it would be crazy of Tory plotters to oust Rishi Sunak before he's had the chance to deliver his pledge of 100 new chess sets
It would be like ditching Starmer before the kids have got their free tooth-brushing lessons....
To think that, in a bombed out and bankrput country and based only on a bit of Liberal pre-work, Labour once managed to create both the NHS and the Welfare State in a single term.
The NHS was hardly produced fully-formed from a vaccum. There had been plenty of work looking at how to create some form of national health care before the war. Here is a report prepared by Lord Dawson in 1920 - Report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services - that was very influential in the way the NHS was finally put together after the war.
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
I do find it funny that the Tories do things and then are criticised for being stupid because it doesn’t help them.
Clearly they must be stupid because no one would make a change to the electoral system except for partisan reasons.
Do you think it’s possible that they are making the change because they believe that it’s the *right* thing to do and don’t care about the electoral consequences?
After a lot of soul-searching, I am now clear in my own mind that Labour is the right choice for the communities across the country where Iceland operates – and the right choice for everyone in business who wants to see this country grow and prosper.
I say this not because I have had a radical change of heart. I say it because Labour under Keir Starmer has progressively moved towards the ground on which I have always stood, at the same time as the Conservatives have moved away from it. Indeed, the Tories’ abandonment of what I have always regarded as basic Conservative principles has not only fuelled my personal disenchantment, it is also reflected in the total collapse of public confidence we can see in every opinion poll.
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
I do find it funny that the Tories do things and then are criticised for being stupid because it doesn’t help them.
Clearly they must be stupid because no one would make a change to the electoral system except for partisan reasons.
Do you think it’s possible that they are making the change because they believe that it’s the *right* thing to do and don’t care about the electoral consequences?
No
I agree - I don't think there is anything except political (mis-)calculation here; it *is* possible that they then try to convince themselves (and certainly others) that it is the "right" thing to do. But that is neither the initial motivation, nor the intended consequence.
Or lack of grammar schools, which were one of the engines of social mobility.
Does anyone have a link showing which Education Secretary closed the most grammar schools?
It was Shirley Williams and Tony Crosland who as Labour Education Secretaries most pushed conversion of grammars to comprehensives.
Thatcher did not stop mainly Labour councils doing the same from 1970-74 under PM Heath's orders but by the end of the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments in 1997 more pupils were in grammar schools than had been in 1979
I'm sure many Tory counties embraced the comprehensive system. I don't have the details and can't be bothered to look them up, but during this time I am certain that Surrey would have been solidly Tory and it went comprehensive. What about East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, etc, etc. Aren't all of these places that were solidly Tory at that time and went comprehensive?
The big news for me today isn't Gaza or any of that, it's on the vaping. The ban on disposables. They are the one thing that's worked to get me off the fags (after 45 years on them) so I'm a bit worried to put it mildly.
That said, I think this must be about the most slam dunk public health measure a government could ever wish for. Disposable vapes are turning large numbers of young people who've never smoked into nicotine addicts and they're an environmental plague.
So, you know, fuck you Rishi and well done Rishi on this one.
After a lot of soul-searching, I am now clear in my own mind that Labour is the right choice for the communities across the country where Iceland operates – and the right choice for everyone in business who wants to see this country grow and prosper.
I say this not because I have had a radical change of heart. I say it because Labour under Keir Starmer has progressively moved towards the ground on which I have always stood, at the same time as the Conservatives have moved away from it. Indeed, the Tories’ abandonment of what I have always regarded as basic Conservative principles has not only fuelled my personal disenchantment, it is also reflected in the total collapse of public confidence we can see in every opinion poll.
"[Rachel Reeves] understands the critical importance of wealth creation that lifts the economy for all in society"
I think that exploring notion of "wealth creation" that *does not* concentrate that wealth into the hands of a few (largely US-based) billionaires and stagnate the flow of capital is going to be one of the most interesting areas in the politics of the next decade or so. It is the strategic discussion that sits over the top of the issue raised upthread of banks financing mortgages but not business investment.
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
I do find it funny that the Tories do things and then are criticised for being stupid because it doesn’t help them.
Clearly they must be stupid because no one would make a change to the electoral system except for partisan reasons.
Do you think it’s possible that they are making the change because they believe that it’s the *right* thing to do and don’t care about the electoral consequences?
No
Agreed. It's the same with Labour and the Lib Dems wanting to give children the vote.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
I stopped smoking at the beginning of January and switched to vaping. I use my vape in the same way I used to smoke cigarettes and the same times and occasions and I have found the switch seamless. I use a low nicotine fluid so just enough to avoid getting withdrawal anger but now my lungs aren’t full of tar and Carbon Monoxide.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
Well done!
I stopped 24 years ago, and can’t believe I ever started. Couldn’t pay me to smoke now.
Despite being a relatively heavy smoker, 20 a day I’d say, I didn’t find it that difficult to give up; I just did the AA style “I won’t have my first cigarette of the day” and kept putting it off. If I fancied one I’d try to eat a fruit pastille without chewing
I recently started going to AA groups for alcohol, and ticked over a month of not drinking at the weekend - probably the longest I've gone without a drink since I was sixteen. AA is a fascinating place with a real gamut of society. For what it's worth I don't think I had an alcohol dependence, but definitely a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with booze, and was on a bad trajectory with it.
Not sure I feel 'better' per se, but I've definitely saved a lot of money and lost a little weight. Still figuring out how to replace alcohol as a defining element of my socialising though.
I hope you do well with AA.
I find the group interesting as an example of a very efficient charity - they have around 20 staff and a £2.5m budget, yet are able to run an average of around 140 meetings a day across the country - taking 365 days as the denominator, reaching around 40k people.
The big news for me today isn't Gaza or any of that, it's on the vaping. The ban on disposables. They are the one thing that's worked to get me off the fags (after 45 years on them) so I'm a bit worried to put it mildly.
That said, I think this must be about the most slam dunk public health measures a government could ever wish for. Disposable vapes are turning large numbers of young people who've never smoked into nicotine addicts and they're an environmental plague.
So, you know, fuck you Rishi and well done Rishi on this one.
Good morning
I have just listened to Sunak explain that it is a free vote but that he wants to stop children smoking and at the same time acknowledges vaping is helpful to quiting smoking so vaping will still be available to adults
I also note Labour support the change so it will become law
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
I do find it funny that the Tories do things and then are criticised for being stupid because it doesn’t help them.
Clearly they must be stupid because no one would make a change to the electoral system except for partisan reasons.
Do you think it’s possible that they are making the change because they believe that it’s the *right* thing to do and don’t care about the electoral consequences?
One should make changes because it is the right thing to do I agree. But do you really think that is the case here? What on earth is the justification for letting people vote who left over 15 years ago? They have new homes in another country. They don't pay taxes here or benefit or contribute to life in any way here. They are gone.
The only thing that should be in dispute is where the cut off should be (1 year, 3 years, 5 years ...) but whatever it is, 15 years is well past the limit.
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Almost perfect, but you haven't mentioned that you have a higher IQ than everyone else here and that you are tempted to leave because we are all too stupid to engage with you properly.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
I stopped smoking at the beginning of January and switched to vaping. I use my vape in the same way I used to smoke cigarettes and the same times and occasions and I have found the switch seamless. I use a low nicotine fluid so just enough to avoid getting withdrawal anger but now my lungs aren’t full of tar and Carbon Monoxide.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
Well done!
I stopped 24 years ago, and can’t believe I ever started. Couldn’t pay me to smoke now.
Despite being a relatively heavy smoker, 20 a day I’d say, I didn’t find it that difficult to give up; I just did the AA style “I won’t have my first cigarette of the day” and kept putting it off. If I fancied one I’d try to eat a fruit pastille without chewing
Stopping ages ago, what helped me was the sense of getting addicted to not smoking and all the things that went with its absence.
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Er, what? Remember that I have always agreed with ex-PBer SeanT on this matter. As he put it in his Spectator piece on this subject:
"To my mind, there are five main possible explanations [for the present UFO flap], in descending order of probability.
1. The US establishment – Pentagon to press – is engaged in a complex cross-party conspiracy of psyops to unnerve and mystify America’s adversaries, especially the Chinese. Perhaps they want to convince them America possesses advanced alien technology, and America has been reverse engineering it for decades.
2. The US establishment has some incredible new military tech – something truly astonishing, like anti-gravity aircraft – and they’ve had it for ages, and they want to hide it from everyone: Americans as much as the Chinese.
3. The US establishment has gone collectively mad, or is suffering some mass hallucination, stemming from a few credulous individuals (a process known in psychology as ‘contagion’).
4. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – but they’re wrong.
5. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – and they are right."
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
You can't argue that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the attempts by Hamas to exterminate Jews and at the same time argue that Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza. You have to choose.
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Almost perfect, but you haven't mentioned that you have a higher IQ than everyone else here and that you are tempted to leave because we are all too stupid to engage with you properly.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
You can't argue that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the attempts by Hamas to exterminate Jews and at the same time argue that Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza. You have to choose.
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
Precisely. All the angst over whether the BBC and others would describe Hamas as terrorists missed the point. They're so much more than terrorists.
The big news for me today isn't Gaza or any of that, it's on the vaping. The ban on disposables. They are the one thing that's worked to get me off the fags (after 45 years on them) so I'm a bit worried to put it mildly.
That said, I think this must be about the most slam dunk public health measure a government could ever wish for. Disposable vapes are turning large numbers of young people who've never smoked into nicotine addicts and they're an environmental plague.
So, you know, fuck you Rishi and well done Rishi on this one.
First off, congratulations.
Secondly, have you tried a reusable one? There are a lot of options on the market and they are not quite so daunting as they are made out to be (at the top end there is a lot of “pro-vaping” terminology/products etc that are a bit mind-boggling but these aren’t things you need to concern yourself with if you’re just looking for a product to keep you away from cigarettes). I vaped for around 4 years, though have now been off nicotine all together for about 2 years now.
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Almost perfect, but you haven't mentioned that you have a higher IQ than everyone else here and that you are tempted to leave because we are all too stupid to engage with you properly.
Well
1 I do
2 I am
3 You are
Given what I have just heretofore adduced, from the Speccie
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Er, what? Remember that I have always agreed with ex-PBer SeanT on this matter. As he put it in his Spectator piece on this subject:
"To my mind, there are five main possible explanations [for the present UFO flap], in descending order of probability.
1. The US establishment – Pentagon to press – is engaged in a complex cross-party conspiracy of psyops to unnerve and mystify America’s adversaries, especially the Chinese. Perhaps they want to convince them America possesses advanced alien technology, and America has been reverse engineering it for decades.
2. The US establishment has some incredible new military tech – something truly astonishing, like anti-gravity aircraft – and they’ve had it for ages, and they want to hide it from everyone: Americans as much as the Chinese.
3. The US establishment has gone collectively mad, or is suffering some mass hallucination, stemming from a few credulous individuals (a process known in psychology as ‘contagion’).
4. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – but they’re wrong.
5. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – and they are right."
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
I stopped smoking at the beginning of January and switched to vaping. I use my vape in the same way I used to smoke cigarettes and the same times and occasions and I have found the switch seamless. I use a low nicotine fluid so just enough to avoid getting withdrawal anger but now my lungs aren’t full of tar and Carbon Monoxide.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
Well done!
I stopped 24 years ago, and can’t believe I ever started. Couldn’t pay me to smoke now.
Despite being a relatively heavy smoker, 20 a day I’d say, I didn’t find it that difficult to give up; I just did the AA style “I won’t have my first cigarette of the day” and kept putting it off. If I fancied one I’d try to eat a fruit pastille without chewing
I recently started going to AA groups for alcohol, and ticked over a month of not drinking at the weekend - probably the longest I've gone without a drink since I was sixteen. AA is a fascinating place with a real gamut of society. For what it's worth I don't think I had an alcohol dependence, but definitely a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with booze, and was on a bad trajectory with it.
