What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
“How many living direct descendants does Rollo of Normandy have, living today?”
Answer:
“It’s impossible to be exact, but a reasonable estimate would place Rollo of Normandy’s living direct descendants at tens of thousands—possibly more.
Reasoning: • Rollo (c. 860–930 CE) lived around 1,100 years ago, which translates roughly to 35 generations. • Noble families like Rollo’s tended to have well-documented lineages through European royalty and aristocracy, who historically had numerous offspring. • Royal and noble descendants spread widely over Europe through marriage and reproduction.
Known facts: • William the Conqueror was Rollo’s great-great-great-grandson, and through William, Rollo’s descendants multiplied exponentially among European nobility. • Royal genealogists have identified thousands of documented direct descendants today—most European monarchs and aristocratic families trace ancestry to Rollo.
Given exponential growth, intermarriage, and known historical documentation, it’s very plausible that tens of thousands (possibly even hundreds of thousands) alive today could claim direct descent.
However, provable, documented direct descent is limited mainly to aristocratic or royal lineages, probably numbering in the thousands to tens of thousands at most.”
Showing the ignorance and bullshit of AI there.
Rollo of Normandy would have hundreds of millions of direct descendants today.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
No, I’m talking about direct descendants
The claim you’re referencing relates to genealogical ancestors, not necessarily genetic ones
You're really not understanding this, are you?
Everyone in Europe today is likely a genealogical descendant of Rollo of Normandy (assuming he has living descendants, which he certainly does), but they are definitely not all direct descendants.
The distinction:
Genealogical descendant means you appear somewhere, anywhere, in their family tree. After roughly a thousand years, someone like Rollo would statistically become a common genealogical ancestor to almost everyone with European roots
Direct descendant suggests a clear, direct lineage (father to son or daughter, continuously down generations). Only a tiny subset of people today can demonstrate or trace that explicitly direct lineage back to Rollo. Someone like, say, me
In short, nearly everyone in Europe today is a genealogical descendant of Rollo, but only certain noble, gifted, virile, handsome witty, popular and clearly aristocratic individuals who have friends (ie the opposite of you) can claim the more prestigious-sounding direct descent often through documented noble line
You're just wrong. We are all direct (genetic) descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants, which is likely).
Sorry if this fact punctures the only thing you thought you had going for you.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
Doesn't matter. Science and maths say you are wrong. All Europeans have the exact same genetic ancestors 1,000 years ago. There are loads of articles on the internet explaining this, even in terms simple enough for a dimwit like you to understand.
I am going to stick my neck out and say that he will honour his pledge. I don't like Starmer or his politics but I think he has a brain and he also has a moral code. I am going to do something very rare and trust him to be doing the right thing for the right reasons.
Of course on all other matters my normal cynicism is maintained but in this instance I think he is genuine.
I disagree, I’m the other way. There is absolutely no way Putin will agree to allow what’s left of Ukraine to join NATO, will never sign anything allowing that, so Starmer and Europe are locked on course to selling out Ukraine. Wave after wave of talks will fall on the question of NATO membership until Starmer and Europe will insist Ukraine cuts a deal that will never be justified or fair, in order to make the war stop.
There is no “win win” or lasting peace option from where it is now, so all hugs in Downing Street and elsewhere in Europe have to be seen as ultimately leading to that betrayal and an unfair deal for Ukraine forced on them. that in itself will set the precedent sovereign borders can be redrawn, that will be music to the Kremlin’s ears.
Not at all. Russia is already struggling - why do you think they are relying on North Korea to provide cannon fodder? What is important is to do what Ukraine wants and keep them in the game. Make sure they can continue to fight this war and force Russia into concessions. It doesn't ned Putin to agree to Ukraine joining NATO, not at the moment. That can come later. What it needs is for NATO minus the USA to give Ukraine they need to carry on the fight.
What weapons would those be, from our run-down stocks? We can give Ukraine money to buy American arms, but those sales would need American government approval – and to be in time for use, would need to come from US Army stocks. Arms manufacturing pipelines are long and slow. Taiwan is currently taking delivery of weapons it bought during the first Trump presidency.
Russia is slowly winning on the battlefield, despite its huge death tolls, or at least is not losing. The Russian economy has not collapsed, despite sanctions, and as soon as peace breaks out and sanctions are lifted, Russia can rebuild its treasury by resuming exports of its dig-and-sell commodities, including gas and oil.
So what Ukraine needs is America back in the game, at least as backstop. With American support, Russia cannot win. Without it (and even with it under Trump) the best Ukraine can hope for is not to give too much away in any ceasefire agreement or peace deal.
So in the short term, America needs Starmer and Lammy and Mandelson, and also Healey through Nato, to patch things up with the White House, at least to get things back to where they were before Vance and Zelensky started arguing.
Looking at maps of the front line now, and the front line on 2nd March 2024, the changes are miniscule, at a cost of about 300,000 Russian casualties. I don't think Russia is winning on the battlefield at all.
An interesting question (if grim). Did the allies win the battle of the Somme? Arguably minuscule changes to the front, but, it forced the Germans to create the Hindenburg line, to retreat giving up land to straighten the line. They were seriously reduced and concerned by ‘Somme fighting.’ In this context both Ukraine and Russia have similar issues. Casualtiesvthat can’t be replaced, economies in the toilet, massive war weariness.
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
“How many living direct descendants does Rollo of Normandy have, living today?”
Answer:
“It’s impossible to be exact, but a reasonable estimate would place Rollo of Normandy’s living direct descendants at tens of thousands—possibly more.
