The headline underplays the gravity of the findings.
"New mothers risk suffering lifelong injuries as hospitals cover up endemic failures in Britain’s maternity system, according to a landmark inquiry which found good care for pregnant women “is the exception rather than the rule”.
The country’s first parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma has found there was “shockingly poor quality” in maternity services, resulting in care lacking compassion and a system where “poor care is all too frequently tolerated as normal”."
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
You're conflating the IRM in Gaza with Daesh which really is a death cult and has never allowed churches to operate in areas it has controlled. "Martyr" in the region means anyone who dies in a just cause or who gets killed by the occupiers. It covers those who were killed in the flotilla massacre and also every single one of the ~35000 killed in Gaza since October, young lads picked off by snipers in the West Bank, etc. You don't have to be a Muslim to be a martyr.
Suicide attacks haven't been much of a thing recently. Where they have happened, they have tended to be by young people who've had about 27 members of their family murdered and who simply want to take some of the murdering bastards down with them - a very human feeling. The idea that many mums and dads would willing sacrifice their sons for social advancement is similar to the traditional Tory idea that the only reason that unmarried working class women have babies is so they can get council flats.
I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but providing for the families of those who have fallen in the conflict is probably the main positive reason for the support they have. (The main negative reason is they aren't a bunch of collaborationist arseholes like most of the Fatah leadership.) Such provision of welfare is one of the good things they do. Doubtless it is also double-edged and comes with making sure that widows or the wives of prisoners don't sleep with men they're not supposed to. Cf. the IRA back in the day.
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
It's all immensely boring. I might prefer Israel because they're industrious, developed, Westernised and more liberal - we all know Palestine would be like another Lebanon in the counterfactual - and they run it better but it's really fucking boring and has been since at least the 1930s.
What is not - or should not be - immensely boring is the level of abuse and hatred levelled at Jews in this country by fellow citizens in recent months. It should shame us.
We can do little or nothing about what happens in the Middle East. We can and should do something about how people are treated here. Instead we barely notice, for instance, that the Green Councillor elected in Oldham is one of those whose threats against the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University led to him and his family having to go into hiding.
It’s quite something - how the Greens have evolved into this hideous new creature: obsessed with trans rights and Palestinian activism. It’s like worrying about rivers and badgers is a gateway drug into every kooky nonsensical radicalism they can find
The headline underplays the gravity of the findings.
"New mothers risk suffering lifelong injuries as hospitals cover up endemic failures in Britain’s maternity system, according to a landmark inquiry which found good care for pregnant women “is the exception rather than the rule”.
The country’s first parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma has found there was “shockingly poor quality” in maternity services, resulting in care lacking compassion and a system where “poor care is all too frequently tolerated as normal”."
This is very important.
Incidentally, we know a couple who work at a certain large hospital. Despite that, they chose to have their children at another, smaller hospital about the same distance away. The reason: being smaller, you got far better care and were not chucked out ASAP. Although they freely admitted that if they expected complications, they would have gone to the larger unit.
"* Israeli forces have continued to attack Jabalia refugee camp, and intensified attacks on Gaza City
* Israeli forces have fired on ambulances trying to reach the wounded as Israeli air strikes pound crowded residential areas within the refugee camp Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
* Medical staff at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah have received an evacuation order from Israeli forces, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports.
* Gaza’s Health Ministry says without fuel for hospital generators, the health system across Gaza could collapse in “a few hours”."
There will be death marches from all parts of Gaza to the Netzarim corridor unless something is done.
In their evacuation orders, sometimes the occupiers are not even bothering to designate any supposedly safe place for people to flee to. As the UNRWA has clearly stated, for many of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are being forcibly displaced there is no safe place.
It's utterly horrific, and I'm deeply ashamed that out government and the West in general is supporting this action.
Any suffering is dreadful. What's your take on these as you are evidently a geopolitically-aware kind of guy.
Also horrific, but at least the West, as far as I'm aware, isn't providing the main protagonists of the other conflicts with moral and material support as they go about their slaughter. So not the shame.
They are in Ukraine although I am sure an Ultra will be along shortly to provide context and contrast.
I suppose as you drift inexorably towards open unashamed support for Russia more and more fellow posters must seem like ultras.
On a sleek intercity train from Foggia to Bari. Fast clean efficient as we speed through notably ugly and boring “countryside” (actually quite industrial)
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
You're conflating the IRM in Gaza with Daesh which really is a death cult and has never allowed churches to operate in areas it has controlled. "Martyr" in the region means anyone who dies in a just cause or who gets killed by the occupiers. It covers those who were killed in the flotilla massacre and also every single one of the ~35000 killed in Gaza since October, young lads picked off by snipers in the West Bank, etc. You don't have to be a Muslim to be a martyr.
Suicide attacks haven't been much of a thing recently. Where they have happened, they have tended to be by young people who've had about 27 members of their family murdered and who simply want to take some of the murdering bastards down with them - a very human feeling. The idea that many mums and dads would willing sacrifice their sons for social advancement is similar to the traditional Tory idea that the only reason that unmarried working class women have babies is so they can get council flats.
I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but providing for the families of those who have fallen in the conflict is probably the main positive reason for the support they have. (The main negative reason is they aren't a bunch of collaborationist arseholes like most of the Fatah leadership.) Such provision of welfare is one of the good things they do. Doubtless it is also double-edged and comes with making sure that widows or the wives of prisoners don't sleep with men they're not supposed to. Cf. the IRA back in the day.
Great line: "I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but..."
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
I read that the only way to understand the culture of a place was to visit it and it took the sensitivity as someone such as yourself who had the experience to do that. I think I read it in one of your travelogue posts last week.
Have you ever been to Gaza and do you know any Gazans?
I know some Gazans and I’ve been to the Israeli side of the strip. I’ve traveled extensively in the West Bank staying with Palestinians and talking with them
I am also very aware of the fascist wing of Israeli politics that regards Palestinians as subhumans. They are in Netanyahu’s government. They are repulsive
But then Palestinians can be equally repulsive. You’ll be talking to the sweetest guy in Nablus and feeling great sympathy then suddenly he says “I hate Jews, we have to kill them all” and you recoil. Both sides have grotesque aspects
As I say maybe the only solution is combat a l’outrance
With clubs.
And voting where the football team supporters get to vote 20 times.
Of course a decision whether to cut interest rates is now made by the Bank of England not the Chancellor anyway.
However yes any fall in interest rates would need to see bigger gains for the Conservatives amongst middle aged mortgage holders than any losses amongst pensioner savers
No fall if your mortgage is being renewed from 5-10 years ago: rather, a huge increase. Which is most people renewing. Which is why it's so stupid to think the fall will help with voting.
Yes and no...
The end of fixed rate deals won't be a surprise for most. The main tranches of my mortgage renew in 2025 and 2026, but I'm obviously very aware of the current interest rate environment and monitoring what happens to them ahead of the actual renewal. I assume most borrowers with a basic level of financial curiosity are going to be watching rates in the same way and already bracing for the change when they come off their current deal. So if instead of going up to 5% they now go up to 4.5% they might see that as a relative win.
Quite, but the originjal increase was also very much a recent Conservative achievement.
Ah, but that's the genius of the Tory campaign pitch: Only a Conservative government can fix the damage we've caused. Don't let Labour ruin it!
And, whisper it, that will probably work with a few voters.
I don't wish to come over all MoonRabbit when the polls are so dire for the Tories, but have you noticed the subtle but real shift in sentiment in the right wing press since the locals? They are now in campaign mode. That means:
- Much more blanket coverage of Labour "woes" like Rayner and the Elphicke defection - Going softly softly on government policy - Boosting messages from both Sunak and "Tory sources" who claim the government is feeling more confident
Not just the print media either - see Kuenssberg over the last few days. Definitely in campaign mode now.
Several months of this cannot fail to dent confidence in Labour among swing voters. Whether it wins back people to the conservative fold is another matter, but it's possible it will help them a bit.
It could work the other way of course, reducing complacency amongst the anti-Tory vote.
Agreed.
Passive support for Labour has been hit hard amongst the young urban left. They may not have been particularly likely to vote anyway, but are now even less likely.
This sort of campaign from the Tories - along with the ramping over the London Mayoral vote - might well shuffle some of those potential abstainers back into the Labour column.
The likelihood of differential turnout is always a key factor, but I'd have thought that the best hope for the Tories is to making this election seem as "boring" as possible in order to suppress the Labour vote.
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
You're conflating the IRM in Gaza with Daesh which really is a death cult and has never allowed churches to operate in areas it has controlled. "Martyr" in the region means anyone who dies in a just cause or who gets killed by the occupiers. It covers those who were killed in the flotilla massacre and also every single one of the ~35000 killed in Gaza since October, young lads picked off by snipers in the West Bank, etc. You don't have to be a Muslim to be a martyr.
