politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Your chance to win the ideal reference book for political a

ThomasNashe said:

Socrates said:

@NickPalmer

I'm intrigued to find out who the Muslim Quakers are. They sound wonderful.

Sufism would be the nearest equivalent, I reckon.

I went to a very interesting talk by this Farid Esack, who was at the time Lecturer in residence at the Quaker Theological College in Birmingham.Quakers are relaxed about dual membership, and it is possible to be a Jewish Quaker, a Methodist one or even an Athiest Quaker.

Is he a Muslim Quaker? Possibly. Certainly he is sympathetic and a very thoughtful theologian. Would that there were more like him in our Mosques:

http://www.oocities.org/faridesack/fetowhom.html

CON 29 UKIP 19 - gah just seen TC has that.

Ok AMended to CON 27 UKIP 19..

MarkSenior said:

astateofdenmark said:

Interesting map of shale gas:

http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/2013/03/28/0014102eac.gif

If we don't exploit our own shale, we will simply end up importing other's shale. Getting bloody fracking.

Would it not be better to import other's shale first and then we will have ours when their's has run out ?

We could be the DeBeers of the shale gas world!

Con 28 UKIP 18

On topic (and assuming I wouldn't have to pay the postage):
CON 27, UKIP 18

Anecdote alert, yesterday was definitely a turning point for the staff in my normally very non-political office. If a party at the next GE went with a policy of zero immigration, the deportation of anyone who did not have a British/EU passport, and much less tolerance to ethnic minorities extreme religious behavior then everyone in my office would vote for them.

RobD said:

Socrates said:

Not really. Shale gas has a practical use - we don't need to conjure up a reason for buying it.

I wasn't seriously contemplating the idea - it would be quite difficult to store several trillion cubic feet of gas, I think.

Are we not already storing several trillion cubic feet of potential gas in our shale fields and at zero cost ?

Lord Mandelson appointed High Steward of Hull
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-22625513

Con 32, UKIP 16

@Fenster & BenM: Yes - knowing that there is a widow and young child (and parents) mourning today and for the foreseeable future is quite heartbreaking. One can only hope that they are getting all the support and help they need from the army.

It was not just the lady who confronted one of the killers who was brave. The lady who sat down next to the body to pray for the soldier had a special sort of courage and a level of decency and compassion that his killers are incapable of comprehending.

NickPalmer said:

Socrates said:

@NickPalmer

I'm intrigued to find out who the Muslim Quakers are. They sound wonderful.

It's these guys:
http://aaiil.org/ahmadiyyat.shtml

The constituent who approached me is one of the authors extensively cited here, Zahid Aziz, a courteous man in his 60s. His book on tolerance of other religions is here:

http://ahmadiyya.org/islam/islam-pt.htm

I recommend pp. 5-10. I've not spent a huge amount of time exploring the website - he impressed me as sincere and I thought they deserved a hearing. He is quite explicit that some Muslim groups live down to the reputation that critics assign to them, and I would assume they're selecting the nice bits of a Qu'ran in the same way as Christians will not dwell on some of the dodgier bits of the Bible.But he doesn't shrink from some of the uncomfortable questions.

My understanding is that they are seen by mainstream Muslims as decent but eccentric - very much like the Quakers are seen by mainstream Christians. There's an independent view here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmadiyya

it does seem a mistake to not fund their campaign.

There is an old Afghan proverb concerning the British. "It is better to be the Enemy of the British than their friends. The British buy their enemies and sell their friends"

Alas there is more than a little truth to that.

sam said:

tim said:

@Fenster

I see Newsnight have idiotically gone and booked Anjem Choudary, who speaks for the one or two hundred loons marching.

Thats why his rent-a-mob turn up in places like that.


Anyone who thinks as was posted on here today that he has a 'mass of British followers" is insane

I cant imagine he is speaking for many people of any faith when he describes Michael Adebajo thus...

"He's a very nice man - I believe he's a family man. He's a very calm and non-violent man. As you can see from the clip yesterday he was concerned and apologising to any women and children who were there."

Perhaps he'd like to apologise to the soldier's widow and child.

What an absolute c**t Choudary is! I hope Newsnight skewer him.

Plato said:

Omnium said:

Is there any secular way to mark someone as forever reprehensible? I'm not sure that there is, much as I'd like it to be so.

