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Polling on yesterday’s man and his next career move – politicalbetting.com
Polling on yesterday’s man and his next career move – politicalbetting.com
Boris Johnson is becoming a TV presenter and commentator on GB News. Do you think this is appropriate or inappropriate?All BritonsAppropriate: 25%Inappropriate: 51%Con votersAppropriate: 42%Inappropriate: 32%https://t.co/L2LmBlU0fs pic.twitter.com/S1D0HZwM60
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The Inquiry is ensuring that what was previously known by most people is now known by everyone.
148grss said:
"An interesting article that also articulates some of my views over the past month that others here have been less than keen on:
https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/no-human-being-can-exist/
SAREE MAKDISI: No Human Being Can Exist
RECENTLY, AN AUSTRALIAN-PALESTINIAN friend of mine was invited to appear on Australia’s national television network to discuss the situation in and around Gaza. His white interviewers posed all the usual questions: Can you defend what we’ve seen from Hamas militants? How has the Palestinian cause been helped by this violence? How can anyone defend the slaughter of young music lovers at a music festival? Do you defend Hamas? They probably expected a defensive reaction from him, but calmly, in his smooth Australian-accented English, my friend had already turned the interview on its head. “I want to know why I’m here today, and why I haven’t been here for the past year,” he said gently.
Apologies if it has already been shared - I've had a busy few days at work so far this week, and so have been more absent then straight after October 7th"
Palestine gets orders of magnitude more political attention and news coverage than most other long term conflicts around the world. I can understand why the interviewee may consider that's still not enough, because they have suffered for decades at the hands both of Israel and their Arab neighbours, but under the surface of this article are some assumptions about race and Israel which could be lifted straight from Baddiel's Jews don't count book.
"His white interviewers" tees up the narrative early on. Then in multiple places in the article the complaint is that the Australian media care more about Jewish lives than Palestinian ones. And finally, there comes a list of historical events where oppressed groups attacked white colonisers.
The premise of the article is that Jews are "white", that they are therefore just another form of European imperialist, their own history of oppression and genocide is therefore irrelevant, and the violent opposition to the very existence of Israel since its inception is just another example of anti-imperialism.
This goes to the nub of some far left arguments about Palestine. It's different from right wing anti-semitism because it's grounded in the idea that Jews don't count. They are "culturally white". Alien implants in the Middle East. They don't belong there. etc.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/nov/01/dominic-cummings-has-every-right-to-badmouth-boris-johnson-but-please-stop-picking-on-shopping-trolleys
Presumably, we'll be looking at a 5 year Labour government, then.
By which time he'll be 65 years old.
I can't see any way back for him, as he won't fancy LOTO as it's too much hard work. And even the route to that role looks hugely convoluted.
One Shopping Trolley, One Bullet.
The premise of the article is not that Jews are white, it is that Israel is a settler colonialist project, and the Palestinians are oppressed by the state of Israel under that framework.
If you watched the interview discussed, it is very clear why he is making the argument that Israeli lives are given more value than Palestinian lives; because in that interview his friend remarks how he is never asked to appear to discuss Palestinian deaths, or to condemn the IDF for them, but is asked to discuss Israeli deaths and condemn Hamas. Just like the interview on ITV where a man talked about his family being killed by Israeli bombs and the interviewer "clarifying" that Israel has assured people it is only targeting Hamas and the interviewee having to clarify that of the 21 members of his family killed, over half were children, and they were not members of Hamas.
Edit: Here is his further clarification that he didn't "lose" 21 members of his family
https://twitter.com/alnaouqa/status/1719637340056858921
The one recent innovation he neglected to mention is the mini trolley-basket, vertical and of plastic build as commonly seen in placed like Lidl. Nicely bridges the gap between overladen basket and unwieldy trolley in this day and age of auto checkouts. I would say the dawn of the self-checkout is the biggest engineering challenge to the shopping trolley in decades.