Suicide attacks haven't been much of a thing recently. Where they have happened, they have tended to be by young people who've had about 27 members of their family murdered and who simply want to take some of the murdering bastards down with them - a very human feeling. The idea that many mums and dads would willing sacrifice their sons for social advancement is similar to the traditional Tory idea that the only reason that unmarried working class women have babies is so they can get council flats.
I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but providing for the families of those who have fallen in the conflict is probably the main positive reason for the support they have. (The main negative reason is they aren't a bunch of collaborationist arseholes like most of the Fatah leadership.) Such provision of welfare is one of the good things they do. Doubtless it is also double-edged and comes with making sure that widows or the wives of prisoners don't sleep with men they're not supposed to. Cf. the IRA back in the day.
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
You're conflating the IRM in Gaza with Daesh which really is a death cult and has never allowed churches to operate in areas it has controlled. "Martyr" in the region means anyone who dies in a just cause or who gets killed by the occupiers. It covers those who were killed in the flotilla massacre and also every single one of the ~35000 killed in Gaza since October, young lads picked off by snipers in the West Bank, etc. You don't have to be a Muslim to be a martyr.
Suicide attacks haven't been much of a thing recently. Where they have happened, they have tended to be by young people who've had about 27 members of their family murdered and who simply want to take some of the murdering bastards down with them - a very human feeling. The idea that many mums and dads would willing sacrifice their sons for social advancement is similar to the traditional Tory idea that the only reason that unmarried working class women have babies is so they can get council flats.
I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but providing for the families of those who have fallen in the conflict is probably the main positive reason for the support they have. (The main negative reason is they aren't a bunch of collaborationist arseholes like most of the Fatah leadership.) Such provision of welfare is one of the good things they do. Doubtless it is also double-edged and comes with making sure that widows or the wives of prisoners don't sleep with men they're not supposed to. Cf. the IRA back in the day.
Great line: "I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but..."
I think all of us reasonable folk would favour this not murdering the gays modernity
"* Israeli forces have continued to attack Jabalia refugee camp, and intensified attacks on Gaza City
* Israeli forces have fired on ambulances trying to reach the wounded as Israeli air strikes pound crowded residential areas within the refugee camp Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
* Medical staff at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah have received an evacuation order from Israeli forces, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports.
* Gaza’s Health Ministry says without fuel for hospital generators, the health system across Gaza could collapse in “a few hours”."
There will be death marches from all parts of Gaza to the Netzarim corridor unless something is done.
In their evacuation orders, sometimes the occupiers are not even bothering to designate any supposedly safe place for people to flee to. As the UNRWA has clearly stated, for many of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are being forcibly displaced there is no safe place.
It's utterly horrific, and I'm deeply ashamed that out government and the West in general is supporting this action.
Any suffering is dreadful. What's your take on these as you are evidently a geopolitically-aware kind of guy.
Also horrific, but at least the West, as far as I'm aware, isn't providing the main protagonists of the other conflicts with moral and material support as they go about their slaughter. So not the shame.
I mean neither you nor I have the time to find out just how much British aid is going into these places and for what ends. I'm kind of a betting man so I would say: some and for uses we might disagree with.
Do you mean British aid going to Israel - and for uses we might not agree with - or to Gaza - and for uses we might not agree with? I wouldn't be entirely surprised if analysis showed that Britain - and indeed other western states - are largely funding both sides efforts to destroy each other. (Not, I would say, out of conspiracy: more out of there being multiple different views within western democracies which don't always check in with each other before acting.)
I have no doubt. Plus is British aid to, say, Saudi, which ends up distributed around the region or the world by Saudi counted as British aid. No idea.
At least some of the British 'aid' is distributed liberally on Yemen. Not sure they're terribly grateful for it mind.
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
You're conflating the IRM in Gaza with Daesh which really is a death cult and has never allowed churches to operate in areas it has controlled. "Martyr" in the region means anyone who dies in a just cause or who gets killed by the occupiers. It covers those who were killed in the flotilla massacre and also every single one of the ~35000 killed in Gaza since October, young lads picked off by snipers in the West Bank, etc. You don't have to be a Muslim to be a martyr.
Suicide attacks haven't been much of a thing recently. Where they have happened, they have tended to be by young people who've had about 27 members of their family murdered and who simply want to take some of the murdering bastards down with them - a very human feeling. The idea that many mums and dads would willing sacrifice their sons for social advancement is similar to the traditional Tory idea that the only reason that unmarried working class women have babies is so they can get council flats.
I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but providing for the families of those who have fallen in the conflict is probably the main positive reason for the support they have. (The main negative reason is they aren't a bunch of collaborationist arseholes like most of the Fatah leadership.) Such provision of welfare is one of the good things they do. Doubtless it is also double-edged and comes with making sure that widows or the wives of prisoners don't sleep with men they're not supposed to. Cf. the IRA back in the day.
Great line: "I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but..."
I think all of us reasonable folk would favour this not murdering the gays modernity
I think this is the flag that @Donkeys isn't waving.
"* Israeli forces have continued to attack Jabalia refugee camp, and intensified attacks on Gaza City
* Israeli forces have fired on ambulances trying to reach the wounded as Israeli air strikes pound crowded residential areas within the refugee camp Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
* Medical staff at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah have received an evacuation order from Israeli forces, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports.
* Gaza’s Health Ministry says without fuel for hospital generators, the health system across Gaza could collapse in “a few hours”."
There will be death marches from all parts of Gaza to the Netzarim corridor unless something is done.
In their evacuation orders, sometimes the occupiers are not even bothering to designate any supposedly safe place for people to flee to. As the UNRWA has clearly stated, for many of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are being forcibly displaced there is no safe place.
It's utterly horrific, and I'm deeply ashamed that out government and the West in general is supporting this action.
Any suffering is dreadful. What's your take on these as you are evidently a geopolitically-aware kind of guy.
Also horrific, but at least the West, as far as I'm aware, isn't providing the main protagonists of the other conflicts with moral and material support as they go about their slaughter. So not the shame.
I mean neither you nor I have the time to find out just how much British aid is going into these places and for what ends. I'm kind of a betting man so I would say: some and for uses we might disagree with.
Do you mean British aid going to Israel - and for uses we might not agree with - or to Gaza - and for uses we might not agree with? I wouldn't be entirely surprised if analysis showed that Britain - and indeed other western states - are largely funding both sides efforts to destroy each other. (Not, I would say, out of conspiracy: more out of there being multiple different views within western democracies which don't always check in with each other before acting.)
I have no doubt. Plus is British aid to, say, Saudi, which ends up distributed around the region or the world by Saudi counted as British aid. No idea.
At least some of the British 'aid' is distributed liberally on Yemen. Not sure they're terribly grateful for it mind.
Ah yes there is that kind of aid also. I assume it doesn't result in improved morale.
And, take Sudan for example, when it gets coverage it more or less misses out entirely reports on what military action is taking place, where, who is winning and losing, who is allied with which countries, who is arming them and with what, and what are the future intentions of the parties.
Yep, even with the Israel-Gaza conflict nowhere on the BBC website are there ever any maps showing territory taken by the IDF, Hamas strikes etc. The coverage is even worse for various ('twas ever thus) African conflicts I get the main "news" of these conflicts nearly always relates to the humanitarian suffering but map territory, strikes and so forth - detail about the actual conflicts would be handy - it only seems to have happened 'properly' during the Ukranian counterattack, otherwise it's just not reported on.
I wonder how many people realise how easy travel is now? Thanks to smartphones and e-translate etc
Example. I was stuck in Mattinata (a pretty little town on the south gargano coast). My transfer to foggia station and thence to Bari and then Bari airport was meant to be this afternoon with a driver who only speaks Italian
However via the miraculous use of Google translate I was able to talk to him on WhatsApp in fluent Italian
Here’s the chat. Remember I don’t speak Italian
He turned up at the new time of 11 (not 4). During the 45 minute transfer to foggia station I bought a train ticket in English on the Trenitalia app, that took about 40 seconds. I had a four minute wait at the station and now I’m on the train using my app’s e-ticket
When I get to Bari I will summon a car with a ride hailing app and it will take 2 more minutes and I will get to Bari (ins’allah) in 15 minutes and pick up the hire car I rented online in a few minutes yesterday
Just phenomenal. Now imagine doing all that 20-30 years ago - and with no Italian. A massive daunting task and one that could so easily go wrong. Now it is a doddle. Doddlissimo
And you can do this all over the world. I did it in Colombia a few weeks back. Apps for buses. Sorted
I’m kinda surprised WhatsApp (and signal and telegram and iMessage) haven’t yet introduced the functionality of instant translate. So, say you are in Italy, you could toggle a switch which says “translate anything I say in English into Italian and anything Italian into English”. Surely not that hard
I had to cut and paste with google translate which took 20 seconds per message but still slowed it down A BIT
Maybe WhatsApp does have this and I don’t know? If not, it is surely coming very soon
Learning languages - as I have said on here many times - is about to become utterly pointless. Something for rich kids to do like learning the cello or taking up dressage
O/T I see the Met Office long range forecast may be simply summarised as "we don't have a f*cking clue"...
