Stone vessels, bowls and plates, in a kitchen very recently unearthed at Karahan Tepe. Remember, this is 11,000 years ago and these people are meant to be “cavemen”
My, they even had Tupperware.
Ah, explains what happened to them
Robert Kennedy : By the way, China invaded India today. Kenny O'Donnell : You're kidding, aren't you? Robert Kennedy : Yeah, I wish I were. Galbraith is handling it in New Delhi. Makes you wonder what's coming next. Kenny O'Donnell : Geez. What is it about the free world that pisses the rest of the world off? Robert Kennedy : I don't know. We have Tupperware parties?
I don't really mind Thatcher but Shakespeare seems odd. Shouldn't he be the kind of figure a PM would find inspirational? Is Sir Keir intimidated by greatness?
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"
Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2.
Would you want to see a portrait of somebody who wanted to kill you?
But wasn't that the Bard showing how essential lawyers are? He put the phrase in the mouth of an insurrectionist.
He was but he never wrote a play on the awesomeness of lawyers.
Aren't some things self evident?
My favourite lawyer is John Cook, lead prosecutor of Charles I. Talk about a high profile case to take on.
Sounded a bit like a Remainiac/Brexiteer fanatic in some respects though.
We fought for the public good and would have enfranchised the people and secured the welfare of the whole groaning creation, if the nation had not more delighted in servitude than in freedom
It's a bit of an extrapolated hagiography, but I do recommend The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson.
Ah yes, the enlightened rule of the Major Generals.
The revolutionaries always complain that The People strangely dislike all the Necessary Evils the revs need to commit to achieve Paradise On Earth…
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
It's entirely confected on both sides for what is, effectively, just a hustle.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
What utter and total bollocks, polish your sandals and put another lentil burger on the BBQ. It should be stopped immediately and the halfwits gibbering about it told to F*** right off
Yes, the awkward truth is much of Scotland was built on the back of slavery.
More of Scotland was in slavery , plenty sent to pick cotton etc and plenty replaced by sheep etc. You not get that in your history lessons. Only a few nabbery made teh cash. Also who sold the slaves to the English , their own people, why do they not ask them to pay the reparation.
As a matter of interest, is there a movement to pay reparations to the miners enslaved until, 1799?? in Scotland?
Interesting issue in Scotland, but it wasn't just colliers - it also included saltworkers btw. They got freed because the lairds who wanted to expand coiuldn't get any free workers to do the job because status.
Also, some argument as to whether it was true slavery, or indentured hereditary servitude by being tied to a colliery or saltworks.
It might seem academic, esp. by modern standards; and there's an old story of an early C19 laird encountering another laird's [by then free] workman who said [I translate]: "Don't you remember me? Your father swopped me for a donkey."
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
It's entirely confected on both sides for what is, effectively, just a hustle.
Indeed my surprise is that Labour seem to have shut it down. Hopefully David Lammy will resign over it closer to the time, it seems like the kind of thing he'll be stupid enough to do.
Stone vessels, bowls and plates, in a kitchen very recently unearthed at Karahan Tepe. Remember, this is 11,000 years ago and these people are meant to be “cavemen”
My, they even had Tupperware.
It's the mundane things that truly amaze. I remember viewing a viking sock in York and it blew my mind - their boots and the like we have loads of, but socks?
It's why people love the Vindolanda tablets too of course
And the Housesteads Fort latrine [edit] on Hadrian's Wall and Thomas Hardy's birthplace cottage (such nihilism of contemplation there).
Anyway, when is England going to apologise for inventing the blood libel, various pogroms, expelling all their Jews and ensuring their land was Judenfrei for 300+ years?
They should be giving arms to Israel in reparations rather than making them pay for them.
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
What utter and total bollocks, polish your sandals and put another lentil burger on the BBQ. It should be stopped immediately and the halfwits gibbering about it told to F*** right off
Yes, the awkward truth is much of Scotland was built on the back of slavery.
More of Scotland was in slavery , plenty sent to pick cotton etc and plenty replaced by sheep etc. You not get that in your history lessons. Only a few nabbery made teh cash. Also who sold the slaves to the English , their own people, why do they not ask them to pay the reparation.
As a matter of interest, is there a movement to pay reparations to the miners enslaved until, 1799?? in Scotland?
Interesting issue in Scotland, but it wasn't just colliers - it also included saltworkers btw. They got freed because the lairds who wanted to expand coiuldn't get any free workers to do the job because status.
Also, some argument as to whether it was true slavery, or indentured hereditary servitude by being tied to a colliery or saltworks.
It might seem academic, esp. by modern standards; and there's an old story of an early C19 laird encountering another laird's [by then free] workman who said [I translate]: "Don't you remember me? Your father swopped me for a donkey."
Just wait and see what's in store once programmable money is a thing.
It will start with people on benefits. Not allowed to buy alcohol and so on. And people will acquiesce to it because they think why should my hard earned tax money be going to bunch of jobless alkies.
But then it will come for the rest of us. Drinking too much? You'll have a choice - go on the 'no buying alcohol plan' or lose the right to NHS treatment. Not a drinker, but a bit of a fatty? Cards blocked from fast food shops and takeaways.
Indeed. Neither the tories or labour have tried to hide their desire for micro-control over our lives. Benefits claimants will be first because, as mentioned, nobody cares about them. The mechanisms were already designed by the tories, DWP gives banks a list of patterns to scan people's accounts for and anything 'suspicious' leads to a court order to access the account statements.
Of course, labour are now going to do away with the court. They'll just be able to look at your account and, if they feel like it, take your money. How long before HMRC also starts using this capability routinely? After the next GE I expect.
(I was going to make a gag about selling your granny's old china tea set collection on ebay and having HMRC coming after you for tax, but ebay already collects sales data for HMRC and only permits sellers to withdraw funds to a small selection of UK banks so their account balances can be monitored)
Absolutely purchase information will be used to deny NHS treatment in future, the powers that be won't be able to help themselves. There will be plenty of other intrusions. When road tax is replaced by a per-mile charge that will be used for behaviour modification, too, with the tax scaling to punish too much driving. 1p/mile if you do less than 5000 miles/year, 2.5p if you do 10,000, 5p above that, for example.
Yep, that is very much the future I can see happening. A great deal less privacy and control over our own lives, all of it done "for our own good" via an ever encroaching state with a great deal more surveillance, power and data at its fingertips. Assuming we're going to net zero, taxing people at the pumps is a very crude instrument compared to, say, cutting them off from buying petrol once they reach a certain allowance. Ditto taxing junk food and alcohol consumption vs simply cutting people off.
And for anyone thinking this is a far-fetched dystopia, remember it was only a few years ago everyone had to download an NHS tracking app on their phones to access most public spaces, and were kept under isolation for arbitrary 'pings' for passing the wrong people in the street.
So no, I will not be wearing my state-sponsored NHS smartwatch when it is issued...
Why do you care about the decor of a building you’ve never been in and aren’t allowed in?
I guess you would not complain if a PM put portraits of Hitler up, along with swastikas as 'art', which is seen by all visitors?
Is that in any way, shape or form like what has happened? No.
I was just seeing what your breaking point of "Why do you care about the decor of a building you’ve never been in and aren’t allowed in?" lies.
Well you did it wrong then because going straight in with Hitler is going to get a No from everyone. You need to start with something less extreme and then slide it until you hit that break point.
So, like this for your opening salvo ...
"I guess you would not complain if a PM put portraits of Prince up, along with his Purple Rain lyrics as 'art', to be seen by all visitors?"
And see where that leads.
Starmer clearly has hangups about 'the pictures of the jockeys that were there before me'.
Doesn't Downing St have pictures of all previous PMs (including Thatcher) on the staircase?
Starmer is haunted by them daily, constantly wondering if he has enough class.
We've learned Starmer has imposter syndrome, doesn't like any challenge and is rather insecure. He's quite ambitious but, now he's got there, wants to feather his nest to make himself feel as comfortable as possible.
That means removing anyone that he feels threatens him, either present or historic, and ensuring he makes the most he can of the fruits of office and cares not a jot for the feelings of others or the country.
Says an awful lot about the man.
It's going to be pretty sparse in there if he removes every painting with a subject that has more gravitas and charisma than him. They'll be left with basically paintings of bowls of fruit, and even that's debatable.
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Did Dave remove every major icon from British history? No.
What's going on here is your tic to oppose anything the Tory Right says and does from a PoV of personal political triangulation, and intellectual snobbery.
It leads you to align yourself with Labour as you'd far rather do that than ever side with them.
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
It insults our intelligence to think that we should believe that.
Anyway, when is England going to apologise for inventing the blood libel, various pogroms, expelling all their Jews and ensuring their land was Judenfrei for 300+ years?