Reasoning: • Rollo (c. 860–930 CE) lived around 1,100 years ago, which translates roughly to 35 generations. • Noble families like Rollo’s tended to have well-documented lineages through European royalty and aristocracy, who historically had numerous offspring. • Royal and noble descendants spread widely over Europe through marriage and reproduction.
Known facts: • William the Conqueror was Rollo’s great-great-great-grandson, and through William, Rollo’s descendants multiplied exponentially among European nobility. • Royal genealogists have identified thousands of documented direct descendants today—most European monarchs and aristocratic families trace ancestry to Rollo.
Given exponential growth, intermarriage, and known historical documentation, it’s very plausible that tens of thousands (possibly even hundreds of thousands) alive today could claim direct descent.
However, provable, documented direct descent is limited mainly to aristocratic or royal lineages, probably numbering in the thousands to tens of thousands at most.”
That's a complete fail, and all you've demonstrated is the pitfalls of relying on AI for something that is complicated.
The number of generations is underestimated because it's used the current average maternal age at childbirth of just over 30, and applied it through history, which is obvious nonsense - and a figure in the mid-20s makes an absolutely huge difference. And after that it's failed to do any meaningful maths at all. You should stop relying on a search engine to think about stuff.
Trump's desire to become the new Gandhi notwithstanding, he and his people, in their desperate quest to achieve "peace" for their master's self promotion, have forgotten one key point. The current situation works well for a lot of vested interests.
Not, obviously, for the Russians, Ukrainians and North Koreans doing the fighting and dying and not for the civilians displaced but beyond them - both the leaderships in Moscow and Kyiv are empowered by the fighting. Neither faces serious opposition and both Putin and Zelensky, in their own very different ways, are portrayed as heroes to their people.
The other group doing well out of this is or are arms manufacturers - their products are now in demand and with increased defence spending across much of the western world (offsetting planned redictions in America) that means more orders, more work and more profit. More orders means employing more people which boosts regional and national economies at a time of weak growth.
A contained stalemated conflict therefore suits a lot of players and "changing" that creates new uncertainty and potential instability. Keeping Putin tied up in the Donetsk means he can't do much elsewhere. Even trying to pry him from Xi is a poor move in some respects - Xi's own armaments industry and that in North Korea are being kept busy by Russian orders for artillery and ammunition.
From memory, I recall the Iran-Iraq War being a similar situation with plenty of players providing plenty of arms to both sides to enable huge offensives which achieved nothing but leaving tens of thousands dead.
So, I'm back to where I was yesterday morning - what does a "peace" deal look like and who actually wants Brazilian, Nigerian or Indian troops patrolling the ruins of Mariupol ? Short answer, and I recognise this will be a deeply cynical viewpoint, no one. Keeping the current conflict going at the current level works well for some important players and the actions of the last few days seem predicated on keeping that conflict going as neither Putin nor Zelensky would survive a "peace" even on current terms.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
A Wykehamist writes, are you sure you are using “Wykehamist Fallacy” in the correct context? It means the wrongheadedness where you think everyone really has the same views and attitudes and you are all educated the same way thus missing the reality of other people’s attitudes.
Would be like assuming that Trump’s bizarre behaviour re Ukraine was a cover and behind the scenes he thinks about things the same way we do when in fact he really doesn’t so we have to deal with the real person not the wrongly analysed person.
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
We can all trace our ancestry back to an amoeba called Kevin.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
No, I’m talking about direct descendants
The claim you’re referencing relates to genealogical ancestors, not necessarily genetic ones
You're really not understanding this, are you?
Everyone in Europe today is likely a genealogical descendant of Rollo of Normandy (assuming he has living descendants, which he certainly does), but they are definitely not all direct descendants.
The distinction:
Genealogical descendant means you appear somewhere, anywhere, in their family tree. After roughly a thousand years, someone like Rollo would statistically become a common genealogical ancestor to almost everyone with European roots
Direct descendant suggests a clear, direct lineage (father to son or daughter, continuously down generations). Only a tiny subset of people today can demonstrate or trace that explicitly direct lineage back to Rollo. Someone like, say, me
In short, nearly everyone in Europe today is a genealogical descendant of Rollo, but only certain noble, gifted, virile, handsome witty, popular and clearly aristocratic individuals who have friends (ie the opposite of you) can claim the more prestigious-sounding direct descent often through documented noble line
You're just wrong. We are all direct (genetic) descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants, which is likely).
Sorry if this fact punctures the only thing you thought you had going for you.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
We can all trace our ancestry back to an amoeba called Kevin.
That's a rough gig. You're and amoeba and you're called Kevin.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
Idiot! That far back, that will be true for millions if not billions, especially for a prominent figure. Go back nearly 50 generations and both you and I have nearly 300,000,000,000,000 ancestors (based on 48). With population size back then, reversing the maths shows that likely almost all of us are descended from him, and everyone else.
Yes Mrs Ian but as I just said the difference is we have a definitive paper trail
It occurs to me you suffer from a kind of inverse-Wykehamist Fallacy, you are not intelligent enough to understand how much brighter I am, than you
Why the capitalised "f" in "Fallacy"? I don't believe "Wykamist fallacy" is a "thing", so fallacy in this context is not a proper noun. Anyone "brighter" than Ian's dog should have known this.
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
We can all trace our ancestry back to an amoeba called Kevin.
That's a rough gig. You're and amoeba and you're called Kevin.
Hundred of millions of years later and he still can't live it down....
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
No, I’m talking about direct descendants
The claim you’re referencing relates to genealogical ancestors, not necessarily genetic ones
You're really not understanding this, are you?