Monday 27 May - Monday 10 Jun Signals during this period are weak and offer limited guidance beyond climatology. Similar weather conditions to those of the preceding few days are most likely to characterise this period to the end of May; a mixture of unsettled periods with rain and showers and settled interludes in-between. By early June, the chances of above and below average rainfall are evenly balanced. There is a slightly higher likelihood of above average temperatures compared with below average temperatures, such that the chance of hot spells, although still very small, is slightly higher than normal too.
This is indeed the power of AI writ large. Tomorrow's weather will be similar to today's weather with some minor variations. Our assimilation is inevitable.
Until fairly recently forecasting that tomorrow's weather will be the same as today's was as good as or better than actual forecasts. One of the bigger issues we have now is that apps appear to be giving really precise forecasts for locations and times, when in reality they are simply outputting unmodified weather model data. The last public puts far too much credence on them, particularly beyond saying 48-72 hours.
Yes. The presentation of weather forecasts on apps is dire.
There is normally fairly impressive skill a week or more ahead in terms of the general weather type. On its 10-day weather forecasts on youtube the Met Office uses a statistical weather regime analysis that is very useful.
Reducing this to hourly forecasts of precipitation and temperature for point locations is moronic.
This is real weak sauce from Sunak. Vote for me because I can be trusted more with change? It’s just such a weird message for a party in power for 14 years. Casting around for gimmicks like this isn’t going to save him.
The headline underplays the gravity of the findings.
"New mothers risk suffering lifelong injuries as hospitals cover up endemic failures in Britain’s maternity system, according to a landmark inquiry which found good care for pregnant women “is the exception rather than the rule”.
The country’s first parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma has found there was “shockingly poor quality” in maternity services, resulting in care lacking compassion and a system where “poor care is all too frequently tolerated as normal”."
"The exception rather than the rule" seems something worth highlighting in the heading to me. It destroys the "odd bad apple" argument that the NHS is so fond of. I can't read the piece as I don't subscribe but it is an eye-catching headline.
Envy of the world, of course. 1.6m heroes. A bargain at near £200bn a year. etc.
I’m kinda surprised WhatsApp (and signal and telegram and iMessage) haven’t yet introduced the functionality of instant translate. So, say you are in Italy, you could toggle a switch which says “translate anything I say in English into Italian and anything Italian into English”. Surely not that hard
I had to cut and paste with google translate which took 20 seconds per message but still slowed it down A BIT
Maybe WhatsApp does have this and I don’t know? If not, it is surely coming very soon
Learning languages - as I have said on here many times - is about to become utterly pointless. Something for rich kids to do like learning the cello or taking up dressage
I wonder how many people realise how easy travel is now? Thanks to smartphones and e-translate etc
Example. I was stuck in Mattinata (a pretty little town on the south gargano coast). My transfer to foggia station and thence to Bari and then Bari airport was meant to be this afternoon with a driver who only speaks Italian
However via the miraculous use of Google translate I was able to talk to him on WhatsApp in fluent Italian
Here’s the chat. Remember I don’t speak Italian
He turned up at the new time of 11 (not 4). During the 45 minute transfer to foggia station I bought a train ticket in English on the Trenitalia app, that took about 40 seconds. I had a four minute wait at the station and now I’m on the train using my app’s e-ticket
When I get to Bari I will summon a car with a ride hailing app and it will take 2 more minutes and I will get to Bari (ins’allah) in 15 minutes and pick up the hire car I rented online in a few minutes yesterday
Just phenomenal. Now imagine doing all that 20-30 years ago - and with no Italian. A massive daunting task and one that could so easily go wrong. Now it is a doddle. Doddlissimo
And you can do this all over the world. I did it in Colombia a few weeks back. Apps for buses. Sorted
It is amazing. We are fortunate to be living in amazing times, tech wise. Where will we be in 20 years time? I was speaking to my 12 year old niece the other day, when I told her the first time I went online I was 19 and it took five minutes for a page to load and I didn’t have a mobile til I was 20 she looked at me like I had three heads.
You’ve mentioned before how AI will affect music. The other day I was watching a video from a guitar YouTuber, he compared a song he generated with AI five years ago to one he’s done now. The difference is colossal.
This is real weak sauce from Sunak. Vote for me because I can be trusted more with change? It’s just such a weird message for a party in power for 14 years. Casting around for gimmicks like this isn’t going to save him.
All that is left for him is fear of Labour votes, so everything will be framed around that. Don't risk it for a biscuit campaign, and even that is about trying to restrict them and have a chance at coming back in 5 years/one heave
I wonder how many people realise how easy travel is now? Thanks to smartphones and e-translate etc
Example. I was stuck in Mattinata (a pretty little town on the south gargano coast). My transfer to foggia station and thence to Bari and then Bari airport was meant to be this afternoon with a driver who only speaks Italian
However via the miraculous use of Google translate I was able to talk to him on WhatsApp in fluent Italian
Here’s the chat. Remember I don’t speak Italian
He turned up at the new time of 11 (not 4). During the 45 minute transfer to foggia station I bought a train ticket in English on the Trenitalia app, that took about 40 seconds. I had a four minute wait at the station and now I’m on the train using my app’s e-ticket
When I get to Bari I will summon a car with a ride hailing app and it will take 2 more minutes and I will get to Bari (ins’allah) in 15 minutes and pick up the hire car I rented online in a few minutes yesterday
Just phenomenal. Now imagine doing all that 20-30 years ago - and with no Italian. A massive daunting task and one that could so easily go wrong. Now it is a doddle. Doddlissimo
And you can do this all over the world. I did it in Colombia a few weeks back. Apps for buses. Sorted
Don't you think it would be more interesting to travel without modern technology?
More desperate attempts to appease the ERG nutjobs from Sunak .
Hasn’t he got better things to do like polish his helicopter than deliver more vacuous nonsense . Country at a crossroads blah blah blah ....
To paraphrase: "Why are our opponents talking about all the stupid unforced errors we've made in the recent past when actually they should be talking about the future?"
Sure, yes, it'd be great if Starmer could do a bit more of the vision thing. But Sunak's not a neutral observer here, he's the Prime Minister - and this speech so far sounds so very, very whingey.
This is real weak sauce from Sunak. Vote for me because I can be trusted more with change? It’s just such a weird message for a party in power for 14 years. Casting around for gimmicks like this isn’t going to save him.
It's the only message they can run with after 14 years. The alternative- fresh start, that bad stuff was nothing to do with us- is a card a new PM can play exactly once. Major got away with it in 1992 and Johnson in 2019, but to try it now would just elicit a hollow laugh.
You Can Only Be Sure With The Conservatives was the title of their 1997 manifesto.
The thing about this speech from Sunak is, if he believed it, he would have ended the speech by saying "and this is why I am calling a general election now". The fact that he doesn't do that just shows everyone that he is just hot air. The average voter reading headlines about this is just going to go "Sunak's spouting nonsense again, still chicken to call an election". If he wants to make election speeches and have them taken seriously - call an election!
I wonder how many people realise how easy travel is now? Thanks to smartphones and e-translate etc
Example. I was stuck in Mattinata (a pretty little town on the south gargano coast). My transfer to foggia station and thence to Bari and then Bari airport was meant to be this afternoon with a driver who only speaks Italian
However via the miraculous use of Google translate I was able to talk to him on WhatsApp in fluent Italian
Here’s the chat. Remember I don’t speak Italian
He turned up at the new time of 11 (not 4). During the 45 minute transfer to foggia station I bought a train ticket in English on the Trenitalia app, that took about 40 seconds. I had a four minute wait at the station and now I’m on the train using my app’s e-ticket
When I get to Bari I will summon a car with a ride hailing app and it will take 2 more minutes and I will get to Bari (ins’allah) in 15 minutes and pick up the hire car I rented online in a few minutes yesterday
Just phenomenal. Now imagine doing all that 20-30 years ago - and with no Italian. A massive daunting task and one that could so easily go wrong. Now it is a doddle. Doddlissimo
And you can do this all over the world. I did it in Colombia a few weeks back. Apps for buses. Sorted
There's apps that do the same thing with the spoken word.
