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Why cutting interest rates will be no panacea for the Tories – politicalbetting.com

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  • Options
    GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 21,080
    edited May 13

    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.

    Wonder if they've got any shindigs planned in Sheffield in the near future? 😂
  • Options
    numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 5,674
    edited May 13

    Very interesting:

    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.
    Many people look to traditional savings interest as a way to boost retirement income.

    Now, yes, it’s true, it’s generally an inefficient way of managing your wealth and people would have typically been better off investing in property and equities and paying more into their pensions in the first place, as a rule. But that doesn’t alter the fact that lots do it, for a myriad of reasons, usually because of feeling more comfortable/safe with the concept, no upfront costs, lack of time/inclination to read up on alternatives, ease of access etc.
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 32,347

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    ...caretaking it for your children and grandchildren, usually.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
  • Options
    SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,699

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    https://theclimate.party/
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Party
    (centrist, rather than explicitly Conservative)

    Bugger all traction, though. Of course, the Conservatives could make Cameron leader again and he could re-embrace all the 'green crap' like the father of a child just getting started weaning on peas and avocado.
  • Options
    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,326
    GIN1138 said:

    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.

    Wonder if they've got any shindigs planned in Sheffield in the near future? 😂
    We were all looking at Ratcliffe yesterday, but it was only when I looked this morning that I realised who else was in this picture I took from the away end:


  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    ...caretaking it for your children and grandchildren, usually.
    The Wedgewood Benn family and other nepotists in the Labour Party know all about that.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 45,186

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    ...caretaking it for your children and grandchildren, usually.
    Yup
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 32,347
    edited May 13

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    The LDs should go large on green matters. 'Orange is the New Green!'
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 48,264
    "I lean into her beautiful pale face and I am about to say something witty and sophisticated but instead I say, in a weird stammering sozzled voice 'your eyes are like UFOs', which doesn't even make sense."

    Well it made me laugh. One of my favourite books
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 59,011
    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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 problem is very small parties can easily be taken over by people with an agenda.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    The LDs should go large on green. 'Orange is the New Green!'
    I voted LD for the last two GEs. Won't be doing so next time as long as Ed "I knew nothing about the PO scandal" Davy is in charge. Hypocritical little toe-rag. He is a liar or is totally incompetent. Neither is a good look.
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 32,347

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 45,186

    Very interesting:

    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.
    Many people look to traditional savings interest as a way to boost retirement income.

    Now, yes, it’s true, it’s generally an inefficient way of managing your wealth and people would have typically been better off investing in property and equities and paying more into their pensions in the first place, as a rule. But that doesn’t alter the fact that lots do it, for a myriad of reasons, usually because of feeling more comfortable/safe with the concept, no upfront costs, lack of time/inclination to read up on alternatives, ease of access etc.
    One thing that was quite strange was the reaction of some on the left to the fact that people had large amounts of money on deposit with banks and building societies, when 2008 happened.

    It took a while to explain that just because Mrs Miggins had £43k in savings, didn’t mean she was a “speculator” - simply that she’d saved x percent of salary each year, for 40 years.
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 59,011

    Sam Freedman
    @Samfr
    ·
    33m
    Another, more basic, problem is that he campaigns with the emotional range of a bored HR director doing a training session for new starters.

    https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1789971610163621891
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 48,264

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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 problem is very small parties can easily be taken over by people with an agenda.
    You’re probably right. The problem for the greens is that they’ve been taken over a deeply unsavoury rabble of wankers
  • Options
    FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,098
    eek said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Very interesting:

    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...
    Why would people want the world post 2008 to be a new reality? It's been bloody awful. Surely low interest rates = low growth. Why else would you get such a small return?
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 32,347


    Sam Freedman
    @Samfr
    ·
    33m
    Another, more basic, problem is that he campaigns with the emotional range of a bored HR director doing a training session for new starters.

    https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1789971610163621891

    This campaign is going to be such a scream. 🍿🍿
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,703

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    Given the strong rural connection with the Cons I would echo @Malmesbury's point that this is precisely what the party does. But then if, say, a Cons farmer decides to do something on his land, or a Cons council decides to do something in their area, quite often the Islingtonians get all up in arms about it.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 32,347
    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    Given the strong rural connection with the Cons I would echo @Malmesbury's point that this is precisely what the party does. But then if, say, a Cons farmer decides to do something on his land, or a Cons council decides to do something in their area, quite often the Islingtonians get all up in arms about it.
    Surely it depends on what said farmer decides to do his land?

    If you've got a specific example of a farmer trying to improve the environment and being castigated by Islingtonians, do share.
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,840

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,840

    algarkirk said:

    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.
    Because they've made a shit job of it.
  • Options
    Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,358
    GIN1138 said:

    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.

    Wonder if they've got any shindigs planned in Sheffield in the near future? 😂
    Yes, the coming election has 1992 written all over it. The difference is that back then Labour thought they could win it simply because of the Poll Tax whereas now it's Brexit. However, just as John Major cunningly shot Labour's fox by abolishing the Poll Tax, Rishi, as we witnessed in his fluent and visionary speech today, is quietly but comprehensively abolishing Brexit. It's a concerted effort: witness, for example, how The Telegraph is now reviling Dominic Cummings as a joke figure on the fringes of history. Not long ago he was their hero. I fear for Sir Keir. This could all go terribly wrong.
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 32,347
    edited May 13

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    Where did you get that from?

    North America had it's 9th warmest March and it's 4th warmest Jan-Mar on record.
    Europe had it's 2nd warmest March and it's 2nd warmest Jan-Mar on record.


    https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202403
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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 problem is very small parties can easily be taken over by people with an agenda.
    You’re probably right. The problem for the greens is that they’ve been taken over a deeply unsavoury rabble of wankers
    Yep, but sadly the same could be said of the party that I used to be a member of when Boris Johnson took over (maybe not quite as unsavoury) ; similarly when Corbyn took over Labour, and when Trump took over the GOP. It is not something limited to small parties. Extremism should be called out, though a lack of engagement with politics by the larger populace and proper scrutiny of the appropriateness of politicians by voters means that incompetents and lunatics see their opportunity and take it.
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 10,197

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    Has the Northern Hemisphere just had a hugely cold spring? All the stats I see show the NH, as well as the globe, has just had the warmest first 4 months of the year on record.

