass network. So, if you travel a lot (like flying every week) and don't get airline lounge access, then the Platinum Card makes a lot of sense. I've also managed to snag some seriously discounted business class flights.
But you get all that for £600 with the Platinum card; there's not a lot extra for the additional £3,000 for the Centurion.
I have the standard Priority Pass membership. £60 a year gets you £20 lounge access, so 5 lounges a year puts you in profit.
Sounds like The Screaming Eagles is being ripped off. Easy come, easy go!
Wasn't that the policy we all eventually accepted? In the teeth of the CSAs of this world, who by and large supported locking up young people and making them pay the bill for Covid lockdowns by borrowing to the tune of 5-8% of national income per year?
Seems a coalition of peacekeepers (Arab, US, UK etc) could be sent into Gaza post harrowing. I think we'd have to be mad to start patrolling the city, catching all the blowback/IEDs.
Where is that being suggested? Bonkers. No way the British Army should get involved there.
Sounds like the least-worst option.
How so?
None of the suggested peacekeepers would want to be there, it would not reduce tensions in any way, and so would just eat up men and materiel.
I'll grant I can't think of any good options right now either, which is why I have not been made Emperor of the Earth since anyone who could do it would deserve that accolade, but it still sounds nightmarish as an option.
Whether it would reduce tensions depends what the alternative is. Gaza policed by Hamas sounds like a tense affair because they'd be constantly at war with their much more military powerful neighbour, and Gaza policed by Israel would be awkward because the Gazans know that the Israelis who are policing them are trying to steal their territory, which would also not be relaxing.
Peacekeeping seems to be a fairly wretched and pointless endeavour. There are supposedly Irish peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, alongside some poor soldiers from other countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia, and every time Hezbollah and Israel start shooting at each other the peacekeepers have to hunker down in their bunkers until it's over.
It's not obvious what good they are doing by being there.
Well, it's probably not to jump in the way of missiles, which is the current stage of combat between the two sides.
The global peacekeepers thing is a crap idea. There ought to be an Arab League peacekeeping force. Its long time that Egypt, Saudi, the UAE and others picked up responsibility for Palestinian stability and security.
To sweeten that deal, Israel needs to make compromises on a two state solution, including assurances around the future of the West Bank.
The global peacekeepers thing is a crap idea. There ought to be an Arab League peacekeeping force. Its long time that Egypt, Saudi, the UAE and others picked up responsibility for Palestinian stability and security.
To sweeten that deal, Israel needs to make compromises on a two state solution, including assurances around the future of the West Bank.
Those countries ought to do the job, but they almost certainly won't.
The global peacekeepers thing is a crap idea. There ought to be an Arab League peacekeeping force. Its long time that Egypt, Saudi, the UAE and others picked up responsibility for Palestinian stability and security.
To sweeten that deal, Israel needs to make compromises on a two state solution, including assurances around the future of the West Bank.
Personally, I would go with a Muslim force from outside the Middle East - maybe Malaysia
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Ultimate privilege is not having your Coutts account cancelled.
I closed my Coutts account. It's not that good, it is living off the fact the Royals bank with them.
An offshore account with EFG is where it's at if you actually value people who understand money, rather than just want to flex your credit card.
Quiet and discreet are not words I would associate with Coutts, even before the Farage thing.
To be honest I value my AMEX Centurion Charge Card more.
Gets you more benefits than Coutts and their concierge service is the best.
It's also outrageously expensive, and you need to do an awful lot of travel to make the benefits worth the cost.
You’re forgetting the huge value ascribed to boasting about it on an obscure website
I have a friend with the £595 version. Used to be good for getting into airport lounges, but then they made cardholders pay for guests.
The Centurion Lounges are generally excellent, and you also get access to the Priority Pass network. So, if you travel a lot (like flying every week) and don't get airline lounge access, then the Platinum Card makes a lot of sense. I've also managed to snag some seriously discounted business class flights.
But you get all that for £600 with the Platinum card; there's not a lot extra for the additional £3,000 for the Centurion.
I have the standard Priority Pass membership. £60 a year gets you £20 lounge access, so 5 lounges a year puts you in profit.
The Centurion Lounges are massively superior to the Priority Pass ones, with great food and drinks.
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Ultimate privilege is not having your Coutts account cancelled.
I closed my Coutts account. It's not that good, it is living off the fact the Royals bank with them.
An offshore account with EFG is where it's at if you actually value people who understand money, rather than just want to flex your credit card.
Quiet and discreet are not words I would associate with Coutts, even before the Farage thing.
To be honest I value my AMEX Centurion Charge Card more.
Gets you more benefits than Coutts and their concierge service is the best.
It's also outrageously expensive, and you need to do an awful lot of travel to make the benefits worth the cost.
