Categories
Options
Classification – politicalbetting.com
Classification – politicalbetting.com
Introduction
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Clear enough in a Scottish context, but not in England, where for many unionism is effectively an expression of English nationalism.
I won't be able to answer questions until around 11am UK, so apologies. Any questions, please make them and I'll address them later. Hope that's ok. Thanks to @TSE and @rcs1000 for publishing ir
Did she clarify whether she meant the one in Westminster or the one in Holyrood?
At various times they also supported federation with the 'white' empire' - Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa (yes, yes, I know) and occasionally some of the Caribbean colonies (ditto) in a 'union of the empire.'
And good morning, one and all
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/hybrid-electric-ferry-nicola-sturgeon-31823730
And no-one cares.
The people calling for Rishi Sunak to go want him out because they dislike his politics, not his Hinduism, not his skin colour.
Looks like a face off between him and Jeremy Miles, incidentally. A prediction on here (not by me) that Miles should be considered favourite is looking good so far despite his lower name recognition.
In Scotland Nationalism is easy - it displays itself as pro Scotland, anti anything English.
In England it’s way harder - most Nationalism appears as racism because the people who use the George Cross have a habit of picking on people based on skin colour, even when the person they tell to go home can honestly reply as I third generation immigrant “I’m walking round the corner to me Nan’s for tea”.
NEW - Sir Keir Starmer calls on the Prime Minister to set a date for a general election NOW & tells @SkyNews Sunak is "putting vanity before country" by wanting to clock up two years in Downing Street before calling a vote #TrevorPhillips
@WilfredFrost
The Labour leader also says he is "very happy to do election debates" as "he wants every opportunity" to make his case to the country. He says individual debates will need to be negotiated
Asked which taxes he would prioritise to cut first, Sir Keir Starmer says "taxes on working people"
And he’s probably got zero chance of retaining the seat..
Starmer on Sky News accuses Sunak of putting his own “vanity” before the country. Calls an election date:
“If he had a plan, he’d set the date. And he should set the date. I can’t help feeling that all he really wants to do is get two years clocked up on his premiership.”
That division very roughly equals the old idea of the Right and the old idea of the Left
At extremes the desire for Liberty is reserved for certain groups, races, families, classes and becomes closer to Fascism or other far right ideas; on the left the extreme desire for Equality is allowed to trample over individual rights and becomes communism, Maoism or Wokeness
However the whole thing breaks down beyond that. Some on the right are green and europhile and religious some on the left are futurist and eurosceptic and atheist and so on
Lord knows how you organise all that. Perhaps it is a futile task
Unfortunately his followers still plague us.
I still think of this as circle, or horseshoe if you prefer; extreme left and right become indistinguishable autocracies.
Ok there is no usefully simple way of classifying political beliefs. Is that better?
When I said "logical" (optimal is perhaps more correct), I simply meant from a decision-tree approach, scoring the outcomes and probabalities. And you're right that if (and that's still a big 'if') the penalty turns out hugely more severe than it would have been had she come clean after Second Sight, then you would also be right that the decision then wasn't (although you'd have to weight the 50% chance of getting off against the chance and severity of the possible penalty now).
My argument was simply that you don't get anycredit in life, or politics, for doing stuff that avoids a then totally hypothetical even worse mess, if things are already very bad.
The story has been known, for those who cared to look, for years, yet Vennells was given a job in the Cabinet Office, Chair of an NHS Trust, and a couple of other directorships. And held these despite protests and complaints in each case, until public pressure and the developing legal story made it impossible. Prior to the ITV drama I would have put money on there being no penalty other than, possibly, losing the CBE and a possible, but legally tricky, private prosecution.
The ITV drama shows the power of media and public attention - and the pressure for some sort of punishment is clearly now building (the petition to take away her CBE, which has been running for three years but only had about 10,000 signatures last week, is now heading toward a million). But the public's attention span is usually short and may move on...