    Even here in the UK both March and April were significantly warmer than average. Year to date the Central England Temperature series is running at +2.28C, way above the run rate needed for 2024 to break the all time record.
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,840


    Sam Freedman
    @Samfr
    ·
    33m
    Another, more basic, problem is that he campaigns with the emotional range of a bored HR director doing a training session for new starters.

    https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1789971610163621891

    This campaign is going to be such a scream. 🍿🍿
    I'm still cherishing a hope that the Tory party comes to its senses and ditches him at the 11th hour. At the moment it really seems like he could hump Tory MPs wives at the dispatch box and all we'd get is some disgruntled Whatsapp leaks from backbenchers saying 'He better not go any bloody further, if things get any worse, I'm really going to see if I've got a pen and look out some stamps'.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,635
    edited May 13

    kinabalu said:

    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. "

    That kind of masterclass
    In amongst all of that are 4 key words: Time for a Change. Millions of apolitical floating voters feel this way and what SKS has done is remove every conceivable obstacle that might stand between each of them and the act of putting their cross next to Labour at the GE. This is why the big majority is looking baked-in.
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 32,347

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,840

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    Where did you get that from?

    North America had it's 9th warmest March and it's 4th warmest Jan-Mar on record.
    Europe had it's 2nd warmest March and it's 2nd warmest Jan-Mar on record.


    https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202403
    I stand corrected - also @TimS
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 10,197

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    Where did you get that from?

    North America had it's 9th warmest March and it's 4th warmest Jan-Mar on record.
    Europe had it's 2nd warmest March and it's 2nd warmest Jan-Mar on record.


    https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202403
    While we're on the subject of climate sceptic talking points, a reminder that the isotopic signature of atmospheric CO2 shows that the rise since the mid 20th century including in recent years is down to fossil fuel burning.

    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GB006170#:~:text=Fossil fuels are completely devoid of 14 C,fuels a Δ 14 C signature of −1,000‰.
  • Options
    numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 5,674


    Sam Freedman
    @Samfr
    ·
    33m
    Another, more basic, problem is that he campaigns with the emotional range of a bored HR director doing a training session for new starters.

    https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1789971610163621891

    This campaign is going to be such a scream. 🍿🍿
    I'm still cherishing a hope that the Tory party comes to its senses and ditches him at the 11th hour. At the moment it really seems like he could hump Tory MPs wives at the dispatch box and all we'd get is some disgruntled Whatsapp leaks from backbenchers saying 'He better not go any bloody further, if things get any worse, I'm really going to see if I've got a pen and look out some stamps'.
    The Tories have clearly decided that they’re going to let him take the loss and have a conversation about how they move forward in opposition. It probably is the right thing to do now in that another leader would be a huge dice roll; though I can understand why it might be tempting to just give it a go at this point.
  • Options
    OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,898

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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 problem is very small parties can easily be taken over by people with an agenda.
    You’re probably right. The problem for the greens is that they’ve been taken over a deeply unsavoury rabble of wankers
    Yep, but sadly the same could be said of the party that I used to be a member of when Boris Johnson took over (maybe not quite as unsavoury) ; similarly when Corbyn took over Labour, and when Trump took over the GOP. It is not something limited to small parties. Extremism should be called out, though a lack of engagement with politics by the larger populace and proper scrutiny of the appropriateness of politicians by voters means that incompetents and lunatics see their opportunity and take it.
    The nutters were there all along of course. Ill-chosen leaders like Corbyn, Trump and Boris encourage them to emerge. The decline in political standards isn't due to them as individuals but rather the longer term decline in those who choose a political career.
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 10,197

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    Where did you get that from?

    North America had it's 9th warmest March and it's 4th warmest Jan-Mar on record.
    Europe had it's 2nd warmest March and it's 2nd warmest Jan-Mar on record.


    https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202403
    I stand corrected - also @TimS
    The trouble in this country is that we are capable of having record breakingly mild weather that is still shit, cloudy and wet. And late frosts, as my vineyard found out to its cost in April.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859

    algarkirk said:

    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.
    Because they've made a shit job of it.
    Because it was a totally ludicrous crock of shit in the first place. The only people it has benefitted, and ever was going to benefit are a few hedge fund managers. Oh, and Boris Johnson who pretended he believed in it.
  • Options
    FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,145

    Very interesting:

    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.
    Many people look to traditional savings interest as a way to boost retirement income.

    Now, yes, it’s true, it’s generally an inefficient way of managing your wealth and people would have typically been better off investing in property and equities and paying more into their pensions in the first place, as a rule. But that doesn’t alter the fact that lots do it, for a myriad of reasons, usually because of feeling more comfortable/safe with the concept, no upfront costs, lack of time/inclination to read up on alternatives, ease of access etc.
    For most people, fear of losing capital greatly outweighs the prospect of making gains. What would happen if property prices were to fall as much as they need to in order to make decent homes affordable for most, will be scary for the “my house is my pension” advocates.
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,703

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    Given the strong rural connection with the Cons I would echo @Malmesbury's point that this is precisely what the party does. But then if, say, a Cons farmer decides to do something on his land, or a Cons council decides to do something in their area, quite often the Islingtonians get all up in arms about it.
    Surely it depends on what said farmer decides to do his land?

    If you've got a specific example of a farmer trying to improve the environment and being castigated by Islingtonians, do share.
    Have hounds hunt over it.
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 10,197

    Very interesting:

    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.
    Many people look to traditional savings interest as a way to boost retirement income.