Everyone in Europe today is likely a genealogical descendant of Rollo of Normandy (assuming he has living descendants, which he certainly does), but they are definitely not all direct descendants.
The distinction:
Genealogical descendant means you appear somewhere, anywhere, in their family tree. After roughly a thousand years, someone like Rollo would statistically become a common genealogical ancestor to almost everyone with European roots
Direct descendant suggests a clear, direct lineage (father to son or daughter, continuously down generations). Only a tiny subset of people today can demonstrate or trace that explicitly direct lineage back to Rollo. Someone like, say, me
In short, nearly everyone in Europe today is a genealogical descendant of Rollo, but only certain noble, gifted, virile, handsome witty, popular and clearly aristocratic individuals who have friends (ie the opposite of you) can claim the more prestigious-sounding direct descent often through documented noble line
You're just wrong. We are all direct (genetic) descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants, which is likely).
Sorry if this fact punctures the only thing you thought you had going for you.
“How many living direct descendants does Rollo of Normandy have, living today?”
Answer:
“It’s impossible to be exact, but a reasonable estimate would place Rollo of Normandy’s living direct descendants at tens of thousands—possibly more.
Reasoning: • Rollo (c. 860–930 CE) lived around 1,100 years ago, which translates roughly to 35 generations. • Noble families like Rollo’s tended to have well-documented lineages through European royalty and aristocracy, who historically had numerous offspring. • Royal and noble descendants spread widely over Europe through marriage and reproduction.
Known facts: • William the Conqueror was Rollo’s great-great-great-grandson, and through William, Rollo’s descendants multiplied exponentially among European nobility. • Royal genealogists have identified thousands of documented direct descendants today—most European monarchs and aristocratic families trace ancestry to Rollo.
Given exponential growth, intermarriage, and known historical documentation, it’s very plausible that tens of thousands (possibly even hundreds of thousands) alive today could claim direct descent.
However, provable, documented direct descent is limited mainly to aristocratic or royal lineages, probably numbering in the thousands to tens of thousands at most.”
It is difficult to know what point you are trying to make. There is no difference between direct decedent and genealogical ancestor. We are all both. Simply do the maths. 2 to the power of however many generations between them and now and you get a number that exceeds the entire population of the globe at the time.
Unless you are saying that you can trace your family tree back to then which of course most of us can't.
So for instance there is no difference between Danny Dyer and myself having a king from medieval times as our gggggg.. grandad except he can trace the line and I can't. But we both have that line.
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
We can all trace our ancestry back to an amoeba called Kevin.
Who would have thought BBC correspondent Frank Gardner and Danny Dyer are related by dint of their ascendency from William the Conqueror?
“How many living direct descendants does Rollo of Normandy have, living today?”
Answer:
“It’s impossible to be exact, but a reasonable estimate would place Rollo of Normandy’s living direct descendants at tens of thousands—possibly more.
Reasoning: • Rollo (c. 860–930 CE) lived around 1,100 years ago, which translates roughly to 35 generations. • Noble families like Rollo’s tended to have well-documented lineages through European royalty and aristocracy, who historically had numerous offspring. • Royal and noble descendants spread widely over Europe through marriage and reproduction.
Known facts: • William the Conqueror was Rollo’s great-great-great-grandson, and through William, Rollo’s descendants multiplied exponentially among European nobility. • Royal genealogists have identified thousands of documented direct descendants today—most European monarchs and aristocratic families trace ancestry to Rollo.
Given exponential growth, intermarriage, and known historical documentation, it’s very plausible that tens of thousands (possibly even hundreds of thousands) alive today could claim direct descent.
However, provable, documented direct descent is limited mainly to aristocratic or royal lineages, probably numbering in the thousands to tens of thousands at most.”
It is difficult to know what point you are trying to make. There is no difference between direct decedent and genealogical ancestor. We are all both. Simply do the maths. 2 to the power of however many generations between them and now and you get a number that exceeds the entire population of the globe at the time.
Unless you are saying that you can trace your family tree back to then which of course most of us can't.
So for instance there is no difference between Danny Dyer and myself having a king from medieval times as our gggggg.. grandad except he can trace the line and I can't. But we both have that line.
We're all saying the same thing, but Leon doesn't seem capable of thinking it through.
relying on AI has already addled his brain, and we just have to hope is isn't leading the way for our species.
“How many living direct descendants does Rollo of Normandy have, living today?”
Answer:
“It’s impossible to be exact, but a reasonable estimate would place Rollo of Normandy’s living direct descendants at tens of thousands—possibly more.
Reasoning: • Rollo (c. 860–930 CE) lived around 1,100 years ago, which translates roughly to 35 generations. • Noble families like Rollo’s tended to have well-documented lineages through European royalty and aristocracy, who historically had numerous offspring. • Royal and noble descendants spread widely over Europe through marriage and reproduction.
Known facts: • William the Conqueror was Rollo’s great-great-great-grandson, and through William, Rollo’s descendants multiplied exponentially among European nobility. • Royal genealogists have identified thousands of documented direct descendants today—most European monarchs and aristocratic families trace ancestry to Rollo.
Given exponential growth, intermarriage, and known historical documentation, it’s very plausible that tens of thousands (possibly even hundreds of thousands) alive today could claim direct descent.
However, provable, documented direct descent is limited mainly to aristocratic or royal lineages, probably numbering in the thousands to tens of thousands at most.”
It is difficult to know what point you are trying to make. There is no difference between direct decedent and genealogical ancestor. We are all both. Simply do the maths. 2 to the power of however many generations between them and now and you get a number that exceeds the entire population of the globe at the time.