Incidentally, isn't it shameful that the Tories are trying to stir up blame for the LibDem junior ministers who were in post for a small, but critical, part of the story - when they gave Vennells a JOB IN THE CABINET OFFICE as well as the CBE when the whole saga was already in the public domain?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Origins_of_Dictatorship_and_Democracy
Promise it for 2026 or so, spend the savings now and leave the next government holding the pooy baby.
If I didn't live here, I'd almost like to see Sunak win and deal with the minefield he is laying.
Pensions are deferred income, and are taxed when taken. The wealthy among us will be paying higher rate taxation in retirement.
Maybe we need a political STELE OF REVEALING
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stele_of_Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu
For example suggesting that Sunak is not really committed to this country has a whiff of nativism to it as well as a legitimate criticism of his former Green Card, Santa Monica house and Non-Dom wife.
It would be more sensible to target funding at those poorer pensioners genuinely in need, rather than helicoptering it onto the entire cohort of the retired, when their disposable income is now - remarkably - already greater on average than those in work.
If you tried to generalise, a left-wing dictatorship tends to be pretty grim for most people except for a small preferred elite, whereas a right-wing dictatorship tends to be truly appalling for a minority and perhaps not quite so bad for a majority. But I'm not sure even that generalisation would stand up to too many examples.
The opposite of conservative is radical. Conservatives want to keep everything the same, radicals want to rip things up and change them. What where Theresa May's self comforting words when her election went wrong? "Nothing has changed!". She and Liz Truss are opposites.
The opposite of Liberal is Authoritarian. The term 'nanny state' could have been coined for Blair and Brown - low level authoritarianism. The most ridiculed was Brown's 'gulags for slags'. That, and Labour's one-size-fits-all approach to things is why the Lib Dems are not fond of Labour governments.
Left vs Right, boiled down to its essence, is about the size of the state - how much it should do, and so how much it should spend, and so how much it should tax. Despite the name, the Conservatives are a right wing party. Labour are obviously on the left, though it's different wings can't agree on where. For the Lib Dems, L vs R is a tertiary identity at best. They are Liberals first and radicals second, at least in their constitution.
Dr. Foxy, seems a bit ambiguous (at best) to throw around racism when the very example you pick you also describe as being potentially legitimate.
@KevinASchofield
Being reminded of this story, for some reason.
‘I'm Not Tetchy' Says Tetchy Rishi Sunak, Tetchily
The one thing we won't have is someone asking - you said spending cuts - which departments and what are the cutting.
There is then a whole set of questions that you can follow with depending on how you want the PM / Minister to squirm...
A Labour veteran, thinking to compare the tepid feelings towards his party in the present day with the last time it was in opposition preparing to be in government, recently lamented to me: “For all that Keir has achieved, it doesn’t feel like 1997.”
[But] Sir Tony, as he has since become, was an ace at delivering uplifting oratory when he thought the occasion demanded it, but the stats tell us that this did not excite a substantial majority of the electorate. The most crucial factor in the Blair landslide of ’97 was not soaring expectations of what a Labour government would deliver; it was the collapse of support for the Conservatives and efficient anti-Tory tactical voting. His Labour was very constrained in what it initially promised it could deliver, even though it knew that it would come to power with the economy doing well.
[So] the bequest from the Tories to a Starmer government will be much grimmer...what you could call the “hope deficit” is more acute for Sir Keir than it was for Labour 27 years ago. Added to which, voter cynicism about politicians and their promises has rarely been deeper.
I think [Starmer] overestimates the Tories when he suggests that they have deliberately schemed to squeeze the optimism out of the nation. The evidence suggests they are not clever enough to be that cunning. What is true is that Britain is heading towards an election shrouded in a dank miasma of despair that anyone can fix our many problems. One dispiriting possible consequence of this is that we will endure a nastily negative election campaign followed by a low turnout...