    Now, yes, it’s true, it’s generally an inefficient way of managing your wealth and people would have typically been better off investing in property and equities and paying more into their pensions in the first place, as a rule. But that doesn’t alter the fact that lots do it, for a myriad of reasons, usually because of feeling more comfortable/safe with the concept, no upfront costs, lack of time/inclination to read up on alternatives, ease of access etc.
    For most people, fear of losing capital greatly outweighs the prospect of making gains. What would happen if property prices were to fall as much as they need to in order to make decent homes affordable for most, will be scary for the “my house is my pension” advocates.
    Which is why a continuation of the trend of the last few years, with house prices staying static in real terms, is not the worst outcome. Perhaps even better for supply-demand to be such that nominal prices rise but real terms values gently decline.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 63,677

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    Love the way you treat the media as lazy and untrustworthy while according your odd hobbyhorses the status of unvarnished truth.
  • Options
    Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,776
    Sunak: Don't let Labour talk Britain down.

    Tories: London is a cesspit. Vote Tory for Mayor!
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 10,197

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    A design feature of FPTP, sadly.
  • Options
    FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,145

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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 problem is very small parties can easily be taken over by people with an agenda.
    You’re probably right. The problem for the greens is that they’ve been taken over a deeply unsavoury rabble of wankers
    Yep, but sadly the same could be said of the party that I used to be a member of when Boris Johnson took over (maybe not quite as unsavoury) ; similarly when Corbyn took over Labour, and when Trump took over the GOP. It is not something limited to small parties. Extremism should be called out, though a lack of engagement with politics by the larger populace and proper scrutiny of the appropriateness of politicians by voters means that incompetents and lunatics see their opportunity and take it.
    Furthermore, extremist views are encouraged by the media, in order to sell newspapers and increase social media activity.
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 32,347
    edited May 13
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    Given the strong rural connection with the Cons I would echo @Malmesbury's point that this is precisely what the party does. But then if, say, a Cons farmer decides to do something on his land, or a Cons council decides to do something in their area, quite often the Islingtonians get all up in arms about it.
    Surely it depends on what said farmer decides to do his land?

    If you've got a specific example of a farmer trying to improve the environment and being castigated by Islingtonians, do share.
    Have hounds hunt over it.
    Like I said, it depends on what the farmer wants to do to their land.

    A lot of farmers don't want the hunt over their fields - it causes a mess and disruption. But it's hardly one to put down under 'conserving the environment' is it?
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,635

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    Hang on, Nigel. What's baked in (imo) is a majority of high 2 digits - with 3 digits (aka 'huge landslide') more likely than anything small like 25 or 30.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 63,677
    This is Israel's largest newspaper, not liberal Ha'aretz.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/12/fierce-battles-in-gaza-as-israeli-forces-attack-hamas-militants
    ...Israeli media are increasingly critical of Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to outline any practicable proposal for a new administration in Gaza. This has left an anarchic security vacuum that has helped Hamas regain its hold over parts of the territory and its population, they said.

    Yedioth Ahronoth, a mass market newspaper, reported on Sunday that Israeli military officials have demanded that the prime minister make a decision about the “day after” in Gaza.

    Ben Caspit, a columnist, said Israel “will continue to pay the price in blood, sweat and a whole lot of tears so that we never get anywhere …. because Hamas’s regime cannot be toppled without preparing an alternative to that regime.” ..
  • Options
    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,962
    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    A design feature of FPTP, sadly.
    I am struggling to adjust to being in an STV constituency that can elect Michael Collins and Holly Cairns. I want to vote against Michael Collins, but it isn't really possible with STV in the way that it is with FPTP.
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,840
    TimS said:

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    Where did you get that from?

    North America had it's 9th warmest March and it's 4th warmest Jan-Mar on record.
    Europe had it's 2nd warmest March and it's 2nd warmest Jan-Mar on record.


    https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202403
    While we're on the subject of climate sceptic talking points, a reminder that the isotopic signature of atmospheric CO2 shows that the rise since the mid 20th century including in recent years is down to fossil fuel burning.

    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GB006170#:~:text=Fossil fuels are completely devoid of 14 C,fuels a Δ 14 C signature of −1,000‰.
    An interesting read (the intro at any rate).
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 32,347

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    I'm talking about the members, not the MPs. Given any choice of two candidates, the Tory membership will choose the more right-wing. Guaranteed.
  • Options
    AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 20,380
    Given we have now seen Sunak's speech, I wonder how many PBers have drawn the inevitable conclusion?

    The stage is being cleared.

    The great new hope is waiting in the wings.

    It's time.

    TRUSS
  • Options
    FF43FF43 Posts: 15,946
    edited May 13
    Four Tory MPs who made £5.4million selling taxpayer-funded second homes won't say if they paid tax.

    The Tories were accused of ­hypocrisy after pushing for police to probe deputy Labour leader Ms Angela Rayner over a £48,000 profit she made selling a former council house


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/four-tory-mps-who-made-32793408
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    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. "

    That kind of masterclass
    In amongst all of that are 4 key words: Time for a Change. Millions of apolitical floating voters feel this way and what SKS has done is remove every conceivable obstacle that might stand between each of them and the act of putting their cross next to Labour at the GE. This is why the big majority is looking baked-in.
    Neil Kinnock thought that was the message that would make him PM. Now, while Starmer is very boring, and a lot more appealing than the Windbag, the reality is that the Labour Party is really not ready for government in any way like they were in 1997. I guess they hope no-one will notice, which might just be true.
  • Options
    FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,025

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    Wildfires are usually a product of land management.

    The fact that someone started them is beside the point as all land that can burn will do so eventually. Some vegetation has evolved to thrive in places that burn frequently and actively encourages it - eg Eucalyptus forest, Maquis.

    What has changed is that people have built in areas that burn (similar mentality to building in flood plains) and then complain about it when things get torched.

    We also actively prevent fires which only makes them bigger when they get out of control.

    Most vegetation (peat bogs being an exception) does not fix carbon so burning it makes little difference to the climate. It all gets recycled.

    If it didn't we'd soon be in a snowball earth.