Unless you are saying that you can trace your family tree back to then which of course most of us can't.
So for instance there is no difference between Danny Dyer and myself having a king from medieval times as our gggggg.. grandad except he can trace the line and I can't. But we both have that line.
Speaking as a fellow Cornishman, I think Leon may be working to different assumptions.
Grok 3 has a very different take to DeepSeek and ChatGPT (which estimates 10s to 100s of thousands)
Grok:
“Thus, an approximate answer: Rollo likely has 10–50 million living descendants today, with only a tiny fraction (thousands) documented. This is a rough estimate, blending historical genealogy with population trends, and reflects the vast, untraceable web of descent over a millennium.”
So something like 1 in 20 Europeans (given that /9 much of his seed will now be widely scattered across the world)
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
More than that, we share ancestry with ferns and bacteria and slime moulds, assuming that the usual single source of all life theory (known as LUCA I think) is true, which it probably is. (If you are looking for earth shattering new discoveries, a discovery on planet earth of unrelated living forms would be a candidate. If life is common in the universe then it may be around. If not, not.)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
More than that, we share ancestry with ferns and bacteria and slime moulds, assuming that the usual single source of all life theory (known as LUCA I think) is true, which it probably is. (If you are looking for earth shattering new discoveries, a discovery on planet earth of unrelated living forms would be a candidate. If life is common in the universe then it may be around. If not, not.)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
Nope. We are all direct descendants. Do the damn maths. Honestly the fact that you don't understand the really simple power of two problem really does put paid to the hight IQ fallacy.
Think of the grain of rice problem on a chess board that gets doubled on the next square and doubles again on the next square etc.
Interesting diversion into genealogy. And the previous discussion about Britishness when most of our royalty are as mongrel as we are. Casey3 is half Greek.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
Nope. We are all direct descendants. Do the damn maths. Honestly the fact that you don't understand the really simple power of two problem really does put paid to the hight IQ fallacy.
Think of the grain of rice problem on a chess board that gets doubled on the next square and doubles again on the next square etc.
Grok 3 has a very different take to DeepSeek and ChatGPT (which estimates 10s to 100s of thousands)
Grok:
“Thus, an approximate answer: Rollo likely has 10–50 million living descendants today, with only a tiny fraction (thousands) documented. This is a rough estimate, blending historical genealogy with population trends, and reflects the vast, untraceable web of descent over a millennium.”
So something like 1 in 20 Europeans (given that /9 much of his seed will now be widely scattered across the world)
That's another fail. Why not give up with the original problem, which is clearly beyond you?
Try yourself on this simpler one. Does the fact that three AIs give three widely different - effectively conflicting - answers, more likely mean:
A: that it's a "genuine puzzle with much dispute"?
or:
B: that AIs have a very long way to go before we can rely on them to give accurate answers to complicated questions?
On the US: let's not look at protests and town halls as snippets of evidence yet, let's wait for signs of Trump's (and other) approval ratings tanking.
We're not yet heading in that direction in any meaningful way. Trump at -1.8 and still in post election honeymoon phase
Beyond the beltways there is a strong cohort who are yet distant from the effects and are quite enjoying the spectacle of the government and prior assumptions being gutted.
Kids are dying of measles. Egg prices are skyrocketing. Bird flu is out of control. Planes are falling out of the sky. Inflation is rising. Tariffs are coming. Consumer confidence is collapsing. A recession is now likely. The stock market is dropping.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
I didn't forget cousin marriage, I explicitly mentioned that we have the same people appearing in the ancestry many times over.
However the odds of each of the hundreds of trillions of possible permutations, even reduced, not being hit once is utterly miniscule. And while the nobility tended to marry the nobility, that was only for the lines that continued the noble line which relied heavily on primogeniture, eventually the 4th child of the 4th child of the 4th child etc isn't getting noble marriages anymore though they still have the same direct ancestry.
The odds of anyone on this board not being a direct descendent by now are so close to zero they effectively are zero.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
Another issue, however, is that recorded trees of ancestry aren’t going to be very reliable. Quite a few people don’t have the father they supposedly have. Ergo, relying on some genealogical research that far back is pointless because actually your great great great granddaddy isn’t your great great great granddaddy.
Interesting diversion into genealogy. And the previous discussion about Britishness when most of our royalty as as mongrel as we are. Casey3 is half Greek.
It's just one of Leon's infamous thread diversions.
On the US: let's not look at protests and town halls as snippets of evidence yet, let's wait for signs of Trump's (and other) approval ratings tanking.
We're not yet heading in that direction in any meaningful way. Trump at -1.8 and still in post election honeymoon phase
Beyond the beltways there is a strong cohort who are yet distant from the effects and are quite enjoying the spectacle of the government and prior assumptions being gutted.
Kids are dying of measles. Egg prices are skyrocketing. Bird flu is out of control. Planes are falling out of the sky. Inflation is rising. Tariffs are coming. Consumer confidence is collapsing. A recession is now likely. The stock market is dropping.
I am going to stick my neck out and say that he will honour his pledge. I don't like Starmer or his politics but I think he has a brain and he also has a moral code. I am going to do something very rare and trust him to be doing the right thing for the right reasons.
Of course on all other matters my normal cynicism is maintained but in this instance I think he is genuine.
I disagree, I’m the other way. There is absolutely no way Putin will agree to allow what’s left of Ukraine to join NATO, will never sign anything allowing that, so Starmer and Europe are locked on course to selling out Ukraine. Wave after wave of talks will fall on the question of NATO membership until Starmer and Europe will insist Ukraine cuts a deal that will never be justified or fair, in order to make the war stop.