EPluribusUnum Report @iEPluribusUnum
"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't."- General George Patton Jr

Yes but I would throw myself in the way of Patton's wrath rather than a nut-job's mercy any day of the week.

tim said:

@Fenster

I see Newsnight have idiotically gone and booked Anjem Choudary, who speaks for the one or two hundred loons marching.

Thats why his rent-a-mob turn up in places like that.


Anyone who thinks as was posted on here today that he has a 'mass of British followers" is insane

Tim, I know Choudary is an embarrassment to most sane British muslims, and I'm lucky enough to live in an area where racial disharmony doesn't exist. I have no argument with that, and despite me posting that 'Luton' thing, I don't know the area from Adam. It might as well be China to me; I just thought it was an interesting youthful take on Britain by a young girl..

But there's no point me denying, or being afraid to speak about, despite the blissful calm and security of my rural spot, the pockets of land in the UK populated by people who fecking hate Westerners. For example, it is tacitly acknowledged around here that the Butetown area of Cardiff isn't particularly safe at night for white people. Tiger Bay - as it was once known - was historically a dockside-area of immigrants, blue-collar brawlers and transients, and a place of spit and sawdust bars. It was always rough. It was never pretty. It was a typical dockland of racial mixes, with hookers walking the streets at night. But it was never a place people were really scared to go into. Yet over the last 10/15 years it has grown to house the biggest population of Somalians outside of Somalia. And now it is a place that people are scared of and it is also a place with a heavy religious presence. Is the danger-factor therefore just a coincidence?

Don't ask me exactly why people are suddenly scared of that particular estate; perhaps all white, Asian, and Carbibbean people (who historically populated the area) are just a bunch of backward bigots who hate Somalians. But I doubt that's the case.

It is perhaps more to do with the fact that an influx of illegal immigrants from war-torn, lawless, Sharia-dominated Somalia fled their country to re-home in a hitherto peaceful Welsh city. Cardiff is still a lovely city, but every man and his dog knows that area is the one to avoid.

To state that isn't bigotry, or racism, it's just commonsense. You stick a load of (on the very large whole) disaffected, uneducated, non-English speaking Somali men together in a hovel of an area, allow them access to as much extreme Islamic propaganda they can hear preached to them, and they'll eventually, partly through disenfranchisement and partly through indoctrination, begin to hate us white people. And we, as a nation of tolerant, scared-to-offend nice people, are allowing it to happen. Cardiff is just a minor blip. In comparison to the Luton's ot Bradford's or Oldham's of this world it is Mr Nobel Peace Prize himself.

You know what, I can kind of understand why they start to hate us. But that doesn't make me feel sympathetic and cosy about it. It makes me wary. And it makes the authorities keep a very, very close eye on activity in the area (there have been various reports of burgeoning extremism and potential terrorism in the area: the celebrations that followed 9/11 and 7/7 didn't help). Perhaps we are just in the early stages of a wonderful onset of multiculturalism where the end result will be a cascade of Somalian educational and aspirational brilliance throughout the city, where they one day live in harmony alongside people from all other backgrounds. Maybe, but for now, as a white man, I'm wary of that area. And a Woolwich style atrocity wouldn't necessarily surprise me.

But on your point of there being no legions of aggressive muslim armies taking over our streets, of course there aren't. But the thought that extremist indoctrination is taking place on a widespread scale away from our glare is the one that strikes fear into the heart of a lot of people.

TIM /SAM your discussion about Enoch Powell is CLOSED

I'll go for Con 24 Ukip 21 as the 'more likelys' have gone (maybe that's gone, dunno...).

I've got the heating on and it's nearly June. Either it's a nippy spring or I've lived down south too long and have gone soft.

Plato said:

Harry Phibbs @harryph
The top rate tax cut to 45p and income tax revenues increase by £1.3bn. If Labour put back to 50p how would they finance that tax increase?

The OBR estimated that the cut in the additional tax rate cost hundreds of millions of pounds. So reversing it would be expected to yield money rather than cost money.

A picture of one of the attackers at a Choudry rally.
https://twitter.com/BBCDomC/status/337617879950303234/photo/1

HYUFD said:

Treasury raises more from 45% than 50% tax

That's completely and utterly unfounded.

RodCrosby said:

For those who don't win, or can't afford the book!