You’re forgetting the huge value ascribed to boasting about it on an obscure website
I have a friend with the £595 version. Used to be good for getting into airport lounges, but then they made cardholders pay for guests.
The Centurion Lounges are generally excellent, and you also get access to the Priority Pass network. So, if you travel a lot (like flying every week) and don't get airline lounge access, then the Platinum Card makes a lot of sense. I've also managed to snag some seriously discounted business class flights.
But you get all that for £600 with the Platinum card; there's not a lot extra for the additional £3,000 for the Centurion.
I believe the value of the centurion card - I know a couple of people who have them - is their concierge service can get you things in the UK you couldn't otherwise get. Last minute tickets to the opera that was sold out months ago, tables at Mayfair night clubs that otherwise wouldn't allow you entrance, and so on. Whether that is worth the cost is entirely a personal thing, as you have to spend *a lot* to qualify for it. But it is useful for more than just airport lounges.
Not something I have, or would even want, as you have to spend *a lot* to qualify (and on luxury items, too - they evaluate your spending patterns before offering you one). But if you do, the concierge service is definitely useful, and I have watched it open doors that are otherwise firmly closed... but it is definitely a card that has more use than just bragging rights.
The global peacekeepers thing is a crap idea. There ought to be an Arab League peacekeeping force. Its long time that Egypt, Saudi, the UAE and others picked up responsibility for Palestinian stability and security.
To sweeten that deal, Israel needs to make compromises on a two state solution, including assurances around the future of the West Bank.
Those countries ought to do the job, but they almost certainly won't.
Saudi defence minister has just turned up in Washington, to meet an American delegation including Blinken.
My suspicion is that the Gulf states don’t want this to escalate any further than it has already, and see the opportunity to get everyone around the table. The aim will be both to secure a solution in Israel and Gaza, and to put an increasingly recalcitrant Iran firmly back in their box.
As always, a lot of realpolitik in this part of the world though, the Amercians will want to see the Saudis stop conspiring with Russia to hold up the oil price, and the Saudis will want a good deal on their next tranche of F-35s, especially as the Germans have just blocked Typhoon exports to them.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
The subtexts to the question are that (a) Jews should not have been allowed to emigrate to Palestine, in the decades prior to 1948 and/or (b) they ought to have been expelled from the land in the 1940’s.
Liz Truss is slowly winning the argument - let's just rejoice at that news.
Her problem was she slashed tax with Kwarteng without also deep cuts to spending, hence the markets crashed and inflation and interest rates and borrowing grew
I don't think that was the main problem - France, Italy, Japan and the United States get away with much higher debt levels than we would have reached in the medium term with her 1.5% of GDP tax cuts. She signalled over the summer that she was going to cut taxes without cutting spending during the leadership campaign, and the markets shrugged, both at the time and when she was elected. I think the main reasons she got into trouble were fourfold.
Firstly, she did everything at once, rather than be irresponsible slowly over decades, like those other countries. Secondly, she did so without publishing information. Markets hate uncertainty more than anything else, and for some reason they tend to assign a completely unrealistic and undeserved level of importance to government economic forecasts, which at the end of the day are no more than best guesses. Thirdly, her timing was extremely poor. She got into power just as the markets were less willing to fund endless government spending for free. Fourthly, Kwasi unwisely signalled that there was much more to come.
Had she and Kwasi taken a more gradual approach, published credible forecasts, been elected a couple of years earlier and told the markets that the tax cuts were the last until we saw how they worked, the market reaction would have been very different I think.
Liz Truss is slowly winning the argument - let's just rejoice at that news.
Her problem was she slashed tax with Kwarteng without also deep cuts to spending, hence the markets crashed and inflation and interest rates and borrowing grew
I don't think that was the main problem - France, Italy, Japan and the United States get away with much higher debt levels than we would have reached in the medium term with her 1.5% of GDP tax cuts. She signalled over the summer that she was going to cut taxes without cutting spending during the leadership campaign, and the markets shrugged, both at the time and when she was elected. I think the main reasons she got into trouble were fourfold.
Firstly, she did everything at once, rather than be irresponsible slowly over decades, like those other countries. Secondly, she did so without publishing information. Markets hate uncertainty more than anything else, and for some reason they tend to assign a completely unrealistic and undeserved level of importance to government economic forecasts, which at the end of the day are no more than best guesses. Thirdly, her timing was extremely poor. She got into power just as the markets were less willing to fund endless government spending for free. Fourthly, Kwasi unwisely signalled that there was much more to come.
Had she and Kwasi taken a more gradual approach, published credible forecasts, been elected a couple of years earlier and told the markets that the tax cuts were the last until we saw how they worked, the market reaction would have been very different I think.
Just look at the deficits Biden is running and what he’s done to US bond yields. Truss was a moderate in comparison.