I asked someone to call me a cab in Tallahassee the other day and got laughed at and told to get an Uber. Nobody uses trad cabs any more except criminals who want to avoid creating a record of their movements.
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
It's all immensely boring. I might prefer Israel because they're industrious, developed, Westernised and more liberal - we all know Palestine would be like another Lebanon in the counterfactual - and they run it better but it's really fucking boring and has been since at least the 1930s.
What is not - or should not be - immensely boring is the level of abuse and hatred levelled at Jews in this country by fellow citizens in recent months. It should shame us.
We can do little or nothing about what happens in the Middle East. We can and should do something about how people are treated here. Instead we barely notice, for instance, that the Green Councillor elected in Oldham is one of those whose threats against the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University led to him and his family having to go into hiding.
We could stop going along with the pretence that Israel's annihilation of Gaza can be described as self-defence. Antisemitism, like all forms of racism, is shameful, but so is the apparent condonement of genocide.
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
You're conflating the IRM in Gaza with Daesh which really is a death cult and has never allowed churches to operate in areas it has controlled. "Martyr" in the region means anyone who dies in a just cause or who gets killed by the occupiers. It covers those who were killed in the flotilla massacre and also every single one of the ~35000 killed in Gaza since October, young lads picked off by snipers in the West Bank, etc. You don't have to be a Muslim to be a martyr.
Suicide attacks haven't been much of a thing recently. Where they have happened, they have tended to be by young people who've had about 27 members of their family murdered and who simply want to take some of the murdering bastards down with them - a very human feeling. The idea that many mums and dads would willing sacrifice their sons for social advancement is similar to the traditional Tory idea that the only reason that unmarried working class women have babies is so they can get council flats.
I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but providing for the families of those who have fallen in the conflict is probably the main positive reason for the support they have. (The main negative reason is they aren't a bunch of collaborationist arseholes like most of the Fatah leadership.) Such provision of welfare is one of the good things they do. Doubtless it is also double-edged and comes with making sure that widows or the wives of prisoners don't sleep with men they're not supposed to. Cf. the IRA back in the day.
Great line: "I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but..."
I think all of us reasonable folk would favour this not murdering the gays modernity
I think this is the flag that @Donkeys isn't waving.
It’s a Russian troll attempting to create and exacerbate divides on the Israel Gaza issue. Just ignore.
I wonder how many people realise how easy travel is now? Thanks to smartphones and e-translate etc
Example. I was stuck in Mattinata (a pretty little town on the south gargano coast). My transfer to foggia station and thence to Bari and then Bari airport was meant to be this afternoon with a driver who only speaks Italian
However via the miraculous use of Google translate I was able to talk to him on WhatsApp in fluent Italian
Here’s the chat. Remember I don’t speak Italian
He turned up at the new time of 11 (not 4). During the 45 minute transfer to foggia station I bought a train ticket in English on the Trenitalia app, that took about 40 seconds. I had a four minute wait at the station and now I’m on the train using my app’s e-ticket
When I get to Bari I will summon a car with a ride hailing app and it will take 2 more minutes and I will get to Bari (ins’allah) in 15 minutes and pick up the hire car I rented online in a few minutes yesterday
Just phenomenal. Now imagine doing all that 20-30 years ago - and with no Italian. A massive daunting task and one that could so easily go wrong. Now it is a doddle. Doddlissimo
And you can do this all over the world. I did it in Colombia a few weeks back. Apps for buses. Sorted
Don't you think it would be more interesting to travel without modern technology?
No not really. I mean it would be quaint and fun in a steampunk way for about 17 minutes and then you’d get frustrated. I love the fact you can now access incredible parts of the world - and move on to other exotic locales - with seamless ease. It’s also gratifying (I admit) that most people don’t realise this or they are too timid or whatever
The fact I could hire a car online at Santa Marta in Colombia and DRIVE into the jungle and meet Stone Age people was just brilliant. Also if you want adventure and hassle you can absolutely find it. Ukraine for instance. No visas needed. Give it a whirl
This is real weak sauce from Sunak. Vote for me because I can be trusted more with change? It’s just such a weird message for a party in power for 14 years. Casting around for gimmicks like this isn’t going to save him.
All that is left for him is fear of Labour votes, so everything will be framed around that. Don't risk it for a biscuit campaign, and even that is about trying to restrict them and have a chance at coming back in 5 years/one heave
And it won't work. Starmer has closed that off along with every other tory attack line. It's been a masterclass really.
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
You're conflating the IRM in Gaza with Daesh which really is a death cult and has never allowed churches to operate in areas it has controlled. "Martyr" in the region means anyone who dies in a just cause or who gets killed by the occupiers. It covers those who were killed in the flotilla massacre and also every single one of the ~35000 killed in Gaza since October, young lads picked off by snipers in the West Bank, etc. You don't have to be a Muslim to be a martyr.
Suicide attacks haven't been much of a thing recently. Where they have happened, they have tended to be by young people who've had about 27 members of their family murdered and who simply want to take some of the murdering bastards down with them - a very human feeling. The idea that many mums and dads would willing sacrifice their sons for social advancement is similar to the traditional Tory idea that the only reason that unmarried working class women have babies is so they can get council flats.
I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but providing for the families of those who have fallen in the conflict is probably the main positive reason for the support they have. (The main negative reason is they aren't a bunch of collaborationist arseholes like most of the Fatah leadership.) Such provision of welfare is one of the good things they do. Doubtless it is also double-edged and comes with making sure that widows or the wives of prisoners don't sleep with men they're not supposed to. Cf. the IRA back in the day.
Great line: "I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but..."
I think all of us reasonable folk would favour this not murdering the gays modernity
I think this is the flag that @Donkeys isn't waving.
It’s a Russian troll attempting to create and exacerbate divides on the Israel Gaza issue. Just ignore.
Always interesting to engage with PB posters. We have all kinds of views here. I'm not sure if The Donkmeister is actually saying anything (actually this last post of his was more telling than others) but it's an opinion - Hamas might be murdering thugs who deny Israel's right to exist and throw gays and their political opponents off buildings, but they do a lot of good work compensating families of martyrs, resisting the Zionist entity, etc - which many on PB share.
The thing about this speech from Sunak is, if he believed it, he would have ended the speech by saying "and this is why I am calling a general election now". The fact that he doesn't do that just shows everyone that he is just hot air. The average voter reading headlines about this is just going to go "Sunak's spouting nonsense again, still chicken to call an election". If he wants to make election speeches and have them taken seriously - call an election!
The tone of the speech is what I would expect from a leader of the opposition.
I do think that some people will vote Tory because they think Starmer and Labour have failed in government. Starmer has been leader of the opposition for a lot longer than Sunak has been PM.
The more Sunak makes speeches the more it becomes clear Starmer is the one and we should just get on with it. It's a choice between the two and Sunak isn't the choice.
This is real weak sauce from Sunak. Vote for me because I can be trusted more with change? It’s just such a weird message for a party in power for 14 years. Casting around for gimmicks like this isn’t going to save him.
It's the only message they can run with after 14 years. The alternative- fresh start, that bad stuff was nothing to do with us- is a card a new PM can play exactly once. Major got away with it in 1992 and Johnson in 2019, but to try it now would just elicit a hollow laugh.
You Can Only Be Sure With The Conservatives was the title of their 1997 manifesto.
I think we're all pretty sure how well that went.
We've had a year (feels like several) of Sunak failing to address the issues and doing his dismal decline management with a sprinkling of enough performative right-wingery to put peoples' backs up without actually getting anything right wing done. Trying to market himself as the change candidate isn't going to work.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 21m This section perfectly encapsulates Sunak's problem. He is incapable of crafting a clear message. It's a mishmash of security, and change, and embracing the future, and not taking a leap into the unknown. Politically and narratively incoherent.
The thing about this speech from Sunak is, if he believed it, he would have ended the speech by saying "and this is why I am calling a general election now". The fact that he doesn't do that just shows everyone that he is just hot air. The average voter reading headlines about this is just going to go "Sunak's spouting nonsense again, still chicken to call an election". If he wants to make election speeches and have them taken seriously - call an election!
The tone of the speech is what I would expect from a leader of the opposition.
I do think that some people will vote Tory because they think Starmer and Labour have failed in government. Starmer has been leader of the opposition for a lot longer than Sunak has been PM.
Time for a change. Vote Starmer out!
Remember those voters at the Hartlepool byelection in 2021.
I quite enjoy the history of Warwickshire County Council, who came onto my radar this weekend because they have declared free-for-all on Pavement Charging Cable Protectors the size of small traffic calming ramps to be run across footways. They also claim by implication that their legal responsibilities to provide an unobstructed public highway and equal service to groups protected under Equality Act 2010 do not exist.