    Has climate change made things worse? Possibly, although you would expect more rain in a hotter climate, not less.
  • Options
    StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,963

    algarkirk said:

    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.
    Because they've made a shit job of it.
    Because it was a totally ludicrous crock of shit in the first place. The only people it has benefitted, and ever was going to benefit are a few hedge fund managers. Oh, and Boris Johnson who pretended he believed in it.
    Did even Boris benefit really? He got to be PM, sure, and that's not to be sniffed at. But the price of that will be a lifetime of all but a handful of crazies hating him. That might be better than a lifetime of people coming up to him and saying 'you know, you should have been Prime Minister' and him ruefully agreeing, but it's not obvious that that's the case.

    There must the a story in the classical canon of the dangers of being given exactly what you wanted.
  • Options
    AlsoLeiAlsoLei Posts: 994
    TimS said:

    Very interesting:

    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.
    Many people look to traditional savings interest as a way to boost retirement income.

    Now, yes, it’s true, it’s generally an inefficient way of managing your wealth and people would have typically been better off investing in property and equities and paying more into their pensions in the first place, as a rule. But that doesn’t alter the fact that lots do it, for a myriad of reasons, usually because of feeling more comfortable/safe with the concept, no upfront costs, lack of time/inclination to read up on alternatives, ease of access etc.
    For most people, fear of losing capital greatly outweighs the prospect of making gains. What would happen if property prices were to fall as much as they need to in order to make decent homes affordable for most, will be scary for the “my house is my pension” advocates.
    Which is why a continuation of the trend of the last few years, with house prices staying static in real terms, is not the worst outcome. Perhaps even better for supply-demand to be such that nominal prices rise but real terms values gently decline.
    Screws a whole generation, though, who remain unable to get on the housing ladder for much longer than if there were to have been a more abrupt decline.

    A generation who, as they age, are becoming ever-more likely to vote.

    If the current issues around housing get pinned on one of the major parties more than the others, it could potentially affect voting patterns for decades. From a pure political calculation point of view, taking the immediate hit from a faster correction might have been the wiser thing to do.
  • Options
    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,962

    Given we have now seen Sunak's speech, I wonder how many PBers have drawn the inevitable conclusion?

    The stage is being cleared.

    The great new hope is waiting in the wings.

    It's time.

    TRUSS

    Let's suppose the unlikely happens and Sunak somehow does well enough at the election to remain as PM. Initially he'll have a lot of credit with his MPs due to saving them from what looks like an impossible situation. But still.

    How long until they change PM again?
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    I'm talking about the members, not the MPs. Given any choice of two candidates, the Tory membership will choose the more right-wing. Guaranteed.
    Your studentship of the Conservative Party is blinkered by your tribalism. David Cameron v David Davis was not that long ago.
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 59,011
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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 problem is very small parties can easily be taken over by people with an agenda.
    You’re probably right. The problem for the greens is that they’ve been taken over a deeply unsavoury rabble of wankers
    I'll put you down as a 'maybe' then sir.

  • Options
    megasaurmegasaur Posts: 531

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    I think if something is flammable it's going to burn at some stage whether it's human error or arson or lightning or spontaneous combustion. Lots of plants evolved to take advantage of forest fires before humans were a thing. The point is not why fires happen, it's that they do happen and planting more trees is therefore not always a good thing.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859

    algarkirk said:

    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.
    Because they've made a shit job of it.
    Because it was a totally ludicrous crock of shit in the first place. The only people it has benefitted, and ever was going to benefit are a few hedge fund managers. Oh, and Boris Johnson who pretended he believed in it.
    Did even Boris benefit really? He got to be PM, sure, and that's not to be sniffed at. But the price of that will be a lifetime of all but a handful of crazies hating him. That might be better than a lifetime of people coming up to him and saying 'you know, you should have been Prime Minister' and him ruefully agreeing, but it's not obvious that that's the case.

    There must the a story in the classical canon of the dangers of being given exactly what you wanted.
    In literature we have Faust, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Then we have Odysseus and the Sirens, and of course King Midas.

    How am I doing?
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 32,347

    Given we have now seen Sunak's speech, I wonder how many PBers have drawn the inevitable conclusion?

    The stage is being cleared.

    The great new hope is waiting in the wings.

    It's time.

    TRUSS

    Let's suppose the unlikely happens and Sunak somehow does well enough at the election to remain as PM. Initially he'll have a lot of credit with his MPs due to saving them from what looks like an impossible situation. But still.

    How long until they change PM again?
    8 - 12 years, I'd guess. 2 or 3 terms of Labour to come first.
  • Options
    DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 25,028
    OT Elon Musk has tweeted a clip from celebrity physicist Richard Feynman talking to the BBC about scales.
    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1789678328875745575
  • Options
    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,962

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    Wildfires are usually a product of land management.

    The fact that someone started them is beside the point as all land that can burn will do so eventually. Some vegetation has evolved to thrive in places that burn frequently and actively encourages it - eg Eucalyptus forest, Maquis.

    What has changed is that people have built in areas that burn (similar mentality to building in flood plains) and then complain about it when things get torched.

    We also actively prevent fires which only makes them bigger when they get out of control.

    Most vegetation (peat bogs being an exception) does not fix carbon so burning it makes little difference to the climate. It all gets recycled.

    If it didn't we'd soon be in a snowball earth.


    Has climate change made things worse? Possibly, although you would expect more rain in a hotter climate, not less.
    You do have more rain in a hotter climate, but it's not evenly distributed in time and space. In general the expectation seems to be that there will be longer dry periods, which will be drier because it is hotter, and when there is rain, it will be more intense.

    So the average is higher, you have more droughts, increased wildfire risk, more floods.

    Modern flood management accepts that you have to let some land flood somewhere, to save the bits of land you want to keep dry. People are finding the same argument in relation to wildfires a bit harder, not least because fires spread and grow, so allowing a fire to burn in one place doesn't (normally) prevent a fire elsewhere in the way that flooding can be managed.
  • Options
    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 25,743
    ...