Maybe don’t tweet then about Israel and play the both sides crap Jason. You would feel a lot different if you were Jewish. Just listen and maybe you will learn something about how awful Jews are treated. All of sudden people care about palastine? Get lost https://twitter.com/dannygore15/status/1719535228597813324
Thanks. I don’t “both sides,” I just try to share what I think and feel and so far that has upset everyone thoroughly on both sides.
As for the idea that I would understand better if I were Jewish, thanks for the advice.
As always, a lot of realpolitik in this part of the world though, the Amercians will want to see the Saudis stop conspiring with Russia to hold up the oil price, and the Saudis will want a good deal on their next tranche of F-35s, especially as the Germans have just blocked Typhoon exports to them.
The Saudis have never had F-35 and never will if Israel has anything to do with it hence Saudi interest in Rafale F5.
Germany aren't going to cave on Eurofighter in my opinion. It's been a firm NEIN for years from different administrations. Any new Saudi jets would come off the British FAL at Wharton while the German FAL is busy with the Quadriga order so there isn't much commercial incentive for them to capitulate and a lot of countervailing political pressure to keep saying no.
British Typhoon assembly will finish with the last Qatari delivery in 2025 if no new orders are forthcoming which is going to be a political migraine for the Labour government as the right wing fuckwit media (DM, Telegraph, etc.) will have a meltdown at the end of combat aircraft production in the UK.
I see Liverpool Street Station has been taken over by a demo tonight.
I wonder if they will notice the statue put up to commemorate the Kindertransport. And ask themselves who those Kinder were and why they came here.
When you speak to Palestinians they ask the very reasonable question "Why should we be deprived of our homes, history and country because of the crimes of Europeans* against the Jews?
*or the Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis etc etc.
The answer to which is two-fold:
(1) Jews are the indigenous people of the area having originated there and been there longer than pretty much any other group, including Palestinians many of whom moved to the area called Palestine from other parts of the Middle Est.
And
(2) That is why the UN proposed two states - and allocated land for a Palestinian state - so that they would have a home. That offer was rejected and the land allocated to the Palestinians stolen by Jordan and Egypt.
(Whether the borders and allocation was fair or viable is another matter. But it is simply not true to say that Palestinians were not offered a state. The world made an attempt to give both groups a state and it is the Palestinians tragedy that they refused that offer and have been trying ever since to get what they could have got more than 70 years ago.)
The idea that Palestinians are latecomers to the area compared to the Jews is dubious, and a line that can be pushed by those who want to “other” the Palestinians. Numerous genetic studies show that the Palestinians, by and large, are not later immigrants. They are the descendants of the same historical population as today’s Jewish population. The Palestinians are the Jews that stayed in the area, but converted to Christianity and then Islam. The likes of David Ben-Gurion was saying this in the early 20th century, when he presumed, with a certain naive colonialist optimism, that the local population would embrace the Zionists as brothers.
Wikipedia quotes some recent papers: “According to a study published in June 2017 by Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler, Mehdi Pirooznia, and Eran Elhaik in Frontiers in Genetics, "in a principal component analysis (PCA) [of DNA], the ancient Levantines [from the Natufian and Neolithic periods] clustered predominantly with modern-day Palestinians and Bedouins..."[87] In a study published in August 2017 by Marc Haber et al. in The American Journal of Human Genetics, the authors concluded that "The overlap between the Bronze Age and present-day Levantines suggests a degree of genetic continuity in the region."[88]”
And conversely, the extent to which - even in medieval times - Ashkenazi Jews descended from ancient Palestine rather than through intermarriage with local populations elsewhere is still a matter of academic controversy.
Govt policy at the time was explicitly to 'flatten the curve'. In other words, to delay inevitable deaths so they didn't all happen at the same time.
What the Inquiry is showing is a much more complicated picture and considerable debate within government. The policy earlier on was herd immunity. Then the policy moved to flatten the curve. Cummings and others have complained of a lack of consistency in planning.
This doesn’t need an inquiry to establish - the very first press conference effectively presented the herd immunity strategy, including actually using those words.
Liz Truss is slowly winning the argument - let's just rejoice at that news.
Her problem was she slashed tax with Kwarteng without also deep cuts to spending, hence the markets crashed and inflation and interest rates and borrowing grew
I don't think that was the main problem - France, Italy, Japan and the United States get away with much higher debt levels than we would have reached in the medium term with her 1.5% of GDP tax cuts. She signalled over the summer that she was going to cut taxes without cutting spending during the leadership campaign, and the markets shrugged, both at the time and when she was elected. I think the main reasons she got into trouble were fourfold.