Not sure I feel 'better' per se, but I've definitely saved a lot of money and lost a little weight. Still figuring out how to replace alcohol as a defining element of my socialising though.
I hope you do well with AA.
I find the group interesting as an example of a very efficient charity - they have around 20 staff and a £2.5m budget, yet are able to run an average of around 140 meetings a day across the country - taking 365 days as the denominator, reaching around 40k people.
The wonderful NY crime novels of Lawrence Block are fascinating on the subject of alcohol addiction and AA, a recurring theme throughout, though not for the fainthearted or squeamish.
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Er, what? Remember that I have always agreed with ex-PBer SeanT on this matter. As he put it in his Spectator piece on this subject:
"To my mind, there are five main possible explanations [for the present UFO flap], in descending order of probability.
1. The US establishment – Pentagon to press – is engaged in a complex cross-party conspiracy of psyops to unnerve and mystify America’s adversaries, especially the Chinese. Perhaps they want to convince them America possesses advanced alien technology, and America has been reverse engineering it for decades.
2. The US establishment has some incredible new military tech – something truly astonishing, like anti-gravity aircraft – and they’ve had it for ages, and they want to hide it from everyone: Americans as much as the Chinese.
3. The US establishment has gone collectively mad, or is suffering some mass hallucination, stemming from a few credulous individuals (a process known in psychology as ‘contagion’).
4. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – but they’re wrong.
5. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – and they are right."
Or lack of grammar schools, which were one of the engines of social mobility.
Does anyone have a link showing which Education Secretary closed the most grammar schools?
It was Shirley Williams and Tony Crosland who as Labour Education Secretaries most pushed conversion of grammars to comprehensives.
Thatcher did not stop mainly Labour councils doing the same from 1970-74 under PM Heath's orders but by the end of the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments in 1997 more pupils were in grammar schools than had been in 1979
I'm sure many Tory counties embraced the comprehensive system. I don't have the details and can't be bothered to look them up, but during this time I am certain that Surrey would have been solidly Tory and it went comprehensive. What about East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, etc, etc. Aren't all of these places that were solidly Tory at that time and went comprehensive?
Hampshire wasn't as solidly conservative as all that- the coastal strip from Portsmouth to Southampton was heavily populated and more mixed, but yes, a lot of Conservative councils were quite happy to run with comprehensivisation. After all, by the 1970s a lot of county councillors would have been getting cross letters from nice middle class parents whose children hadn't made the cut.
Remember, folks:
You can't have a grammar school system without a secondary modern system, and very few heads or teachers have the skills to make those work well. That's why places like Kent don't do well on social mobility.
Providing wide access to secondary education where it hadn't existed before undoubtedly improved social mobility, but a lot of the mobility was due to changes in the economy. Someone had to do all the new, more middle class jobs.
In the 40's and 50's, we believed in rationing scarce things, and an academic secondary education was one of those. That need has gone, and so has the belief in rationing. What right has Blankshire County Council to tell you that your child shouldn't go to an academic school?
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Er, what? Remember that I have always agreed with ex-PBer SeanT on this matter. As he put it in his Spectator piece on this subject:
"To my mind, there are five main possible explanations [for the present UFO flap], in descending order of probability.
1. The US establishment – Pentagon to press – is engaged in a complex cross-party conspiracy of psyops to unnerve and mystify America’s adversaries, especially the Chinese. Perhaps they want to convince them America possesses advanced alien technology, and America has been reverse engineering it for decades.
2. The US establishment has some incredible new military tech – something truly astonishing, like anti-gravity aircraft – and they’ve had it for ages, and they want to hide it from everyone: Americans as much as the Chinese.
3. The US establishment has gone collectively mad, or is suffering some mass hallucination, stemming from a few credulous individuals (a process known in psychology as ‘contagion’).
4. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – but they’re wrong.
5. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – and they are right."
Kirkpatrick's testimony seems to be a combination of explanations 3, 2 and 1
Some credulous individuals. perhaps being exploited by others for Psyops, plus a bit of advanced tech
It's also worth noting that Kirkpatrick is not the last word on the subject, and Grusch remains hard to explain
But what is the 'establishment'? This is just a few stories in the press and media at large. There is not a shred of evidence for 2 (anti-grav aircraft? or of 1 - a huge conspiracy. 3 is closesr to the mark - some credulous fools (Bigelow) and the media picking up on it, probably via a thrill seeking, drama queen of a flint dildo maker.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
What are your views on UNRWA officials lending vehicles to Hamas for the October 7 attacks? And for allowing hostages to be held at their facilities?
Unlike other so called 'Western Countries' Israel lies. Anyone watching their spokespeople and ministers over the last several months know this. Not even their most ardent followers now accept announcements by the Israeli government at face value. It is one of the reasons their so called 'friends' are peeling off at such a rate
The big news for me today isn't Gaza or any of that, it's on the vaping. The ban on disposables. They are the one thing that's worked to get me off the fags (after 45 years on them) so I'm a bit worried to put it mildly.
That said, I think this must be about the most slam dunk public health measure a government could ever wish for. Disposable vapes are turning large numbers of young people who've never smoked into nicotine addicts and they're an environmental plague.
So, you know, fuck you Rishi and well done Rishi on this one.
First off, congratulations.
Secondly, have you tried a reusable one? There are a lot of options on the market and they are not quite so daunting as they are made out to be (at the top end there is a lot of “pro-vaping” terminology/products etc that are a bit mind-boggling but these aren’t things you need to concern yourself with if you’re just looking for a product to keep you away from cigarettes). I vaped for around 4 years, though have now been off nicotine all together for about 2 years now.
Mixed feelings about vaping.
On one hand, I tend to the libertarian view on these things. Every step of the way, I've viewed the gradual erosion of smokers' freedoms with dismay - banning smoking in pubs, hiding cigarettes in cupboards, etc. And I feel the same about this. I don't like smoking, but I like the gradual creep of rules even less. On the other hand, vape shops are a hideous eyesore and a blight on the public realm and I wish vaping had never been invented. At least cigarettes used to have some handsome and stylish advertising and branding.
Off thread: I'm WFHing today and my cats are being dicks. One of them just walked onto my desk and very carefully and deliberately put her paw on the 'off' button, looking at me blankly as she did so; then batted my pencil onto the floor and settled down on my 'to do' list. Still better than a dog, though.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
I stopped smoking at the beginning of January and switched to vaping. I use my vape in the same way I used to smoke cigarettes and the same times and occasions and I have found the switch seamless. I use a low nicotine fluid so just enough to avoid getting withdrawal anger but now my lungs aren’t full of tar and Carbon Monoxide.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
Well done!
I stopped 24 years ago, and can’t believe I ever started. Couldn’t pay me to smoke now.
Despite being a relatively heavy smoker, 20 a day I’d say, I didn’t find it that difficult to give up; I just did the AA style “I won’t have my first cigarette of the day” and kept putting it off. If I fancied one I’d try to eat a fruit pastille without chewing
I recently started going to AA groups for alcohol, and ticked over a month of not drinking at the weekend - probably the longest I've gone without a drink since I was sixteen. AA is a fascinating place with a real gamut of society. For what it's worth I don't think I had an alcohol dependence, but definitely a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with booze, and was on a bad trajectory with it.
Not sure I feel 'better' per se, but I've definitely saved a lot of money and lost a little weight. Still figuring out how to replace alcohol as a defining element of my socialising though.
I hope you do well with AA.
I find the group interesting as an example of a very efficient charity - they have around 20 staff and a £2.5m budget, yet are able to run an average of around 140 meetings a day across the country - taking 365 days as the denominator, reaching around 40k people.
Thank you.
I agree - it is very efficient, and known also to be quite effective too, despite it being hard to pin down precisely why (tbh for me I think it's helpful to be around people with whom you can be totally honest, without judgement, and know that the people you are sharing with understand your behaviour better than most of your friends and family will).
The 'higher power' and steps stuff can - understandably - be a bit off-putting, but tbh from what I've seen it's up to you how much you want to engage with that.
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Er, what? Remember that I have always agreed with ex-PBer SeanT on this matter. As he put it in his Spectator piece on this subject:
"To my mind, there are five main possible explanations [for the present UFO flap], in descending order of probability.
1. The US establishment – Pentagon to press – is engaged in a complex cross-party conspiracy of psyops to unnerve and mystify America’s adversaries, especially the Chinese. Perhaps they want to convince them America possesses advanced alien technology, and America has been reverse engineering it for decades.
2. The US establishment has some incredible new military tech – something truly astonishing, like anti-gravity aircraft – and they’ve had it for ages, and they want to hide it from everyone: Americans as much as the Chinese.
3. The US establishment has gone collectively mad, or is suffering some mass hallucination, stemming from a few credulous individuals (a process known in psychology as ‘contagion’).
4. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – but they’re wron 5. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – and they are right."
Kirkpatrick's testimony seems to be a combination of explanations 3, 2 and 1
Some credulous individuals. perhaps being exploited by others for Psyops, plus a bit of advanced tech
It's also worth noting that Kirkpatrick is not the last word on the subject, and Grusch remains hard to explain
I also wonder why Trump hasn't rambled extensively on the subject. It seems prime Trumpian lunacy material.
The weird thing is that Trump is the ONLY living US president who, as far as I know, has not made cryptic, suggestive or evasive comments on the subject of UFOs
Obama, Bill Clinton and Dubya Bush have all said weird things
Biden has been evasive
The late Jimmy Carter was a true believer
I think even Bush Senior was a little cryptic
Trump came right out and said: It's all a load of bollocks
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
You can't argue that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the attempts by Hamas to exterminate Jews and at the same time argue that Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza. You have to choose.
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
This is the central premise - and contradiction - that those pro-Hamas, will no one think of the innocent civilian types always overlook.
They can't both be innocent civilians and also have voted Hamas into power. Hamas are not some rogue group operating on the fringes of Gaza society. They are its government.
The standard response is that there hasn't been an election in many years so the broad mass of Gaza civilians are not Hamas supporters. But again, they are the government running the country. And it is legitimate for Israel to be at war with the government/country.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
I stopped smoking at the beginning of January and switched to vaping. I use my vape in the same way I used to smoke cigarettes and the same times and occasions and I have found the switch seamless. I use a low nicotine fluid so just enough to avoid getting withdrawal anger but now my lungs aren’t full of tar and Carbon Monoxide.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
Well done!
I stopped 24 years ago, and can’t believe I ever started. Couldn’t pay me to smoke now.
Despite being a relatively heavy smoker, 20 a day I’d say, I didn’t find it that difficult to give up; I just did the AA style “I won’t have my first cigarette of the day” and kept putting it off. If I fancied one I’d try to eat a fruit pastille without chewing
I recently started going to AA groups for alcohol, and ticked over a month of not drinking at the weekend - probably the longest I've gone without a drink since I was sixteen. AA is a fascinating place with a real gamut of society. For what it's worth I don't think I had an alcohol dependence, but definitely a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with booze, and was on a bad trajectory with it.
Not sure I feel 'better' per se, but I've definitely saved a lot of money and lost a little weight. Still figuring out how to replace alcohol as a defining element of my socialising though.
I hope you do well with AA.
I find the group interesting as an example of a very efficient charity - they have around 20 staff and a £2.5m budget, yet are able to run an average of around 140 meetings a day across the country - taking 365 days as the denominator, reaching around 40k people.
The wonderful NY crime novels of Lawrence Block are fascinating on the subject of alcohol addiction and AA, a recurring theme throughout, though not for the fainthearted or squeamish.
I do sometimes wonder how many people I'm sitting with are just doing research for a script or a novel.
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Er, what? Remember that I have always agreed with ex-PBer SeanT on this matter. As he put it in his Spectator piece on this subject:
"To my mind, there are five main possible explanations [for the present UFO flap], in descending order of probability.