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    I'm talking about the members, not the MPs. Given any choice of two candidates, the Tory membership will choose the more right-wing. Guaranteed.
    Your studentship of the Conservative Party is blinkered by your tribalism. David Cameron v David Davis was not that long ago.
    I am always humoured by tribal Tories calling out tribalism from their opponents.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 45,186

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    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. "

    That kind of masterclass
    In amongst all of that are 4 key words: Time for a Change. Millions of apolitical floating voters feel this way and what SKS has done is remove every conceivable obstacle that might stand between each of them and the act of putting their cross next to Labour at the GE. This is why the big majority is looking baked-in.
    Neil Kinnock thought that was the message that would make him PM. Now, while Starmer is very boring, and a lot more appealing than the Windbag, the reality is that the Labour Party is really not ready for government in any way like they were in 1997. I guess they hope no-one will notice, which might just be true.
    The problem is really training and promotion of politicians.

    In times past, being an MP was a second job, taken on in the second half of a career - at least very often.

    We now have a situation where people are supposed to be running departments who’ve never run anything bigger than a constituency office.

    That’s about as sensible as selling promotions in the army to saloon loungers from Dublin. Sure, once every couple of centuries you get the Duke of Wellington, but…

    The other day, we were discussing VAT on school fees. How many here believe that those proposing the policy have -

    1) heard of demand curves
    2) think they might apply to the policy
    3) got someone to construct a report, using estimations of the probable elasticity of demand, to see what the range of probable effects of the policy would be.

    This is not about disparaging the policy or those promoting it - it’s about skills.

    Many times, I have seen policies from left, right and centre that seem to assume that the policy has only first order effects. That is, the policy will move X to Y and all the other variables will remain the same.
  • Options
    megasaurmegasaur Posts: 531

    Given we have now seen Sunak's speech, I wonder how many PBers have drawn the inevitable conclusion?

    The stage is being cleared.

    The great new hope is waiting in the wings.

    It's time.

    TRUSS

    The Times refuses to recognise the speech as a news event at all. It leads with "Obese people twice as likely to be off work."
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859
    FF43 said:

    Four Tory MPs who made £5.4million selling taxpayer-funded second homes won't say if they paid tax.

    The Tories were accused of ­hypocrisy after pushing for police to probe deputy Labour leader Ms Angela Rayner over a £48,000 profit she made selling a former council house


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/four-tory-mps-who-made-32793408

    Desperate stuff by the Mirror to try and deflect (haha) for Ms Rayner. The hypocrisy is Rayner's, who despite being a major figure in the Labour Party managed to benefit from not just one, but two council house sales. Whether it was legal or otherwise it stinks. Starmer won't look at her legal advice for some reason. I wonder why.
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 10,197
    AlsoLei said:

    TimS said:

    Very interesting:

    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.
    Many people look to traditional savings interest as a way to boost retirement income.

    Now, yes, it’s true, it’s generally an inefficient way of managing your wealth and people would have typically been better off investing in property and equities and paying more into their pensions in the first place, as a rule. But that doesn’t alter the fact that lots do it, for a myriad of reasons, usually because of feeling more comfortable/safe with the concept, no upfront costs, lack of time/inclination to read up on alternatives, ease of access etc.
    For most people, fear of losing capital greatly outweighs the prospect of making gains. What would happen if property prices were to fall as much as they need to in order to make decent homes affordable for most, will be scary for the “my house is my pension” advocates.
    Which is why a continuation of the trend of the last few years, with house prices staying static in real terms, is not the worst outcome. Perhaps even better for supply-demand to be such that nominal prices rise but real terms values gently decline.
    Screws a whole generation, though, who remain unable to get on the housing ladder for much longer than if there were to have been a more abrupt decline.

    A generation who, as they age, are becoming ever-more likely to vote.

    If the current issues around housing get pinned on one of the major parties more than the others, it could potentially affect voting patterns for decades. From a pure political calculation point of view, taking the immediate hit from a faster correction might have been the wiser thing to do.
    It’s the conundrum isn’t it? As a government you know the best approach long term is a ripping off of the plaster, but you also know it would be politically suicidal in the short term. See also social care funding, fuel duty, the triple lock, [cough, ahem] rejoining the single market…
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,720

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    One recent issue in Australia (where it should be noted that fire is part of the natural ecology, and can be started by non-human intervention such as lightening etc) is that changes to management of the bush has made fires much worse. Clearing flammable materials can prevent or reduce the risk to property of buch fires, but recent times has been seen a bad thing to do ecologically. And then the fires that happen are worse and threaten property.

    This kind of change is not climate change related, but sadly some will present it as evidence.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 45,186

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    Wildfires are usually a product of land management.

    The fact that someone started them is beside the point as all land that can burn will do so eventually. Some vegetation has evolved to thrive in places that burn frequently and actively encourages it - eg Eucalyptus forest, Maquis.

    What has changed is that people have built in areas that burn (similar mentality to building in flood plains) and then complain about it when things get torched.

    We also actively prevent fires which only makes them bigger when they get out of control.

    Most vegetation (peat bogs being an exception) does not fix carbon so burning it makes little difference to the climate. It all gets recycled.

    If it didn't we'd soon be in a snowball earth.


    Has climate change made things worse? Possibly, although you would expect more rain in a hotter climate, not less.
    You do have more rain in a hotter climate, but it's not evenly distributed in time and space. In general the expectation seems to be that there will be longer dry periods, which will be drier because it is hotter, and when there is rain, it will be more intense.

    So the average is higher, you have more droughts, increased wildfire risk, more floods.

    Modern flood management accepts that you have to let some land flood somewhere, to save the bits of land you want to keep dry. People are finding the same argument in relation to wildfires a bit harder, not least because fires spread and grow, so allowing a fire to burn in one place doesn't (normally) prevent a fire elsewhere in the way that flooding can be managed.
    Controlled burns are now back as part of land management in various countries, after decades of “must stop all fires”.
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,720

    Very interesting:

    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.
    Many people look to traditional savings interest as a way to boost retirement income.

    Now, yes, it’s true, it’s generally an inefficient way of managing your wealth and people would have typically been better off investing in property and equities and paying more into their pensions in the first place, as a rule. But that doesn’t alter the fact that lots do it, for a myriad of reasons, usually because of feeling more comfortable/safe with the concept, no upfront costs, lack of time/inclination to read up on alternatives, ease of access etc.
    One thing that was quite strange was the reaction of some on the left to the fact that people had large amounts of money on deposit with banks and building societies, when 2008 happened.