There is no “win win” or lasting peace option from where it is now, so all hugs in Downing Street and elsewhere in Europe have to be seen as ultimately leading to that betrayal and an unfair deal for Ukraine forced on them. that in itself will set the precedent sovereign borders can be redrawn, that will be music to the Kremlin’s ears.
Or until Russia crumbles and the front line is pushed back
(In answer to the inevitable question, my preference would be pre 2014 borders, but the 2021 borders would be an ok ceasefire line. Plus something in addition for withdrawing from Kursk.)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
Nope. We are all direct descendants. Do the damn maths. Honestly the fact that you don't understand the really simple power of two problem really does put paid to the hight IQ fallacy.
Think of the grain of rice problem on a chess board that gets doubled on the next square and doubles again on the next square etc.
It’s a tiny bit more complicated than that
Indeed.
Its complicated by the fact you're incapable of doing the damn maths and so are relying upon AI to do it for you.
I've been searching for what it is in JD Vance that seems so familiar and that sketch provides the answer. He's "butch". It's perfect. He's butch like a character out of a 1970s British sitcom. Someone Mr Humphries would fancy because Mr Humphries knows who he really is.
Interesting diversion into genealogy. And the previous discussion about Britishness when most of our royalty as as mongrel as we are. Casey3 is half Greek.
It's just one of Leon's infamous thread diversions.
Having been adopted at three months I have no idea who my parents were. But I do have blue eyes, which must count for something when separating the wheat from the chaff.
It's worth PBers noting that "The Spectator Index" is not connected with The Spectator magazine.
On Twitter it's bigger than the Times or Good Morning Britain, but this news source has no reporters, no fact-checkers – and until now, its owner has never been named. Who is behind The Spectator Index?
It’s some Australian dude I think. Who randomly got famous
I’d be really surprised if Elon said something THAT crass - leave NATO and the UN? My guess is there is, at least, some context missing. An hypothetical
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
Not when you have 300,000,000,000,000 ancestors to distribute between probably 25,000,000 people, it isn't.
It's the old story of the human mind struggling with compounding, such that it's so hard to appreciate that a single penny doubled each day for a month would net you nearly eleven million pounds, even when you know the answer already.
I am going to stick my neck out and say that he will honour his pledge. I don't like Starmer or his politics but I think he has a brain and he also has a moral code. I am going to do something very rare and trust him to be doing the right thing for the right reasons.
Of course on all other matters my normal cynicism is maintained but in this instance I think he is genuine.
I disagree, I’m the other way. There is absolutely no way Putin will agree to allow what’s left of Ukraine to join NATO, will never sign anything allowing that, so Starmer and Europe are locked on course to selling out Ukraine. Wave after wave of talks will fall on the question of NATO membership until Starmer and Europe will insist Ukraine cuts a deal that will never be justified or fair, in order to make the war stop.
There is no “win win” or lasting peace option from where it is now, so all hugs in Downing Street and elsewhere in Europe have to be seen as ultimately leading to that betrayal and an unfair deal for Ukraine forced on them. that in itself will set the precedent sovereign borders can be redrawn, that will be music to the Kremlin’s ears.
Or until Russia crumbles and the front line is pushed back
(In answer to the inevitable question, my preference would be pre 2014 borders, but the 2021 borders would be an ok ceasefire line. Plus something in addition for withdrawing from Kursk.)
Interesting diversion into genealogy. And the previous discussion about Britishness when most of our royalty as as mongrel as we are. Casey3 is half Greek.
It's just one of Leon's infamous thread diversions.
Understandable - Reform supporters like him don't want to talk about supporting Putin especially as they are clearly on the wrong side of public opinion this time and that's the thing with so-called populist parties - they always have to be on the right side of opinion because a populist party can never be unpopular otherwise what's the point of them?
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
I didn't forget cousin marriage, I explicitly mentioned that we have the same people appearing in the ancestry many times over.
However the odds of each of the hundreds of trillions of possible permutations, even reduced, not being hit once is utterly miniscule. And while the nobility tended to marry the nobility, that was only for the lines that continued the noble line which relied heavily on primogeniture, eventually the 4th child of the 4th child of the 4th child etc isn't getting noble marriages anymore though they still have the same direct ancestry.
The odds of anyone on this board not being a direct descendent by now are so close to zero they effectively are zero.
I think that is too high an estimate and doesn’t take account of realistic heritage. Just applying the law of big numbers doesn’t work without understanding the rules. Your assumption is of random breeding for say 48 generations but that won’t have been the case.
Grok 3 has a very different take to DeepSeek and ChatGPT (which estimates 10s to 100s of thousands)
Grok:
“Thus, an approximate answer: Rollo likely has 10–50 million living descendants today, with only a tiny fraction (thousands) documented. This is a rough estimate, blending historical genealogy with population trends, and reflects the vast, untraceable web of descent over a millennium.”
So something like 1 in 20 Europeans (given that /9 much of his seed will now be widely scattered across the world)
There's a competition between LLMs to see which one can be most wrong? Not surprising.
AFAIK there is no actual dispute. Did you read this?
It's actually very interesting, and written for a non-scientific audience, so you might be able to cope.
It answers these questions:
1. How did you learn about genealogical ancestry from genetics? 2. How did you find out when these shared ancestors lived? 3. What did you find?