Firstly, she did everything at once, rather than be irresponsible slowly over decades, like those other countries. Secondly, she did so without publishing information. Markets hate uncertainty more than anything else, and for some reason they tend to assign a completely unrealistic and undeserved level of importance to government economic forecasts, which at the end of the day are no more than best guesses. Thirdly, her timing was extremely poor. She got into power just as the markets were less willing to fund endless government spending for free. Fourthly, Kwasi unwisely signalled that there was much more to come.
Had she and Kwasi taken a more gradual approach, published credible forecasts, been elected a couple of years earlier and told the markets that the tax cuts were the last until we saw how they worked, the market reaction would have been very different I think.
Just look at the deficits Biden is running and what he’s done to US bond yields. Truss was a moderate in comparison.
This right wing revisionism on Truss, aside from being the equivalent of "its was not REAL Socialism", completely misses the point. The US holds a reserve currency, which Sterling is not, so this severely limits what polices Britain can offer versus the USA.
The problem was not that the policy was ineptly presented, as some would have it. It was strategically simply unobtainable, and once the markets latched on to this, the UK Gilts market faced a limitless freefall. As a result, the UK pensions system went into cardiac arrest, and without the emergency action that was taken by the BoE, there would have been a major UK financial crisis on a par with the collapse of Creditanstalt in 1931.
It was not poor presentation that killed Liz Truss´s premiership, it was the reckless incompetence of a government whose ideology was not rooted in economic or financial reality. It changed the idea that Britain would always be a responsible player- to the permanent weakening of our global reputation and credit rating. Truss may have had the shortest term as Prime Minister, but it was a total catastrophe while she was there, and it will take many years before the reputation of UK PLC in the global markets will fully recover, if it ever does.
As for the Tory Party responsible for this fiasco? Hell mend them.
Govt policy at the time was explicitly to 'flatten the curve'. In other words, to delay inevitable deaths so they didn't all happen at the same time.
What the Inquiry is showing is a much more complicated picture and considerable debate within government. The policy earlier on was herd immunity. Then the policy moved to flatten the curve. Cummings and others have complained of a lack of consistency in planning.
This doesn’t need an inquiry to establish - the very first press conference effectively presented the herd immunity strategy, including actually using those words.
And Cummings was busily claiming credit for it.
Interesting to see the papers this morning. The Borisgraph, Times and Mail are laying into Cummings. The Guardian, Express, Mirror and Finanacial Times are laying into Johnson. The Star is hammering both of them.
Govt policy at the time was explicitly to 'flatten the curve'. In other words, to delay inevitable deaths so they didn't all happen at the same time.
What the Inquiry is showing is a much more complicated picture and considerable debate within government. The policy earlier on was herd immunity. Then the policy moved to flatten the curve. Cummings and others have complained of a lack of consistency in planning.
This doesn’t need an inquiry to establish - the very first press conference effectively presented the herd immunity strategy, including actually using those words.
And Cummings was busily claiming credit for it.
Interesting to see the papers this morning. The Borisgraph, Times and Mail are laying into Cummings. The Guardian, Express, Mirror and Finanacial Times are laying into Johnson. The Star is hammering both of them.
They each put the other there. If Cummings is so awful, that’s on Johnson. If Johnson is so awful, that’s on Cummings.
Govt policy at the time was explicitly to 'flatten the curve'. In other words, to delay inevitable deaths so they didn't all happen at the same time.
What the Inquiry is showing is a much more complicated picture and considerable debate within government. The policy earlier on was herd immunity. Then the policy moved to flatten the curve. Cummings and others have complained of a lack of consistency in planning.
This doesn’t need an inquiry to establish - the very first press conference effectively presented the herd immunity strategy, including actually using those words.
And Cummings was busily claiming credit for it.
Interesting to see the papers this morning. The Borisgraph, Times and Mail are laying into Cummings. The Guardian, Express, Mirror and Finanacial Times are laying into Johnson. The Star is hammering both of them.
They each put the other there. If Cummings is so awful, that’s on Johnson. If Johnson is so awful, that’s on Cummings.
No doubt if Johnson had told Cummings he wanted to see a pile of bodies, Cummings's answer would have been the time-honoured "how high?"
Govt policy at the time was explicitly to 'flatten the curve'. In other words, to delay inevitable deaths so they didn't all happen at the same time.
What the Inquiry is showing is a much more complicated picture and considerable debate within government. The policy earlier on was herd immunity. Then the policy moved to flatten the curve. Cummings and others have complained of a lack of consistency in planning.
This doesn’t need an inquiry to establish - the very first press conference effectively presented the herd immunity strategy, including actually using those words.
And Cummings was busily claiming credit for it.
Interesting to see the papers this morning. The Borisgraph, Times and Mail are laying into Cummings. The Guardian, Express, Mirror and Finanacial Times are laying into Johnson. The Star is hammering both of them.
They each put the other there. If Cummings is so awful, that’s on Johnson. If Johnson is so awful, that’s on Cummings.