    It took a while to explain that just because Mrs Miggins had £43k in savings, didn’t mean she was a “speculator” - simply that she’d saved x percent of salary each year, for 40 years.
    Or just as likely had inherited some money. I inherited 9 grand when my maternal grandmother died in the 1990's. Frittered it away over the next 15 years. As a couple we will get a half share of my mother in law's estate when the house is sold - a much bigger wodge. Lots of people get similar over their lives (not all, obviously).
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 59,011

    algarkirk said:

    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.
    Because they've made a shit job of it.
    Because it was a totally ludicrous crock of shit in the first place. The only people it has benefitted, and ever was going to benefit are a few hedge fund managers. Oh, and Boris Johnson who pretended he believed in it.
    Did even Boris benefit really? He got to be PM, sure, and that's not to be sniffed at. But the price of that will be a lifetime of all but a handful of crazies hating him. That might be better than a lifetime of people coming up to him and saying 'you know, you should have been Prime Minister' and him ruefully agreeing, but it's not obvious that that's the case.

    There must the a story in the classical canon of the dangers of being given exactly what you wanted.
    He's hated because he broke his own covid laws. Not so much for Brexit I think.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 63,677

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    Wildfires are usually a product of land management.

    The fact that someone started them is beside the point as all land that can burn will do so eventually. Some vegetation has evolved to thrive in places that burn frequently and actively encourages it - eg Eucalyptus forest, Maquis.

    What has changed is that people have built in areas that burn (similar mentality to building in flood plains) and then complain about it when things get torched.

    We also actively prevent fires which only makes them bigger when they get out of control.

    Most vegetation (peat bogs being an exception) does not fix carbon so burning it makes little difference to the climate. It all gets recycled.

    If it didn't we'd soon be in a snowball earth.

    Has climate change made things worse? Possibly, although you would expect more rain in a hotter climate, not less.
    What's very different in the last decade or so
    is that fires which are unprecedented in scale and location are breaking out, as for example:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Russia_wildfires

    And the vegetation created carbon stores beneath them, built up over millennia, are threatened on a timescale orders of magnitude less than took to create them.

    That's an imbalance which will likely make a huge difference to climate.

    (Along with second order effects like loss of albedo in the Arctic.)

  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,720

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    Where did you get that from?

    North America had it's 9th warmest March and it's 4th warmest Jan-Mar on record.
    Europe had it's 2nd warmest March and it's 2nd warmest Jan-Mar on record.


    https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202403
    We've had an odd spring. Overall its warm, but mainly due to overnight temps not being that low - the daytimes have been pretty rubbish.
  • Options
    Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,358

    algarkirk said:

    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.
    Because they've made a shit job of it.
    Because it was a totally ludicrous crock of shit in the first place. The only people it has benefitted, and ever was going to benefit are a few hedge fund managers. Oh, and Boris Johnson who pretended he believed in it.
    Did even Boris benefit really? He got to be PM, sure, and that's not to be sniffed at. But the price of that will be a lifetime of all but a handful of crazies hating him. That might be better than a lifetime of people coming up to him and saying 'you know, you should have been Prime Minister' and him ruefully agreeing, but it's not obvious that that's the case.

    There must the a story in the classical canon of the dangers of being given exactly what you wanted.
    It must be rather sad to be Boris. The only thing he was good at was penning putting-the-world-to-rights articles for the right-wing media and then have his admirers post 'Boris for PM!' messages BTL. Now all that will just be greeted with hollow guffawing. Rotten really.
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,703

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    Given the strong rural connection with the Cons I would echo @Malmesbury's point that this is precisely what the party does. But then if, say, a Cons farmer decides to do something on his land, or a Cons council decides to do something in their area, quite often the Islingtonians get all up in arms about it.
    Surely it depends on what said farmer decides to do his land?

    If you've got a specific example of a farmer trying to improve the environment and being castigated by Islingtonians, do share.
    Have hounds hunt over it.
    Like I said, it depends on what the farmer wants to do to their land.

    A lot of farmers don't want the hunt over their fields - it causes a mess and disruption. But it's hardly one to put down under 'conserving the environment' is it?
    Of course it is. Hedgerows, coverts, general maintenance and husbandry of the land, sometimes even vermin control. Plenty of great conservation work there. But the Islingtonians didn't like it.
  • Options
    DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 25,028
    FF43 said:

    Four Tory MPs who made £5.4million selling taxpayer-funded second homes won't say if they paid tax.

    The Tories were accused of ­hypocrisy after pushing for police to probe deputy Labour leader Ms Angela Rayner over a £48,000 profit she made selling a former council house


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/four-tory-mps-who-made-32793408

    Is Dan Hodges on the case yet? There's no reason the Mail should not go after a few bad opportunistic apples. It will make them appear even-handed, even noble, and can't do the Tories much damage at this stage.
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,720

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    If the Tories are simply decimated, they would be delighted. As our latin learning friends would recall, decimation is the loss of 1/10th of something. Common usage has shifted it to be a much worse loss.

    I think if the Tories are decimated they are still in power.
  • Options
    wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 8,167
    Was just thinking about by elections. I guess we are coming to the end of them being a thing for this parliament? Voluntary stand downs after the Whitsun recess probably won't be filled (GE 'soon', waste of money etc) and for recalls they have to open by 6 months before a GE is due (Jan 25th so July 25th) so Speaker would need to notify the RO by about 15th July. Meaning any sanction and vote by Parliament needs to happen in the next 6 weeks (with 2 of them off for Whitsun)?
    Thus Blackpool South 'probably' the last such test this time round?
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859

    ...