Questions about the interpretation of genealogical ancestry and our results. 4. If all Europeans share the same set of common ancestors 1000 years ago, how can there be variation in the number of shared ancestors? 5. If you and I share all of our common ancestors 1000 years ago, why are we not genetically (almost) identical? 6. I know from the work on mtDNA that we all share a common ancestor tens of thousands of years ago, and yet you say that we all share a common ancestor only a few thousand years ago. Is one of these facts wrong? 7. How can it be that a person from the UK has more distant cousins in Ireland than in the UK? 8. What about recent immigrants to Europe? 9. How long ago did the most recent common ancestor of all modern humans live?
Questions about historical interpretations 10. Why do people on the Italian and Iberian peninsulas have relatively fewer common ancestors with other populations than other European populations? 11. Could population movements in the past 100 years explain the higher levels of sharing in some parts of the world? 12. Can your results about (insert population) be explained by (insert historical fact)?
Questions about our work and personal genomics results. 13. How does this relate to who my mitochondrial/Y-chromosomal haplogroup says I’m related to? 14. How can personal genomics companies (e.g. 23andme) place a European on the map of the Europe, if all Europeans are related to each other just a thousand years ago? 15. Personal genomics companies identify genetic connections (via shared genomic regions) between distant cousins. How long ago does this connections date too, and what do they mean in light of your results?
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
I didn't forget cousin marriage, I explicitly mentioned that we have the same people appearing in the ancestry many times over.
However the odds of each of the hundreds of trillions of possible permutations, even reduced, not being hit once is utterly miniscule. And while the nobility tended to marry the nobility, that was only for the lines that continued the noble line which relied heavily on primogeniture, eventually the 4th child of the 4th child of the 4th child etc isn't getting noble marriages anymore though they still have the same direct ancestry.
The odds of anyone on this board not being a direct descendent by now are so close to zero they effectively are zero.
Exactly. Very well explained. In fact it is essential there are multiple cousin marriages although some might be 100s of times removed so not a cousin in the accepted sense (ie we are all cousins) as the power of 2 calculation will come to a number greater than the entire population many times over.
So not only are we all direct decedents, but we are multiple times over.
I am going to stick my neck out and say that he will honour his pledge. I don't like Starmer or his politics but I think he has a brain and he also has a moral code. I am going to do something very rare and trust him to be doing the right thing for the right reasons.
Of course on all other matters my normal cynicism is maintained but in this instance I think he is genuine.
I disagree, I’m the other way. There is absolutely no way Putin will agree to allow what’s left of Ukraine to join NATO, will never sign anything allowing that, so Starmer and Europe are locked on course to selling out Ukraine. Wave after wave of talks will fall on the question of NATO membership until Starmer and Europe will insist Ukraine cuts a deal that will never be justified or fair, in order to make the war stop.
There is no “win win” or lasting peace option from where it is now, so all hugs in Downing Street and elsewhere in Europe have to be seen as ultimately leading to that betrayal and an unfair deal for Ukraine forced on them. that in itself will set the precedent sovereign borders can be redrawn, that will be music to the Kremlin’s ears.
What happens, if U.K. and France form a security alliance that includes a bunch of European states and Ukraine? Complete with a nuclear guarantee.
What happens if we do that and the next day Russia continues bombing as usual?
Then we abide by the terms of our treaty.
Unless your masters in Russia, the UK and other European countries believe that treaties between sovereign nations such as the UK and Ukraine should be stuck to
Interesting diversion into genealogy. And the previous discussion about Britishness when most of our royalty as as mongrel as we are. Casey3 is half Greek.
It's just one of Leon's infamous thread diversions.
Having been adopted at three months I have no idea who my parents were. But I do have blue eyes, which must count for something when separating the wheat from the chaff.
You are probably descended from Nazis, or something.
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
We can all trace our ancestry back to an amoeba called Kevin.
That’s true. I know that because some lawyers contacted me to confirm that I am Kevin’s direct heir. I thought I would be quids in, but all I inherited was a can of primordial soup.
On the US: let's not look at protests and town halls as snippets of evidence yet, let's wait for signs of Trump's (and other) approval ratings tanking.
We're not yet heading in that direction in any meaningful way. Trump at -1.8 and still in post election honeymoon phase
Beyond the beltways there is a strong cohort who are yet distant from the effects and are quite enjoying the spectacle of the government and prior assumptions being gutted.
Kids are dying of measles. Egg prices are skyrocketing. Bird flu is out of control. Planes are falling out of the sky. Inflation is rising. Tariffs are coming. Consumer confidence is collapsing. A recession is now likely. The stock market is dropping.
Somewhere between 70-90% of the support we've provided Ukraine since Russia's illegal invasion was spent *in the U.S.* as American defense workers built or replaced weapons we sent over.
All those jobs are about to disappear, and most of them are skilled blue collar positions.
That face-eating leopard is sooooo hungry.
I doubt all, or even many, of those jobs will disappear.
There might be a big drop in overtime though.
Given that the Trump administration is planning on cutting military spending by around 8% this year, and that it is a lot easier to cut procurement than soldiers, my guess is that the defense industry might see more than a drop in overtime.
They seem to be firing a lot of soldiers from politically disfavoured groups which should be a hiring opportunity for European armies that clearly don't have enough people for the world they now live in.
Starmer should keep her abreast of all developments. To be fair to her she has equivocated less than other senior RefConners over Trump, and thus by definition Putin.
And indeed less than Keir Starmer.
Indeed, and I was one of the posters demanding Starmer's resignation on Thursday but for diametrically opposed reasons from yours.
My concern was later borne out by the debacle in the Oval Office. Starmer by inviting Trump to Balmoral did indeed bring shame on our nation. However his indiscretion is nothing compared to your necklace wearing lady friend who has gone full frontal Trumpster. Shame on her!