They should be giving arms to Israel in reparations rather than making them pay for them.
The blood libel was invented long before it was revived against the jews.
It started off by the Romans against early christians
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
Hang on. I though tearing down/removing historic statues that offend people in the present day is AOK?
Bristol. The city of cool. Broadmead is heaven and I love the suspension bridge!
As reparations for slavery, I’ve suggested that the captives of the Libyan Coastguard be bought (brought?) to this country, via Bristol, to fill the gaps in agricultural labour.
I think I should get a statue for this idea….
Clearly reparations should be paid by the residents of cities that were most prominent in the slave trade, such as Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow etc. Oh, and the Lancashire cotton towns.
I don't really mind Thatcher but Shakespeare seems odd. Shouldn't he be the kind of figure a PM would find inspirational? Is Sir Keir intimidated by greatness?
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"
Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2.
Would you want to see a portrait of somebody who wanted to kill you?
But wasn't that the Bard showing how essential lawyers are? He put the phrase in the mouth of an insurrectionist.
He was but he never wrote a play on the awesomeness of lawyers.
Aren't some things self evident?
My favourite lawyer is John Cook, lead prosecutor of Charles I. Talk about a high profile case to take on.
Sounded a bit like a Remainiac/Brexiteer fanatic in some respects though.
We fought for the public good and would have enfranchised the people and secured the welfare of the whole groaning creation, if the nation had not more delighted in servitude than in freedom
It's a bit of an extrapolated hagiography, but I do recommend The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson.
Ah yes, the enlightened rule of the Major Generals.
The revolutionaries always complain that The People strangely dislike all the Necessary Evils the revs need to commit to achieve Paradise On Earth…
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
These specific artworks? Of these three people who clearly intimidate the PM whenever he sees them?
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
Anyway, when is England going to apologise for inventing the blood libel, various pogroms, expelling all their Jews and ensuring their land was Judenfrei for 300+ years?
They should be giving arms to Israel in reparations rather than making them pay for them.
The blood libel was invented long before it was revived against the jews.
It started off by the Romans against early christians
Earliest written claim is 10th Century? By a Greek chap, IIRC
Anyway, when is England going to apologise for inventing the blood libel, various pogroms, expelling all their Jews and ensuring their land was Judenfrei for 300+ years?
They should be giving arms to Israel in reparations rather than making them pay for them.
The blood libel was invented long before it was revived against the jews.
It started off by the Romans against early christians
Yeah, but Blood Libel Classic that has informed antisemitism for centuries was invented in u-know-where.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
What utter and total bollocks, polish your sandals and put another lentil burger on the BBQ. It should be stopped immediately and the halfwits gibbering about it told to F*** right off
Yes, the awkward truth is much of Scotland was built on the back of slavery.
More of Scotland was in slavery , plenty sent to pick cotton etc and plenty replaced by sheep etc. You not get that in your history lessons. Only a few nabbery made teh cash. Also who sold the slaves to the English , their own people, why do they not ask them to pay the reparation.
As a matter of interest, is there a movement to pay reparations to the miners enslaved until, 1799?? in Scotland?
Interesting issue in Scotland, but it wasn't just colliers - it also included saltworkers btw. They got freed because the lairds who wanted to expand coiuldn't get any free workers to do the job because status.
Also, some argument as to whether it was true slavery, or indentured hereditary servitude by being tied to a colliery or saltworks.
It might seem academic, esp. by modern standards; and there's an old story of an early C19 laird encountering another laird's [by then free] workman who said [I translate]: "Don't you remember me? Your father swopped me for a donkey."
All the modern anti-slavery societies and organisations would categorise it as slavery. Rightly, I think.
Similar systems exist in parts of he world today….
I rest easy knowing that things I consume or purchase were not made by slaves, but possibly by people treated little different to slaves. That's my moral loophole.
I don't really mind Thatcher but Shakespeare seems odd. Shouldn't he be the kind of figure a PM would find inspirational? Is Sir Keir intimidated by greatness?
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"
Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2.
Would you want to see a portrait of somebody who wanted to kill you?
But wasn't that the Bard showing how essential lawyers are? He put the phrase in the mouth of an insurrectionist.
He was but he never wrote a play on the awesomeness of lawyers.
Aren't some things self evident?
My favourite lawyer is John Cook, lead prosecutor of Charles I. Talk about a high profile case to take on.
Sounded a bit like a Remainiac/Brexiteer fanatic in some respects though.
We fought for the public good and would have enfranchised the people and secured the welfare of the whole groaning creation, if the nation had not more delighted in servitude than in freedom
It's a bit of an extrapolated hagiography, but I do recommend The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson.
Ah yes, the enlightened rule of the Major Generals.
The revolutionaries always complain that The People strangely dislike all the Necessary Evils the revs need to commit to achieve Paradise On Earth…
Still a popular view to this day!
The Revolution is always Revolting.
Or, as I like to say - “To achieve a perfect world, sacrifices will need to be made. Great news - you are high on The List.”
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
These specific artworks? Of these three people who clearly intimidate the PM whenever he sees them?
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
I've said Starmer's policies would be a disaster, I've been proven right about VAT on school fees.
I've said Ed Miliband screwed up when he was at DECC under Brown and nothing has changed on that front.
Labour's plan for the railways would be a fiasco.
The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money.
I still voted Tory in July and was planning on campaigning for a couple of Tory candidates but surgery put the kibosh on that.
Anyway, when is England going to apologise for inventing the blood libel, various pogroms, expelling all their Jews and ensuring their land was Judenfrei for 300+ years?
They should be giving arms to Israel in reparations rather than making them pay for them.
The blood libel was invented long before it was revived against the jews.
It started off by the Romans against early christians
Yeah, but Blood Libel Classic that has informed antisemitism for centuries was invented in u-know-where.
I attended a diversity session which referenced the expulsion of Jews from England as the banning of Jews from England which I feel misses some key details.
Anyway, when is England going to apologise for inventing the blood libel, various pogroms, expelling all their Jews and ensuring their land was Judenfrei for 300+ years?
They should be giving arms to Israel in reparations rather than making them pay for them.
The blood libel was invented long before it was revived against the jews.
It started off by the Romans against early christians
Yeah, but Blood Libel Classic that has informed antisemitism for centuries was invented in u-know-where.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
What utter and total bollocks, polish your sandals and put another lentil burger on the BBQ. It should be stopped immediately and the halfwits gibbering about it told to F*** right off
Yes, the awkward truth is much of Scotland was built on the back of slavery.
More of Scotland was in slavery , plenty sent to pick cotton etc and plenty replaced by sheep etc. You not get that in your history lessons. Only a few nabbery made teh cash. Also who sold the slaves to the English , their own people, why do they not ask them to pay the reparation.
As a matter of interest, is there a movement to pay reparations to the miners enslaved until, 1799?? in Scotland?
Interesting issue in Scotland, but it wasn't just colliers - it also included saltworkers btw. They got freed because the lairds who wanted to expand coiuldn't get any free workers to do the job because status.
Also, some argument as to whether it was true slavery, or indentured hereditary servitude by being tied to a colliery or saltworks.
It might seem academic, esp. by modern standards; and there's an old story of an early C19 laird encountering another laird's [by then free] workman who said [I translate]: "Don't you remember me? Your father swopped me for a donkey."
All the modern anti-slavery societies and organisations would categorise it as slavery. Rightly, I think.
Similar systems exist in parts of he world today….
I rest easy knowing that things I consume or purchase were not made by slaves, but possibly by people treated little different to slaves. That's my moral loophole.
When the children’s cheap toys break, and a bit of paper falls out, don’t read it.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
The people who say we should be proud of our past positives (Shakespeare, Magna Carta, Standing alone against the Hun etc) are often the very same people who say we should not be ashamed of our past negatives (like slavery).
This doesn't quite scan for me. Because feeling the pride assumes an identification of yourself with the nation. With Britain (or Scotland in your case). But if you do have that identification how come it gets put aside for the bad stuff?
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
These specific artworks? Of these three people who clearly intimidate the PM whenever he sees them?
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
To be fair, he voted Tory.
He just hates the Tory Right and gets a kick out of manipulating them, which also contributes to reinforcing his sense of intellectual superiority.
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
A problem, or a different interpretation? People on the right tend towards the great man view of history. People on the left often prefer to focus on the experiences and contributions of everyday people. They're different ways of looking at the past and they're both valid, imho.
Anyway, when is England going to apologise for inventing the blood libel, various pogroms, expelling all their Jews and ensuring their land was Judenfrei for 300+ years?
They should be giving arms to Israel in reparations rather than making them pay for them.
The blood libel was invented long before it was revived against the jews.
It started off by the Romans against early christians
Persecution, blood libel, and slavery, suitable for all occasions. Are 100 generations of humans wrong?