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    I'm talking about the members, not the MPs. Given any choice of two candidates, the Tory membership will choose the more right-wing. Guaranteed.
    Your studentship of the Conservative Party is blinkered by your tribalism. David Cameron v David Davis was not that long ago.
    I am always humoured by tribal Tories calling out tribalism from their opponents.
    Er, I may have been a Conservative member and voter in the past, but I think my criticism of the party on here has been vociferous. Not so from most of the Labour supporters on here, many of whom would have been happy to have the man who has been banned from their party on grounds of anti-Semitism made PM. Excuses are made for Angela "two council house sales" Rayner which they would have been howling about if it were a Tory that had done it. The inability to see any virtue in anyone who supports a different party (never kissed a Tory -cringe)This is tribalism, and sorry I am quite comfortable not being guilty of it - at all. I will critique them all. When I see @kinabalu (or you for that matter) questioning Rayner's house sales I will know he is not a tribalist.
  • Options
    megasaurmegasaur Posts: 531

    algarkirk said:

    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.
    Because they've made a shit job of it.
    Because it was a totally ludicrous crock of shit in the first place. The only people it has benefitted, and ever was going to benefit are a few hedge fund managers. Oh, and Boris Johnson who pretended he believed in it.
    Did even Boris benefit really? He got to be PM, sure, and that's not to be sniffed at. But the price of that will be a lifetime of all but a handful of crazies hating him. That might be better than a lifetime of people coming up to him and saying 'you know, you should have been Prime Minister' and him ruefully agreeing, but it's not obvious that that's the case.

    There must the a story in the classical canon of the dangers of being given exactly what you wanted.
    In literature we have Faust, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Then we have Odysseus and the Sirens, and of course King Midas.

    How am I doing?
    Sorcerer's apprentice
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    If the Tories are simply decimated, they would be delighted. As our latin learning friends would recall, decimation is the loss of 1/10th of something. Common usage has shifted it to be a much worse loss.

    I think if the Tories are decimated they are still in power.
    As Captain Mainwaring once said "I wondered who would spot that first"
  • Options
    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 25,743
    ...

    ...

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    I'm talking about the members, not the MPs. Given any choice of two candidates, the Tory membership will choose the more right-wing. Guaranteed.
    Your studentship of the Conservative Party is blinkered by your tribalism. David Cameron v David Davis was not that long ago.
    I am always humoured by tribal Tories calling out tribalism from their opponents.
    Er, I may have been a Conservative member and voter in the past, but I think my criticism of the party on here has been vociferous. Not so from most of the Labour supporters on here, many of whom would have been happy to have the man who has been banned from their party on grounds of anti-Semitism made PM. Excuses are made for Angela "two council house sales" Rayner which they would have been howling about if it were a Tory that had done it. The inability to see any virtue in anyone who supports a different party (never kissed a Tory -cringe)This is tribalism, and sorry I am quite comfortable not being guilty of it - at all. I will critique them all. When I see @kinabalu (or you for that matter) questioning Rayner's house sales I will know he is not a tribalist.
    Case concluded M'Lud!
  • Options
    DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 25,028

    algarkirk said:

    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.
    Because they've made a shit job of it.
    Because it was a totally ludicrous crock of shit in the first place. The only people it has benefitted, and ever was going to benefit are a few hedge fund managers. Oh, and Boris Johnson who pretended he believed in it.
    The irony of Brexit is it pitted a leaver pretending to be a remainer against a remainer pretending to be a leaver.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 63,677
    megasaur said:

    @bondegezou

    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.
    I agree that hotter, dryer conditions make wild fires likelier to spread. Blaming this on climate change is a double-edged sword - the Northern hemisphere has just had a hugely cold spring that people have also been blaming climate change for. Does that mean we should thank climate change for protecting our forests?

    The real issue with these fires is afaics the people causing them. The penalties for doing so, even accidentally through lack of attention, should be huge, and the perpetrators' families should be liable for the financial cost. Secondly, there should be earlier detection of fires using all the technology at the at risk countries' disposal. News agencies reporting forest fires using lazy angles about climate change (leading to ridiculous comments like Sandy's) are missing the point.
    I think if something is flammable it's going to burn at some stage whether it's human error or arson or lightning or spontaneous combustion. Lots of plants evolved to take advantage of forest fires before humans were a thing. The point is not why fires happen, it's that they do happen and planting more trees is therefore not always a good thing.
    "At some stage" is ignoring the inconvenient point that humanity exists on a historical, not geological timescale - whereas our impact in terms of atmospheric CO2 (amongst other things) is a change, and likely to bring about further changes, expected only on a geological timescale.
  • Options
    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 25,743
    edited May 13
    BBC WATO balancing Rishi's speech with analysis from two Conservative councillors and Michael Howard.

    Howard says Starmer is a danger to Britain.
  • Options
    megasaurmegasaur Posts: 531

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    If the Tories are simply decimated, they would be delighted. As our latin learning friends would recall, decimation is the loss of 1/10th of something. Common usage has shifted it to be a much worse loss.

    I think if the Tories are decimated they are still in power.
    As Captain Mainwaring once said "I wondered who would spot that first"
    I believe the point of decimation was that the 90% were obliged to kill the 10. So it wouldn't really work the other way round.
  • Options
    StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,963

    algarkirk said:

    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.
    Because they've made a shit job of it.
    Because it was a totally ludicrous crock of shit in the first place. The only people it has benefitted, and ever was going to benefit are a few hedge fund managers. Oh, and Boris Johnson who pretended he believed in it.
    Did even Boris benefit really? He got to be PM, sure, and that's not to be sniffed at. But the price of that will be a lifetime of all but a handful of crazies hating him. That might be better than a lifetime of people coming up to him and saying 'you know, you should have been Prime Minister' and him ruefully agreeing, but it's not obvious that that's the case.

    There must the a story in the classical canon of the dangers of being given exactly what you wanted.
    In literature we have Faust, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Then we have Odysseus and the Sirens, and of course King Midas.

    How am I doing?
    Better than me, though I had heard of Midas. But then again, I am a scientist who went to a comprehensive in the 1980s.

    Have mercy on me.
  • Options
    AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 20,380

    BBC WATO balancing Rishi's speech with analysis from two Conservative councillors and Michael Hpward.

    Howard says Starmer is a danger to Britain.

    And you breathlessly repeat it on PB.

    As ever.

    Give it a rest.
  • Options
    AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 20,380

    ...