So of the three papers laying into Cummings, Boris writes for two of them.
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Ultimate privilege is not having your Coutts account cancelled.
That reminds me. I'm being semi-debanked. Barclays is kicking me off Premium back to an ordinary current account.
They seem to be doing this across the board, after 35 years I am getting close to the limit of my tolerance with Barclays-- Any better suggestions?
Liz Truss is slowly winning the argument - let's just rejoice at that news.
Her problem was she slashed tax with Kwarteng without also deep cuts to spending, hence the markets crashed and inflation and interest rates and borrowing grew
I don't think that was the main problem - France, Italy, Japan and the United States get away with much higher debt levels than we would have reached in the medium term with her 1.5% of GDP tax cuts. She signalled over the summer that she was going to cut taxes without cutting spending during the leadership campaign, and the markets shrugged, both at the time and when she was elected. I think the main reasons she got into trouble were fourfold.
Firstly, she did everything at once, rather than be irresponsible slowly over decades, like those other countries. Secondly, she did so without publishing information. Markets hate uncertainty more than anything else, and for some reason they tend to assign a completely unrealistic and undeserved level of importance to government economic forecasts, which at the end of the day are no more than best guesses. Thirdly, her timing was extremely poor. She got into power just as the markets were less willing to fund endless government spending for free. Fourthly, Kwasi unwisely signalled that there was much more to come.
Had she and Kwasi taken a more gradual approach, published credible forecasts, been elected a couple of years earlier and told the markets that the tax cuts were the last until we saw how they worked, the market reaction would have been very different I think.
Just look at the deficits Biden is running and what he’s done to US bond yields. Truss was a moderate in comparison.
This right wing revisionism on Truss, aside from being the equivalent of "its was not REAL Socialism", completely misses the point. The US holds a reserve currency, which Sterling is not, so this severely limits what polices Britain can offer versus the USA.
The problem was not that the policy was ineptly presented, as some would have it. It was strategically simply unobtainable, and once the markets latched on to this, the UK Gilts market faced a limitless freefall. As a result, the UK pensions system went into cardiac arrest, and without the emergency action that was taken by the BoE, there would have been a major UK financial crisis on a par with the collapse of Creditanstalt in 1931.
It was not poor presentation that killed Liz Truss´s premiership, it was the reckless incompetence of a government whose ideology was not rooted in economic or financial reality. It changed the idea that Britain would always be a responsible player- to the permanent weakening of our global reputation and credit rating. Truss may have had the shortest term as Prime Minister, but it was a total catastrophe while she was there, and it will take many years before the reputation of UK PLC in the global markets will fully recover, if it ever does.
As for the Tory Party responsible for this fiasco? Hell mend them.
Nonsense. The UK's reputation and credit rating has not been "permanently" damaged. Standard and Poor and Moody's restored the small cuts to our credit rating that they made in six months in S&P's case and one year in Moody's:
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Especially given how hard it is to even get hold of a £50 note these days.
Some friends gave me a framed £50 note as a present (tarted up by former PB cartoonist Marf, as it happens) but had not realised the Turing note was in general circulation. They thought it was a one-off special (as with stamps and 50p pieces) so bought one at a high premium from Ebay.
I've never seen a £50 note. What would it look like? How would I know if it was real?
Do they still print 500 Euro notes as a convenience for gangsters?
It's odd. A £20 in my youth is worth about £50 in today's money, and they were common. I wonder why the £50 never became common.
I guess because in the meantime cash became barely used for large transactions. I rarely use a £20 note without expecting change. I rarely use a £20 note full stop.
"Nowcast The net of all this is that my sense is that if there were an election tomorrow, Labour would get in the order of 425–450 seats and the Conservatives 110–135 seats."
This one in particular appears to repudiate the previous thirty.
Alastair admits that it is his guessing stick in action.
Nonetheless all the evidence from polling, by-elections and the 2023 Locals puts the Tory seat total in that ballpark. Add in a swingback guess too and you add about 50% more Tory seats.
Sure the data is imperfect, but what else is there to go on?
As always, a lot of realpolitik in this part of the world though, the Amercians will want to see the Saudis stop conspiring with Russia to hold up the oil price, and the Saudis will want a good deal on their next tranche of F-35s, especially as the Germans have just blocked Typhoon exports to them.
The Saudis have never had F-35 and never will if Israel has anything to do with it hence Saudi interest in Rafale F5.
Germany aren't going to cave on Eurofighter in my opinion. It's been a firm NEIN for years from different administrations. Any new Saudi jets would come off the British FAL at Wharton while the German FAL is busy with the Quadriga order so there isn't much commercial incentive for them to capitulate and a lot of countervailing political pressure to keep saying no.