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
Hang on. I though tearing down/removing historic statues that offend people in the present day is AOK?
Bristol. The city of cool. Broadmead is heaven and I love the suspension bridge!
As reparations for slavery, I’ve suggested that the captives of the Libyan Coastguard be bought (brought?) to this country, via Bristol, to fill the gaps in agricultural labour.
I think I should get a statue for this idea….
Clearly reparations should be paid by the residents of cities that were most prominent in the slave trade, such as Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow etc. Oh, and the Lancashire cotton towns.
And towns and cities in Spain. Portugal. Holland. France.Belgium for that matter with what happened in the Congo. Ask yourself this question. If the Africans had been the aggressors and not the Europeans would they be saying sorry now? Is the real problem humane nature in that when we have control and power we are quite happy to abuse it and is this system still operating today as it was then and in a different ways as well?
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
What utter and total bollocks, polish your sandals and put another lentil burger on the BBQ. It should be stopped immediately and the halfwits gibbering about it told to F*** right off
Hey Malc, hope you’re well.
Well said. I get apologising for stuff like Bloody Sunday and the Post Office scandal that happened in our lifetime. But slavery. Eff off. These fuckers are only after us for our money. Plenty of Other nations were involved but they don’t go after them as they’ve not got the cash. It’s all about the money. Grifters.
Taz, very well thanks, bleak outside today mind you. Hope you are well. Totally agree that this liberal crap about reparations is just that, where do these clowns want to stop , crusades , or before that or every other topic in between, utter rubbish.
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
These specific artworks? Of these three people who clearly intimidate the PM whenever he sees them?
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
To be fair, he voted Tory.
He just hates the Tory Right and gets a kick out of manipulating them, which also contributes to reinforcing his sense of intellectual superiority.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
Hang on. I though tearing down/removing historic statues that offend people in the present day is AOK?
So far we have retained a little backbone up here but not far behind the woke tossers down south.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
The people who say we should be proud of our past positives (Shakespeare, Magna Carta, Standing alone against the Hun etc) are often the very same people who say we should not be ashamed of our past negatives (like slavery).
This doesn't quite scan for me. Because feeling the pride assumes an identification of yourself with the nation. With Britain (or Scotland in your case). But if you do have that identification how come it gets put aside for the bad stuff?
You have to take bad with good to get an accurate picture (as much as we can get one) - no liberty was not the fundamental characteristic of England, no it was not a nation of immigrants in the modern sense etc - but the conversation is swamped by eyes closed nostalgic fools and irritatingly self righteous flagellants.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
The people who say we should be proud of our past positives (Shakespeare, Magna Carta, Standing alone against the Hun etc) are often the very same people who say we should not be ashamed of our past negatives (like slavery).
This doesn't quite scan for me. Because feeling the pride assumes an identification of yourself with the nation. With Britain (or Scotland in your case). But if you do have that identification how come it gets put aside for the bad stuff?
Yep.
Churchill, greatest evah Briton to be commemorated and venerated NOW!
Also
Look, Churchill may have been a racist, white supremacist and imperialist but he was a man of his time not to be judged by modern day standards.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
Hang on. I though tearing down/removing historic statues that offend people in the present day is AOK?
So far we have retained a little backbone up here but not far behind the woke tossers down south.
I'm not sure you'll want to stand on that hill too long. You have your fair share of softy crap in Scotland. Whilst much of the intention is of course good, there's a whole load of actuality that simply beggars belief.
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
These specific artworks? Of these three people who clearly intimidate the PM whenever he sees them?
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
What are you talking about? What are you scared of?. You aren't a pensioner relying on fuel payments?
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
These specific artworks? Of these three people who clearly intimidate the PM whenever he sees them?
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
What are you talking about? What are you scared of?. You aren't a pensioner relying on fuel payments?
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
These specific artworks? Of these three people who clearly intimidate the PM whenever he sees them?
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
To be fair, he voted Tory.
He just hates the Tory Right and gets a kick out of manipulating them, which also contributes to reinforcing his sense of intellectual superiority.
Fiscally I am of the Tory right.
It's the cultural right I am annoyed at.
The cultural right has been ahead of the game on legal and illegal immigration, wokeism and the erosion of women's rights. It was the liberal wing of the party that tolerated these for far too long from 2015 and allowed the overton window to move too far to the left until we had women having to put up with blokes in dresses in their spaces, children being pumped full of drugs because a teacher saw them play with the "wrong" toys.
It was your part of the party that abandoned our values and allowed the left to move what "normal" people would put up with, its only now shifting back because people like Kemi and, yes, Robert Jenrick stood up for our values of upholding women's rights and spaces, making sure kids aren't abused by drug pushing doctors and pharmaceutical companies and the conversation about immigration is being had both about legal and illegal immigrants.
The liberal wing of the Tory party had control of the party from 2010 - 2022 with a bout of socialism from Theresa May in between. In that time traditional values were laughed at and thousands of kids were mutilated by the Tavistock clinic and others. It's not a record to be proud of IMO.
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
These specific artworks? Of these three people who clearly intimidate the PM whenever he sees them?
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
What are you talking about? What are you scared of?. You aren't a pensioner relying on fuel payments?
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
It insults our intelligence to think that we should believe that.
You don't either.
TSE is right on this.
This is just flapping by the unhinged, because they have nothing sensible to say. They have reached the base of the stack of barrels.
I don't really mind Thatcher but Shakespeare seems odd. Shouldn't he be the kind of figure a PM would find inspirational? Is Sir Keir intimidated by greatness?
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"
Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2.
Would you want to see a portrait of somebody who wanted to kill you?
But wasn't that the Bard showing how essential lawyers are? He put the phrase in the mouth of an insurrectionist.
He was but he never wrote a play on the awesomeness of lawyers.
Aren't some things self evident?
My favourite lawyer is John Cook, lead prosecutor of Charles I. Talk about a high profile case to take on.
Sounded a bit like a Remainiac/Brexiteer fanatic in some respects though.
We fought for the public good and would have enfranchised the people and secured the welfare of the whole groaning creation, if the nation had not more delighted in servitude than in freedom
It's a bit of an extrapolated hagiography, but I do recommend The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson.
Pepys this very Sunday 1660, 21st October, saw Cook's head set up on view. He had been hanged, drawn and quartered on 16th October:
"..and so to the Crown in the Palace Yard, I and George Vines by the way calling at their house, where he carried me up to the top of his turret, where there is Cooke’s head set up for a traytor, and Harrison’s set up on the other side of Westminster Hall. Here I could see them plainly, as also a very fair prospect about London."
Anyway, when is England going to apologise for inventing the blood libel, various pogroms, expelling all their Jews and ensuring their land was Judenfrei for 300+ years?
They should be giving arms to Israel in reparations rather than making them pay for them.
The blood libel was invented long before it was revived against the jews.
It started off by the Romans against early christians
Yeah, but Blood Libel Classic that has informed antisemitism for centuries was invented in u-know-where.
Newent?
East Anglia seems to have been a hotbed but also goings on in Gloucester, so not a million miles away.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
Hang on. I though tearing down/removing historic statues that offend people in the present day is AOK?
So far we have retained a little backbone up here but not far behind the woke tossers down south.
I'm not sure you'll want to stand on that hill too long. You have your fair share of softy crap in Scotland. Whilst much of the intention is of course good, there's a whole load of actuality that simply beggars belief.
Far too much softy crap for sure, I am in violent agreement. Time the idiot moron do gooders that come up with this useless stuff were booted right out. I have no illusions that Scotland is not just as crappy nowadays , whole UK is infected with these parasites.
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
These specific artworks? Of these three people who clearly intimidate the PM whenever he sees them?
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
What are you talking about? What are you scared of?. You aren't a pensioner relying on fuel payments?
How do I claim for them please?
If you have worked hard and saved you will not get them
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
Hang on. I though tearing down/removing historic statues that offend people in the present day is AOK?
Bristol. The city of cool. Broadmead is heaven and I love the suspension bridge!
As reparations for slavery, I’ve suggested that the captives of the Libyan Coastguard be bought (brought?) to this country, via Bristol, to fill the gaps in agricultural labour.
I think I should get a statue for this idea….
Clearly reparations should be paid by the residents of cities that were most prominent in the slave trade, such as Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow etc. Oh, and the Lancashire cotton towns.
And towns and cities in Spain. Portugal. Holland. France.Belgium for that matter with what happened in the Congo. Ask yourself this question. If the Africans had been the aggressors and not the Europeans would they be saying sorry now? Is the real problem humane nature in that when we have control and power we are quite happy to abuse it and is this system still operating today as it was then and in a different ways as well?
Algeria and the slaving raids on Cornwall, Devon and Ireland?