If hope is to be revitalised, it is probably more likely to happen after we have had a change of government, rather than before. It will be helpful to Labour if Sir Keir can generate a flicker of hope before the election, but the sterner test will be whether he has it in him to lift the country out of the slough of despondency once he has the power to do more than talk about it.
A good example of politics winning over good governance.
https://news.sky.com/story/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-justice-secretary-examines-how-to-clear-names-of-workers-caught-up-in-horizon-it-scandal-13043410
Huzzah for ITV.
Well?
What the header, and indeed the discussion BTL, show is that it is increasingly difficult and complicated to classify someone's political beliefs in a broad category that carries a coherent meaning. One point that I think hasn't been made to date is that this is the reason that political parties have also become less coherent and disciplined.
So yesterday we had a former Tory Minister Chris Skidmore resigning because he doesn't think that the government should be issuing licences for fresh exploration in the North Sea. How do you classify that? According to Wiki he was Chairman of the Bow Group and a fellow of the Policy Exchange. He has been active in Tory politics since he was a teenager and supported Truss's Free Enterprise Group. An almost classic Tory but he has resigned the Whip and may soon be to resign his seat. If you can't create a tent big enough to include people like that how do you create a government?
Holding parties together in such an atmosphere is incredibly difficult creating governments that lack coherence, stability and a sense of purpose. I think that the politician who has proven to be the best at this in recent decades was Nicola Sturgeon but look what has happened since she left the scene. The famous SNP self discipline has collapsed and dissent is rife. This simply means that the SNP have fallen to earth and are in a similar position to most political parties.
We see this in the Commons. Both parties have an exceptional number of people who have been expelled or simply chosen to leave. In Labour's case this includes the former leader. In the last Parliament we had the likes of Ken Clarke expelled. What this means for the future is that any government elected with a small majority simply will not survive. There will be too many single issue obsessives who will split away.
For working age people, income is heavily taxed via national insurance.
Pension income would only be taxed the same, if the exemption given to pensioners is removed and pension income is taxed by national insurance.
Everyone earning the same amount should pay the same rate of tax.
But I think the reason there has been a focus on the Lib Dems is because Ed Davey came out with his explanation and is still in politics. There has also been the release of the Bates correspondence with him, following the ITV drama.
Alan Bates has also talked about the other Ministers he wrote to: Stephen Timms, Norman Lamb, Jo Swinson etc before the litigation was launched but as they are no longer in politics no-one really cares about them.
https://twitter.com/MichaelLCrick/status/1743929872563466648?t=WtLTwLV5Qtq2DPtHurHIXQ&s=19
It is clear that Davey did look into the allegations, but that the PO and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system didn't allow remote access and logged each entry in a separate file down to each keystroke.
https://twitter.com/MichaelLCrick/status/1743930008282837255?t=mpZfJVtnIKDMIaAhz0jqfw&s=19
We know that now not to be true, but that is Fujitsu's fault and untruth.
Meanwhile Scotland's largely devolved economy continues to flatline, nothing is done in the recent budget to encourage investment here, nothing to attract higher earners, nothing to address our growing skills gap and nothing to address our failing education system. And the shadow of Grangemouth and the loss of industrial output that that represents hangs over everything like a cowl. The UK will avoid recession this year. Scotland won't.
Never underestimate the capacity of the average Yoon to whip themselves into a conspiracy fuelled frenzy.
So Davey isn't at fault and at best Fujitsu carefully answered the question asked and not the question that was meant.
In reality I'm being very generous to Fujitsu there - they carefully answered a different question to the one that was being asked.
One reason that I have never entered party politics for election (though have been a member of Labour 1994-2003, and Lib Dems 2013-present) is that my political views are incoherent. They really do not match any political party. I am a minority of one.
Forgive me it was delicious, so sweet and so cold
Anyone who can persuade their mum to vote for them, would be off to a flyer
Previously Manchester is expected to have viaducts to bring the trains in while Italy & France go - hmm this train isn't as fast as it could be let's tunnel under the city and build a new station for Bologna (and now Florence, Marseille).