British Typhoon assembly will finish with the last Qatari delivery in 2025 if no new orders are forthcoming which is going to be a political migraine for the Labour government as the right wing fuckwit media (DM, Telegraph, etc.) will have a meltdown at the end of combat aircraft production in the UK.
The Saudis would do better with F16s or whatever replaces them. Even the Pentagon is starting to wonder if the F35 is overengineered and over-expensive, and the Saudis main defence need is air shows and pot shots at Yemen.
Now I have got my ultra privileged card, does this mean I can go around and act like a total knob throwing paint around, holding up traffic, etc and not get punished for it?
Ultimate privilege is burning £50 notes in front of poor/homeless people.
Ultimate privilege is not having your Coutts account cancelled.
That reminds me. I'm being semi-debanked. Barclays is kicking me off Premium back to an ordinary current account.
They seem to be doing this across the board, after 35 years I am getting close to the limit of my tolerance with Barclays-- Any better suggestions?
Nationwide are really good. The are keeping branches open and have helpful staff.
It comes from being a mutual, rather than a way to squeeze every last penny from the customers I suppose.
I'd love those complaining about BJ's words to have all their private correspondence; and those of their friends and colleagues, analysed in anything near this much detail.
If it continues this way, it's going to make any government impossible. How can you make decisions, especially in fraught times, if you know there's a good chance that any comment you make; any glance at the alternatives, will be used in the future against you? Especially when hindsight is added in.
I would want robust debate in government, especially in a crisis. It's perfectly possible to 'sympathise' with a view, whilst eventually rejecting it.
Mutterings on various news platforms that this is spinning out into something regional. Because if Israel wants to take out Hamas it really needs to take out Iran.
CEASEFIRE NOW does what exactly? Brings peace to the region? Or empowers Iran to resource siginficantly more terrorism to rain down on Israel?
I look at the devastation in the refugee camp and recoil in horror. But what am I looking at? A refugee camp - what kind of refugees? Third and fouth generation descendents of the people driven away by Israel. Lots of people need to resettle - but do we have Memel refugee camps in Europe?
There should be no refugee camps - but there are. And it has been bombed. Firstly that demonstrates that the hospital bombing story was a Massive Lie - so anything pumped out by the Gazan Health Ministry should be taken as such unless corroborated by someone who isn't Hamas. Secondly the IDF claim to have killed a chief Hamas commander. Who was deliberately using the civilians as human shields.
Hamas build all these tunnels, yet not a single bomb shelter. Hamas demand that nobody leave, then stick their people and weapons next to children. Then decry the murder of innocents.
For all the people demanding a ceasefire now, how do they see this playing out? Peace?
Comments
Would it be embarrassing to mention the role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during WW2? He was perfectly prepared to exploit the Holocaust for his agenda. Palestinians have not been well served by their leaders. It is a tragedy. They keep turning to leaders or groups who use the tactics and language of the Nazis and then wonder why this revolts or turns off so many.
If Palestinians ask why they should suffer for European crimes against Jews it is also reasonable to ask them why they seem so keen to copy the attitudes and views which led to those crimes?
None of the suggested peacekeepers would want to be there, it would not reduce tensions in any way, and so would just eat up men and materiel.
I'll grant I can't think of any good options right now either, which is why I have not been made Emperor of the Earth since anyone who could do it would deserve that accolade, but it still sounds nightmarish as an option.
We passed Hilary Clinton in the lobby when we checked into our hotel in 1994.
But that was then and this is now.
Hopefully you get some useful stuff out of an enquiry alongside the headline bickering stuff as well.
With your words or wagging tongue"
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present
That Palestinian and other Arab leaders were inept doesn't make the misery of individual Palestinian families deprived of their homes, history and existence as a people any less of a pain.
I fully understand the creation of Israel in response to the wrongs committed against Jews, but that act of creation did commit a wrong against the people of that land.
In the old phrase, two wrongs do not make a right. The tragedy is that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to the land, and those two rights need to be reconciled for any lasting peace.
Do they still print 500 Euro notes as a convenience for gangsters?
*I see this as the only solution, but one needing to be tempered by a UN Mandate and peace keeping force, for the security of both Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
Peak maverick posho though; crumpled linen jacket, un-ironed shirt with gold cuff links (no doubt heirlooms), black tie probably avec soup stains.
Criticism of their actions is perfectly legitimate.
The IDF seem to be blaming civilians for not heading south to alleged safety . The victim blaming might have been less nauseating if the IDF hadn’t bombed the south or provided an incentive as in allowing sufficient aid in .
So I have sympathy for the terrible choices that Israel’s government faced after the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. But it was precisely because I closely followed Singh’s unique reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attack that I immediately advocated a much more targeted, fully thought-through response by Israel. It should have called this Operation Save Our Hostages and focused on capturing and killing the kidnappers of children and grandparents. Every parent could understand that.
Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government immediately raced into a plan to, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it, “wipe out” Hamas “from the face of the earth.” And in three weeks Israel has inflicted easily more than triple the number of civilian casualties and caused far more destruction in Gaza than Israel suffered, while committing itself to taking military control of Gaza — an operation, on a relative population basis, that is roughly equivalent to the United States deciding almost overnight to occupy half of Mexico.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceasefire.html?searchResultPosition=1
It's not obvious what good they are doing by being there.
Wikipedia quotes some recent papers: “According to a study published in June 2017 by Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler, Mehdi Pirooznia, and Eran Elhaik in Frontiers in Genetics, "in a principal component analysis (PCA) [of DNA], the ancient Levantines [from the Natufian and Neolithic periods] clustered predominantly with modern-day Palestinians and Bedouins..."[87] In a study published in August 2017 by Marc Haber et al. in The American Journal of Human Genetics, the authors concluded that "The overlap between the Bronze Age and present-day Levantines suggests a degree of genetic continuity in the region."[88]”
But the Jews were the people of that land too - indeed indigenous to that land - and denying this is wrong. And the Palestinians need to accept the consequences of their own fatefully stupid decision to reject the state created for them all those years ago.
We are not starting from 1948 any more. But from where we are now. It is going to a hell of a lot to persuade Israel to give up land for peace. Look what it got them before 7 October. Now add 7 October into the mix. Plus the pain of Palestinians.
I might - before I go to bed - suggest to Palestinians and their supporters that celebrating barbaric murders as "inspirational" is not the way to go. I would not want to have such people as neighbours. Would you?
See Andrew Roberts in this morning's Telegraph.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Time_Immemorial
Liz Truss is slowly winning the argument - let's just rejoice at that news.
2,187 Palestinian women killed by the IDF since the 7th
I’m getting a sense of De ja vue
https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/endgame-06fe25077201
Her time is now.
@Taj_Ali1
NEW: Blackburn Councillors who left the Labour Party over @Keir_Starmer's comments on Gaza have formed a new political party. The new group of 9 consists of:
Suleman Khonat
Salim Sidat
Salma Patel
Akhtar Hussain
Irfan Malik
Shamim Desai
Saj Ali
Mustafa Desai
Abdul Patel
9:23 PM · Oct 31, 2023
https://twitter.com/Taj_Ali1/status/1719465231003381888
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/polymer-50-pound-note
The net of all this is that my sense is that if there were an election tomorrow, Labour would get in the order of 425–450 seats and the Conservatives 110–135 seats."
This one in particular appears to repudiate the previous thirty.
Which is basically exactly what happened...
Taj Ali
@Taj_Ali1
·
2h
There are rumours of national coordination and an electoral challenge to the Labour Party in at least a dozen parliamentary constituencies.
====
"the newly formed Muslim Brotherhood Party"
Michel Houellebecq, Submission.
But you get all that for £600 with the Platinum card; there's not a lot extra for the additional £3,000 for the Centurion.
If the answer is genocide then we are asking the wrong question.
Easy come, easy go!
What’s shocking is the chaos, piss-poor decision-making, undisciplined communications, etc. Boris helped foster a culture of confusion.
There ought to be an Arab League peacekeeping force.
Its long time that Egypt, Saudi, the UAE and others picked up responsibility for Palestinian stability and security.
To sweeten that deal, Israel needs to make compromises on a two state solution, including assurances around the future of the West Bank.
Not something I have, or would even want, as you have to spend *a lot* to qualify (and on luxury items, too - they evaluate your spending patterns before offering you one). But if you do, the concierge service is definitely useful, and I have watched it open doors that are otherwise firmly closed... but it is definitely a card that has more use than just bragging rights.
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/saudi-arabias-defense-minister-to-travel-to-us-for-gaza-talk
My suspicion is that the Gulf states don’t want this to escalate any further than it has already, and see the opportunity to get everyone around the table. The aim will be both to secure a solution in Israel and Gaza, and to put an increasingly recalcitrant Iran firmly back in their box.
As always, a lot of realpolitik in this part of the world though, the Amercians will want to see the Saudis stop conspiring with Russia to hold up the oil price, and the Saudis will want a good deal on their next tranche of F-35s, especially as the Germans have just blocked Typhoon exports to them.
It was a personal cheque, and the bank was The Bank of England.
Firstly, she did everything at once, rather than be irresponsible slowly over decades, like those other countries. Secondly, she did so without publishing information. Markets hate uncertainty more than anything else, and for some reason they tend to assign a completely unrealistic and undeserved level of importance to government economic forecasts, which at the end of the day are no more than best guesses. Thirdly, her timing was extremely poor. She got into power just as the markets were less willing to fund endless government spending for free. Fourthly, Kwasi unwisely signalled that there was much more to come.