1. The US establishment – Pentagon to press – is engaged in a complex cross-party conspiracy of psyops to unnerve and mystify America’s adversaries, especially the Chinese. Perhaps they want to convince them America possesses advanced alien technology, and America has been reverse engineering it for decades.
2. The US establishment has some incredible new military tech – something truly astonishing, like anti-gravity aircraft – and they’ve had it for ages, and they want to hide it from everyone: Americans as much as the Chinese.
3. The US establishment has gone collectively mad, or is suffering some mass hallucination, stemming from a few credulous individuals (a process known in psychology as ‘contagion’).
4. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – but they’re wrong.
5. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – and they are right."
Kirkpatrick's testimony seems to be a combination of explanations 3, 2 and 1
Some credulous individuals. perhaps being exploited by others for Psyops, plus a bit of advanced tech
It's also worth noting that Kirkpatrick is not the last word on the subject, and Grusch remains hard to explain
But what is the 'establishment'? This is just a few stories in the press and media at large. There is not a shred of evidence for 2 (anti-grav aircraft? or of 1 - a huge conspiracy. 3 is closesr to the mark - some credulous fools (Bigelow) and the media picking up on it, probably via a thrill seeking, drama queen of a flint dildo maker.
Gosh, who knew I had such power as an anonymous commenter on PB, able to sway public debate and get ex CIA chiefs and US admirals and US senators and US intel chiefs and President Obama to say Yeah, there is something up there we don't understand
I mean, I know PB is influential and I am the mosr articulate and intelligent commenter on here (as we see today) but still. Wow. Thanks!
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Er, what? Remember that I have always agreed with ex-PBer SeanT on this matter. As he put it in his Spectator piece on this subject:
"To my mind, there are five main possible explanations [for the present UFO flap], in descending order of probability.
1. The US establishment – Pentagon to press – is engaged in a complex cross-party conspiracy of psyops to unnerve and mystify America’s adversaries, especially the Chinese. Perhaps they want to convince them America possesses advanced alien technology, and America has been reverse engineering it for decades.
2. The US establishment has some incredible new military tech – something truly astonishing, like anti-gravity aircraft – and they’ve had it for ages, and they want to hide it from everyone: Americans as much as the Chinese.
3. The US establishment has gone collectively mad, or is suffering some mass hallucination, stemming from a few credulous individuals (a process known in psychology as ‘contagion’).
4. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – but they’re wron 5. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – and they are right."
Kirkpatrick's testimony seems to be a combination of explanations 3, 2 and 1
Some credulous individuals. perhaps being exploited by others for Psyops, plus a bit of advanced tech
It's also worth noting that Kirkpatrick is not the last word on the subject, and Grusch remains hard to explain
I also wonder why Trump hasn't rambled extensively on the subject. It seems prime Trumpian lunacy material.
The weird thing is that Trump is the ONLY living US president who, as far as I know, has not made cryptic, suggestive or evasive comments on the subject of UFOs
Obama, Bill Clinton and Dubya Bush have all said weird things
Biden has been evasive
The late Jimmy Carter was a true believer
I think even Bush Senior was a little cryptic
Trump came right out and said: It's all a load of bollocks
fwiw I gave up smoking (such as I smoked which was a few Kent and Sobranie and ofc No.10 and No.6s) one day when I was 16yrs old thinking dear god I'm killing myself. Not smoked since, perhaps the odd cigar and I don't like those much either.
I wish I had had at some point the same damascene revelation about booze. But I really enjoy a glass (or two) of wine, and sometimes, occasionally, a very strong gin (no ice, no lemon, gin from the freezer, tonic from the fridge). I know it is bad for my health but can't or won't stop. That said I have a fake G&T, ice and a slice, every day at around 6pm and that is nice also. Oh that there would be a great non-alcoholic wine, but there isn't.
I drink a huge amount less than I used to (as do many friends and family) and really like the feeling of not having drunk the previous night/week, which happens often.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
I mean, genocide is a legal term and (unfortunately) typically only gets designated as such after the fact. I am happy based on South Africa's evidence to call it a genocide, but I know people here like being pedantic so I didn't want to get pulled up on that.
Using the word "Genocide" is quite a well-used rhetorical device and often falls into the same bucket as "woke", "political correctness gone mad", et al.
You are happy for South Africa to have used it and I would say whoop-de-doo. The ICJ said Israel shouldn't engage in genocide which is sort of the thing that you would expect and hope the ICJ to say.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the war rages. Wars are shit and shit things happen in the name of a war aim. Inadvertent, or even intentional bombing of civilian populations is quite common. Usually the victors tend to have dibs on categorisation and nomination. In this case, as @RochdalePioneers notes, a victor will be very hard to identify which means we must come to our own conclusions.
The lawyer in the Bosnian case discussed online how this is the first step to a full investigation into official designation of a genocide. That the ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction to investigate is similar to saying there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are doing a genocide. You can go back to your usual hand waving of "the powerful will do what they will" all you want - it doesn't change the importance of the situation.
People are dying in large numbers. How large we don't know because Hamas is controlling that narrative but certainly large. Buildings are being flattened, infrastructure is being destroyed.
All fairly war-ish. But South Africa says hold on this is genocide. And some lawyer looks at the supposed body count and says why yes it could be.
Such a sequence could apply to most any conflict of the past 100 years.
Is Israel systematically trying to kill every Palestinian? I don't think it is. Or if it is it is being pretty cack-handed about it.
The incoming famine could be a efficient delivery vehicle with limited apportionment of blame if Netanyahu is so minded.
Make no mistake, Hamas are a death cult that needs to be crushed.
The incoming collective punishment of Palestinians by Netanyahu via famine might shift the dial towards adjectives that we have hitherto avoided. The numbers involved could be eye-watetingly high.
The big news for me today isn't Gaza or any of that, it's on the vaping. The ban on disposables. They are the one thing that's worked to get me off the fags (after 45 years on them) so I'm a bit worried to put it mildly.
That said, I think this must be about the most slam dunk public health measure a government could ever wish for. Disposable vapes are turning large numbers of young people who've never smoked into nicotine addicts and they're an environmental plague.
So, you know, fuck you Rishi and well done Rishi on this one.
First off, congratulations.
Secondly, have you tried a reusable one? There are a lot of options on the market and they are not quite so daunting as they are made out to be (at the top end there is a lot of “pro-vaping” terminology/products etc that are a bit mind-boggling but these aren’t things you need to concern yourself with if you’re just looking for a product to keep you away from cigarettes). I vaped for around 4 years, though have now been off nicotine all together for about 2 years now.
Mixed feelings about vaping.
On one hand, I tend to the libertarian view on these things. Every step of the way, I've viewed the gradual erosion of smokers' freedoms with dismay - banning smoking in pubs, hiding cigarettes in cupboards, etc. And I feel the same about this. I don't like smoking, but I like the gradual creep of rules even less. On the other hand, vape shops are a hideous eyesore and a blight on the public realm and I wish vaping had never been invented. At least cigarettes used to have some handsome and stylish advertising and branding.
Off thread: I'm WFHing today and my cats are being dicks. One of them just walked onto my desk and very carefully and deliberately put her paw on the 'off' button, looking at me blankly as she did so; then batted my pencil onto the floor and settled down on my 'to do' list. Still better than a dog, though.
Vaping for me was an invaluable tool to get me off cigarettes. I think it is very likely I would still be smoking today if it wasn’t for them.
However I do have a mixed relationship with it. It served its original purpose, for which I will be forever grateful, but lockdown meant it became much more accessible 24/7 at home (I was never one being comfortable walking along a street blowing great plumes of vapour at whichever poor sod was downwind of me), and if I were to assess it, I’d say it actually meant I was more nicotine reliant than I had been previously. No lingering smell or nasty ash - it really doesn’t create a huge incentive against using it as often as you like at home. I did eventually need to force myself off it, because it was becoming as obsessive a thing, if not more, than the cigarettes.
To be blunt, I am in full support of smokers making the transition to it. I would advise non-smokers just thinking it’s a cool habit to take up, that it’s a very big mistake to start.
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Er, what? Remember that I have always agreed with ex-PBer SeanT on this matter. As he put it in his Spectator piece on this subject:
"To my mind, there are five main possible explanations [for the present UFO flap], in descending order of probability.
1. The US establishment – Pentagon to press – is engaged in a complex cross-party conspiracy of psyops to unnerve and mystify America’s adversaries, especially the Chinese. Perhaps they want to convince them America possesses advanced alien technology, and America has been reverse engineering it for decades.
2. The US establishment has some incredible new military tech – something truly astonishing, like anti-gravity aircraft – and they’ve had it for ages, and they want to hide it from everyone: Americans as much as the Chinese.
3. The US establishment has gone collectively mad, or is suffering some mass hallucination, stemming from a few credulous individuals (a process known in psychology as ‘contagion’).
4. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – but they’re wron 5. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – and they are right."
Kirkpatrick's testimony seems to be a combination of explanations 3, 2 and 1
Some credulous individuals. perhaps being exploited by others for Psyops, plus a bit of advanced tech
It's also worth noting that Kirkpatrick is not the last word on the subject, and Grusch remains hard to explain
I also wonder why Trump hasn't rambled extensively on the subject. It seems prime Trumpian lunacy material.
The weird thing is that Trump is the ONLY living US president who, as far as I know, has not made cryptic, suggestive or evasive comments on the subject of UFOs
Obama, Bill Clinton and Dubya Bush have all said weird things
Biden has been evasive
The late Jimmy Carter was a true believer
I think even Bush Senior was a little cryptic
Trump came right out and said: It's all a load of bollocks
Isn't Jimmy Carter still alive?
Is he?? Was it his wife that keeled over, then?
If so, sorry Jimmy!!
Incidentally he was/is a TOTAL believer in UFOs - after he had some personal first-hand experience of one. He may indeed have seen a couple, IIRC
You can't argue that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the attempts by Hamas to exterminate Jews and at the same time argue that Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza. You have to choose.
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
That's a very odd view, even leaving aside the less than perfect nature of democracy in Gaza. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021–22_Palestinian_local_elections for the background. Anyway, suppose that Hamas had won a fair election. Does that make every citizen complicit in everything that follows? Are you and I complicit in any action taken by Sunak, and if he chose to launch attacks that killed civilians, would we therefore be legitimate targets for reprisals?
Killing civilians is always undesirable, and routinely doing so without a reasonable military excuse is a war crime. Retaliation for other civilians being killed is not a reasonable excuse.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
I stopped smoking at the beginning of January and switched to vaping. I use my vape in the same way I used to smoke cigarettes and the same times and occasions and I have found the switch seamless. I use a low nicotine fluid so just enough to avoid getting withdrawal anger but now my lungs aren’t full of tar and Carbon Monoxide.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
Well done!
I stopped 24 years ago, and can’t believe I ever started. Couldn’t pay me to smoke now.
Despite being a relatively heavy smoker, 20 a day I’d say, I didn’t find it that difficult to give up; I just did the AA style “I won’t have my first cigarette of the day” and kept putting it off. If I fancied one I’d try to eat a fruit pastille without chewing
I recently started going to AA groups for alcohol, and ticked over a month of not drinking at the weekend - probably the longest I've gone without a drink since I was sixteen. AA is a fascinating place with a real gamut of society. For what it's worth I don't think I had an alcohol dependence, but definitely a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with booze, and was on a bad trajectory with it.
Not sure I feel 'better' per se, but I've definitely saved a lot of money and lost a little weight. Still figuring out how to replace alcohol as a defining element of my socialising though.
I hope you do well with AA.
I find the group interesting as an example of a very efficient charity - they have around 20 staff and a £2.5m budget, yet are able to run an average of around 140 meetings a day across the country - taking 365 days as the denominator, reaching around 40k people.
Thank you.
I agree - it is very efficient, and known also to be quite effective too, despite it being hard to pin down precisely why (tbh for me I think it's helpful to be around people with whom you can be totally honest, without judgement, and know that the people you are sharing with understand your behaviour better than most of your friends and family will).