I ran into one on a shared pavement in my own town, and it was as high as a scaffold plank.
Looking at the history since 1974, it's as if they say "let's try the Conservatives" and get scared off by the experience, and go NOC, then forget and try again. Or vice-versa.
The thing about this speech from Sunak is, if he believed it, he would have ended the speech by saying "and this is why I am calling a general election now". The fact that he doesn't do that just shows everyone that he is just hot air. The average voter reading headlines about this is just going to go "Sunak's spouting nonsense again, still chicken to call an election". If he wants to make election speeches and have them taken seriously - call an election!
The tone of the speech is what I would expect from a leader of the opposition.
I do think that some people will vote Tory because they think Starmer and Labour have failed in government. Starmer has been leader of the opposition for a lot longer than Sunak has been PM.
Time for a change. Vote Starmer out!
TBH if someone votes Tory because they think Starmer and Labour have failed in government then their vote should be voided. Surely no-one is that thick?
Is interest rates an area where the media has badly misjudged the public mood? You'd think from most news programmes that the public is dying for a rate cut. Perhaps there will be quite a few people who'll be annoyed at having agreed a fixed deal at a higher rate.
I'm sad he's dead, but is it really front page news to tell us that his widow misses him? Really?
The tabloid-is-ation of the BBC News output in recent times (particularly online) is very depressing.
On that point, does anyone have a better go-to online default news source? I have tried Reuters but it is too hit-and-miss with what it covers, particularly on UK topics.
Weirdly, the whole speech was nakedly party political. Every sentence ended with "and that's why you'll be less safe with Keir Starmer", "unlike Labour in Wales", or "and actually it's only the Conservatives who have a plan for the future".
Why's he using the government lectern when this so clearly wasn't a government speech?
I'm sad he's dead, but is it really front page news to tell us that his widow misses him? Really?
The tabloid-is-ation of the BBC News output in recent times (particularly online) is very depressing.
On that point, does anyone have a better go-to online default news source? I have tried Reuters but it is too hit-and-miss with what it covers, particularly on UK topics.
Genuinely think PB is a good start. You have to be wary of certain posters reactions to stuff, but if something happens, it gets posted on PB.
The thing about this speech from Sunak is, if he believed it, he would have ended the speech by saying "and this is why I am calling a general election now". The fact that he doesn't do that just shows everyone that he is just hot air. The average voter reading headlines about this is just going to go "Sunak's spouting nonsense again, still chicken to call an election". If he wants to make election speeches and have them taken seriously - call an election!
The tone of the speech is what I would expect from a leader of the opposition.
I do think that some people will vote Tory because they think Starmer and Labour have failed in government. Starmer has been leader of the opposition for a lot longer than Sunak has been PM.
Time for a change. Vote Starmer out!
Remember those voters at the Hartlepool byelection in 2021.
The Cummings/Boz approach was to play the insurgents, not as easy for Rishi, his millions and his safe Rural seat but, then again, its about convincing a few to backfill the foundations, not the majority
Weirdly, the whole speech was nakedly party political. Every sentence ended with "and that's why you'll be less safe with Keir Starmer", "unlike Labour in Wales", or "and that's why it's only the Conservatives who have a plan for the future".
Why's he using the government lectern when this so clearly wasn't a government speech?
Because he can? He's got a few months left where he is PM, so cut him some slack.
Is interest rates an area where the media has badly misjudged the public mood? You'd think from most news programmes that the public is dying for a rate cut. Perhaps there will be quite a few people who'll be annoyed at having agreed a fixed deal at a higher rate.
Geography? A regional breakdown would be good.
This is an odd argument, as mortgages come up all the time for renewal. By this logic the bank should always increase rates so as to not annoy people who have remortgaged recently.
On another financial matter, those of us with children born in April 2022 get the funding at the same time as anyone with a 9 mth+ child but missed out on the 2 yr old 15 hr implementation recently brought in.
Weirdly, the whole speech was nakedly party political. Every sentence ended with "and that's why you'll be less safe with Keir Starmer", "unlike Labour in Wales", or "and that's why it's only the Conservatives who have a plan for the future".
Why's he using the government lectern when this so clearly wasn't a government speech?
It was a GE calling speech without calling a GE.
I wonder if this speech was always in the calendar and might have been timed with an announcement if the locals had gone OK-ish? Would a dissolution now have given enough time for a vote before the school holidays? If so, perhaps a chance this could’ve been it, if it had not been for the locals.
Can anyone else tell me what @donkeys is referring to with IRM in the context of Gaza?
Islamic Resistance Movement, the English translation of 'Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah' - ie. Hamas.
Thanks - couldn't find it on the interweb, seems a bit niche. Is this a poster just being a bit of a dick, look how much more I know than you?
My guess is that IRM is the English-language way that Hamas themselves use as their name when using English. And so, in some circles, Hamas would be viewed as a name provided by the enemy/colonisers. And then there's the benefit that IRM doesn't have all the subconscious connotations of barbarism that most people in the West will associate with Hamas.
The thing about this speech from Sunak is, if he believed it, he would have ended the speech by saying "and this is why I am calling a general election now". The fact that he doesn't do that just shows everyone that he is just hot air. The average voter reading headlines about this is just going to go "Sunak's spouting nonsense again, still chicken to call an election". If he wants to make election speeches and have them taken seriously - call an election!
The tone of the speech is what I would expect from a leader of the opposition.
I do think that some people will vote Tory because they think Starmer and Labour have failed in government. Starmer has been leader of the opposition for a lot longer than Sunak has been PM.
Time for a change. Vote Starmer out!
Again, if he really felt that Starmer was an empty shirt and he is the messiah - he'd call an election. The problem isn't that some of Sunak's criticisms of Starmer aren't true - I think his point on Starmer going from Corbyn to Elphicke is not a bad point that the LDs and Greens should probably say themselves - it's just that it makes no sense coming from Sunak who is also a vapid ideologue in exactly the same way. Sunak and Starmer see the end point of politics as being in power, not in actually enacting significant and important policies to benefit people. That's why Sunak is clinging onto being in government for as long as he can without actually doing much governing, and that's why Starmer can welcome Elphicke into the fold. Because the thing they both believe in, the neoliberal consensus, doesn't really need people who have ideas about policy, but those who continue to treat politics like a back and forward game.
I'm sad he's dead, but is it really front page news to tell us that his widow misses him? Really?
The tabloid-is-ation of the BBC News output in recent times (particularly online) is very depressing.
On that point, does anyone have a better go-to online default news source? I have tried Reuters but it is too hit-and-miss with what it covers, particularly on UK topics.
Genuinely think PB is a good start. You have to be wary of certain posters reactions to stuff, but if something happens, it gets posted on PB.
Indeed. Even news on widows missing their husbands gets re-posted on here
I'm sad he's dead, but is it really front page news to tell us that his widow misses him? Really?
The tabloid-is-ation of the BBC News output in recent times (particularly online) is very depressing.
On that point, does anyone have a better go-to online default news source? I have tried Reuters but it is too hit-and-miss with what it covers, particularly on UK topics.
Genuinely think PB is a good start. You have to be wary of certain posters reactions to stuff, but if something happens, it gets posted on PB.
I get all my news from here. Why bother thinking what the BBC wants me to think?
Is interest rates an area where the media has badly misjudged the public mood? You'd think from most news programmes that the public is dying for a rate cut. Perhaps there will be quite a few people who'll be annoyed at having agreed a fixed deal at a higher rate.
Geography? A regional breakdown would be good.
And there are a lot of savers out there. Even with these interest rates, inflation has outstripped savings rates.
Weirdly, the whole speech was nakedly party political. Every sentence ended with "and that's why you'll be less safe with Keir Starmer", "unlike Labour in Wales", or "and that's why it's only the Conservatives who have a plan for the future".
Why's he using the government lectern when this so clearly wasn't a government speech?
It was a GE calling speech without calling a GE.
I wonder if this speech was always in the calendar and might have been timed with an announcement if the locals had gone OK-ish? Would a dissolution now have given enough time for a vote before the school holidays? If so, perhaps a chance this could’ve been it, if it had not been for the locals.
For pre schools hols he will need to call it pretty much on return from Whitsun on June 3rd
Is interest rates an area where the media has badly misjudged the public mood? You'd think from most news programmes that the public is dying for a rate cut. Perhaps there will be quite a few people who'll be annoyed at having agreed a fixed deal at a higher rate.
Geography? A regional breakdown would be good.
And there are a lot of savers out there. Even with these interest rates, inflation has outstripped savings rates.
Is anyone that bothered about the paltry interest the banks pay on savings? It's a huge difference in importance to someone's mortgage payments going up.