We'll ignore the Dutch and American approach that keeping trains on platforms is a waste of resources so let's extend HS2 to say Croydon and terminate the trains somewhere cheaper (which is what Amsterdam and New York are doing the equivalent of).
Of the countries surveyed (UK, USA, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain), Germany had the fewest identifying as religious or spiritual, and also the fewest saying that their "religious, spiritual or non-religious position" is "important to who you are and how you view the world". The latter score being highest in the US and Argentina, but even in the US, only 59%.
In the UK, Canada, Australia and (interestingly) Spain, the breakdown of responses to this question were pretty similar, with "important" percentages of 32-36% and "not important" of 42-46%.
For the converse question, how important is "science" to the same, Spain comes out highest at 71%. Who knew the Spanish were so scientific? Equally surprising, the UK came in second lowest (after the Germans) at 52%, behind even the US where 24% claim to be creationists (12% in UK, 7% in Germany, 6% Spain).
The responses to the latter question correlate strongly with level of education.
Asked whether religion has more negative consequences for society than positive, in all countries except the US, more people said negative, with negative achieving a majority (50%) in the UK, Germany & Canada (51%), Spain (54%) and Australia (56%). Argentina was lower at 37% but with "positive" coming in lower still at 31%.
For the same question about science, in all countries there are significant majorities for seeing science as positve with again Spain leading the way at 74% (negative 10%), and again the US (53%, negative 26%) and Argentina (46%, negative 20%) at the other end. The proportions agreeing are higher for those identifying as non-religious/spiritual, but the pluralities remain among the religious respondents. Again, a positive view of science correlates strongly with level of education.
The responses to how reliable people find a range of scientific and spiritual 'experts' broadly reflects the above, with medical practitioners leading the way in all countries as being seen as most reliable. An interesting counter-finding is that Argentinians, despite being more religious on most survey quesions, nevertheless had a lower (23%) proportion who see religious leaders as reliable sources of information.
Generally, younger people found experts more reliable across all countries and types of expert (both scientific and religious) than older people.
I do look back on the Coalition positively, despite some significant errors including by the Lib Dems. Indeed that was when I became active on PB.
A software system may work very well for purpose A but not for purpose B. What error logs were there? What internal audit reports on it were there? What quality assurance was done? Etc. I am no IT expert but these questions are not hard to ask and even less so if you take advice from those who do understand these matters.
The other obvious questions to have asked are: who does the investigation into the discrepancies? What are their qualifications for doing so? How do they check that this is not caused by software or other faults? What quality assurance is done on their reports? Are these reports disclosed to the defendants during the prosecutions as they are legally obliged to be? And so on.
There was a basic lack of curiosity.
The balloon really should have gone up when Second Sight reported that they were being denied access to the documents they were promised. That was a red flag. Then when they were sacked just before their second report came out. That was another one.
Here’s an eyebrow raising blog where a materialist scientist says “yeah; reincarnation may be true”
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/ian-stevensone28099s-case-for-the-afterlife-are-we-e28098skepticse28099-really-just-cynics/
For the purposes of transcendental clarity, I do not believe in reincarnation - at least I don’t think so. I DO believe the edifice of strict scientific materialism, as we have known it, is under unprecedented siege, and is perhaps beginning to totter
He doesn't inspire confidence in that role. He appears to have kept his head down, when for years he could have been making noise that he was lied to by Fujitsu - and that helped cause this great injustice.