Could also have mentioned other popular innovations:
- The key operated chain lock to stop trolley theft and dumping
- The small shallower trolley
- the little loop at the back that you can hang your reusable shopping bags from
Boris dropped straight back into journalism - with rather a low political content. He certainly isn't trying to challenge the leadership of the Conservative Party in any meaningful way.
Today's background music-while-I-work is "The Masque of Mandragora": not one of the famous ones but Baker and Sladen are on top form and it's only four episodes.
The House Ethics Committee generally says very little about its pending investigations. On George Santos, there's a reason the panel made an exception.
It’s been nearly a week since a group of House Republicans from New York launched a new effort to expel one of their home-state colleagues: Rep. George Santos. For the GOP members behind the effort, the indicted congressman can no longer remain a member in good standing — his not guilty plea notwithstanding — so they’ve introduced a privileged resolution to force his ouster.
As the chamber prepares to deal with that measure, the House Ethics Committee peeled back the curtain a bit on its scrutiny of the scandal-plagued lawmaker. The Hill reported:
"The Ethics Committee on Tuesday said it will “announce its next course of action” in its investigation into Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) on or before Nov. 17. ... The announcement from the Ethics Committee, which has been investigating Santos for months, may influence how some lawmakers vote on the effort to expel Santos, which could hit the floor as soon as Wednesday."
In case this isn’t obvious, statements like these aren’t common. Ordinarily, the Ethics panel tells the public when an investigation begins and when it ends. In between those points, the committee generally maintains a tight lid on disclosures.
But in this instance, members of the Ethics Committee — which began its probe in the spring, and then expanded it after Santos’ criminal charges — decided to give their colleagues an update on their progress. They didn’t offer much in the way of details. . . .
For those hoping to expel Santos, this wasn’t exactly helpful. Members who remain on the fence about whether to kick the New York Republican out of Congress suddenly have an excuse: They can say they want to wait to learn more from the Ethics panel about the “next course of action” it has in mind.
They’ll have to decide relatively quickly: The House vote on the expulsion resolution could come as early as Wednesday (as in, today).
A Washington Post report added, if the resolution were to pass, Santos would be the first House member to be ousted “without having been convicted of a crime. Establishing such a precedent has prompted members of both parties to seriously weigh the consequences of expelling Santos, who has pleaded not guilty to 23 federal counts in New York that include fraud, money laundering, falsifying records and aggravated identity theft.”
As we’ve discussed, expelling sitting members of Congress isn’t easy — it requires a two-thirds majority of those in the chamber — and it’s only happened twice since the Civil War. In 1980, Democratic Rep. Michael Myers of Pennsylvania was expelled over his involvement with the Abscam scandal, and in 2002, Democratic Rep. Jim Traficant of Ohio was expelled after he was convicted on multiple corruption charges. . . .
Likewise by framing the debate in those terms you are saying that Israel shouldn't exist.
I can work with that. You presumably think that like for all would be good with the local Jews living under a benign Arab rule as second class but protected citizens?
Just when you thought you'd heard it all....
Boris Johnson asked scientists if you could kill Covid by blowing hairdryer up nose
Boris Johnson asked scientists if people could kill Covid by blowing a hairdryer up their nose after he watched a YouTube video suggesting this.
The then-PM shared the clip on a WhatsApp group including Government health experts and senior No10 officials. In a written statement to the Covid Inquiry, Dominic Cummings accused Mr Johnson of spreading misinformation during the pandemic.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-asked-scientists-you-31334180
https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/opinion-the-guardians-coverage-and-my-colleagues-comments-mean-i-dont-feel-safe-at-work/
However, it would be surprising if the Civil Service haven't gamed what to do if a PM is incapacitated through illness, given Boris Johnson's hospitalisation in April 2020.
As for a Boris Johnson political comeback, it is less likely as Jadon Sancho rejoining Manchester United's first team squad.
A plurality and a majority of 58% don't agree that it is appropriate for "Boris" to be a commentator on GB news.