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
These specific artworks? Of these three people who clearly intimidate the PM whenever he sees them?
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
To be fair, he voted Tory.
He just hates the Tory Right and gets a kick out of manipulating them, which also contributes to reinforcing his sense of intellectual superiority.
Fiscally I am of the Tory right.
It's the cultural right I am annoyed at.
Is there actually anyone espousing the sort of economic policies that can be described as 'Tory right' any more? The last attempt was Truss, and she just went with the idea that Prime Ministers got free statues. I've not heard any sensible economic proposals from a politician for many, many years. Oddly Reeves might prove the most vaguely Tory person and try to face up to matters.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
Hang on. I though tearing down/removing historic statues that offend people in the present day is AOK?
Bristol. The city of cool. Broadmead is heaven and I love the suspension bridge!
As reparations for slavery, I’ve suggested that the captives of the Libyan Coastguard be bought (brought?) to this country, via Bristol, to fill the gaps in agricultural labour.
I think I should get a statue for this idea….
Clearly reparations should be paid by the residents of cities that were most prominent in the slave trade, such as Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow etc. Oh, and the Lancashire cotton towns.
And towns and cities in Spain. Portugal. Holland. France.Belgium for that matter with what happened in the Congo. Ask yourself this question. If the Africans had been the aggressors and not the Europeans would they be saying sorry now? Is the real problem humane nature in that when we have control and power we are quite happy to abuse it and is this system still operating today as it was then and in a different ways as well?
No one in North Africa is vaguely sorry for the Barbary Pirates. That I know of.
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
These specific artworks? Of these three people who clearly intimidate the PM whenever he sees them?
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
What are you talking about? What are you scared of?. You aren't a pensioner relying on fuel payments?
How do I claim for them please?
If you have worked hard and saved you will not get them
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
Hang on. I though tearing down/removing historic statues that offend people in the present day is AOK?
Bristol. The city of cool. Broadmead is heaven and I love the suspension bridge!
As reparations for slavery, I’ve suggested that the captives of the Libyan Coastguard be bought (brought?) to this country, via Bristol, to fill the gaps in agricultural labour.
I think I should get a statue for this idea….
Clearly reparations should be paid by the residents of cities that were most prominent in the slave trade, such as Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow etc. Oh, and the Lancashire cotton towns.
And towns and cities in Spain. Portugal. Holland. France.Belgium for that matter with what happened in the Congo. Ask yourself this question. If the Africans had been the aggressors and not the Europeans would they be saying sorry now? Is the real problem humane nature in that when we have control and power we are quite happy to abuse it and is this system still operating today as it was then and in a different ways as well?
No one in North Africa is vaguely sorry for the Barbary Pirates. That I know of.
I learn a lot from reading PB, but I confess I'm astonished to read that Starmer feels threatened by Shakespeare. Surely he must know that he's dead?
Modern culture involves time compression to the extreme (see Rings of Power, where events in the source take 1000 years. In the series they take an afternoon)
Starmer is probably under the impression that Shakespeare was the last Poet Laureate.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
The people who say we should be proud of our past positives (Shakespeare, Magna Carta, Standing alone against the Hun etc) are often the very same people who say we should not be ashamed of our past negatives (like slavery).
This doesn't quite scan for me. Because feeling the pride assumes an identification of yourself with the nation. With Britain (or Scotland in your case). But if you do have that identification how come it gets put aside for the bad stuff?
That claim seems to require a bit of exactness. Who exactly says 'we should not be ashamed of our past slavery'? I can't think of anyone, however much they like an upbeat narrative of our national history.
What people correctly do is place it in global and historical context, point out our part in overcoming it and so on. That is completely different from it not being a shaming fact about our past.
At a deeper level of course there is the question of how we now can have any sort of shameful accountability for any actions in the past not done by those now living. But that's a universal question, not just one for the mythical 'slavery didn't and doesn't matter' brigade.
Just checking on train times on Real Time Trains, when up popped an ad from Kemi.
Targeting the commuter & crank elements of the Tory membership.
Question is, will she make them run on time?
..like Mussolini?..
In New Zealand all the trains run on time. If a train arrives the same day as it is scheduled then it is defined as "on time" !
"The time indicated on the timetable is not the time at which the train leave; it is the time before which it will definitely not leave." - sign at Agra station, India.
It's almost as if he's been reading PB about how the ECHR needs to be reformed of Europe is going to properly tackle illegal immigration and halting the wave of asylum seekers.
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
It insults our intelligence to think that we should believe that.
You don't either.
TSE is right on this.
This is just flapping by the unhinged, because they have nothing sensible to say. They have reached the base of the stack of barrels.
I suspect this is mostly a non-story; No 10 is putting up different pictures from its enormous collection, and Starmer doesn't like working in rooms full of portraits. Which is fair enough.
But, if the plan was to inject this story into the national bloodstream to a) make the right froth and look like nutters and b) distract people from actual stuff going on, then job done.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
The people who say we should be proud of our past positives (Shakespeare, Magna Carta, Standing alone against the Hun etc) are often the very same people who say we should not be ashamed of our past negatives (like slavery).
This doesn't quite scan for me. Because feeling the pride assumes an identification of yourself with the nation. With Britain (or Scotland in your case). But if you do have that identification how come it gets put aside for the bad stuff?
That claim seems to require a bit of exactness. Who exactly says 'we should not be ashamed of our past slavery'? I can't think of anyone, however much they like an upbeat narrative of our national history.
What people correctly do is place it in global and historical context, point out our part in overcoming it and so on. That is completely different from it not being a shaming fact about our past.
At a deeper level of course there is the question of how we now can have any sort of shameful accountability for any actions in the past not done by those now living. But that's a universal question, not just one for the mythical 'slavery didn't and doesn't matter' brigade.
Someone on this thread has literally said we (the UK) shouldn’t feel sorry for slavery.
Sorry guys but Shakespeare is overrated. It's a tragedy, we force schoolchildren to sit through so many of his plays. I think I was about 15 before I learnt there were other playwrights.
I learn a lot from reading PB, but I confess I'm astonished to read that Starmer feels threatened by Shakespeare. Surely he must know that he's dead?
Modern culture involves time compression to the extreme (see Rings of Power, where events in the source take 1000 years. In the series they take an afternoon)
Starmer is probably under the impression that Shakespeare was the last Poet Laureate.
He should consult his Foreign Secretary, he would know
Sorry guys but Shakespeare is overrated. It's a tragedy, we force schoolchildren to sit through so many of his plays. I think I was about 15 before I learnt there were other playwrights.
I don't really mind Thatcher but Shakespeare seems odd. Shouldn't he be the kind of figure a PM would find inspirational? Is Sir Keir intimidated by greatness?
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"
Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2.
Would you want to see a portrait of somebody who wanted to kill you?
But wasn't that the Bard showing how essential lawyers are? He put the phrase in the mouth of an insurrectionist.
He was but he never wrote a play on the awesomeness of lawyers.
"You have not experienced Shakespeare till you have read him in the original Klingon."
I don't really mind Thatcher but Shakespeare seems odd. Shouldn't he be the kind of figure a PM would find inspirational? Is Sir Keir intimidated by greatness?
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"
Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2.
Would you want to see a portrait of somebody who wanted to kill you?
But wasn't that the Bard showing how essential lawyers are? He put the phrase in the mouth of an insurrectionist.
He was but he never wrote a play on the awesomeness of lawyers.
"You have not experienced Shakespeare till you have read him in the original Klingon."
I can imagine that the Klingon prison system is very big on lawyers.
total valid votes 2,037.522 (57.4% of 3,550,017 registered voters)
BC New Democratic Party (NDP) = 46 seats leading (6 too close to call) 46 908,603 44.6%
Conservative Party of BC = 45 seats leading (including 5 too close to call) 45 887,736 43.6%
BC Green Party = 2 seats leading 166,838 8.2%
Independents 40,446 2.0% Unaffiliated 24,852 1.2% Libertarian 1,337 0.07% Freedom Party of BC 1,244 0.06% Communist Party of BC 617 0.03% Christian Heritage Party of BC 361 0.02%
It's almost as if he's been reading PB about how the ECHR needs to be reformed of Europe is going to properly tackle illegal immigration and halting the wave of asylum seekers.
I don't think I've ever read a bad article by him.
Sorry guys but Shakespeare is overrated. It's a tragedy, we force schoolchildren to sit through so many of his plays. I think I was about 15 before I learnt there were other playwrights.
I don't really mind Thatcher but Shakespeare seems odd. Shouldn't he be the kind of figure a PM would find inspirational? Is Sir Keir intimidated by greatness?
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"
Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2.
Would you want to see a portrait of somebody who wanted to kill you?
But wasn't that the Bard showing how essential lawyers are? He put the phrase in the mouth of an insurrectionist.