Stuff I started on Wikipedia covers a lot of the same ground.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election_records
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_by-election_records
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_MPs_with_the_shortest_service
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_of_members_of_parliament_of_the_United_Kingdom

This is a good one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

All the headline poll results are easily accessible, with links to the data, and the graph is updated much more frequently than the ukpollingreport one, and includes UKIP.

Why is there so little in the British media about the riots in Stockholm?

http://www.thelocal.se/

tim said:

@Fenster

Yet over the last 10/15 years it has grown to house the biggest population of Somalians outside of Somalia.

Cardiff has?

Don't recognise that at all I'm afraid

1672 Somali Born in Cardiff

http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView.do?a=7&b=6275349&c=cardiff&d=13&e=61&g=6497663&i=1001x1003x1032x1004&m=0&r=1&s=1369330569255&enc=1&dsFamilyId=2525

3209 Somali born people in Leicester

http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView.do?a=7&b=6275151&c=leicester&d=13&e=61&g=6383957&i=1001x1003x1032x1004&m=0&r=1&s=1369330966755&enc=1&dsFamilyId=2525

7765 Somali born people in Birmingham

http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView.do?a=7&b=6275020&c=birmingham&d=13&e=61&g=6363493&i=1001x1003x1032x1004&m=0&r=1&s=1369331140567&enc=1&dsFamilyId=2525


There are only 5,213 of African ethnicity in Cardiff in total, fewer than the Somalis in Birmingham


As for the language

"The Somali community in Cardiff has the largest British-born Somali population in the UK."


I assume that's what you mean, given that the community is long established and took the first wave of refugees in the 80's

I'll accept your official stats on that, I was told a few years ago now by a nice lady in Cardiff Council that Cardiff housed Somalia's biggest population outside their homeland (and maybe she was correct back then), but I bet a) Cardiff has seen many more Somalians than that born outside of the official figures, and b) the historic immigrant populations of Leicester and Birmingham will no doubt feel the effect of Somalian integration-skills. They arrive fast, stick close and do not assimilate well.

Incidentally, you talk to long-time immigrant residents of areas like Tiger Bay, mainly from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds* and they will be quick to tell of the difficulties they have faced with integration.

*Ryan Giggs' dad Danny Wilson is a former Tiger Bay resident. A bit of a rogue and a hustler himself. I once played rugby against him (he 40, me about 20). Shirley Bassey is from there too. The area has changed dramatically now and your stats do nothing to displace my overall point. The area is not good.

you are all barking on here

eckythumper said:

you are all barking on here

Woof woof

Socrates, Neil, SO Clearly we will have to wait to get the full picture

"On Woolwich, British media could learn from Swedish riots coverage. It brings its own problems but Swedish media's refusal to obsess over violent incidents may reduce the chance they will spread

When I saw that riots around Stockholm had made the front page of the Financial Times, I scurried over to the sites of Swedish papers to see in some detail what was happening. It turned out that the dismembered parts of a Thai woman had been found in Lapland, various television stars had been variously unhappy in their love lives, a farmer had caused the evacuation of a police station in the south of the country by handing in 12 sticks of dynamite he'd had lying around the place – oh, and there had been a hundred or so cars burnt out in the satellite towns around Stockholm.

Only the conservative Svenska Dagbladet had led with the news a couple of days ago, when I started watching the coverage. Do these things become less newsworthy after three or four nights, or is it deliberate policy not to encourage copycat rioting?

I can only assume that it's the latter, coupled with a certain prudishness about violence. Even the most sensationalist of the papers did not reproduce anywhere prominent on their websites the pictures of the English atrocity. For once, I think the Swedish press is showing the English one a good example"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/23/woolwich-media-swedish-riots

Plato said:

Totally OT - as some PBers know, my sense of smell has been AWOL for a while - but this afternoon, I'm overwhelmed by the scent of Christmas Pudding.

Given its late May and I'm in the middle of nowhere - any suggestions?! This is a most pleasant experience - if very peculiar. I trust its not a brain tumour or something else scary - that's burning feathers [they are buggers to light if anyone's tried to get rid of a old pillow on a bonfire]...

@Plato

Anyone making silage near you?

My guess for ICM 30/16

As mentioned last night, both those shot and arrested at the incident in Woolwich indeed were known to the authorities. One is confirmed as known to the security services ands police, the other definitely to police. You'd assume by default if the 2nd was known for links then SS would be aware as well.