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
Nope. We are all direct descendants. Do the damn maths. Honestly the fact that you don't understand the really simple power of two problem really does put paid to the hight IQ fallacy.
Think of the grain of rice problem on a chess board that gets doubled on the next square and doubles again on the next square etc.
It’s a tiny bit more complicated than that
Indeed.
Its complicated by the fact you're incapable of doing the damn maths and so are relying upon AI to do it for you.
Somebody who started out boasting about his super-intelligence then proceeded to prove himself to be an idiot, unable to understand something even when it's spelled out for him.
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
We can all trace our ancestry back to an amoeba called Kevin.
That’s true. I know that because some lawyers contacted me to confirm that I am Kevin’s direct heir. I thought I would be quids in, but all I inherited was a can of primordial soup.
To be pedantic, as is the first rule of PB, there’s a couple of billion of years between primordial soup and amoebas evolving.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
I didn't forget cousin marriage, I explicitly mentioned that we have the same people appearing in the ancestry many times over.
However the odds of each of the hundreds of trillions of possible permutations, even reduced, not being hit once is utterly miniscule. And while the nobility tended to marry the nobility, that was only for the lines that continued the noble line which relied heavily on primogeniture, eventually the 4th child of the 4th child of the 4th child etc isn't getting noble marriages anymore though they still have the same direct ancestry.
The odds of anyone on this board not being a direct descendent by now are so close to zero they effectively are zero.
I think that is too high an estimate and doesn’t take account of realistic heritage. Just applying the law of big numbers doesn’t work without understanding the rules. Your assumption is of random breeding for say 48 generations but that won’t have been the case.
It doesn't need to either, the numbers are that big that all the possible combinations come to the fore.
Nobility continued their records via primogeniture looking at their dad's, dad's, dad's, dad's, dad's etc dad and only bothering primarily with firstborn kids and a few others.
But you share just as much genetic material with every potential combination. Your dad's, mum's, mum's, dad's, dad's, mum's, mum's etc mum is just as much an ancestor and so on and so forth.
The potential combinations are so huge and it only takes one 'hit' and its in the bloodline.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
It is a bit like asserting that every bridge hand is unique because the number of permutations of playing cards is greater than the number of atoms in the universe. It is true as far as it goes but ignores that all new packs of cards are sorted identically and most people can't shuffle very well (which is why casinos use machines).
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
We can all trace our ancestry back to an amoeba called Kevin.
That’s true. I know that because some lawyers contacted me to confirm that I am Kevin’s direct heir. I thought I would be quids in, but all I inherited was a can of primordial soup.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
Not when you have 300,000,000,000,000 ancestors to distribute between probably 25,000,000 people, it isn't.
It's the old story of the human mind struggling with compounding, such that it's so hard to appreciate that a single penny doubled each day for a month would net you nearly eleven million pounds, even when you know the answer already.
No, it’s not. You are making the doubling mistake from covid. Take an isolated Scottish village, or Cornish, or wherever. Until the 20th century most people rarely move away and tended to marry and breed locally. They would have had the same ancestors popping up all over their family past by dint of geography. Yes we are have vast numbers of ancestors but you cannot just use x! to say we all have the SAME ancestors when x is large enough.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
I didn't forget cousin marriage, I explicitly mentioned that we have the same people appearing in the ancestry many times over.
However the odds of each of the hundreds of trillions of possible permutations, even reduced, not being hit once is utterly miniscule. And while the nobility tended to marry the nobility, that was only for the lines that continued the noble line which relied heavily on primogeniture, eventually the 4th child of the 4th child of the 4th child etc isn't getting noble marriages anymore though they still have the same direct ancestry.
The odds of anyone on this board not being a direct descendent by now are so close to zero they effectively are zero.
I think that is too high an estimate and doesn’t take account of realistic heritage. Just applying the law of big numbers doesn’t work without understanding the rules. Your assumption is of random breeding for say 48 generations but that won’t have been the case.
It doesn't need to either, the numbers are that big that all the possible combinations come to the fore.
Nobility continued their records via primogeniture looking at their dad's, dad's, dad's, dad's, dad's etc dad and only bothering primarily with firstborn kids and a few others.
But you share just as much genetic material with every potential combination. Your dad's, mum's, mum's, dad's, dad's, mum's, mum's etc mum is just as much an ancestor and so on and so forth.
The potential combinations are so huge and it only takes one 'hit' and its in the bloodline.
It's also skewed because a king could shag any wench that took his fancy.
I am going to stick my neck out and say that he will honour his pledge. I don't like Starmer or his politics but I think he has a brain and he also has a moral code. I am going to do something very rare and trust him to be doing the right thing for the right reasons.
Of course on all other matters my normal cynicism is maintained but in this instance I think he is genuine.
I disagree, I’m the other way. There is absolutely no way Putin will agree to allow what’s left of Ukraine to join NATO, will never sign anything allowing that, so Starmer and Europe are locked on course to selling out Ukraine. Wave after wave of talks will fall on the question of NATO membership until Starmer and Europe will insist Ukraine cuts a deal that will never be justified or fair, in order to make the war stop.
There is no “win win” or lasting peace option from where it is now, so all hugs in Downing Street and elsewhere in Europe have to be seen as ultimately leading to that betrayal and an unfair deal for Ukraine forced on them. that in itself will set the precedent sovereign borders can be redrawn, that will be music to the Kremlin’s ears.
What happens, if U.K. and France form a security alliance that includes a bunch of European states and Ukraine? Complete with a nuclear guarantee.
What happens if we do that and the next day Russia continues bombing as usual?
Then it gets fun.