This is real weak sauce from Sunak. Vote for me because I can be trusted more with change? It’s just such a weird message for a party in power for 14 years. Casting around for gimmicks like this isn’t going to save him.
After 14 years in power you have to be able to point to solid achievements and changes that make sense to the individual voter - brilliant NHS, solved housing problems especially in London, social housing working well, delivered on migration pledges, prisons nearly empty because of rehabilitation and education, police being effective, schools no problem because spoilt for choice, public finances sure and steady, Brexit deal now booming, illegal drugs a minimal problem, defences and armed forces sorted, northern transport systems as good as London - and so on.
In don't think he has really touched on any of those matters. Why?
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
It's all immensely boring. I might prefer Israel because they're industrious, developed, Westernised and more liberal - we all know Palestine would be like another Lebanon in the counterfactual - and they run it better but it's really fucking boring and has been since at least the 1930s.
What is not - or should not be - immensely boring is the level of abuse and hatred levelled at Jews in this country by fellow citizens in recent months. It should shame us.
We can do little or nothing about what happens in the Middle East. We can and should do something about how people are treated here. Instead we barely notice, for instance, that the Green Councillor elected in Oldham is one of those whose threats against the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University led to him and his family having to go into hiding.
It’s quite something - how the Greens have evolved into this hideous new creature: obsessed with trans rights and Palestinian activism. It’s like worrying about rivers and badgers is a gateway drug into every kooky nonsensical radicalism they can find
The Green Party is and always has been a greenwashed version of the Socialist Workers Party. Most of them do not have the first clue about ecology or earth science.
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
You're conflating the IRM in Gaza with Daesh which really is a death cult and has never allowed churches to operate in areas it has controlled. "Martyr" in the region means anyone who dies in a just cause or who gets killed by the occupiers. It covers those who were killed in the flotilla massacre and also every single one of the ~35000 killed in Gaza since October, young lads picked off by snipers in the West Bank, etc. You don't have to be a Muslim to be a martyr.
Suicide attacks haven't been much of a thing recently. Where they have happened, they have tended to be by young people who've had about 27 members of their family murdered and who simply want to take some of the murdering bastards down with them - a very human feeling. The idea that many mums and dads would willing sacrifice their sons for social advancement is similar to the traditional Tory idea that the only reason that unmarried working class women have babies is so they can get council flats.
I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but providing for the families of those who have fallen in the conflict is probably the main positive reason for the support they have. (The main negative reason is they aren't a bunch of collaborationist arseholes like most of the Fatah leadership.) Such provision of welfare is one of the good things they do. Doubtless it is also double-edged and comes with making sure that widows or the wives of prisoners don't sleep with men they're not supposed to. Cf. the IRA back in the day.
Great line: "I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but..."
I think all of us reasonable folk would favour this not murdering the gays modernity
I think this is the flag that @Donkeys isn't waving.
It’s a Russian troll attempting to create and exacerbate divides on the Israel Gaza issue. Just ignore.
Always interesting to engage with PB posters. We have all kinds of views here. I'm not sure if The Donkmeister is actually saying anything (actually this last post of his was more telling than others) but it's an opinion - Hamas might be murdering thugs who deny Israel's right to exist and throw gays and their political opponents off buildings, but they do a lot of good work compensating families of martyrs, resisting the Zionist entity, etc - which many on PB share.
Off to the Donkey Sanctuary with him, who keep targeting me on Youtube to tell me how much they need more money.
In a response to Rishi Sunak’s speech, the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey says Sunak should just call an election. “Instead of talking at people, Rishi Sunak should be listening to the public by calling a general election now,” Davey says.
Sir Keir needs to tread carefully. He's starting to look like lord over all he surveys. The Elphicke defection had the air of 'Idolize me mortals for I am your god.' Cooler heads should advise Sir Keir to temper his enthusiasm with some humility. Much more of this and voters will turn to Rishi just to spite him.
This is real weak sauce from Sunak. Vote for me because I can be trusted more with change? It’s just such a weird message for a party in power for 14 years. Casting around for gimmicks like this isn’t going to save him.
All that is left for him is fear of Labour votes, so everything will be framed around that. Don't risk it for a biscuit campaign, and even that is about trying to restrict them and have a chance at coming back in 5 years/one heave
And it won't work. Starmer has closed that off along with every other tory attack line. It's been a masterclass really.
A masterclass in saying "well other than me (did you know I used to be DPP?), the Labour front bench is full of lightweights and people who would struggle to get above lower middle management in the real world, but the Tories are all baby-eaters and it is time for a change. Basically we, Labour, are just a bit less crap than the tired out Tories. Vote for us, and if you can't, please don't vote at all. "
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
It's all immensely boring. I might prefer Israel because they're industrious, developed, Westernised and more liberal - we all know Palestine would be like another Lebanon in the counterfactual - and they run it better but it's really fucking boring and has been since at least the 1930s.
What is not - or should not be - immensely boring is the level of abuse and hatred levelled at Jews in this country by fellow citizens in recent months. It should shame us.
We can do little or nothing about what happens in the Middle East. We can and should do something about how people are treated here. Instead we barely notice, for instance, that the Green Councillor elected in Oldham is one of those whose threats against the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University led to him and his family having to go into hiding.
It’s quite something - how the Greens have evolved into this hideous new creature: obsessed with trans rights and Palestinian activism. It’s like worrying about rivers and badgers is a gateway drug into every kooky nonsensical radicalism they can find
It's almost like somebody wrote an article explaining why progressive politics is essential to, and a precondition of, one of the Greens' imagined future
So, if I have read this right, Sunak wishes to frame the GE as a "change vs the past" election.
LOL.
The guy is a genius. Absolutely.
I actually detest his 'vision' (lack of would be a better description) for the future. Which is basically that Britain generally, and him specifically, has no agency, no way of bucking the trend or providing its subjects with a better life, so pick him, because things are going to shit, and he can put a mildly preferable spin on that shit compared to his rival. He's a pathetic, spineless vacuum of a Prime Minister. I'm actually 50/50 between him and Starmer now - I think Starmer might be worse, but at least the Tories would stand a chance of getting out of Sunak's cold, clammy grip.
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
It's all immensely boring. I might prefer Israel because they're industrious, developed, Westernised and more liberal - we all know Palestine would be like another Lebanon in the counterfactual - and they run it better but it's really fucking boring and has been since at least the 1930s.
What is not - or should not be - immensely boring is the level of abuse and hatred levelled at Jews in this country by fellow citizens in recent months. It should shame us.
We can do little or nothing about what happens in the Middle East. We can and should do something about how people are treated here. Instead we barely notice, for instance, that the Green Councillor elected in Oldham is one of those whose threats against the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University led to him and his family having to go into hiding.
It’s quite something - how the Greens have evolved into this hideous new creature: obsessed with trans rights and Palestinian activism. It’s like worrying about rivers and badgers is a gateway drug into every kooky nonsensical radicalism they can find
The Green Party is and always has been a greenwashed version of the Socialist Workers Party. Most of them do not have the first clue about ecology or earth science.
Someone should start a Green Conservative Party.
After all, 'conserve' ought to be in the Tories' DNA - but they have sold out to big money of course.
Is interest rates an area where the media has badly misjudged the public mood? You'd think from most news programmes that the public is dying for a rate cut. Perhaps there will be quite a few people who'll be annoyed at having agreed a fixed deal at a higher rate.
Geography? A regional breakdown would be good.
This is an odd argument, as mortgages come up all the time for renewal. By this logic the bank should always increase rates so as to not annoy people who have remortgaged recently.
On another financial matter, those of us with children born in April 2022 get the funding at the same time as anyone with a 9 mth+ child but missed out on the 2 yr old 15 hr implementation recently brought in.
Yeah but if you are fixed for another 2,3,4 years it hardly warrants much of a response.
Another thing I found odd was rate expectations for 2027(?) being 2%. Why are people expecting rates to fall that much? Demographic factors? Japanisation?
The thing about this speech from Sunak is, if he believed it, he would have ended the speech by saying "and this is why I am calling a general election now". The fact that he doesn't do that just shows everyone that he is just hot air. The average voter reading headlines about this is just going to go "Sunak's spouting nonsense again, still chicken to call an election". If he wants to make election speeches and have them taken seriously - call an election!
The tone of the speech is what I would expect from a leader of the opposition.
I do think that some people will vote Tory because they think Starmer and Labour have failed in government. Starmer has been leader of the opposition for a lot longer than Sunak has been PM.
Time for a change. Vote Starmer out!
TBH if someone votes Tory because they think Starmer and Labour have failed in government then their vote should be voided. Surely no-one is that thick?