He was but he never wrote a play on the awesomeness of lawyers.
"You have not experienced Shakespeare till you have read him in the original Klingon."
I can imagine that the Klingon prison system is very big on lawyers.
I would say Keir Starmer does appear to have more interest in the arts than most recent politicians. And FWIW the paintings he has removed are not very good ones in my inexpert opinion, leaving aside their subjects.
I don't really mind Thatcher but Shakespeare seems odd. Shouldn't he be the kind of figure a PM would find inspirational? Is Sir Keir intimidated by greatness?
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"
Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2.
Would you want to see a portrait of somebody who wanted to kill you?
But wasn't that the Bard showing how essential lawyers are? He put the phrase in the mouth of an insurrectionist.
He was but he never wrote a play on the awesomeness of lawyers.
"You have not experienced Shakespeare till you have read him in the original Klingon."
I don't really mind Thatcher but Shakespeare seems odd. Shouldn't he be the kind of figure a PM would find inspirational? Is Sir Keir intimidated by greatness?
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"
Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2.
Would you want to see a portrait of somebody who wanted to kill you?
But wasn't that the Bard showing how essential lawyers are? He put the phrase in the mouth of an insurrectionist.
He was but he never wrote a play on the awesomeness of lawyers.
"You have not experienced Shakespeare till you have read him in the original Klingon."
I can imagine that the Klingon prison system is very big on lawyers.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
The people who say we should be proud of our past positives (Shakespeare, Magna Carta, Standing alone against the Hun etc) are often the very same people who say we should not be ashamed of our past negatives (like slavery).
This doesn't quite scan for me. Because feeling the pride assumes an identification of yourself with the nation. With Britain (or Scotland in your case). But if you do have that identification how come it gets put aside for the bad stuff?
That claim seems to require a bit of exactness. Who exactly says 'we should not be ashamed of our past slavery'? I can't think of anyone, however much they like an upbeat narrative of our national history.
What people correctly do is place it in global and historical context, point out our part in overcoming it and so on. That is completely different from it not being a shaming fact about our past.
At a deeper level of course there is the question of how we now can have any sort of shameful accountability for any actions in the past not done by those now living. But that's a universal question, not just one for the mythical 'slavery didn't and doesn't matter' brigade.
Well there you're getting into "it is shaming" vs "I feel ashamed". And the same for "pride". The question at the heart of this is what it means for an individual to identify with a country. People will have their own views on it, all valid if sincere, but my point is about the mismatch.
Eg if you say "I feel proud of the good stuff but the bad stuff is shaming" - that is tilted in your own favour. You take the positives personally but shuffle the negatives off to the passive indirect. Conversely, "I feel ashamed of the bad stuff but the good stuff is admirable" - that's the opposite. It's being a bit pious and self-punishing.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
What utter and total bollocks, polish your sandals and put another lentil burger on the BBQ. It should be stopped immediately and the halfwits gibbering about it told to F*** right off
Yes, the awkward truth is much of Scotland was built on the back of slavery.
More of Scotland was in slavery , plenty sent to pick cotton etc and plenty replaced by sheep etc. You not get that in your history lessons. Only a few nabbery made teh cash. Also who sold the slaves to the English , their own people, why do they not ask them to pay the reparation.
As a matter of interest, is there a movement to pay reparations to the miners enslaved until, 1799?? in Scotland?
Interesting issue in Scotland, but it wasn't just colliers - it also included saltworkers btw. They got freed because the lairds who wanted to expand coiuldn't get any free workers to do the job because status.
Also, some argument as to whether it was true slavery, or indentured hereditary servitude by being tied to a colliery or saltworks.
It might seem academic, esp. by modern standards; and there's an old story of an early C19 laird encountering another laird's [by then free] workman who said [I translate]: "Don't you remember me? Your father swopped me for a donkey."
All the modern anti-slavery societies and organisations would categorise it as slavery. Rightly, I think.
Similar systems exist in parts of he world today….
Similar systems still exist in the UK, eg where rich people bring a maid with them who is treated as a slave, or where various types of labour are exploited.
I would say Keir Starmer does appear to have more interest in the arts than most recent politicians. And FWIW the paintings he has removed are not very good ones in my inexpert opinion, leaving aside their subjects.
He is a philistine lacking in character.. wooden. ... The only art he seems into is that Amrican singer people go mad about... it's a form of hysteria alin to the Beatles in he 60s.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
What utter and total bollocks, polish your sandals and put another lentil burger on the BBQ. It should be stopped immediately and the halfwits gibbering about it told to F*** right off
Yes, the awkward truth is much of Scotland was built on the back of slavery.
More of Scotland was in slavery , plenty sent to pick cotton etc and plenty replaced by sheep etc. You not get that in your history lessons. Only a few nabbery made teh cash. Also who sold the slaves to the English , their own people, why do they not ask them to pay the reparation.
As a matter of interest, is there a movement to pay reparations to the miners enslaved until, 1799?? in Scotland?
Interesting issue in Scotland, but it wasn't just colliers - it also included saltworkers btw. They got freed because the lairds who wanted to expand coiuldn't get any free workers to do the job because status.
Also, some argument as to whether it was true slavery, or indentured hereditary servitude by being tied to a colliery or saltworks.
It might seem academic, esp. by modern standards; and there's an old story of an early C19 laird encountering another laird's [by then free] workman who said [I translate]: "Don't you remember me? Your father swopped me for a donkey."
All the modern anti-slavery societies and organisations would categorise it as slavery. Rightly, I think.
Similar systems exist in parts of he world today….
Similar systems still exist in the UK, eg where rich people bring a maid with them who is treated as a slave, or where various types of labour are exploited.
That's why we have laws about it.
Indeed.
Though it took breaching the “cultural sensitivity” guidelines to start prosecuting such.
MLAs elected in BC (source wiki) GE 2020 > GE 2024
Total 87 > 93 (+6) BC NDP 57 > 46 (-11) BC Liberals 28 > 0 (-28) Conservatives 0 > 45 (+45) BC Greens 2 > 2 (nc)
SSI - Due in part to low polling numbers, apparently exacerbated by unpopulatity out West of Canadian federal Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the BC Liberals withdrew from the election campaign in August, and the once-moribund Conservatives of BC took Libs place as the "party of free enterprise" versus the (once) socialist and (still somewhat) labour NDP.
Further note that IF the NDP manages to hang on in the 6 ridings where their candidates are narrowly ahead right now, then they will likely lead a new minority provincial government with support of Greens.
IF so, then this will be FIRST time that NDP has won (sorta) three BC provincial elections in a row.
I learn a lot from reading PB, but I confess I'm astonished to read that Starmer feels threatened by Shakespeare. Surely he must know that he's dead?
Modern culture involves time compression to the extreme (see Rings of Power, where events in the source take 1000 years. In the series they take an afternoon)
Starmer is probably under the impression that Shakespeare was the last Poet Laureate.
He should consult his Foreign Secretary, he would know
His Foreign Secretary probably thinks a "shakespeare" is a dergatory term for a Zulu...
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
The people who say we should be proud of our past positives (Shakespeare, Magna Carta, Standing alone against the Hun etc) are often the very same people who say we should not be ashamed of our past negatives (like slavery).
This doesn't quite scan for me. Because feeling the pride assumes an identification of yourself with the nation. With Britain (or Scotland in your case). But if you do have that identification how come it gets put aside for the bad stuff?
That claim seems to require a bit of exactness. Who exactly says 'we should not be ashamed of our past slavery'? I can't think of anyone, however much they like an upbeat narrative of our national history.
What people correctly do is place it in global and historical context, point out our part in overcoming it and so on. That is completely different from it not being a shaming fact about our past.
At a deeper level of course there is the question of how we now can have any sort of shameful accountability for any actions in the past not done by those now living. But that's a universal question, not just one for the mythical 'slavery didn't and doesn't matter' brigade.
Someone on this thread has literally said we (the UK) shouldn’t feel sorry for slavery.
Have to admit it was shocking to see that here.
It's a morality from the dark ages. It's expected in criminal gang circles of various stripes, but not put forward in public as acceptable.
As a philosophy it doesn't stand up so well if you are on the receiving end. And a philosophy that only works for one group does not stand.
I learn a lot from reading PB, but I confess I'm astonished to read that Starmer feels threatened by Shakespeare. Surely he must know that he's dead?
Modern culture involves time compression to the extreme (see Rings of Power, where events in the source take 1000 years. In the series they take an afternoon)
Starmer is probably under the impression that Shakespeare was the last Poet Laureate.
He should consult his Foreign Secretary, he would know
His Foreign Secretary probably thinks a "shakespeare" is a dergatory term for a Zulu...