Remember after Thatcher was toppled in 1990 she ensured her chosen candidate won every Tory leadership election until 2005 (when she was neutral as she was in 1995 when Redwood challenged Major), backing Major over Heseltine in 1990, Hague over Clarke in 1997 and IDS over Clarke in 2001.
Johnson similarly can ensure his preferred candidate wins the membership vote if the Tories lose the next election for some time to come, given he remains popular amongst party members
Trump started musing out loud in a public press conference, which was the problem. I’m prepared to cut Boris some slack on this, which I am not often accustomed to do.
It appears that Kate Forbes has kept messages unlike the former First Minister.
Interesting on the attempts by the Founder of Extinction Rebellion to avoid responsibility for the criminal damage she caused:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67288289
"During her police interview, she said she was trying to stop crimes against humanity and "had permission from nature" to break the window."
...
"During the preparations for Gail Bradbrook's trial in July this year, the former scientist, who did not have a lawyer, said she intended to tell jurors that she could not be found guilty because of her right to freedom of expression and that she was also trying to preventing a greater crime of climate destruction."
"My right to Freedom of Expression Trumps any attempt to hold me accountable for my criminal behaviour" is the justification / excuse used by guess who?
It horrified me that my grandchildren might be disadvantaged into the indefinite future in order (possibly) to protect me from – what?
Janet Daley"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/01/boris-was-right-older-people-covid-lockdown/
Here’s US comic Andrew Schulz and (a very diverse group of) friends breaking down the conflict, in a way that only comedians can. (With some adult language)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QQQpSHQ6R70
Oh Sarah-Jane, I have missed you...
(end Baker voice)
There are points in this where her yelps are operatic: I swear to god she's covering octaves. They are both very good. The bits on film are great, the bits on video are sufficiently in shadow to cover up the rubbish. The hero is a science guy, referencing Galileo. The baddy is the court astrologer, who does "MWAH-HAH-HAH" in the best theatrical manner. Even the CSO/chromakey isn't bad. This is surprisingly good.
https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/police-probing-photo-that-appears-to-show-person-dressed-as-hamas-member-in-derry/a91129012.html
Baker: Subthermal recombination of ionised plasma.
Sarah-Jane: Oh simple. I should have thought of that
(squeeness intensifies)
PS Why isn't it appropriate for him to go on GB News? I'm struggling to think of any objections. Seems a good place for him. Out of harms way.
ABSTRACT This article examines how settler colonial narratives, structures and relations constitute development. The article offers a new concept, settler development, to show how development, as a colonial template of liberal rule and economic improvement, and settler colonialism, augment and imprint each other. To understand how settler development works, I present a case study that analyzes settler texts that circulate between Zionists in the United States and in Palestine before 1948. In particular, David Ben-Gurion, leader of Jewish settlement in Palestine, and writers in the Jewish American magazine, Jewish Frontier, sought to justify settlement based on economic productivity to appeal to the British to hand over the Mandate to settlers, not indigenous Palestinians. These circulating discourses valorized the ‘pioneer’ as the quintessential subject of settler development who is assumed to have a right over indigenous land through their ability to improve economic productivity. The article combines settler colonial and critical development studies to suggest creative analyses of the way that development is epistemologically linked to the networks of settler colonialism.
What was inappropriate was the same bloke being given a job as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. But that's not GB News' fault - it's on the Conservative Party and the voting public.
To mix two topics, what about the former U.K. prime minister who is supposed to be a full time peace envoy in the Middle East, who has not been getting poorer for his efforts? And took the job after re-arranging the Middle East in a somewhat exciting fashion…
Lab 38, SNP 32
A fifth of SNP and Tory voters have switched to Labour, as have 38% of LibDems. The poll was taken after the SNP conference and the announcement of a council tax freeze.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cricket/66858822
McDonald's condemns Birmingham restaurant mice protests
"McDonald's has condemned what it called disinformation over the Israel-Gaza war after boxes of live mice were released in three of its restaurants in apparent protests.
A video on social media showed customers at Birmingham's Star City restaurant jumping in shock as mice dyed in the colours of the Palestinian flag scurried near their feet on Monday."