Likewise @Peter_the_Punter and @IanB2 and everyone else who has jangled this tambourine. It now resounds
It STILL bores the moobs off me, but that is absolutely my fault for being easily bored by post offices. I shall watch the ITV drama tonight (which has clearly shifted everything); hopefully I will feel some empathy - and curiosity
It is unsustainable and the next government will have no choice but change it, and I may add, increase he pension age incrementally
I think that the Coalition was one of the best periods of government in my adult life time. Of course they made mistakes, as all governments do, but that is in the nature of things. What would we give for that level of incompetence now? It would be deeply aspirational both for the present government and the Labour opposition.
https://www.jfsa.org.uk/uploads/5/4/3/1/54312921/document_25_-_detica_netreveal_fraud_analysis_011013_1.pdf
It basically said the Post Office was unable to account for cash and stock across its entire network and its systems were unfit for purpose.
So 2 independent reports in 2013 saying that the Post Office could not put its own socks on in the morning and we're expected to accept that Ministers should not be told about it or were not told about this despite this company being owned and funded by us.
The Post Office Board was in breach of its duties. At this time Alice Perkins, Jack Straw's wife, an ex-civil servant was the Chair. So it's not just Ms Vennells who needs to answer questions or have her honours removed. Ms Perkins was Chair for a crucial 4 years from 2011 - 2015.
She has remained quiet unlike Ed Davey and had the gall to say that she left the Post Office in a better situation than when she started.
Amazing that these people manage to cross the road without being run over so blind they must be.
a) Magnets don't work in water
b) School shooting is very sad but parents need to get over it
c) Abraham Lincoln shouldn't be famous. If he negotiated it (the Civil War) we wouldn't know who he was.
As far as c) is concerned (ignoring the minor point of negotiating slavery) he obviously doesn't like that he isn't the most famous president. He shouldn't worry. He will be, but not for the reasons he thinks.
if you’ve ever watched an LNER Azuma train race through Luton without stopping you will notice they go REALLY fast, certainly fast enough for a country as small and compact as the UK. 125mph. We don’t actually NEED more than that, do we?
https://www.railway-technology.com/projects/virgin-trains-azuma-trains/
It occurs to me we should just have built more of those and relabelled them “high speed”. Job done for a third the price
The Trailers.
To wet our appetite, Poster talks to Admins in main room about submitted article, not via one of PBs rest rooms - fascism will be defined for us. Oh Goodie can’t wait.
Wikipedia
Defined by Wikipedia as Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement,[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.[2][3].
Personally I would question “far right” and “natural social hierarchy.” All of those things on the list could be practiced by a middle way centerist, or someone AOL or vague on political leanings, couldn’t they?
Boots.
The simplest and most effective definition of fascism is footwear. Fascism isn’t politics or ideas at all - It’s the uniform. It’s all about dressing up. Droogism. Belonging to a street gang. They look in the mirror before leaving the bedsit and see style and panache. We see mummy’s boys - immaturity - clowns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#/media/File:Mussolini_and_Hitler_1940_(retouched).jpg
Hope this helps.
1) Leadership cults are integral to fascism. The vision of the Leader embodying the people, and therefore the state. They are however not unique to facism, being found in other totalitarian systems like Communism, Theocracies and absolute monarchies.
2) There is an idealisation of a unique people, with a common culture and outlook, with special distinctive features and manifest destiny.
This refuses to accept that the people are not a single variety, but are actually quite diverse ethnically, culturally, religiously etc. This is the root of the nativism and racism of fascist ideology.
3) There is a culture of physicality and machismo, that defines the reborn nation and has contempt for intellectualism and other habits seen as effete. This leads to systemic homophobia, misogyny and political violence.
I don't think we have more than a tiny percentage of such people in Britain.
I am interested professionally. But also because my own profession - not just lawyers but lawyers who do investigations - have behaved so abysmally. This shames me. I know what it is needed to do good investigations, to run a really effective investigations team, to manage the internal and external stakeholders, to gain the confidence and trust and respect of those you deal with etc., and to see the total lack of professionalism and any sense of ethical underpinning displayed in this case over such a long period and the utter shamelessness of those involved, even when faced with the human consequences of what they have done, really pains - and infuriates - me.
If it helps, think of it as a lot of creative types in Soho persecuted by some rogue AI and lying lawyers.