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
The people who say we should be proud of our past positives (Shakespeare, Magna Carta, Standing alone against the Hun etc) are often the very same people who say we should not be ashamed of our past negatives (like slavery).
This doesn't quite scan for me. Because feeling the pride assumes an identification of yourself with the nation. With Britain (or Scotland in your case). But if you do have that identification how come it gets put aside for the bad stuff?
That claim seems to require a bit of exactness. Who exactly says 'we should not be ashamed of our past slavery'? I can't think of anyone, however much they like an upbeat narrative of our national history.
What people correctly do is place it in global and historical context, point out our part in overcoming it and so on. That is completely different from it not being a shaming fact about our past.
At a deeper level of course there is the question of how we now can have any sort of shameful accountability for any actions in the past not done by those now living. But that's a universal question, not just one for the mythical 'slavery didn't and doesn't matter' brigade.
Someone on this thread has literally said we (the UK) shouldn’t feel sorry for slavery.
Have to admit it was shocking to see that here.
It's a morality from the dark ages. It's expected in criminal gang circles of various stripes, but not put forward in public as acceptable.
As a philosophy it doesn't stand up so well if you are on the receiving end. And a philosophy that only works for one group does not stand.
Since low wage immigration is awesome, I advocate zero wage involuntary migration.
I learn a lot from reading PB, but I confess I'm astonished to read that Starmer feels threatened by Shakespeare. Surely he must know that he's dead?
Modern culture involves time compression to the extreme (see Rings of Power, where events in the source take 1000 years. In the series they take an afternoon)
Starmer is probably under the impression that Shakespeare was the last Poet Laureate.
He should consult his Foreign Secretary, he would know
His Foreign Secretary probably thinks a "shakespeare" is a dergatory term for a Zulu...
A hit, a very palpable hit.
"We gave Johnny Shakespeare a damn good thrashing at Rorke's Drift and no mistake!"
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
The people who say we should be proud of our past positives (Shakespeare, Magna Carta, Standing alone against the Hun etc) are often the very same people who say we should not be ashamed of our past negatives (like slavery).
This doesn't quite scan for me. Because feeling the pride assumes an identification of yourself with the nation. With Britain (or Scotland in your case). But if you do have that identification how come it gets put aside for the bad stuff?
That claim seems to require a bit of exactness. Who exactly says 'we should not be ashamed of our past slavery'? I can't think of anyone, however much they like an upbeat narrative of our national history.
What people correctly do is place it in global and historical context, point out our part in overcoming it and so on. That is completely different from it not being a shaming fact about our past.
At a deeper level of course there is the question of how we now can have any sort of shameful accountability for any actions in the past not done by those now living. But that's a universal question, not just one for the mythical 'slavery didn't and doesn't matter' brigade.
Someone on this thread has literally said we (the UK) shouldn’t feel sorry for slavery.
Alga was trying to get some names. Not falling for that!
I would say Keir Starmer does appear to have more interest in the arts than most recent politicians. And FWIW the paintings he has removed are not very good ones in my inexpert opinion, leaving aside their subjects.
He is a philistine lacking in character.. wooden. ... The only art he seems into is that Amrican singer people go mad about... it's a form of hysteria alin to the Beatles in he 60s.
The funny thing about this painting is that it is a copy made by a sculptor of another more famous painting - he was working on a Shakespeare sculpture at the time - but he didn't know how to paint.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
The people who say we should be proud of our past positives (Shakespeare, Magna Carta, Standing alone against the Hun etc) are often the very same people who say we should not be ashamed of our past negatives (like slavery).
This doesn't quite scan for me. Because feeling the pride assumes an identification of yourself with the nation. With Britain (or Scotland in your case). But if you do have that identification how come it gets put aside for the bad stuff?
That claim seems to require a bit of exactness. Who exactly says 'we should not be ashamed of our past slavery'? I can't think of anyone, however much they like an upbeat narrative of our national history.
What people correctly do is place it in global and historical context, point out our part in overcoming it and so on. That is completely different from it not being a shaming fact about our past.
At a deeper level of course there is the question of how we now can have any sort of shameful accountability for any actions in the past not done by those now living. But that's a universal question, not just one for the mythical 'slavery didn't and doesn't matter' brigade.
Someone on this thread has literally said we (the UK) shouldn’t feel sorry for slavery.
Have to admit it was shocking to see that here.
It's a morality from the dark ages. It's expected in criminal gang circles of various stripes, but not put forward in public as acceptable.
As a philosophy it doesn't stand up so well if you are on the receiving end. And a philosophy that only works for one group does not stand.
Since low wage immigration is awesome, I advocate zero wage involuntary migration.
What? Is it something I said?
[grabbing Malmesbury by the balls] Those LibDems you sold me. They won't mate. They just walk around all day Tweeting, and not mating. You sold me... queer LibDems. I want my money back!
I learn a lot from reading PB, but I confess I'm astonished to read that Starmer feels threatened by Shakespeare. Surely he must know that he's dead?
Modern culture involves time compression to the extreme (see Rings of Power, where events in the source take 1000 years. In the series they take an afternoon)
Starmer is probably under the impression that Shakespeare was the last Poet Laureate.
He should consult his Foreign Secretary, he would know
His Foreign Secretary probably thinks a "shakespeare" is a dergatory term for a Zulu...
A hit, a very palpable hit.
"We gave Johnny Shakespeare a damn good thrashing at Rorke's Drift and no mistake!"
Question - is stabbing playwrights in pubs in Deptford part of British culture?
I would say Keir Starmer does appear to have more interest in the arts than most recent politicians. And FWIW the paintings he has removed are not very good ones in my inexpert opinion, leaving aside their subjects.
He is a philistine lacking in character.. wooden. ... The only art he seems into is that Amrican singer people go mad about... it's a form of hysteria alin to the Beatles in he 60s.
The funny thing about this painting is that it is a copy made by a sculptor of another more famous painting - he was working on a Shakespeare sculpture at the time - but he didn't know how to paint.
I think Starmer will turn out like Gordon Brown. God help us all.
I learn a lot from reading PB, but I confess I'm astonished to read that Starmer feels threatened by Shakespeare. Surely he must know that he's dead?
Modern culture involves time compression to the extreme (see Rings of Power, where events in the source take 1000 years. In the series they take an afternoon)
Starmer is probably under the impression that Shakespeare was the last Poet Laureate.
He should consult his Foreign Secretary, he would know
His Foreign Secretary probably thinks a "shakespeare" is a dergatory term for a Zulu...
A hit, a very palpable hit.
"We gave Johnny Shakespeare a damn good thrashing at Rorke's Drift and no mistake!"
Question - is stabbing playwrights in pubs in Deptford part of British culture?
I would say Keir Starmer does appear to have more interest in the arts than most recent politicians. And FWIW the paintings he has removed are not very good ones in my inexpert opinion, leaving aside their subjects.
He is a philistine lacking in character.. wooden. ... The only art he seems into is that Amrican singer people go mad about... it's a form of hysteria alin to the Beatles in he 60s.
The funny thing about this painting is that it is a copy made by a sculptor of another more famous painting - he was working on a Shakespeare sculpture at the time - but he didn't know how to paint.
He will be hanging pictures of Arsene Wenger and Denis Bergkamp soon....
I don't think it's a good idea to put everything online. I'd be happier if my medical records stayed on a paper record in a filing cabinet in the local GP surgery.
All your personal information is already online.
Or not. When my father was in hospital, recently, they tried hiding the bloodwork - it wasn’t entered into the system. Then the family couldn’t see it - patient confidentiality. Despite the patient actually asking for the data….
When they finally gave it to us - even I could see issues. Classic dehydration, for a start.
Well I nearly came a cropper with the paperwork being both online and on paper. I reported it here at the time. It was this year that I had a really minor op (local anaesthetic, takes 5 min) for trigger finger. So they wheeled in the computer and paper file and confirmed my name and date of birth. All confirmed ok. Then mentioned I was allergic to penicillin to which I said no. They then said according to the notes I had a severe reaction when I had pancreatitis to which I said I have never had that. At which point I got up to look at the notes. The computer records were me, but the notes were for someone else with the same name, but a completely different date of birth. They had confirm stuff on the computer and then referred to the paper notes.
I joked about the fact that it was a good job I was going to be awake as I didn't want to lose a leg. My name and date of birth were confirmed endlessly after that as per normal, but we managed to pass that test previously by using two sets of records that weren't the same.
Which is precisely why we do the checks on identity so repetitively, recognising that errors will creep in, and computer systems are just as prone to these.
Not totally convinced. No matter how many times they did the check it will agree with the computer system because it was correct, but if I hadn't picked up on the incorrect allergy (and that only happened by chance; if the other kjh had not been allergic to penicillin it would not have been picked up) then the wrong paperwork would have accompanied me. If the paperwork was never accessed it would not matter, but it was and might have been later to my detriment. Only if they checked the DOB on both systems each time would it have been picked up. Do they do that? They obviously didn't the first time.