This, in part, explains why I have been so aggrieved around the discourse surrounding Israel / Palestine - because those who rightly decry the brutality and inhumanity of Hamas' attack on October 7th are incapable of seeing that that attack has a cause (as in "and effect"), and part of that cause is the brutality and inhumanity of how the state of Israel treats Palestinians.
Total agency is given to the state of Israel. The stated intent of "minimising civilian lives" is taken at face value. The actions of mass killing, child murder and displacement of Palestinians is waved away because of the need to prevent the mass killing, child murder and displacement of Israelis at the hand of Hamas is somehow logical, not paradoxical. The understanding that what made Hamas' attack so abhorrent was their targeting of civilians occurs at the same time as a defence of the indiscriminate bombing of North Gaza, of hospitals and refugee camps.
It reaches heights of absurdity with people here suggesting that Israel is making a tactical mistake in the eyes of the international community, instead of using the impunity that the international community has given it to do an ethnic cleansing, when it does these things. That "Israel has the right to defend itself" when attacked, but that Gaza, under blockade from land air and sea from Israel since 2005, has no reason to produce such hatred that could explain the violence of Hamas.
I can denounce Hamas and Israel, I can point to the causal acts and the historical parallels, the UN accounts over decades, that end up with this point we are in now. I can suggest what I think is the only political solution, one where Palestinian Arabs and Israeli citizens live in one state after truth and reconciliation happens. And the response boils down to "Palestinian Arabs / all Arabs are so inherently anti-Semitic that that is impossible", as if European anti-Semitism wasn't historically worse. I can argue against the genocide and ethnic cleansing happening now to the Palestinian people, and people here will defend it by pointing to the horrific genocide and ethnic cleansing of Jewish people in Europe and the Middle East that partially led to the creation of the state of Israel, as if that somehow makes sense.
You cannot sincerely care about the value of life, of dead babies, of dying civilians, you cannot sincerely decry genocide, you cannot sincerely claim that the right to national self defence is sacrosanct and at the same time defend the acts of the state of Israel - what it has done to the Palestinians in the past, what it is doing now, and what it is proposing to do in the future.
India 12
SA 12
NZ Curr 8 Max 12
Aus Curr 8 Max 14
Pak Curr 6 Max 10
Afgh Curr 6 Max 12 (RR Can't conceivably catch India)
SL Curr 4 Max 10
NL Curr 4 Max 10
Bangladesh Curr 2 Max 6
England Curr 2 Max 8
So South Africa and India are definitely through.
Even if one accepts the premise that original sin rests with the Jews, for migrating to the region, from the 1890's onwards, we are where we are.
But imagine the commercial possibilities had he succeeded.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/life-saving-nose-spray-that-kills-99-9-of-viruses-begins-production-in-israel/
The hairdryer up the nose seems a rudimentary non-chemical form of the same principle, and who knows, perhaps depriving the virus of moisture during its incubation stage could have an effect. Personally I'm glad Boris wanted to find the answer, and wasn't afraid to look silly to find out. I hope he got more response than sneering, though it would appear not.
It is a very clever piece of marketing by the pharmaceutical industry to persuade us all that unless a treatment has cost billions to create, and comes with an expensive proprietary price tag, it's not efficacious.
No. It's perfectly possible to see that the attack had 'causes' (multiple); but also to say that that is essentially irrelevant. Hamas did what they did not because of the Palestinian 'cause'; but because they are anti-Semitic, homophobic and many other nasty things. Oh. and they also like power and money.
That is what you are incapable of seeing. Hamas is not dong this for the Palestinians; or for some sort of historic revenge. They are doing it because they are religious zealots who are about as far from what a leftist should see as 'good' as it is possible to get. But common enemies makes odd friends.
Your 'one state solution' is also one that will see genocide of the Jews in it; and you don't really address that. How can Jews live in a Hamas-led state? And if you don't think it'd be run by Hamas (or Iran, through proxies), how do you think you'll get them to give up power?