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    I'm talking about the members, not the MPs. Given any choice of two candidates, the Tory membership will choose the more right-wing. Guaranteed.
    Your studentship of the Conservative Party is blinkered by your tribalism. David Cameron v David Davis was not that long ago.
    I am always humoured by tribal Tories calling out tribalism from their opponents.
    Er, I may have been a Conservative member and voter in the past, but I think my criticism of the party on here has been vociferous. Not so from most of the Labour supporters on here, many of whom would have been happy to have the man who has been banned from their party on grounds of anti-Semitism made PM. Excuses are made for Angela "two council house sales" Rayner which they would have been howling about if it were a Tory that had done it. The inability to see any virtue in anyone who supports a different party (never kissed a Tory -cringe)This is tribalism, and sorry I am quite comfortable not being guilty of it - at all. I will critique them all. When I see @kinabalu (or you for that matter) questioning Rayner's house sales I will know he is not a tribalist.
    RAYNER
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 63,677

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    If the Tories are simply decimated, they would be delighted. As our latin learning friends would recall, decimation is the loss of 1/10th of something. Common usage has shifted it to be a much worse loss.

    I think if the Tories are decimated they are still in power.
    I don't think they'd be very happy.
    If we're going to be literal, it means one in ten being clubbed to death, and the rest fed on slave rations.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859

    ...

    ...

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    I'm talking about the members, not the MPs. Given any choice of two candidates, the Tory membership will choose the more right-wing. Guaranteed.
    Your studentship of the Conservative Party is blinkered by your tribalism. David Cameron v David Davis was not that long ago.
    I am always humoured by tribal Tories calling out tribalism from their opponents.
    Er, I may have been a Conservative member and voter in the past, but I think my criticism of the party on here has been vociferous. Not so from most of the Labour supporters on here, many of whom would have been happy to have the man who has been banned from their party on grounds of anti-Semitism made PM. Excuses are made for Angela "two council house sales" Rayner which they would have been howling about if it were a Tory that had done it. The inability to see any virtue in anyone who supports a different party (never kissed a Tory -cringe)This is tribalism, and sorry I am quite comfortable not being guilty of it - at all. I will critique them all. When I see @kinabalu (or you for that matter) questioning Rayner's house sales I will know he is not a tribalist.
    Case concluded M'Lud!
    Kind of you to concede. I look forward to a critique from you on the paucity of talent on the Labour Party front bench or some of their more ludicrous and naive policy pronouncements. And saying "oh the Tories are crap too" doesn't cut it.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,635
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    If the Tories are simply decimated, they would be delighted. As our latin learning friends would recall, decimation is the loss of 1/10th of something. Common usage has shifted it to be a much worse loss.

    I think if the Tories are decimated they are still in power.
    I don't think they'd be very happy.
    If we're going to be literal, it means one in ten being clubbed to death, and the rest fed on slave rations.
    Now you're talking.
  • Options
    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 25,743

    BBC WATO balancing Rishi's speech with analysis from two Conservative councillors and Michael Hpward.

    Howard says Starmer is a danger to Britain.

    And you breathlessly repeat it on PB.

    As ever.

    Give it a rest.
    Read my post and read it again. You are really not very bright are you?
  • Options
    MattWMattW Posts: 19,181

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    If the Tories are simply decimated, they would be delighted. As our latin learning friends would recall, decimation is the loss of 1/10th of something. Common usage has shifted it to be a much worse loss.

    I think if the Tories are decimated they are still in power.
    Wasn't decimation in its original form also done by an army's own commanders?

    Rishi seems to be quite good at that.
  • Options
    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,541

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    If the Tories are simply decimated, they would be delighted. As our latin learning friends would recall, decimation is the loss of 1/10th of something. Common usage has shifted it to be a much worse loss.

    I think if the Tories are decimated they are still in power.
    Let’s hope they’re crucified instead then, side effects ‘n’ all.


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    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,859

    ...

    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Leon said:

    Donkeys said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    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.
    I think David Cameron sort of tried that, and yes there is no reason why to be green you have to be a corporatist lefty. Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out" to big money any more than all on the centre-left have "sold out" to the unions and the more corrupt money-grabbing low productivity end of the public sector.
    Many people on the centre-right have not "sold out"

    ...but that's not today's Conservative Party is it?
    Contrary to those who have a simplistic and tribal view of politics, there are still (despite Bozo's best efforts) plenty of decent people in the Conservative Party. Hopefully they will be able to restore the party to pre-Johnson respectability at some point in the future. An unchallenged Labour Party that has almost zero understanding of business and wealth creation is a very bad thing for the country.
    Let's see how many decent people there are in the Conservative Party when the next leader is chosen, shall we? (A: not enough, I suspect.)
    Depends on how many of them survive the decimation, assuming the huge landslide that @kinabalu believes is "baked in".

    It is a sad aspect of our politics that so many tribalists want the other party to be annihilated. It is not good for anyone.
    I'm talking about the members, not the MPs. Given any choice of two candidates, the Tory membership will choose the more right-wing. Guaranteed.
    Your studentship of the Conservative Party is blinkered by your tribalism. David Cameron v David Davis was not that long ago.
    I am always humoured by tribal Tories calling out tribalism from their opponents.
    Er, I may have been a Conservative member and voter in the past, but I think my criticism of the party on here has been vociferous. Not so from most of the Labour supporters on here, many of whom would have been happy to have the man who has been banned from their party on grounds of anti-Semitism made PM. Excuses are made for Angela "two council house sales" Rayner which they would have been howling about if it were a Tory that had done it. The inability to see any virtue in anyone who supports a different party (never kissed a Tory -cringe)This is tribalism, and sorry I am quite comfortable not being guilty of it - at all. I will critique them all. When I see @kinabalu (or you for that matter) questioning Rayner's house sales I will know he is not a tribalist.
    RAYNER
    Erm, I think that is how I spelt it, or do you have a habit of blurting out politicians names in caps? Maybe you could get a job on Truth Social?
  • Options
    GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 21,080
    Lab supporters seem somewhat rattled on here today.

    Relax guys, it's still in the bag. 👌
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