Not many I grant you, but that's definitely a vibe Sunak seems to be aiming for - Starmer is the do-nothing candidate of the status quo, vote Tory for change - even though the status quo is in large part a result of 14 years of Tory government.
It's weird because he's simultaneously trying to run the contrary message - look how well we've done, don't risk it with a vote for Labour.
Maybe different voters will pick the message that fits best for them to self-justify a Tory vote.
I've observed a similar effect in play with some women when justifying their choice to take their husband's surname. Some will say that their husband's name was simpler, easier to give to people over the phone and others will say they their husband's name was more interesting and not the boring simple name they were born with.
Point is that they've made the decision for other reasons that they don't want to admit to, or aren't aware of, but they've grabbed for a simpler reason that's easier to use, even though on a population level it looks contradictory.
Is interest rates an area where the media has badly misjudged the public mood? You'd think from most news programmes that the public is dying for a rate cut. Perhaps there will be quite a few people who'll be annoyed at having agreed a fixed deal at a higher rate.
Geography? A regional breakdown would be good.
And there are a lot of savers out there. Even with these interest rates, inflation has outstripped savings rates.
Is anyone that bothered about the paltry interest the banks pay on savings? It's a huge difference in importance to someone's mortgage payments going up.
Thanks for providing a selection of reading materials in the previous thread. None of the studies provided add a shred of weight to @SandyRentool's claim that 'climate change' caused the wildfires seen in Canada recently. None of them even alleges that climate change has ever caused a wildfire anywhere, though they do suggest that climate change (for which read a hotter, dryer climate) has increased the risk of more severe wildfires. Appropriately, that's bears shitting in the woods stuff.
The resource that goes into this in the most depth deals with Australia - that obviously doesn't help much with Canada, and the three papers that it references that refer to North America are all about the USA.
So, we’re agreed that climate change makes wildfires worse (and worse wildfires, in a vicious circle, dumps more CO2 into the atmosphere, increasing climate change). I think that’s the core point SandyRentool was making.
This is real weak sauce from Sunak. Vote for me because I can be trusted more with change? It’s just such a weird message for a party in power for 14 years. Casting around for gimmicks like this isn’t going to save him.
After 14 years in power you have to be able to point to solid achievements and changes that make sense to the individual voter - brilliant NHS, solved housing problems especially in London, social housing working well, delivered on migration pledges, prisons nearly empty because of rehabilitation and education, police being effective, schools no problem because spoilt for choice, public finances sure and steady, Brexit deal now booming, illegal drugs a minimal problem, defences and armed forces sorted, northern transport systems as good as London - and so on.
In don't think he has really touched on any of those matters. Why?
The only change the Tories can point to is Brexit. I can't for the life of me think why they aren't majoring on that.
I'm sad he's dead, but is it really front page news to tell us that his widow misses him? Really?
The tabloid-is-ation of the BBC News output in recent times (particularly online) is very depressing.
On that point, does anyone have a better go-to online default news source? I have tried Reuters but it is too hit-and-miss with what it covers, particularly on UK topics.
The R4 Today programme has hit a particularly dull patch. Increasing amounts of it are boring bits of stuff much more suited to magazine type progs like Woman's Hour and the dreadful whingefest You and Yours.
Is interest rates an area where the media has badly misjudged the public mood? You'd think from most news programmes that the public is dying for a rate cut. Perhaps there will be quite a few people who'll be annoyed at having agreed a fixed deal at a higher rate.
Geography? A regional breakdown would be good.
This is an odd argument, as mortgages come up all the time for renewal. By this logic the bank should always increase rates so as to not annoy people who have remortgaged recently.
On another financial matter, those of us with children born in April 2022 get the funding at the same time as anyone with a 9 mth+ child but missed out on the 2 yr old 15 hr implementation recently brought in.
Yeah but if you are fixed for another 2,3,4 years it hardly warrants much of a response.
Another thing I found odd was rate expectations for 2027(?) being 2%. Why are people expecting rates to fall that much? Demographic factors? Japanisation?
Hopemism that the world post 2008 is the new reality and that it wasn't a one off event due to unique circumstances...
Is interest rates an area where the media has badly misjudged the public mood? You'd think from most news programmes that the public is dying for a rate cut. Perhaps there will be quite a few people who'll be annoyed at having agreed a fixed deal at a higher rate.
Geography? A regional breakdown would be good.
And there are a lot of savers out there. Even with these interest rates, inflation has outstripped savings rates.
Is anyone that bothered about the paltry interest the banks pay on savings? It's a huge difference in importance to someone's mortgage payments going up.
I imagine that many of those who were upset by the NICs reduction will also be upset by any reduction in the interest paid on their savings, no matter how minimal...
Is interest rates an area where the media has badly misjudged the public mood? You'd think from most news programmes that the public is dying for a rate cut. Perhaps there will be quite a few people who'll be annoyed at having agreed a fixed deal at a higher rate.
Geography? A regional breakdown would be good.
And there are a lot of savers out there. Even with these interest rates, inflation has outstripped savings rates.
Is anyone that bothered about the paltry interest the banks pay on savings? It's a huge difference in importance to someone's mortgage payments going up.
Is interest rates an area where the media has badly misjudged the public mood? You'd think from most news programmes that the public is dying for a rate cut. Perhaps there will be quite a few people who'll be annoyed at having agreed a fixed deal at a higher rate.
Geography? A regional breakdown would be good.
The thing is, if you have a typical £300,000 mortgage, interest rates rising 2% costs you £6000 a year whereas if you have a typical savings account of £10000 the rise only nets £200. The former is far more likely to affect your vote than the latter.
Just read through the last thread. Incredible the number of fine posters on PB who have been banned yet the likes of Livermore who would probably be banned from most Nazi sites just sail on spreading their ignorant poison
Calling for other posters to be banned is not an engaging attribute imo.
As for Blanche, I disagree with their take on Gaza and on the benefits system but it hardly struck me as something that 'would probably be banned from most Nazi sites'.
Get a grip Roger.
What is this list of banned posters?
A number of people have left, but the list of banned is pretty small.
Stuart ....Ishmael....and several other Scottish posters.
And in their place we have posters like this;
"Do the Palestinians who want their kids to be martyrs have kids because they want dead Jews, or because they want the Hamas endowment? "
Even Braverman might think twice before posting this fascistic drivel. It's ugly and ill informed. My question was not to get Livermore banned but to wonder what these other posters could have written that was considered worse?
Er, that’s a totally fair question. Let’s go through it
1. Do some Palestinians WANT their sons to be martyrs? Yes, absolutely. We have tons of evidence of this. Young Gazans grow up in a theo-fascist statelet which inculcates the glory of martyrdom into them. Their parents go along with it, some embrace it (cf trans….)
2. If they want their kids to be martyred, why is that? there are two obvious reasons
2a they think killing Jews in Israel is a noble and holy cause; they want Jews in Israel dead
2b (less likely but plausible, perhaps in combination with the above) they believe it will advance the family as a whole. Gain them social status. This is hardly unknown - families sacrifice sons in martial societies in exchange for esteem and position
There. Sorted for you. @BlancheLivermore was making an entirely rational if polemical point
"Gazans"? "Theo-fascist statelet"? Remind me how most Palestinian families in Gaza got there, and also which side has bombed the churches.
You're throwing shit at Palestinians for getting killed. Apparently even when they get killed it's because they're so sick and Jew-haty that they want to be killed.
Are you denying Gaza is a “theo-fascist statelet”? Because it really is. They throw gays off buildings dontchaknow
I’ve not said a word about Israel. But here’s a few words: Israel’s behaviour is barbaric, demonic even. I’ve discussed before that they seem so traumatised by the Holocaust they are intent on re-enacting one; like abused children who reiterate that abuse in later life
But radical Islam has not done a lot to win friends in the last 40 years so I have almost zero sympathy for anyone associated with it
Quite frankly I’m bored and sickened by the whole thing and I’m tired of it hijacking global politics taking attention away from more deserving communities and problems
Let them fight to the death and be done with it
It's all immensely boring. I might prefer Israel because they're industrious, developed, Westernised and more liberal - we all know Palestine would be like another Lebanon in the counterfactual - and they run it better but it's really fucking boring and has been since at least the 1930s.
What is not - or should not be - immensely boring is the level of abuse and hatred levelled at Jews in this country by fellow citizens in recent months. It should shame us.
We can do little or nothing about what happens in the Middle East. We can and should do something about how people are treated here. Instead we barely notice, for instance, that the Green Councillor elected in Oldham is one of those whose threats against the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University led to him and his family having to go into hiding.