The 'higher power' and steps stuff can - understandably - be a bit off-putting, but tbh from what I've seen it's up to you how much you want to engage with that.
I have my own ideas about why it is effective - partly to do with consistency and sticking to the knitting over 75 years, but also to do with finding where the "centre" of organisation and values needs to be which is an anchor, and how to combine that with open edges facilitating access without judgement.
So creating a supportive community / network with the appropriate touching points for members for as long as they need them, but within a limited sector of life that works against a wider dependency.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
I stopped smoking at the beginning of January and switched to vaping. I use my vape in the same way I used to smoke cigarettes and the same times and occasions and I have found the switch seamless. I use a low nicotine fluid so just enough to avoid getting withdrawal anger but now my lungs aren’t full of tar and Carbon Monoxide.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
Well done!
I stopped 24 years ago, and can’t believe I ever started. Couldn’t pay me to smoke now.
Despite being a relatively heavy smoker, 20 a day I’d say, I didn’t find it that difficult to give up; I just did the AA style “I won’t have my first cigarette of the day” and kept putting it off. If I fancied one I’d try to eat a fruit pastille without chewing
I recently started going to AA groups for alcohol, and ticked over a month of not drinking at the weekend - probably the longest I've gone without a drink since I was sixteen. AA is a fascinating place with a real gamut of society. For what it's worth I don't think I had an alcohol dependence, but definitely a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with booze, and was on a bad trajectory with it.
Not sure I feel 'better' per se, but I've definitely saved a lot of money and lost a little weight. Still figuring out how to replace alcohol as a defining element of my socialising though.
I hope you do well with AA.
I find the group interesting as an example of a very efficient charity - they have around 20 staff and a £2.5m budget, yet are able to run an average of around 140 meetings a day across the country - taking 365 days as the denominator, reaching around 40k people.
The wonderful NY crime novels of Lawrence Block are fascinating on the subject of alcohol addiction and AA, a recurring theme throughout, though not for the fainthearted or squeamish.
I do sometimes wonder how many people I'm sitting with are just doing research for a script or a novel.
The big news for me today isn't Gaza or any of that, it's on the vaping. The ban on disposables. They are the one thing that's worked to get me off the fags (after 45 years on them) so I'm a bit worried to put it mildly.
That said, I think this must be about the most slam dunk public health measure a government could ever wish for. Disposable vapes are turning large numbers of young people who've never smoked into nicotine addicts and they're an environmental plague.
So, you know, fuck you Rishi and well done Rishi on this one.
First off, congratulations.
Secondly, have you tried a reusable one? There are a lot of options on the market and they are not quite so daunting as they are made out to be (at the top end there is a lot of “pro-vaping” terminology/products etc that are a bit mind-boggling but these aren’t things you need to concern yourself with if you’re just looking for a product to keep you away from cigarettes). I vaped for around 4 years, though have now been off nicotine all together for about 2 years now.
Mixed feelings about vaping.
On one hand, I tend to the libertarian view on these things. Every step of the way, I've viewed the gradual erosion of smokers' freedoms with dismay - banning smoking in pubs, hiding cigarettes in cupboards, etc. And I feel the same about this. I don't like smoking, but I like the gradual creep of rules even less. On the other hand, vape shops are a hideous eyesore and a blight on the public realm and I wish vaping had never been invented. At least cigarettes used to have some handsome and stylish advertising and branding.
Off thread: I'm WFHing today and my cats are being dicks. One of them just walked onto my desk and very carefully and deliberately put her paw on the 'off' button, looking at me blankly as she did so; then batted my pencil onto the floor and settled down on my 'to do' list. Still better than a dog, though.
Vaping for me was an invaluable tool to get me off cigarettes. I think it is very likely I would still be smoking today if it wasn’t for them.
However I do have a mixed relationship with it. It served its original purpose, for which I will be forever grateful, but lockdown meant it became much more accessible 24/7 at home (I was never one being comfortable walking along a street blowing great plumes of vapour at whichever poor sod was downwind of me), and if I were to assess it, I’d say it actually meant I was more nicotine reliant than I had been previously. No lingering smell or nasty ash - it really doesn’t create a huge incentive against using it as often as you like at home. I did eventually need to force myself off it, because it was becoming as obsessive a thing, if not more, than the cigarettes.
To be blunt, I am in full support of smokers making the transition to it. I would advise non-smokers just thinking it’s a cool habit to take up, that it’s a very big mistake to start.
The interesting stat is that the trend for smoking cessation has actually slowed down since the advent of vaping. Which suggests vaping isn't in general an effective smoking cessation tool.
I do accept it could be useful in getting people to smoke less.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
You can't argue that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the attempts by Hamas to exterminate Jews and at the same time argue that Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza. You have to choose.
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
Unfortunately, there haven't been elections in Gaza OR the West Bank since 2006...
🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead narrows to fourteen points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 29% (+1) Lab 43% (-2) Lib Dem 10% (+1) Other 19% (+2) Fieldwork: 26th - 29th January 2024 Sample: 2,064 GB adults (Changes from 19th - 22nd January 2024)
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
I mean, genocide is a legal term and (unfortunately) typically only gets designated as such after the fact. I am happy based on South Africa's evidence to call it a genocide, but I know people here like being pedantic so I didn't want to get pulled up on that.
Using the word "Genocide" is quite a well-used rhetorical device and often falls into the same bucket as "woke", "political correctness gone mad", et al.
You are happy for South Africa to have used it and I would say whoop-de-doo. The ICJ said Israel shouldn't engage in genocide which is sort of the thing that you would expect and hope the ICJ to say.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the war rages. Wars are shit and shit things happen in the name of a war aim. Inadvertent, or even intentional bombing of civilian populations is quite common. Usually the victors tend to have dibs on categorisation and nomination. In this case, as @RochdalePioneers notes, a victor will be very hard to identify which means we must come to our own conclusions.
The lawyer in the Bosnian case discussed online how this is the first step to a full investigation into official designation of a genocide. That the ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction to investigate is similar to saying there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are doing a genocide. You can go back to your usual hand waving of "the powerful will do what they will" all you want - it doesn't change the importance of the situation.
People are dying in large numbers. How large we don't know because Hamas is controlling that narrative but certainly large. Buildings are being flattened, infrastructure is being destroyed.
All fairly war-ish. But South Africa says hold on this is genocide. And some lawyer looks at the supposed body count and says why yes it could be.
Such a sequence could apply to most any conflict of the past 100 years.
Is Israel systematically trying to kill every Palestinian? I don't think it is. Or if it is it is being pretty cack-handed about it.
The incoming famine could be a efficient delivery vehicle with limited apportionment of blame if Netanyahu is so minded.
Make no mistake, Hamas are a death cult that needs to be crushed.
The incoming collective punishment of Palestinians by Netanyahu via famine might shift the dial towards adjectives that we have hitherto avoided. The numbers involved could be eye-watetingly high.
Couple of things here.
First, did the Allies "collectively punish" the Germans or were they just at war with them. :Let's not go round in circles but Hamas is the democratically-elected government of Gaza.
Secondly, let's wait for the famine to materialise before we castigate Israel for it. When we see pictures a la Michael Buerk 40 years ago (god help us) then we can worry. And of course puff pieces as there have been on Band/Live Aid of course the international community got that wrong also and instead of helping the starving, propped up Mengistu and the Eritreans.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
You can't argue that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the attempts by Hamas to exterminate Jews and at the same time argue that Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza. You have to choose.
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
Unfortunately, there haven't been elections in Gaza OR the West Bank since 2006...
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
I mean, genocide is a legal term and (unfortunately) typically only gets designated as such after the fact. I am happy based on South Africa's evidence to call it a genocide, but I know people here like being pedantic so I didn't want to get pulled up on that.
Using the word "Genocide" is quite a well-used rhetorical device and often falls into the same bucket as "woke", "political correctness gone mad", et al.
You are happy for South Africa to have used it and I would say whoop-de-doo. The ICJ said Israel shouldn't engage in genocide which is sort of the thing that you would expect and hope the ICJ to say.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the war rages. Wars are shit and shit things happen in the name of a war aim. Inadvertent, or even intentional bombing of civilian populations is quite common. Usually the victors tend to have dibs on categorisation and nomination. In this case, as @RochdalePioneers notes, a victor will be very hard to identify which means we must come to our own conclusions.
The lawyer in the Bosnian case discussed online how this is the first step to a full investigation into official designation of a genocide. That the ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction to investigate is similar to saying there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are doing a genocide. You can go back to your usual hand waving of "the powerful will do what they will" all you want - it doesn't change the importance of the situation.
People are dying in large numbers. How large we don't know because Hamas is controlling that narrative but certainly large. Buildings are being flattened, infrastructure is being destroyed.
All fairly war-ish. But South Africa says hold on this is genocide. And some lawyer looks at the supposed body count and says why yes it could be.
Such a sequence could apply to most any conflict of the past 100 years.
Is Israel systematically trying to kill every Palestinian? I don't think it is. Or if it is it is being pretty cack-handed about it.
The incoming famine could be a efficient delivery vehicle with limited apportionment of blame if Netanyahu is so minded.
Make no mistake, Hamas are a death cult that needs to be crushed.
The incoming collective punishment of Palestinians by Netanyahu via famine might shift the dial towards adjectives that we have hitherto avoided. The numbers involved could be eye-watetingly high.
The big news for me today isn't Gaza or any of that, it's on the vaping. The ban on disposables. They are the one thing that's worked to get me off the fags (after 45 years on them) so I'm a bit worried to put it mildly.
That said, I think this must be about the most slam dunk public health measure a government could ever wish for. Disposable vapes are turning large numbers of young people who've never smoked into nicotine addicts and they're an environmental plague.
So, you know, fuck you Rishi and well done Rishi on this one.
First off, congratulations.
Secondly, have you tried a reusable one? There are a lot of options on the market and they are not quite so daunting as they are made out to be (at the top end there is a lot of “pro-vaping” terminology/products etc that are a bit mind-boggling but these aren’t things you need to concern yourself with if you’re just looking for a product to keep you away from cigarettes). I vaped for around 4 years, though have now been off nicotine all together for about 2 years now.
Cheers thanks. And congrats yourself - more so in fact since unlike me you've dealt with the core (nicotine) addiction. I found the re-usable kits too much of a faff and not sufficiently 'like' smoking last time (hence the godsend of the disposables) but I'll be looking at it again since needs must. There's also that NEAFS product which looks worth a shot.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
You can't argue that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the attempts by Hamas to exterminate Jews and at the same time argue that Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza. You have to choose.
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
Unfortunately, there haven't been elections in Gaza OR the West Bank since 2006...
🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead narrows to fourteen points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 29% (+1) Lab 43% (-2) Lib Dem 10% (+1) Other 19% (+2) Fieldwork: 26th - 29th January 2024 Sample: 2,064 GB adults (Changes from 19th - 22nd January 2024)
The swing back has started...
(Or more realistically random fluctuations around the mean!)
Millions of expats given vote by Tories ‘will punish party for Brexit’
Labour and Liberal Democrats expected to reap benefit from franchise rule changes and frustration over visa restrictions
Labour’s vote will be boosted by a change in voting rules introduced by the Conservative government that will enfranchise an extra two million British expats at the next general election, according to academic research.
Rules came into effect on January 16 allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in a general election. Previously, people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost this right but the Conservatives pledged to scrap the rule in their 2019 manifesto and enacted the policy through the Elections Act 2022.
Labour opposed the rule change, but in an ironic twist, academics at the University of Sussex suggest the party will gain from it at the expense of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are also likely to benefit, according to the research...
...Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and Britain’s leading polling expert, said it was ironic that changes introduced by the Conservatives were likely to damage them at the polls. He told The Times: “Whatever benefit the Conservatives might have gained in the past from enfranchisement of overseas British citizens — and, in truth, no one can be sure how far that has been the case — there must be question marks about how much support the party can now hope to garner from expatriates living in the European Union, many of whom could well feel that their lives have been made more difficult by Brexit.”