So repeatedly asking the name and DOB won't work if you have two differing systems and one is wrong and you don't check them both, which they didn't do the first time.
It was obviously worrying to have the notes of a complete stranger mixed up with mine.
My wife, who like you, is a Doctor was quite surprised it happened.
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
It insults our intelligence to think that we should believe that.
You don't either.
TSE is right on this.
This is just flapping by the unhinged, because they have nothing sensible to say. They have reached the base of the stack of barrels.
I suspect this is mostly a non-story; No 10 is putting up different pictures from its enormous collection, and Starmer doesn't like working in rooms full of portraits. Which is fair enough.
But, if the plan was to inject this story into the national bloodstream to a) make the right froth and look like nutters and b) distract people from actual stuff going on, then job done.
I think it's rope-a-dope. The TeleSunMailExGuidoSpeccy monster is punching itself out and there'll be nothing left for the budget.
With respect to yesterday's very close result in Beautiful British Columbia (and also the ugly bits) note that
> polling showed the race was very tight, with slight but (so it seems) significant gains by NDP in last week or so.
> BC Liberals, who ruled the province from 1997 to 2017 and despite their name were more conservative than liberal (in 21st-century terms) were replaced this year by Conservative Party of BC, with more hard-right platform AND leader.
> aside from the election, the BIG news in British Columbia was the atmospheric river (aka "pineapple express" from Hawaii) that deluged much of the province, in particular Vancouver Island and Lower Mainland; which likely depressed voter turnout somewhat.
> my quasi-educated guess, is that the advers weather MAY (emphasis on conditional) impacted Conservative voters bit more than Dippers or Greenies, who MAY (ditto) have been more likely to have early voted (over 1m a provincial record) before yesterday.
> looks to me that the rise of Conservatives to near-parity with NDP, in the process running the BC Liberals out of contention, is a boost for federal Conservative LOLO Pierre Poilievre, and yet another nail in the political coffin of Liberal PM Justin Trudeau.
> FYI (also BTW) note that Poilievre is pronounced "PAW-lee-EV" by anglophone Canucks.
Glad to see that Labour are shutting down the whole slavery apology business. It will irk a lot of their support base but fundamentally we shouldn't be sorry for it, no one who is alive today perpetrated slavery and I think apologising for it opens the door to reparations which is obviously a non-starter. If that means more Caribbean countries leave the commonwealth then so be it, let them throw their lot in with China and suffer the fate of Sri Lanka.
Apologising for slavery is quite good for the UK because it highlights just how much better we were at abolishing it. If Labour put up a statue of Wilberforce on the 4th plinth at the same time it would be quite the PR coup. Or even a HMS Wilberforce given the role the RN played .
Could even link it to other historical "wins" like Magna Carta to really wind up people on facebook.
No it isn't because the logical course is "well you say you're sorry but words are empty" to which the government will either have to say "words aren't empty" and struggle to justify not having a reparations programme for the Caribbean and some African countries or they'll have to go into a reparations programme willingly.
We have nothing to apologise for, all great nations and empires were built on the back of slavery of some kind. Subjugation of the "lesser" still occurs today, where is the outcry about indentured servitude and slavery across the middle east of South Asians and black Africans?
Fundamentally we don't open the door to these conversations and for once Labour seem to have a bit of a backbone on it. Next stop let's cut the aid budget to 0.2% of GDP and reserve it for disaster relief, it's time for us to look after our own.
One of the strengths of the UK is that we can look back at the past and reflect that some of the things we did as a nation was pretty awful. It helps us avoid the sense of entitlement that pervades Putin's Russia, for example, while allowing us to celebrate our abolition of slave the trade. You can't pick and choose.
Indeed, that same reflection is why we can look at the what is happening to people in Africa and South Asia now and say - "hey, that's shitty behaviour!" without looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
This link you keep making to reperations is baseless. Sturgeon issues an apology to witches a few years ago, and it brought out attention to some of the awful things that happen to women now and in the past, for zero cost.
How many museums of and monuments to the victims of the slave trade are there, just to compliment us celebrating ‘our abolition of the slave trade’?
As an inhabitant of Edinburgh I imagine you’re aware of the stushie in St Andrew Square re attempts to put up a plaque referencing Lord Dundas’s less than glorious part in the end of slavery. It keeps getting knocked back & removed by his descendants who hate nasty things being said about their ancestor, not exactly lacking in entitled whitewashing.
The people who say we should be proud of our past positives (Shakespeare, Magna Carta, Standing alone against the Hun etc) are often the very same people who say we should not be ashamed of our past negatives (like slavery).
This doesn't quite scan for me. Because feeling the pride assumes an identification of yourself with the nation. With Britain (or Scotland in your case). But if you do have that identification how come it gets put aside for the bad stuff?
That claim seems to require a bit of exactness. Who exactly says 'we should not be ashamed of our past slavery'? I can't think of anyone, however much they like an upbeat narrative of our national history.
What people correctly do is place it in global and historical context, point out our part in overcoming it and so on. That is completely different from it not being a shaming fact about our past.
At a deeper level of course there is the question of how we now can have any sort of shameful accountability for any actions in the past not done by those now living. But that's a universal question, not just one for the mythical 'slavery didn't and doesn't matter' brigade.
Someone on this thread has literally said we (the UK) shouldn’t feel sorry for slavery.
Have to admit it was shocking to see that here.
It's a morality from the dark ages. It's expected in criminal gang circles of various stripes, but not put forward in public as acceptable.
As a philosophy it doesn't stand up so well if you are on the receiving end. And a philosophy that only works for one group does not stand.
Since low wage immigration is awesome, I advocate zero wage involuntary migration.
What? Is it something I said?
Your turn to clean out the troll litter tray.
(Come to think of it, do any of us know how to housetrain a Russian troll?)
You're all reading too much in to the Telegraph bullshit.
Every time we have a change of PM/government the Downing Street pictures get changed, it is down to personal preference, Starmer isn't the first PM to do this.
IIRC Thatcher took down a portrait of Attlee.
One portrait might be regarded as a misfortune, two looks like carelessness, three or four?
Looks like the man has a real problem with our history.
After thirteen years of a Labour government Dave removed more, this is just that.
Shakespeare is a weird one to get rid of though, he's consistently ranked as one of the truly great Britons alongside Newton, Churchill etc... and he hasn't exactly got anything political about him. Starmer just seems to be intimidated by greatness, whether that's Churchill, Maggie or now Bill.
It speaks to a personality type that is inherently insecure and unable to stand being questioned or compared negatively with people who achieved stuff other than letting Mohammed Al Fayed off the hook. It also aligns very closely with what Rosie Duffield said about his personality and being unable to stand anyone who disagreed with him. Here are three Britons who will be held in the pantheon of greatness and that clearly makes him feel small so removing them and replacing them with nonsense modern art does show lack of character.
But Downing Street said the changes to the display were “long planned, since before the election, and timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection”.
These specific artworks? Of these three people who clearly intimidate the PM whenever he sees them?
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
To be fair, he voted Tory.
He just hates the Tory Right and gets a kick out of manipulating them, which also contributes to reinforcing his sense of intellectual superiority.
Fiscally I am of the Tory right.
It's the cultural right I am annoyed at.
The cultural right has been ahead of the game on legal and illegal immigration, wokeism and the erosion of women's rights. It was the liberal wing of the party that tolerated these for far too long from 2015 and allowed the overton window to move too far to the left until we had women having to put up with blokes in dresses in their spaces, children being pumped full of drugs because a teacher saw them play with the "wrong" toys.
It was your part of the party that abandoned our values and allowed the left to move what "normal" people would put up with, its only now shifting back because people like Kemi and, yes, Robert Jenrick stood up for our values of upholding women's rights and spaces, making sure kids aren't abused by drug pushing doctors and pharmaceutical companies and the conversation about immigration is being had both about legal and illegal immigrants.
The liberal wing of the Tory party had control of the party from 2010 - 2022 with a bout of socialism from Theresa May in between. In that time traditional values were laughed at and thousands of kids were mutilated by the Tavistock clinic and others. It's not a record to be proud of IMO.
This was discussed when Suella Braverman discussed childhood surgery at NatCon. IIRC the number of children who have had genital surgery in the UK is zero, and is IIRC illegal. As for puberty-blockers/cross-gender hormones I think that did happen (but not thousands) for the <16s, and I can't speak to mastectomies, especially WRT private clinics or abroad.
When the Cass report came out some datasets were released. It'll take me several days to dig it out, and I'm fully booked until Nov 5th. I'm committed to a syntactic analysis of the Cass Report by EOY, so would you like me to dig out the figures for UK vs US to accompany it? The contrast is surprising.