You attack Israel for what it is 'proposing' to do. You ignore what Hamas, Iran and others want to do to Israel.
And Jews.
And the original sin does not "rest with the Jews" because "Jews" is not the same as "the state of Israel" (because not all Jewish people are Israeli or represented by the state of Israel), nor is it the same as "Zionist" (because not all Zionists are Jewish people, nor are all Jewish people Zionists).
"And the response boils down to "Palestinian Arabs / all Arabs are so inherently anti-Semitic that that is impossible", as if European anti-Semitism wasn't historically worse."
It does nothing to strengthen your arguments, merely weakens them. And this applies to both sides. I regularly read a post from someone that is passionate and well written, might even agree with 80-90% of it and then the inevitable childish, counter productive, insulting and frankly boring sign off.
Please assume at least neutral intent from those you disagree with. The vast vast majority of the time on here it will be good intent. And this is definitely both sides doing the same thing. Continue passionately argue your cases but drop that last paragraph, please.
I already address the issue of "a one state solution being a genocide of the Jews" by a) pointing out that European anti-Semitism has historically been much worse and we have manages to create a society that is much more tolerant of Jewish people, if still harbouring anti-Semites and b) that truth and reconciliation between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli citizens should occur. Do you think that statement somehow endorses the killing of all Jewish Israeli citizens? Or the creation of a Hamas-led state?
I have already expressed why I dismiss the idea that Hamas is only motivated by anti-Semitism - both above and elsewhere - and until you can explain why that is their only motivation outside of "because they are evil", I am not going to treat it like a grown up argument, because it isn't.
What single thing did I write here, or elsewhere, that suggests I believe Hamas is "good"? Explicable, given the context, yes. But good?
I do, above, denounce what Israel is proposing to do. I will also denounce any future violence aimed at civilians that may come from any state or non state actor that is not Israel. I can do both. But you cannot do the first.
And Israel is, categorically, not a proxy for all Jewish people.
You criticise others for assigning "total agency to the state of Israel" but that's exactly what you are doing by treating everything that happens as a function of the actions of the Israeli state.
And your 'proposal' may happen; as it did in Europe. After the Jews have been nearly wiped out, or totally wiped out. For the Holocaust was the one big thing that made anti-Semitism in Europe unacceptable for most in Europe. Is that a risk you are really willing to take?
I did not say Hamas are only motivated by racism. They are also motivated by power, religion, ideology, politics and money. It's a heady mix. But racism is in there.
However, we do have rules about ex-ministers taking up jobs. These need to be vetted by ACOBA for up to 2 years after leaving. Has ACOBA vetted this job? Of course, Johnson took a job with Mail and just ignored their ruling.
The chap in question has some rather colourful views (Doesn't seem to have run across a conspiracy he didn't like, basically. Very much of the WEF/WHO/NIH/
If you mean the Nazism and the Holocaust, of course not. Jewish people were in no way the "cause (as in "and effect)" of any of the wrongs done to post WW1 Germany, nor were the other targets of Nazi violence. Jewish people are also in no way the "cause (as in "and effect") of the Israel / Palestine conflict - because Israel is not a proxy for Jewish people - as I will keep pointing out to everyone who uses it as such. As I have said before, it is just as anti-Semitic to claim Israel is somehow a proxy for all Jewish people, or somehow represents all Jewish people as it is to claim that all Jewish people have "dual loyalty"; because its root is the same trope.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/johnson-boris-secretary-of-state-foreign-and-commonwealth-office-acoba/advice-letter-boris-johnson-presenter-and-contributor-gb-news
Frankly, this one is pretty unlikely to raise concerns given it's not really about lobbying/influence. It's not Cameron/Greensill.
Take H. Pylori (or rather don't take it orally). Stomach ulcers were long thought to be down to stress. Then someone thought differently and wondered if a pathogen might be involved. There was a fair bit of skepticism, but it turned out to be right. Barry Marshal even infected himself to prove it.
Does that make Johnson's comments sesnsible? Not really, but thinking outside the box ought to be encouraged.