Well duh! Wasn't this obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain (so not a Tory)? The people who voted against Brexit and for whom the post Brexit deal has been the most harmful to their daily lives want to punish the party who did this to them shock.
Just how dumb are Sunak and his team of advisors?
I do find it funny that the Tories do things and then are criticised for being stupid because it doesn’t help them.
Clearly they must be stupid because no one would make a change to the electoral system except for partisan reasons.
Do you think it’s possible that they are making the change because they believe that it’s the *right* thing to do and don’t care about the electoral consequences?
Or lack of grammar schools, which were one of the engines of social mobility.
Does anyone have a link showing which Education Secretary closed the most grammar schools?
It was Shirley Williams and Tony Crosland who as Labour Education Secretaries most pushed conversion of grammars to comprehensives.
Thatcher did not stop mainly Labour councils doing the same from 1970-74 under PM Heath's orders but by the end of the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments in 1997 more pupils were in grammar schools than had been in 1979
I'm sure many Tory counties embraced the comprehensive system. I don't have the details and can't be bothered to look them up, but during this time I am certain that Surrey would have been solidly Tory and it went comprehensive. What about East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, etc, etc. Aren't all of these places that were solidly Tory at that time and went comprehensive?
Of the remaining grammar school counties eg Kent, Bucks and Lincolnshire they were all Tory controlled as were areas like Poole, Southend, Chelmsford, Trafford, Rugby and Ripon that also still keep them
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Er, what? Remember that I have always agreed with ex-PBer SeanT on this matter. As he put it in his Spectator piece on this subject:
"To my mind, there are five main possible explanations [for the present UFO flap], in descending order of probability.
1. The US establishment – Pentagon to press – is engaged in a complex cross-party conspiracy of psyops to unnerve and mystify America’s adversaries, especially the Chinese. Perhaps they want to convince them America possesses advanced alien technology, and America has been reverse engineering it for decades.
2. The US establishment has some incredible new military tech – something truly astonishing, like anti-gravity aircraft – and they’ve had it for ages, and they want to hide it from everyone: Americans as much as the Chinese.
3. The US establishment has gone collectively mad, or is suffering some mass hallucination, stemming from a few credulous individuals (a process known in psychology as ‘contagion’).
4. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – but they’re wron 5. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – and they are right."
Kirkpatrick's testimony seems to be a combination of explanations 3, 2 and 1
Some credulous individuals. perhaps being exploited by others for Psyops, plus a bit of advanced tech
It's also worth noting that Kirkpatrick is not the last word on the subject, and Grusch remains hard to explain
I also wonder why Trump hasn't rambled extensively on the subject. It seems prime Trumpian lunacy material.
The weird thing is that Trump is the ONLY living US president who, as far as I know, has not made cryptic, suggestive or evasive comments on the subject of UFOs
Obama, Bill Clinton and Dubya Bush have all said weird things
Biden has been evasive
The late Jimmy Carter was a true believer
I think even Bush Senior was a little cryptic
Trump came right out and said: It's all a load of bollocks
This, I think, lends credence to the "being deliberately and subtly vague about the UFO stuff helps keep people guessing about the USA's technological capabilities" case. I can believe that Trump couldn't grasp that position at all.
You can't argue that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the attempts by Hamas to exterminate Jews and at the same time argue that Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza. You have to choose.
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
That's a very odd view, even leaving aside the less than perfect nature of democracy in Gaza. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021–22_Palestinian_local_elections for the background. Anyway, suppose that Hamas had won a fair election. Does that make every citizen complicit in everything that follows? Are you and I complicit in any action taken by Sunak, and if he chose to launch attacks that killed civilians, would we therefore be legitimate targets for reprisals?
Killing civilians is always undesirable, and routinely doing so without a reasonable military excuse is a war crime. Retaliation for other civilians being killed is not a reasonable excuse.
Israel believes it is at war, Nick. And if the UK went to war with, say, oh I don't know, "Terror", then we become legitimate targets of the terrorists. Or France, less improbably. Of course we would. If our government goes to war with another country then that puts us at war.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
You can't argue that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the attempts by Hamas to exterminate Jews and at the same time argue that Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza. You have to choose.
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
Unfortunately, there haven't been elections in Gaza OR the West Bank since 2006...
And why is that?
You catch on well, my friend...
Well in my (very limited) opinion its down to Hamas...
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
You can't argue that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the attempts by Hamas to exterminate Jews and at the same time argue that Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza. You have to choose.
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
Unfortunately, there haven't been elections in Gaza OR the West Bank since 2006...
I need to point out that if you had backed the Green at 14 in the Finnish Presidential Election you could now be laying them at 9 (Betfair Exchange). If you had soaked up all the liquidity I think your *profit* would be mid three figures. I hate to get Ferengi on your arses, but that would have been a nice little earner.
You can't argue that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the attempts by Hamas to exterminate Jews and at the same time argue that Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza. You have to choose.
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
That's a very odd view, even leaving aside the less than perfect nature of democracy in Gaza. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021–22_Palestinian_local_elections for the background. Anyway, suppose that Hamas had won a fair election. Does that make every citizen complicit in everything that follows? Are you and I complicit in any action taken by Sunak, and if he chose to launch attacks that killed civilians, would we therefore be legitimate targets for reprisals?
Killing civilians is always undesirable, and routinely doing so without a reasonable military excuse is a war crime. Retaliation for other civilians being killed is not a reasonable excuse.
I'm not saying that civilians are legitimate targets in war. That's a clumsy way of phrasing it. But in a full-scale war between two states, civilian casualties are inevitable, this is one reason why we try so hard to avoid war. So you cannot point to civilian casualties and say that only one side in the war is responsible for them. It's just something that happens in war, and that we should minimise as much as possible.
If Hamas/Gaza didn't want a war then they shouldn't have started one.
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
What are your views on UNRWA officials lending vehicles to Hamas for the October 7 attacks? And for allowing hostages to be held at their facilities?
An Israeli official told CNN on Friday that Israel shared information about 12 staffers allegedly involved in the October 7 attacks both with UNRWA and the US.
The head of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, met with senior US officials on Friday and gave them “specific names and which organizations they are affiliated with, whether Hamas or PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) or others, and what exactly they did on October 7,” the Israeli official said.
“We showed them that we had solid intelligence from difference sources.”
An Israeli official familiar with how the intelligence was gathered said it was taken from Hamas computers and documents confiscated during operations in Gaza, and from interrogations of detainees and alleged terrorists.
Israeli officials say some of the attackers who were killed or detained on October 7 had UNRWA IDs on them. CNN was not shown the IDs or other intelligence.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has said he received “information about the alleged involvement of several employees.” To protect the agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance in Gaza, he decided “to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth,” a statement said.
Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror “will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” he added.
In a statement Sunday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said nine of the 12 UNRWA staff members at the center of the allegations had been fired. One other was dead and the identities of two others were still “being clarified.”
“Any UN employee involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” Guterres said, adding that an independent review is forthcoming...
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
Er, what? Remember that I have always agreed with ex-PBer SeanT on this matter. As he put it in his Spectator piece on this subject:
"To my mind, there are five main possible explanations [for the present UFO flap], in descending order of probability.
1. The US establishment – Pentagon to press – is engaged in a complex cross-party conspiracy of psyops to unnerve and mystify America’s adversaries, especially the Chinese. Perhaps they want to convince them America possesses advanced alien technology, and America has been reverse engineering it for decades.
2. The US establishment has some incredible new military tech – something truly astonishing, like anti-gravity aircraft – and they’ve had it for ages, and they want to hide it from everyone: Americans as much as the Chinese.
3. The US establishment has gone collectively mad, or is suffering some mass hallucination, stemming from a few credulous individuals (a process known in psychology as ‘contagion’).
4. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – but they’re wron 5. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – and they are right."
Kirkpatrick's testimony seems to be a combination of explanations 3, 2 and 1
Some credulous individuals. perhaps being exploited by others for Psyops, plus a bit of advanced tech
It's also worth noting that Kirkpatrick is not the last word on the subject, and Grusch remains hard to explain
I also wonder why Trump hasn't rambled extensively on the subject. It seems prime Trumpian lunacy material.
The weird thing is that Trump is the ONLY living US president who, as far as I know, has not made cryptic, suggestive or evasive comments on the subject of UFOs
Obama, Bill Clinton and Dubya Bush have all said weird things
Biden has been evasive
The late Jimmy Carter was a true believer
I think even Bush Senior was a little cryptic
Trump came right out and said: It's all a load of bollocks
This, I think, lends credence to the "being deliberately and subtly vague about the UFO stuff helps keep people guessing about the USA's technological capabilities" case. I can believe that Trump couldn't grasp that position at all.
That’s a really astute point. Hadn’t looked at it that way
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
I stopped smoking at the beginning of January and switched to vaping. I use my vape in the same way I used to smoke cigarettes and the same times and occasions and I have found the switch seamless. I use a low nicotine fluid so just enough to avoid getting withdrawal anger but now my lungs aren’t full of tar and Carbon Monoxide.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
Well done!
I stopped 24 years ago, and can’t believe I ever started. Couldn’t pay me to smoke now.
Despite being a relatively heavy smoker, 20 a day I’d say, I didn’t find it that difficult to give up; I just did the AA style “I won’t have my first cigarette of the day” and kept putting it off. If I fancied one I’d try to eat a fruit pastille without chewing
Stopping ages ago, what helped me was the sense of getting addicted to not smoking and all the things that went with its absence.
Nicotine is the most pointless drug of all time. Highly addictive yet with minimal/zero buzz.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
I mean, genocide is a legal term and (unfortunately) typically only gets designated as such after the fact. I am happy based on South Africa's evidence to call it a genocide, but I know people here like being pedantic so I didn't want to get pulled up on that.
Using the word "Genocide" is quite a well-used rhetorical device and often falls into the same bucket as "woke", "political correctness gone mad", et al.
You are happy for South Africa to have used it and I would say whoop-de-doo. The ICJ said Israel shouldn't engage in genocide which is sort of the thing that you would expect and hope the ICJ to say.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the war rages. Wars are shit and shit things happen in the name of a war aim. Inadvertent, or even intentional bombing of civilian populations is quite common. Usually the victors tend to have dibs on categorisation and nomination. In this case, as @RochdalePioneers notes, a victor will be very hard to identify which means we must come to our own conclusions.
The lawyer in the Bosnian case discussed online how this is the first step to a full investigation into official designation of a genocide. That the ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction to investigate is similar to saying there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are doing a genocide. You can go back to your usual hand waving of "the powerful will do what they will" all you want - it doesn't change the importance of the situation.
People are dying in large numbers. How large we don't know because Hamas is controlling that narrative but certainly large. Buildings are being flattened, infrastructure is being destroyed.
All fairly war-ish. But South Africa says hold on this is genocide. And some lawyer looks at the supposed body count and says why yes it could be.
Such a sequence could apply to most any conflict of the past 100 years.
Is Israel systematically trying to kill every Palestinian? I don't think it is. Or if it is it is being pretty cack-handed about it.
The incoming famine could be a efficient delivery vehicle with limited apportionment of blame if Netanyahu is so minded.
Make no mistake, Hamas are a death cult that needs to be crushed.
The incoming collective punishment of Palestinians by Netanyahu via famine might shift the dial towards adjectives that we have hitherto avoided. The numbers involved could be eye-watetingly high.
Couple of things here.
First, did the Allies "collectively punish" the Germans or were they just at war with them. :Let's not go round in circles but Hamas is the democratically-elected government of Gaza.
Secondly, let's wait for the famine to materialise before we castigate Israel for it. When we see pictures a la Michael Buerk 40 years ago (god help us) then we can worry. And of course puff pieces as there have been on Band/Live Aid of course the international community got that wrong also and instead of helping the starving, propped up Mengistu and the Eritreans.