It’s quite something - how the Greens have evolved into this hideous new creature: obsessed with trans rights and Palestinian activism. It’s like worrying about rivers and badgers is a gateway drug into every kooky nonsensical radicalism they can find
The Green Party is and always has been a greenwashed version of the Socialist Workers Party. Most of them do not have the first clue about ecology or earth science.
Someone should start a Green Conservative Party.
After all, 'conserve' ought to be in the Tories' DNA - but they have sold out to big money of course.
There is a big chunk of that already, in the existing Conservative Party.
See the very old view that you don’t own land so much as be its caretaker for your lifetime.
Comments
The headline underplays the gravity of the findings.
"New mothers risk suffering lifelong injuries as hospitals cover up endemic failures in Britain’s maternity system, according to a landmark inquiry which found good care for pregnant women “is the exception rather than the rule”.
The country’s first parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma has found there was “shockingly poor quality” in maternity services, resulting in care lacking compassion and a system where “poor care is all too frequently tolerated as normal”."
Suicide attacks haven't been much of a thing recently. Where they have happened, they have tended to be by young people who've had about 27 members of their family murdered and who simply want to take some of the murdering bastards down with them - a very human feeling. The idea that many mums and dads would willing sacrifice their sons for social advancement is similar to the traditional Tory idea that the only reason that unmarried working class women have babies is so they can get council flats.
I am not waving a flag for the IRM or justifying things like murdering gays, but providing for the families of those who have fallen in the conflict is probably the main positive reason for the support they have. (The main negative reason is they aren't a bunch of collaborationist arseholes like most of the Fatah leadership.) Such provision of welfare is one of the good things they do. Doubtless it is also double-edged and comes with making sure that widows or the wives of prisoners don't sleep with men they're not supposed to. Cf. the IRA back in the day.
Incidentally, we know a couple who work at a certain large hospital. Despite that, they chose to have their children at another, smaller hospital about the same distance away. The reason: being smaller, you got far better care and were not chucked out ASAP. Although they freely admitted that if they expected complications, they would have gone to the larger unit.
Nice use of the Scotch expert gambit there too.
Also: insanely cheap. €11 for a 90 minute journey
Passive support for Labour has been hit hard amongst the young urban left. They may not have been particularly likely to vote anyway, but are now even less likely.
This sort of campaign from the Tories - along with the ramping over the London Mayoral vote - might well shuffle some of those potential abstainers back into the Labour column.
The likelihood of differential turnout is always a key factor, but I'd have thought that the best hope for the Tories is to making this election seem as "boring" as possible in order to suppress the Labour vote.
Example. I was stuck in Mattinata (a pretty little town on the south gargano coast). My transfer to foggia station and thence to Bari and then Bari airport was meant to be this afternoon with a driver who only speaks Italian
However via the miraculous use of Google translate I was able to talk to him on WhatsApp in fluent Italian
Here’s the chat. Remember I don’t speak Italian
He turned up at the new time of 11 (not 4). During the 45 minute transfer to foggia station I bought a train ticket in English on the Trenitalia app, that took about 40 seconds. I had a four minute wait at the station and now I’m on the train using my app’s e-ticket
When I get to Bari I will summon a car with a ride hailing app and it will take 2 more minutes and I will get to Bari (ins’allah) in 15 minutes and pick up the hire car I rented online in a few minutes yesterday
Just phenomenal. Now imagine doing all that 20-30 years ago - and with no Italian. A massive daunting task and one that could so easily go wrong. Now it is a doddle. Doddlissimo
And you can do this all over the world. I did it in Colombia a few weeks back. Apps for buses. Sorted
Hasn’t he got better things to do like polish his helicopter than deliver more vacuous nonsense . Country at a crossroads blah blah blah ....
I had to cut and paste with google translate which took 20 seconds per message but still slowed it down A BIT
Maybe WhatsApp does have this and I don’t know? If not, it is surely coming very soon
Learning languages - as I have said on here many times - is about to become utterly pointless. Something for rich kids to do like learning the cello or taking up dressage
There is normally fairly impressive skill a week or more ahead in terms of the general weather type. On its 10-day weather forecasts on youtube the Met Office uses a statistical weather regime analysis that is very useful.
Reducing this to hourly forecasts of precipitation and temperature for point locations is moronic.
Envy of the world, of course. 1.6m heroes. A bargain at near £200bn a year. etc.
You’ve mentioned before how AI will affect music. The other day I was watching a video from a guitar YouTuber, he compared a song he generated with AI five years ago to one he’s done now. The difference is colossal.
I find it tremendously exciting.
Sure, yes, it'd be great if Starmer could do a bit more of the vision thing. But Sunak's not a neutral observer here, he's the Prime Minister - and this speech so far sounds so very, very whingey.
You Can Only Be Sure With The Conservatives was the title of their 1997 manifesto.
I think we're all pretty sure how well that went.
I asked someone to call me a cab in Tallahassee the other day and got laughed at and told to get an Uber. Nobody uses trad cabs any more except criminals who want to avoid creating a record of their movements.
The fact I could hire a car online at Santa Marta in Colombia and DRIVE into the jungle and meet Stone Age people was just brilliant. Also if you want adventure and hassle you can absolutely find it. Ukraine for instance. No visas needed. Give it a whirl
Yep. And he is the past. 14 years of this crap.
Which is it Sunak? Complete change on 30 year consensus or building on a solid foundation of 14 years?
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2j0vl2n8zo
I'm sad he's dead, but is it really front page news to tell us that his widow misses him? Really?
I do think that some people will vote Tory because they think Starmer and Labour have failed in government. Starmer has been leader of the opposition for a lot longer than Sunak has been PM.
Time for a change. Vote Starmer out!
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
·
21m
This section perfectly encapsulates Sunak's problem. He is incapable of crafting a clear message. It's a mishmash of security, and change, and embracing the future, and not taking a leap into the unknown. Politically and narratively incoherent.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1789966949817950611
Thank-you for the header, @TSE .
I quite enjoy the history of Warwickshire County Council, who came onto my radar this weekend because they have declared free-for-all on Pavement Charging Cable Protectors the size of small traffic calming ramps to be run across footways. They also claim by implication that their legal responsibilities to provide an unobstructed public highway and equal service to groups protected under Equality Act 2010 do not exist.
I ran into one on a shared pavement in my own town, and it was as high as a scaffold plank.
Looking at the history since 1974, it's as if they say "let's try the Conservatives" and get scared off by the experience, and go NOC, then forget and try again. Or vice-versa.
Is interest rates an area where the media has badly misjudged the public mood? You'd think from most news programmes that the public is dying for a rate cut. Perhaps there will be quite a few people who'll be annoyed at having agreed a fixed deal at a higher rate.
Geography? A regional breakdown would be good.
On that point, does anyone have a better go-to online default news source? I have tried Reuters but it is too hit-and-miss with what it covers, particularly on UK topics.
Why's he using the government lectern when this so clearly wasn't a government speech?
On another financial matter, those of us with children born in April 2022 get the funding at the same time as anyone with a 9 mth+ child but missed out on the 2 yr old 15 hr implementation recently brought in.
Nick Lucas
@nicklucas69
·
44m
Replying to
@DPJHodges
He’s had more launches than the RNLI
I wonder if this speech was always in the calendar and might have been timed with an announcement if the locals had gone OK-ish? Would a dissolution now have given enough time for a vote before the school holidays? If so, perhaps a chance this could’ve been it, if it had not been for the locals.
The underlying objection is to character, not actions. It's "make it stop and get them out".
He could shift the moon to a different orbit, and many of the Electorate would not be interested.
And with that, I must be off.
In don't think he has really touched on any of those matters. Why?
LOL.
The guy is a genius. Absolutely.
Indeed
Guardian
That kind of masterclass
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/05/12/solarpunk/
After all, 'conserve' ought to be in the Tories' DNA - but they have sold out to big money of course.
Another thing I found odd was rate expectations for 2027(?) being 2%. Why are people expecting rates to fall that much? Demographic factors? Japanisation?
It's weird because he's simultaneously trying to run the contrary message - look how well we've done, don't risk it with a vote for Labour.
Maybe different voters will pick the message that fits best for them to self-justify a Tory vote.
I've observed a similar effect in play with some women when justifying their choice to take their husband's surname. Some will say that their husband's name was simpler, easier to give to people over the phone and others will say they their husband's name was more interesting and not the boring simple name they were born with.
Point is that they've made the decision for other reasons that they don't want to admit to, or aren't aware of, but they've grabbed for a simpler reason that's easier to use, even though on a population level it looks contradictory.
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/savings-accounts-best-interest/
Lots of people don't like the stock market and presumably have biggish sums in these accounts
The former is far more likely to affect your vote than the latter.
See the very old view that you don’t own land so much as be its caretaker for your lifetime.