Comments
The revolutionaries always complain that The People strangely dislike all the Necessary Evils the revs need to commit to achieve Paradise On Earth…
Also, some argument as to whether it was true slavery, or indentured hereditary servitude by being tied to a colliery or saltworks.
It might seem academic, esp. by modern standards; and there's an old story of an early C19 laird encountering another laird's [by then free] workman who said [I translate]: "Don't you remember me? Your father swopped me for a donkey."
Haven't encountered any reparations movement.
*goes off to check family tree*
https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/our-legal-heritage-when-scots-had-to-earn-their-salt
They should be giving arms to Israel in reparations rather than making them pay for them.
Similar systems exist in parts of he world today….
What's going on here is your tic to oppose anything the Tory Right says and does from a PoV of personal political triangulation, and intellectual snobbery.
It leads you to align yourself with Labour as you'd far rather do that than ever side with them.
You don't either.
It started off by the Romans against early christians
Oh, and the Lancashire cotton towns.
People like you are clinging onto this in hope that the next 5 years won't be terrible because you abandoned the party and now you have to live with the outcome. While I was out there canvassing and campaigning in hostile London seats getting doors slammed on me you were sitting luxuriating about how Labour won't be so bad and now you've realised it's worse than even you could have thought.
Or, as I like to say - “To achieve a perfect world, sacrifices will need to be made. Great news - you are high on The List.”
I've said Ed Miliband screwed up when he was at DECC under Brown and nothing has changed on that front.
Labour's plan for the railways would be a fiasco.
The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money.
I still voted Tory in July and was planning on campaigning for a couple of Tory candidates but surgery put the kibosh on that.
What you don’t know, didn’t happen.
This doesn't quite scan for me. Because feeling the pride assumes an identification of yourself with the nation. With Britain (or Scotland in your case). But if you do have that identification how come it gets put aside for the bad stuff?
He just hates the Tory Right and gets a kick out of manipulating them, which also contributes to reinforcing his sense of intellectual superiority.
(Yes)
It's the cultural right I am annoyed at.
Churchill, greatest evah Briton to be commemorated and venerated NOW!
Also
Look, Churchill may have been a racist, white supremacist and imperialist but he was a man of his time not to be judged by modern day standards.
It was your part of the party that abandoned our values and allowed the left to move what "normal" people would put up with, its only now shifting back because people like Kemi and, yes, Robert Jenrick stood up for our values of upholding women's rights and spaces, making sure kids aren't abused by drug pushing doctors and pharmaceutical companies and the conversation about immigration is being had both about legal and illegal immigrants.
The liberal wing of the Tory party had control of the party from 2010 - 2022 with a bout of socialism from Theresa May in between. In that time traditional values were laughed at and thousands of kids were mutilated by the Tavistock clinic and others. It's not a record to be proud of IMO.
This is just flapping by the unhinged, because they have nothing sensible to say. They have reached the base of the stack of barrels.
"..and so to the Crown in the Palace Yard, I and George Vines by the way calling at their house, where he carried me up to the top of his turret, where there is Cooke’s head set up for a traytor, and Harrison’s set up on the other side of Westminster Hall. Here I could see them plainly, as also a very fair prospect about London."
I have no illusions that Scotland is not just as crappy nowadays , whole UK is infected with these parasites.
Nice angle on the Exploding Pagers - The value of supply chain security.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bvvo46jYFU
Starmer is probably under the impression that Shakespeare was the last Poet Laureate.
What people correctly do is place it in global and historical context, point out our part in overcoming it and so on. That is completely different from it not being a shaming fact about our past.
At a deeper level of course there is the question of how we now can have any sort of shameful accountability for any actions in the past not done by those now living. But that's a universal question, not just one for the mythical 'slavery didn't and doesn't matter' brigade.
- sign at Agra station, India.
1. He feels intimidated by the awesomeness of the bard.
2. It's a gesture of sneery contempt for traditional values.
I'm very much hoping it's number 2.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/8cae5928-d47e-4cdf-9584-6487a308c042?shareToken=e7a065da9a3901ca7c640b3bf8e23f7e
It's almost as if he's been reading PB about how the ECHR needs to be reformed of Europe is going to properly tackle illegal immigration and halting the wave of asylum seekers.
But, if the plan was to inject this story into the national bloodstream to a) make the right froth and look like nutters and b) distract people from actual stuff going on, then job done.
total valid votes 2,037.522 (57.4% of 3,550,017 registered voters)
BC New Democratic Party (NDP) = 46 seats leading (6 too close to call)
46 908,603 44.6%
Conservative Party of BC = 45 seats leading (including 5 too close to call)
45 887,736 43.6%
BC Green Party = 2 seats leading
166,838 8.2%
Independents
40,446 2.0%
Unaffiliated
24,852 1.2%
Libertarian
1,337 0.07%
Freedom Party of BC
1,244 0.06%
Communist Party of BC
617 0.03%
Christian Heritage Party of BC
361 0.02%
https://elections.bc.ca/
A liberal who gets it.
I’d put it slightly below Donkeygate although fractionally above CURRYGATE.
https://youtu.be/fg58hVEY5Og?si=lvmZhL1OvXaTdO1O
Never was so much scenery chewed, so well. A dish for princes, I deem it…
Eg if you say "I feel proud of the good stuff but the bad stuff is shaming" - that is tilted in your own favour. You take the positives personally but shuffle the negatives off to the passive indirect. Conversely, "I feel ashamed of the bad stuff but the good stuff is admirable" - that's the opposite. It's being a bit pious and self-punishing.
That's why we have laws about it.
The only art he seems into is that Amrican singer people go mad about... it's a form of hysteria alin to the Beatles in he 60s.
Though it took breaching the “cultural sensitivity” guidelines to start prosecuting such.
GE 2020 > GE 2024
Total 87 > 93 (+6)
BC NDP 57 > 46 (-11)
BC Liberals 28 > 0 (-28)
Conservatives 0 > 45 (+45)
BC Greens 2 > 2 (nc)
SSI - Due in part to low polling numbers, apparently exacerbated by unpopulatity out West of Canadian federal Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the BC Liberals withdrew from the election campaign in August, and the once-moribund Conservatives of BC took Libs place as the "party of free enterprise" versus the (once) socialist and (still somewhat) labour NDP.
Further note that IF the NDP manages to hang on in the 6 ridings where their candidates are narrowly ahead right now, then they will likely lead a new minority provincial government with support of Greens.
IF so, then this will be FIRST time that NDP has won (sorta) three BC provincial elections in a row.
It's a morality from the dark ages. It's expected in criminal gang circles of various stripes, but not put forward in public as acceptable.
As a philosophy it doesn't stand up so well if you are on the receiving end. And a philosophy that only works for one group does not stand.
What? Is it something I said?
Those LibDems you sold me. They won't mate. They just walk around all day Tweeting, and not mating. You sold me... queer LibDems. I want my money back!
So repeatedly asking the name and DOB won't work if you have two differing systems and one is wrong and you don't check them both, which they didn't do the first time.
It was obviously worrying to have the notes of a complete stranger mixed up with mine.
My wife, who like you, is a Doctor was quite surprised it happened.
> polling showed the race was very tight, with slight but (so it seems) significant gains by NDP in last week or so.
> BC Liberals, who ruled the province from 1997 to 2017 and despite their name were more conservative than liberal (in 21st-century terms) were replaced this year by Conservative Party of BC, with more hard-right platform AND leader.
> aside from the election, the BIG news in British Columbia was the atmospheric river (aka "pineapple express" from Hawaii) that deluged much of the province, in particular Vancouver Island and Lower Mainland; which likely depressed voter turnout somewhat.
> my quasi-educated guess, is that the advers weather MAY (emphasis on conditional) impacted Conservative voters bit more than Dippers or Greenies, who MAY (ditto) have been more likely to have early voted (over 1m a provincial record) before yesterday.
> looks to me that the rise of Conservatives to near-parity with NDP, in the process running the BC Liberals out of contention, is a boost for federal Conservative LOLO Pierre Poilievre, and yet another nail in the political coffin of Liberal PM Justin Trudeau.
> FYI (also BTW) note that Poilievre is pronounced "PAW-lee-EV" by anglophone Canucks.
If you don't have a picture of Shakespeare in your sitting room does it mean you hate Britain? I better find one double quick.
(Come to think of it, do any of us know how to housetrain a Russian troll?)
When the Cass report came out some datasets were released. It'll take me several days to dig it out, and I'm fully booked until Nov 5th. I'm committed to a syntactic analysis of the Cass Report by EOY, so would you like me to dig out the figures for UK vs US to accompany it? The contrast is surprising.