Yes, the allies did collectively punish Germans and things like the Dresden bombings would be considered war crimes under the laws we have now.
@trussliz The Government should abandon its profoundly unconservative plans for the ban on tobacco sales to those born after 1st January 2009.
A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. It only gives succour to those who wish to curtail freedom.
Liz Truss is right. Again.
Would you legalise everything? I can see the logic in that.
Otherwise, I'm not persuaded of the case for continuing sale of tabacco given the very clear harms compared to some other banned substances.
One can make a similar argument about alcohol, of course, but there is at least fair evidence for that being non-harmful in moderate quantities.
There no upside in smoking whatsoever, I can’t see why there shouldn’t be a gradual phasing out of it. Preventing young kids starting, whilst allowing old people who have the habit already to continue, seems like a pleasant compromise to me
There is no upside to lots of things. The issue is the liberty to do dangerous and damaging things, and which ones and why. Consistency would help.
Alcohol is massively damaging and dangerous to millions of people, and its adverse effects are far worse than tobacco. It is very hard to make out the case for banning one but not the other.
I didn’t know that drinking alcohol was worse than smoking, but at least there is some point in drinking, it gives you a buzz. Smoking never did that for me at least, it was just a dirty habit that I’m glad I stopped
I stopped smoking at the beginning of January and switched to vaping. I use my vape in the same way I used to smoke cigarettes and the same times and occasions and I have found the switch seamless. I use a low nicotine fluid so just enough to avoid getting withdrawal anger but now my lungs aren’t full of tar and Carbon Monoxide.
I haven’t craved a fag once since starting vaping, already find the smell of cigarettes repulsive and the only downside is that I’m fucking furious with myself for not switching years ago.
Well done!
I stopped 24 years ago, and can’t believe I ever started. Couldn’t pay me to smoke now.
Despite being a relatively heavy smoker, 20 a day I’d say, I didn’t find it that difficult to give up; I just did the AA style “I won’t have my first cigarette of the day” and kept putting it off. If I fancied one I’d try to eat a fruit pastille without chewing
Stopping ages ago, what helped me was the sense of getting addicted to not smoking and all the things that went with its absence.
Nicotine is the most pointless drug of all time. Highly addictive yet with minimal/zero buzz.
Yes, but in its day smoking had an unspoken purpose, which was to relieve tension and reduce hunger pangs. There is a part of me that is convinced the rise in obesity and diabetes is at least partly due to the drive against smoking.
I'm not slow to criticise anti-semitism, which runs rife amongst the Corbynistas, but I'm struggling to see what's wrong with that post?
Comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust?
Ah, I missed Gaza as the final word. Just didn't spot it.
I thought she was just saying we should remember all holocausts and genocides and the criticism was that she was diluting the meaning of it in remembering the original Holocaust by so doing.
Yes, it was deliberately tendentious to mention Gaza.
The historical facts are substantially well-established and unequivocal in respect of the Holocaust, whilst anything but for Gaza.
Starmer was correct to penalise her. It would be nice if her constituency did likewise, but I expect she knows her audience.
So the many Jewish people I know who are also comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust, as well as the many Jewish people with family who did and did not survive the Holocaust, are what? Also anti-Semites? Never again means never again for anyone. This is just Starmer using this as a stick to beat left wing MPs with.
Don't lecture me about the views of Jewish people. Apart from anything else, I live with one. Their opinions are, in my experience, many and various.
The MP was playing politics. She got what she asked for.
A politician playing politics, whatever next.
Oh, she's entitled to do so, just as her Party Leader is entitled to react.
Personally I would avoid trying to hijack an essentially non-political demonstration like Holocaust Day to my own specific and rather contentious ends, but as I indicated, she knows her audience. She appealed to it, just as her Party Leader appealed to his.
I notice that Corbyn managed to stay the right side of the line by dealing in generalities. She decided to go further.
As I said, she got what she deserved.
Holocaust Memorial day in not "non-political". It may be non-partisan - but of course it is political. It happened due to a political ideology, and it was enacted using the state apparatus of the Nazi state, and politics made it happen. The ideologies behind genocides are political, and the similarities between other genocides and the Holocaust are important. If we are supposed to remember the Holocaust surely it is for a reason, and that reason is never again. It therefore makes sense to mention a current potential genocide (which the ICJ are going to investigate as such) when memorialising those killed in the Holocaust.
"A current potential genocide".
Is that like my status as currently potentially dating Margot Robbie.
I mean, genocide is a legal term and (unfortunately) typically only gets designated as such after the fact. I am happy based on South Africa's evidence to call it a genocide, but I know people here like being pedantic so I didn't want to get pulled up on that.
Using the word "Genocide" is quite a well-used rhetorical device and often falls into the same bucket as "woke", "political correctness gone mad", et al.
You are happy for South Africa to have used it and I would say whoop-de-doo. The ICJ said Israel shouldn't engage in genocide which is sort of the thing that you would expect and hope the ICJ to say.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the war rages. Wars are shit and shit things happen in the name of a war aim. Inadvertent, or even intentional bombing of civilian populations is quite common. Usually the victors tend to have dibs on categorisation and nomination. In this case, as @RochdalePioneers notes, a victor will be very hard to identify which means we must come to our own conclusions.
The lawyer in the Bosnian case discussed online how this is the first step to a full investigation into official designation of a genocide. That the ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction to investigate is similar to saying there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are doing a genocide. You can go back to your usual hand waving of "the powerful will do what they will" all you want - it doesn't change the importance of the situation.
People are dying in large numbers. How large we don't know because Hamas is controlling that narrative but certainly large. Buildings are being flattened, infrastructure is being destroyed.
All fairly war-ish. But South Africa says hold on this is genocide. And some lawyer looks at the supposed body count and says why yes it could be.
Such a sequence could apply to most any conflict of the past 100 years.
Is Israel systematically trying to kill every Palestinian? I don't think it is. Or if it is it is being pretty cack-handed about it.
The incoming famine could be a efficient delivery vehicle with limited apportionment of blame if Netanyahu is so minded.
Make no mistake, Hamas are a death cult that needs to be crushed.
The incoming collective punishment of Palestinians by Netanyahu via famine might shift the dial towards adjectives that we have hitherto avoided. The numbers involved could be eye-watetingly high.
Couple of things here.
First, did the Allies "collectively punish" the Germans or were they just at war with them. :Let's not go round in circles but Hamas is the democratically-elected government of Gaza.
Secondly, let's wait for the famine to materialise before we castigate Israel for it. When we see pictures a la Michael Buerk 40 years ago (god help us) then we can worry. And of course puff pieces as there have been on Band/Live Aid of course the international community got that wrong also and instead of helping the starving, propped up Mengistu and the Eritreans.
Yes, the allies did collectively punish Germans and things like the Dresden bombings would be considered war crimes under the laws we have now.
Iiuc dambusting and flamethrowers were made into war crimes after WW2
Or lack of grammar schools, which were one of the engines of social mobility.
Does anyone have a link showing which Education Secretary closed the most grammar schools?
It was Shirley Williams and Tony Crosland who as Labour Education Secretaries most pushed conversion of grammars to comprehensives.
Thatcher did not stop mainly Labour councils doing the same from 1970-74 under PM Heath's orders but by the end of the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments in 1997 more pupils were in grammar schools than had been in 1979
I'm sure many Tory counties embraced the comprehensive system. I don't have the details and can't be bothered to look them up, but during this time I am certain that Surrey would have been solidly Tory and it went comprehensive. What about East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, etc, etc. Aren't all of these places that were solidly Tory at that time and went comprehensive?
Hampshire wasn't as solidly conservative as all that- the coastal strip from Portsmouth to Southampton was heavily populated and more mixed, but yes, a lot of Conservative councils were quite happy to run with comprehensivisation. After all, by the 1970s a lot of county councillors would have been getting cross letters from nice middle class parents whose children hadn't made the cut.
Remember, folks:
You can't have a grammar school system without a secondary modern system, and very few heads or teachers have the skills to make those work well. That's why places like Kent don't do well on social mobility.
Providing wide access to secondary education where it hadn't existed before undoubtedly improved social mobility, but a lot of the mobility was due to changes in the economy. Someone had to do all the new, more middle class jobs.
In the 40's and 50's, we believed in rationing scarce things, and an academic secondary education was one of those. That need has gone, and so has the belief in rationing. What right has Blankshire County Council to tell you that your child shouldn't go to an academic school?
Which is why the idea of streaming per subject comes up. A Grammar school inside every school.
Banning smoking and related activities (ie vaping) is like banning high stakes FOBTs.
An affront to liberty and freedom but a Good Thing nevertheless.
Yeah - I went on a bit of journey with this too. At the time, despite being a non-smoker, I felt it was an illiberal infringement on freedoms. But then after my first morning waking up after the pub and *not* stinking of second hand smoke, I started to see a bit of an upside. Then seeing the significant drops in smoking, and hearing from friends who were nudged into giving up because of the ban... I have pretty much gone 180 on my opinion on it.
On a call with a colleague from Technical. New Brexit rules come into effect on Wednesday. A DEFRA online training seminar at the end of last week had 800 importers on it, and the polled how many were ready for the new rules on Wednesday.
4%.
The UK border will be flexible for 3 months - as long as importers are trying to do the new process. The issue is foreign customs officials who are going to impose our new rules from day 1. Nobody is ready, and we already have a list of products where (a) the existing product will no longer be shipped but (b) the proposed UK compliant product isn't ready and won't be for months.
On a call with a colleague from Technical. New Brexit rules come into effect on Wednesday. A DEFRA online training seminar at the end of last week had 800 importers on it, and the polled how many were ready for the new rules on Wednesday.
4%.
The UK border will be flexible for 3 months - as long as importers are trying to do the new process. The issue is foreign customs officials who are going to impose our new rules from day 1. Nobody is ready, and we already have a list of products where (a) the existing product will no longer be shipped but (b) the proposed UK compliant product isn't ready and won't be for months.
Three months, you say?
Anything else happening in British politics in three months time?
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
You support the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea. Don't you pretend to care about the collapse of an "international rules based order".
And do you not think the claims against the UNRWA are serious?
Under the ICJ ruling all countries have a duty to enforce the ruling - sanctions like a blockade would be a legally recognised method of enforcing such a ruling if a country did not believe it was being followed.
No, I do not. The claims are that workers at the UNRWA actively collaborated with Hamas to coordinate the October 7th attacks. Israel has provided no evidence of this, and the timing of the allegations are literally just after the ICJ ruling. Not only that but the state apparatus of Israel is, in my mind, an untrustworthy actor - it has lied multiple times during this conflict and, as the evidence shown by South Africa attests to, many people within the Israeli government are expressing genocidal intent. Indeed Israel has long targeted UN workers and UNRAW specifically, and posts like this below show how UNRWA has been an organisation the Israeli government have long detested due to their aid towards Palestinians in Gaza:
If the UNRWA has had links to Hamas or people affiliated with Hamas - that isn't that surprising; they are the government in Gaza and basically any aid will go through someone who is somehow affiliated with Hamas. But that is not the same thing as collaborating. That's like saying that the child of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target, or a neighbour of a Hamas fighter is a reasonable target because of close proximity to Hamas.
It is outrageous, and the bending backwards to justify it is outrageous.
Well of course this Israeli government is an untrustworthy actor. Its PM is a crook who was under massive domestic before all this blew up. But we also know that Hamas is an untrustworthy actor, and now it would seem that a UN agency (again) is up to its armpits in it.
None of that matters. You lot have screamed genocide and called for Israel to stop, a one-sided ceasefire. Problem is that a ceasefire has to be general. One side can't ceasefire unless the other also does. And Hamas repeatedly refuse to stop. That is the long and short of it.
Both sides are doing appalling things. The west should be past the point of tolerance now and the war is on the verge of spilling out of Gaza into a regional war. So I have no problem with pressure on that crook Netanyahu. I just boggle slightly at the position which blames Israel and only Israel as even now Hamas refuse to stop fighting and fire rockets and hold hostages.