Had she and Kwasi taken a more gradual approach, published credible forecasts, been elected a couple of years earlier and told the markets that the tax cuts were the last until we saw how they worked, the market reaction would have been very different I think.
I’m a non-profit executive and a podcast host, not a politician.
I don’t answer to anyone. I’m just doing my best in general.
https://twitter.com/JasonKander/status/1719531007823540317
Maybe don’t tweet then about Israel and play the both sides crap Jason. You would feel a lot different if you were Jewish. Just listen and maybe you will learn something about how awful Jews are treated. All of sudden people care about palastine? Get lost
https://twitter.com/dannygore15/status/1719535228597813324
Thanks. I don’t “both sides,” I just try to share what I think and feel and so far that has upset everyone thoroughly on both sides.
As for the idea that I would understand better if I were Jewish, thanks for the advice.
I’ll share that with my Rabbi
https://twitter.com/JasonKander/status/1719541083338653742
Germany aren't going to cave on Eurofighter in my opinion. It's been a firm NEIN for years from different administrations. Any new Saudi jets would come off the British FAL at Wharton while the German FAL is busy with the Quadriga order so there isn't much commercial incentive for them to capitulate and a lot of countervailing political pressure to keep saying no.
British Typhoon assembly will finish with the last Qatari delivery in 2025 if no new orders are forthcoming which is going to be a political migraine for the Labour government as the right wing fuckwit media (DM, Telegraph, etc.) will have a meltdown at the end of combat aircraft production in the UK.
The problem was not that the policy was ineptly presented, as some would have it. It was strategically simply unobtainable, and once the markets latched on to this, the UK Gilts market faced a limitless freefall. As a result, the UK pensions system went into cardiac arrest, and without the emergency action that was taken by the BoE, there would have been a major UK financial crisis on a par with the collapse of Creditanstalt in 1931.
It was not poor presentation that killed Liz Truss´s premiership, it was the reckless incompetence of a government whose ideology was not rooted in economic or financial reality. It changed the idea that Britain would always be a responsible player- to the permanent weakening of our global reputation and credit rating. Truss may have had the shortest term as Prime Minister, but it was a total catastrophe while she was there, and it will take many years before the reputation of UK PLC in the global markets will fully recover, if it ever does.
As for the Tory Party responsible for this fiasco? Hell mend them.
Interesting to see the papers this morning. The Borisgraph, Times and Mail are laying into Cummings. The Guardian, Express, Mirror and Finanacial Times are laying into Johnson. The Star is hammering both of them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67175072
UK 10 year gilts currently trade at 4.5%, compared with 4.9% with US 10 year Treasuries, despite higher inflation here:
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/bond/tmbmkgb-10y?countrycode=bx
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/bond/tmubmusd10y?countrycode=bx
And our credit default swaps trade at lower levels than Canada's and the US's, much lower than Italy's though oddly slightly higher than France's:
https://uk.investing.com/rates-bonds/world-cds
It's absolutely right that Truss was no more irresponsible than Biden and Trump have been - her presentation and timing were disastrously bad.
Nonetheless all the evidence from polling, by-elections and the 2023 Locals puts the Tory seat total in that ballpark. Add in a swingback guess too and you add about 50% more Tory seats.
Sure the data is imperfect, but what else is there to go on?
It comes from being a mutual, rather than a way to squeeze every last penny from the customers I suppose.
If it continues this way, it's going to make any government impossible. How can you make decisions, especially in fraught times, if you know there's a good chance that any comment you make; any glance at the alternatives, will be used in the future against you? Especially when hindsight is added in.
I would want robust debate in government, especially in a crisis. It's perfectly possible to 'sympathise' with a view, whilst eventually rejecting it.
Mutterings on various news platforms that this is spinning out into something regional. Because if Israel wants to take out Hamas it really needs to take out Iran.
CEASEFIRE NOW does what exactly? Brings peace to the region? Or empowers Iran to resource siginficantly more terrorism to rain down on Israel?
I look at the devastation in the refugee camp and recoil in horror. But what am I looking at? A refugee camp - what kind of refugees? Third and fouth generation descendents of the people driven away by Israel. Lots of people need to resettle - but do we have Memel refugee camps in Europe?
There should be no refugee camps - but there are. And it has been bombed. Firstly that demonstrates that the hospital bombing story was a Massive Lie - so anything pumped out by the Gazan Health Ministry should be taken as such unless corroborated by someone who isn't Hamas. Secondly the IDF claim to have killed a chief Hamas commander. Who was deliberately using the civilians as human shields.
Hamas build all these tunnels, yet not a single bomb shelter. Hamas demand that nobody leave, then stick their people and weapons next to children. Then decry the murder of innocents.
For all the people demanding a ceasefire now, how do they see this playing out? Peace?