This is war, not football. Stop chanting for your team only.
Are Israel saying they will stop the bombing if all hostages are released? No. (In fact Israel have killed more hostages then they have been responsible for freeing). Are Israel saying that they won't push all Palestinians out of Gaza if Hamas release all hostages? No. (In fact their rhetoric is getting more ludicrous, including the idea of creating an artificial island of the coast of Gaza to move all Palestinians on to).
Israel is not offering any terms for a ceasefire that any reasonable government in Gaza, let along Hamas, could accept. That's why the calls are for Israel to accept a ceasefire - it is the state with the power and leverage, Hamas is not. If the West (and US specifically) wanted a ceasefire it would be easy to get one - the US could just stop giving Israel weapons and Israel would have no choice but to stop.
As we all know, rhetoric in war is usually ludicrous and absolutist. Israel will require a secure outcome from this mess - which is what really pissed you lot off who want Israel to cease to exist.
And this is the problem. You decry Israel not offering any reasonable terms for a ceasefire. How is that any different from Hamas? You endlessly label Israel and absolve Hamas. BOTH are wrong. BOTH need to stop, BOTH are committing terrible acts. Its war - terrible is normal.
Simple truth - peace is impossible unless at least one side backs down. Both Hamas/Iran and Israel think there is a military victory possible - or at least one forced politically thanks to its military action.
There is not. Israel can no more sweep Gaza than Hamas can sweep Israel. So any settlement will involve massive compromise from both. I see little desire for compromise from your side. And plenty from the west who have little patience left for the crook and his lunatic government.
Hamas have, in the past, released hostages. So that seems to be something they are willing to do and negotiate. Israel are the ones who are saying they won't end their bombing campaign and reject the premise of a ceasefire.
Yep. Hamas really are the victims here. Thanks for pointing that out.
"As of 22 January, over 26,000 people (25,105 Palestinian and 1,410 Israeli) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 83 journalists (76 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers."
The Palestinians are clearly the victims here. And, for better or worse, the group that represent the interests of the Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.
You can't argue that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for the attempts by Hamas to exterminate Jews and at the same time argue that Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza. You have to choose.
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
This is the central premise - and contradiction - that those pro-Hamas, will no one think of the innocent civilian types always overlook.
They can't both be innocent civilians and also have voted Hamas into power. Hamas are not some rogue group operating on the fringes of Gaza society. They are its government.
The standard response is that there hasn't been an election in many years so the broad mass of Gaza civilians are not Hamas supporters. But again, they are the government running the country. And it is legitimate for Israel to be at war with the government/country.
Look at the population demographics - approximately 35% of Gaza's population are old enough to have voted in the 2006 election and Hamas won 45% of that vote, so only 16% of the present population voted for Hamas. Truly the sins of the fathers etc...
I am really starting to despair amid the deconstruction of the post-war consensus that was built to prevent global war and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons. The UN is a mostly toothless organisation that is effective tool of Western hegemon, but it still does good work around the globe and often does integral work for the most needy.
That a day after the ICJ decides it is worth investigating South Africa's case against Israel for genocide Israel and its allies decide to defund a UN organisation making sure aid is getting to Gazans is mind blowing. Not only is it a refusal to deal with the serious allegations made by South Africa and the mandates made by the court to prevent a genocide going forward, it is an act of direct retribution against the UN for the findings. If this was Russia or China doing something similar the world would, rightly, be outraged and yet, once again, because it is the US and other Western powers it is something that has to be swallowed. It is setting a precedent that the UN and other international organisations to promote international law are not only ignorable but, at the end of the day, can be removed by the power of the member states if it dares to question their actions. That is not a far step away from no sense of international law or duties and, again, presents a situation where if the West wants the moral high ground (to deal with Russian atrocities, or genocide in China) that there will be none.
The collapse of an "international rules based order" is not something to be cheered, even if you currently disagree with the UN. These institutions are imperfect but they came out of the horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust. As they are chipped away at, the protections that came with them will soften for everyone. The UK is already down the road to breaking international law in an attempt to keep out immigrants, and the US and EU are doing the same. How long before the deaths at the borders / in the Mediterranean / Channel are not enough, and the prevailing policy becomes shooting boats down or concentrated detention centres? How long before food shortages, exacerbated by climate change and conflict, become an excuse to decide who are "good volk" and who are "useless eaters"? The move to the far right across the globe is chugging along and the erosion of institutions like the UN will only embolden that shift.
We should ask, again, if this were anyone else in any other situation, would we be cheering this on? If Russia was targeting UN aid and defunding UN operations in Ukraine - would it rightly not be denounced by all as an attempt to compound the horrors of war with a social horror as well? It's disgusting and should not be accepted by right thinking people.
What are your views on UNRWA officials lending vehicles to Hamas for the October 7 attacks? And for allowing hostages to be held at their facilities?
Unlike other so called 'Western Countries' Israel lies. Anyone watching their spokespeople and ministers over the last several months know this. Not even their most ardent followers now accept announcements by the Israeli government at face value. It is one of the reasons their so called 'friends' are peeling off at such a rate
So you aren’t even prepared to consider the evidence that persuaded Germany to suspend funding.
I think it's easy to look at the past with rose-tinted spectacles.
I have nostalgia for the 80s and I also remember cigarettes being utterly endemic, so much so that I hid behind my mother's dress when going shopping with her in a vain attempt to avoid breathing it in on the streets, and that bullying in schools was far more common and not considered anything more than boisterous behaviour and even character building. I was encouraged by a teacher to man-up and punch back to make it stop. Groups of young men/ teenagers were in general bad news and to be avoided, so I stayed at home and only went out with parents/schoolteachers.
The range and quality of food for eating out was also very limited, and basically non-existant in pubs, which is why our eyes lit up at any American fast food/diner place (like TGI Fridays) that I now find disgusting. And the range of consumer products available was improving but far off the quality it reached in the 1990s.
I think if any of us actually time-travelled we'd quickly be shocked and rapidly beat a path back to the present day.
Yes but that is just progress. As I've said before, Henry VIII had many palaces but would now be called poor because he had no mobile phone.
Obese Children from multiple women Dependent on the state for income Linked to the violent death of many people
Or lack of grammar schools, which were one of the engines of social mobility.
Does anyone have a link showing which Education Secretary closed the most grammar schools?
It was Shirley Williams and Tony Crosland who as Labour Education Secretaries most pushed conversion of grammars to comprehensives.
Thatcher did not stop mainly Labour councils doing the same from 1970-74 under PM Heath's orders but by the end of the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments in 1997 more pupils were in grammar schools than had been in 1979
I'm sure many Tory counties embraced the comprehensive system. I don't have the details and can't be bothered to look them up, but during this time I am certain that Surrey would have been solidly Tory and it went comprehensive. What about East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, etc, etc. Aren't all of these places that were solidly Tory at that time and went comprehensive?
Hampshire wasn't as solidly conservative as all that- the coastal strip from Portsmouth to Southampton was heavily populated and more mixed, but yes, a lot of Conservative councils were quite happy to run with comprehensivisation. After all, by the 1970s a lot of county councillors would have been getting cross letters from nice middle class parents whose children hadn't made the cut.
Remember, folks:
You can't have a grammar school system without a secondary modern system, and very few heads or teachers have the skills to make those work well. That's why places like Kent don't do well on social mobility.
Providing wide access to secondary education where it hadn't existed before undoubtedly improved social mobility, but a lot of the mobility was due to changes in the economy. Someone had to do all the new, more middle class jobs.
In the 40's and 50's, we believed in rationing scarce things, and an academic secondary education was one of those. That need has gone, and so has the belief in rationing. What right has Blankshire County Council to tell you that your child shouldn't go to an academic school?
Which is why the idea of streaming per subject comes up. A Grammar school inside every school.
The private school I went to did that.
My comp did that and it worked well.
My grammar school streamed not by subject but by average performance in the 3rd year exams. An A and a B stream. The B stream were referred by some teachers as "less able" despite students having passed the 11 plus three years earlier. And the Secondary School head in the town treated his school as a borstal with exclusively CSE exams at the end of the five years.
Or lack of grammar schools, which were one of the engines of social mobility.
Does anyone have a link showing which Education Secretary closed the most grammar schools?
It was Shirley Williams and Tony Crosland who as Labour Education Secretaries most pushed conversion of grammars to comprehensives.
Thatcher did not stop mainly Labour councils doing the same from 1970-74 under PM Heath's orders but by the end of the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments in 1997 more pupils were in grammar schools than had been in 1979
I'm sure many Tory counties embraced the comprehensive system. I don't have the details and can't be bothered to look them up, but during this time I am certain that Surrey would have been solidly Tory and it went comprehensive. What about East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, etc, etc. Aren't all of these places that were solidly Tory at that time and went comprehensive?
Hampshire wasn't as solidly conservative as all that- the coastal strip from Portsmouth to Southampton was heavily populated and more mixed, but yes, a lot of Conservative councils were quite happy to run with comprehensivisation. After all, by the 1970s a lot of county councillors would have been getting cross letters from nice middle class parents whose children hadn't made the cut.
Remember, folks:
You can't have a grammar school system without a secondary modern system, and very few heads or teachers have the skills to make those work well. That's why places like Kent don't do well on social mobility.
Providing wide access to secondary education where it hadn't existed before undoubtedly improved social mobility, but a lot of the mobility was due to changes in the economy. Someone had to do all the new, more middle class jobs.
In the 40's and 50's, we believed in rationing scarce things, and an academic secondary education was one of those. That need has gone, and so has the belief in rationing. What right has Blankshire County Council to tell you that your child shouldn't go to an academic school?
What right does it have to tell an academic child whose parents cannot afford private school fees they cannot go to an academic grammar school either? Comprehensives aren't academic schools particularly, just by definition average schools.
Let parents ballot to open new grammars not just end selection as now
Or lack of grammar schools, which were one of the engines of social mobility.
Does anyone have a link showing which Education Secretary closed the most grammar schools?
It was Shirley Williams and Tony Crosland who as Labour Education Secretaries most pushed conversion of grammars to comprehensives.
Thatcher did not stop mainly Labour councils doing the same from 1970-74 under PM Heath's orders but by the end of the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments in 1997 more pupils were in grammar schools than had been in 1979
I'm sure many Tory counties embraced the comprehensive system. I don't have the details and can't be bothered to look them up, but during this time I am certain that Surrey would have been solidly Tory and it went comprehensive. What about East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, etc, etc. Aren't all of these places that were solidly Tory at that time and went comprehensive?
Hampshire wasn't as solidly conservative as all that- the coastal strip from Portsmouth to Southampton was heavily populated and more mixed, but yes, a lot of Conservative councils were quite happy to run with comprehensivisation. After all, by the 1970s a lot of county councillors would have been getting cross letters from nice middle class parents whose children hadn't made the cut.
Remember, folks:
You can't have a grammar school system without a secondary modern system, and very few heads or teachers have the skills to make those work well. That's why places like Kent don't do well on social mobility.
Providing wide access to secondary education where it hadn't existed before undoubtedly improved social mobility, but a lot of the mobility was due to changes in the economy. Someone had to do all the new, more middle class jobs.
In the 40's and 50's, we believed in rationing scarce things, and an academic secondary education was one of those. That need has gone, and so has the belief in rationing. What right has Blankshire County Council to tell you that your child shouldn't go to an academic school?
Which is why the idea of streaming per subject comes up. A Grammar school inside every school.
The private school I went to did that.
My comp did that and it worked well.
My grammar school streamed not by subject but by average performance in the 3rd year exams. An A and a B stream. The B stream were referred by some teachers as "less able" despite students having passed the 11 plus three years earlier. And the Secondary School head in the town treated his school as a borstal with exclusively CSE exams at the end of the five years.
Of course all pupils now do GCSEs whatever school they attend after O levels were merged with CSEs
On a call with a colleague from Technical. New Brexit rules come into effect on Wednesday. A DEFRA online training seminar at the end of last week had 800 importers on it, and the polled how many were ready for the new rules on Wednesday.
4%.
The UK border will be flexible for 3 months - as long as importers are trying to do the new process. The issue is foreign customs officials who are going to impose our new rules from day 1. Nobody is ready, and we already have a list of products where (a) the existing product will no longer be shipped but (b) the proposed UK compliant product isn't ready and won't be for months.
Three months, you say?
Anything else happening in British politics in three months time?
The new biometric passport requirements this summer - if they happen when planned - are going to cause absolute carnage at the Chunnel and Dover. I’m rather dreading it as we’ll be driving down to France at some point.
EDIT: scratch that, they’re apparently now coming in later in the year, possibly October. So summer is safe.
Comments
Yes? Forgive me whilst I enjoy a "sniggle".
(Used to be HOUSE!!)
That said, I think this must be about the most slam dunk public health measure a government could ever wish for. Disposable vapes are turning large numbers of young people who've never smoked into nicotine addicts and they're an environmental plague.
So, you know, fuck you Rishi and well done Rishi on this one.
"[Rachel Reeves] understands the critical importance of wealth creation that lifts the economy for all in society"
I think that exploring notion of "wealth creation" that *does not* concentrate that wealth into the hands of a few (largely US-based) billionaires and stagnate the flow of capital is going to be one of the most interesting areas in the politics of the next decade or so. It is the strategic discussion that sits over the top of the issue raised upthread of banks financing mortgages but not business investment.
I note that @leon is very quiet about the recent story from the states about UAP's.
https://theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/27/sean-kirkpatrick-pentagon-ufo-conspiracy-theory-myths
As I have said all along. Now @leon needs to admit that I am right.
(Is this how you do it? - Asking for a friend)
I find the group interesting as an example of a very efficient charity - they have around 20 staff and a £2.5m budget, yet are able to run an average of around 140 meetings a day across the country - taking 365 days as the denominator, reaching around 40k people.
I have just listened to Sunak explain that it is a free vote but that he wants to stop children smoking and at the same time acknowledges vaping is helpful to quiting smoking so vaping will still be available to adults
I also note Labour support the change so it will become law
The only thing that should be in dispute is where the cut off should be (1 year, 3 years, 5 years ...) but whatever it is, 15 years is well past the limit.
- Tidal power stations
- Ukraine
- A Leon parallel thread
- Electoral qualities of Boris
- 20mph speed limits
"To my mind, there are five main possible explanations [for the present UFO flap], in descending order of probability.
1. The US establishment – Pentagon to press – is engaged in a complex cross-party conspiracy of psyops to unnerve and mystify America’s adversaries, especially the Chinese. Perhaps they want to convince them America possesses advanced alien technology, and America has been reverse engineering it for decades.
2. The US establishment has some incredible new military tech – something truly astonishing, like anti-gravity aircraft – and they’ve had it for ages, and they want to hide it from everyone: Americans as much as the Chinese.
3. The US establishment has gone collectively mad, or is suffering some mass hallucination, stemming from a few credulous individuals (a process known in psychology as ‘contagion’).
4. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – but they’re wrong.
5. The US military/elite sincerely believes we are being visited by non human intelligence – and they are right."
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/ufos-or-not-something-is-up/
That is literally what is written
Kirkpatrick's testimony seems to be a combination of explanations 3, 2 and 1
Some credulous individuals. perhaps being exploited by others for Psyops, plus a bit of advanced tech
It's also worth noting that Kirkpatrick is not the last word on the subject, and Grusch remains hard to explain
If Hamas represent Gaza, then the civilians there are complicit in the attacks in early October, and legitimately part of a full-scale total war. If Gazan Palestinian civilians are innocent bystanders, then perhaps they need to find other people to advocate for themselves then Hamas.
Secondly, have you tried a reusable one? There are a lot of options on the market and they are not quite so daunting as they are made out to be (at the top end there is a lot of “pro-vaping” terminology/products etc that are a bit mind-boggling but these aren’t things you need to concern yourself with if you’re just looking for a product to keep you away from cigarettes). I vaped for around 4 years, though have now been off nicotine all together for about 2 years now.
1 I do
2 I am
3 You are
Given what I have just heretofore adduced, from the Speccie
Remember, folks:
You can't have a grammar school system without a secondary modern system, and very few heads or teachers have the skills to make those work well. That's why places like Kent don't do well on social mobility.
Providing wide access to secondary education where it hadn't existed before undoubtedly improved social mobility, but a lot of the mobility was due to changes in the economy. Someone had to do all the new, more middle class jobs.
In the 40's and 50's, we believed in rationing scarce things, and an academic secondary education was one of those. That need has gone, and so has the belief in rationing. What right has Blankshire County Council to tell you that your child shouldn't go to an academic school?
On one hand, I tend to the libertarian view on these things. Every step of the way, I've viewed the gradual erosion of smokers' freedoms with dismay - banning smoking in pubs, hiding cigarettes in cupboards, etc. And I feel the same about this. I don't like smoking, but I like the gradual creep of rules even less.
On the other hand, vape shops are a hideous eyesore and a blight on the public realm and I wish vaping had never been invented. At least cigarettes used to have some handsome and stylish advertising and branding.
Off thread: I'm WFHing today and my cats are being dicks. One of them just walked onto my desk and very carefully and deliberately put her paw on the 'off' button, looking at me blankly as she did so; then batted my pencil onto the floor and settled down on my 'to do' list.
Still better than a dog, though.
I agree - it is very efficient, and known also to be quite effective too, despite it being hard to pin down precisely why (tbh for me I think it's helpful to be around people with whom you can be totally honest, without judgement, and know that the people you are sharing with understand your behaviour better than most of your friends and family will).
The 'higher power' and steps stuff can - understandably - be a bit off-putting, but tbh from what I've seen it's up to you how much you want to engage with that.
Obama, Bill Clinton and Dubya Bush have all said weird things
Biden has been evasive
The late Jimmy Carter was a true believer
I think even Bush Senior was a little cryptic
Trump came right out and said: It's all a load of bollocks
They can't both be innocent civilians and also have voted Hamas into power. Hamas are not some rogue group operating on the fringes of Gaza society. They are its government.
The standard response is that there hasn't been an election in many years so the broad mass of Gaza civilians are not Hamas supporters. But again, they are the government running the country. And it is legitimate for Israel to be at war with the government/country.
I mean, I know PB is influential and I am the mosr articulate and intelligent commenter on here (as we see today) but still. Wow. Thanks!
I wish I had had at some point the same damascene revelation about booze. But I really enjoy a glass (or two) of wine, and sometimes, occasionally, a very strong gin (no ice, no lemon, gin from the freezer, tonic from the fridge). I know it is bad for my health but can't or won't stop. That said I have a fake G&T, ice and a slice, every day at around 6pm and that is nice also. Oh that there would be a great non-alcoholic wine, but there isn't.
I drink a huge amount less than I used to (as do many friends and family) and really like the feeling of not having drunk the previous night/week, which happens often.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/28/famine-in-gaza-is-being-made-inevitable-says-un-rapporteur
Make no mistake, Hamas are a death cult that needs to be crushed.
The incoming collective punishment of Palestinians by Netanyahu via famine might shift the dial towards adjectives that we have hitherto avoided. The numbers involved could be eye-watetingly high.
However I do have a mixed relationship with it. It served its original purpose, for which I will be forever grateful, but lockdown meant it became much more accessible 24/7 at home (I was never one being comfortable walking along a street blowing great plumes of vapour at whichever poor sod was downwind of me), and if I were to assess it, I’d say it actually meant I was more nicotine reliant than I had been previously. No lingering smell or nasty ash - it really doesn’t create a huge incentive against using it as often as you like at home. I did eventually need to force myself off it, because it was becoming as obsessive a thing, if not more, than the cigarettes.
To be blunt, I am in full support of smokers making the transition to it. I would advise non-smokers just thinking it’s a cool habit to take up, that it’s a very big mistake to start.
An affront to liberty and freedom but a Good Thing nevertheless.
If so, sorry Jimmy!!
Incidentally he was/is a TOTAL believer in UFOs - after he had some personal first-hand experience of one. He may indeed have seen a couple, IIRC
Killing civilians is always undesirable, and routinely doing so without a reasonable military excuse is a war crime. Retaliation for other civilians being killed is not a reasonable excuse.
So creating a supportive community / network with the appropriate touching points for members for as long as they need them, but within a limited sector of life that works against a wider dependency.
There must be some studies on it somewhere !
I do accept it could be useful in getting people to smoke less.
🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨
Labour lead narrows to fourteen points in the latest results from Deltapoll.
Con 29% (+1)
Lab 43% (-2)
Lib Dem 10% (+1)
Other 19% (+2)
Fieldwork: 26th - 29th January 2024
Sample: 2,064 GB adults
(Changes from 19th - 22nd January 2024)
First, did the Allies "collectively punish" the Germans or were they just at war with them. :Let's not go round in circles but Hamas is the democratically-elected government of Gaza.
Secondly, let's wait for the famine to materialise before we castigate Israel for it. When we see pictures a la Michael Buerk 40 years ago (god help us) then we can worry. And of course puff pieces as there have been on Band/Live Aid of course the international community got that wrong also and instead of helping the starving, propped up Mengistu and the Eritreans.
(Or more realistically random fluctuations around the mean!)
Frankly, no.
Oh, NEW THREAD, Btw
(Buffs nails)
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/01/21/finland/
If Hamas/Gaza didn't want a war then they shouldn't have started one.
..Details remain scant. Neither Israel nor UNRWA have specified the nature of the alleged involvement of UNRWA employees in the events of October 7.
An Israeli official told CNN on Friday that Israel shared information about 12 staffers allegedly involved in the October 7 attacks both with UNRWA and the US.
The head of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, met with senior US officials on Friday and gave them “specific names and which organizations they are affiliated with, whether Hamas or PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) or others, and what exactly they did on October 7,” the Israeli official said.
“We showed them that we had solid intelligence from difference sources.”
An Israeli official familiar with how the intelligence was gathered said it was taken from Hamas computers and documents confiscated during operations in Gaza, and from interrogations of detainees and alleged terrorists.
Israeli officials say some of the attackers who were killed or detained on October 7 had UNRWA IDs on them. CNN was not shown the IDs or other intelligence.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has said he received “information about the alleged involvement of several employees.” To protect the agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance in Gaza, he decided “to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth,” a statement said.
Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror “will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” he added.
In a statement Sunday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said nine of the 12 UNRWA staff members at the center of the allegations had been fired. One other was dead and the identities of two others were still “being clarified.”
“Any UN employee involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” Guterres said, adding that an independent review is forthcoming...
Except it's not some Machiavellian psy-ops, as Leon theorised, but a bunch of obsessed dweebs just doing their thing.
The private school I went to did that.
4%.
The UK border will be flexible for 3 months - as long as importers are trying to do the new process. The issue is foreign customs officials who are going to impose our new rules from day 1. Nobody is ready, and we already have a list of products where (a) the existing product will no longer be shipped but (b) the proposed UK compliant product isn't ready and won't be for months.
Anything else happening in British politics in three months time?
Gotcha.
Israel is uniquely evil.
Gotcha
Children from multiple women
Dependent on the state for income
Linked to the violent death of many people
Hmmmm… I think he’d have at least an ASBO
My grammar school streamed not by subject but by average performance in the 3rd year exams. An A and a B stream. The B stream were referred by some teachers as "less able" despite students having passed the 11 plus three years earlier. And the Secondary School head in the town treated his school as a borstal with exclusively CSE exams at the end of the five years.
Let parents ballot to open new grammars not just end selection as now
EDIT: scratch that, they’re apparently now coming in later in the year, possibly October. So summer is safe.