I know it was meant as a flip comment
But we should always remember that war is never fun. It should always be the last choice but sometimes it is necessary - in all cases an endeavour to be undertaken with a heavy heart
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
I didn't forget cousin marriage, I explicitly mentioned that we have the same people appearing in the ancestry many times over.
However the odds of each of the hundreds of trillions of possible permutations, even reduced, not being hit once is utterly miniscule. And while the nobility tended to marry the nobility, that was only for the lines that continued the noble line which relied heavily on primogeniture, eventually the 4th child of the 4th child of the 4th child etc isn't getting noble marriages anymore though they still have the same direct ancestry.
The odds of anyone on this board not being a direct descendent by now are so close to zero they effectively are zero.
I think that is too high an estimate and doesn’t take account of realistic heritage. Just applying the law of big numbers doesn’t work without understanding the rules. Your assumption is of random breeding for say 48 generations but that won’t have been the case.
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
We can all trace our ancestry back to an amoeba called Kevin.
That’s true. I know that because some lawyers contacted me to confirm that I am Kevin’s direct heir. I thought I would be quids in, but all I inherited was a can of primordial soup.
To be pedantic, as is the first rule of PB, there’s a couple of billion of years between primordial soup and amoebas evolving.
Despite your welcome health warning PB pedants correcting jokes is very vexing.
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
We can all trace our ancestry back to an amoeba called Kevin.
That’s true. I know that because some lawyers contacted me to confirm that I am Kevin’s direct heir. I thought I would be quids in, but all I inherited was a can of primordial soup.
To be pedantic, as is the first rule of PB, there’s a couple of billion of years between primordial soup and amoebas evolving.
To be fair, he didn't claim it was within its use by date...
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
Not when you have 300,000,000,000,000 ancestors to distribute between probably 25,000,000 people, it isn't.
It's the old story of the human mind struggling with compounding, such that it's so hard to appreciate that a single penny doubled each day for a month would net you nearly eleven million pounds, even when you know the answer already.
No, it’s not. You are making the doubling mistake from covid. Take an isolated Scottish village, or Cornish, or wherever. Until the 20th century most people rarely move away and tended to marry and breed locally. They would have had the same ancestors popping up all over their family past by dint of geography. Yes we are have vast numbers of ancestors but you cannot just use x! to say we all have the SAME ancestors when x is large enough.
Rarely is not never. It only takes one person to move to that isolated Scottish village in the past thousand years and they bring their ancestry with them.
On the US: let's not look at protests and town halls as snippets of evidence yet, let's wait for signs of Trump's (and other) approval ratings tanking.
We're not yet heading in that direction in any meaningful way. Trump at -1.8 and still in post election honeymoon phase
Beyond the beltways there is a strong cohort who are yet distant from the effects and are quite enjoying the spectacle of the government and prior assumptions being gutted.
Kids are dying of measles. Egg prices are skyrocketing. Bird flu is out of control. Planes are falling out of the sky. Inflation is rising. Tariffs are coming. Consumer confidence is collapsing. A recession is now likely. The stock market is dropping.
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
We can all trace our ancestry back to an amoeba called Kevin.
That’s true. I know that because some lawyers contacted me to confirm that I am Kevin’s direct heir. I thought I would be quids in, but all I inherited was a can of primordial soup.
To be pedantic, as is the first rule of PB, there’s a couple of billion of years between primordial soup and amoebas evolving.
FAKE PRIMORDIAL SOUP!!!!!!
The scandal. I hope you get that lawyer struck off.
Grok 3 has a very different take to DeepSeek and ChatGPT (which estimates 10s to 100s of thousands)
Grok:
“Thus, an approximate answer: Rollo likely has 10–50 million living descendants today, with only a tiny fraction (thousands) documented. This is a rough estimate, blending historical genealogy with population trends, and reflects the vast, untraceable web of descent over a millennium.”
So something like 1 in 20 Europeans (given that /9 much of his seed will now be widely scattered across the world)
That's another fail. Why not give up with the original problem, which is clearly beyond you?
Try yourself on this simpler one. Does the fact that three AIs give three widely different - effectively conflicting - answers, more likely mean:
A: that it's a "genuine puzzle with much dispute"?
or:
B: that AIs have a very long way to go before we can rely on them to give accurate answers to complicated questions?
Take your time. Clue: it's either A, or B.
Actually yes. I agree. B. Tho maybe not “very long way”. Definitely a way
This is an interesting use case where AIs are showing obvious failings - but they still grasp it better than many on here
Problematically for the Elon haters it looks like Grok 3 is the most nuanced
Evolution teaches us if you back far enough you share a common ancestor with your dog. Fido’s great, great,…, great grandmother is your great, great,…, great grandmother.
Food for thought.
We can all trace our ancestry back to an amoeba called Kevin.
That’s true. I know that because some lawyers contacted me to confirm that I am Kevin’s direct heir. I thought I would be quids in, but all I inherited was a can of primordial soup.
To be pedantic, as is the first rule of PB, there’s a couple of billion of years between primordial soup and amoebas evolving.
Kevin inherited the soup himself. It’s an heirloom.
(why do people insist on pedantry in reaction to jokes?)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
It is a bit like asserting that every bridge hand is unique because the number of permutations of playing cards is greater than the number of atoms in the universe. It is true as far as it goes but ignores that all new packs of cards are sorted identically and most people can't shuffle very well (which is why casinos use machines).
You are right that simply using big numbers isn't enough, but again I can only refer you to the scientific literature:
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
Nope. We are all direct descendants. Do the damn maths. Honestly the fact that you don't understand the really simple power of two problem really does put paid to the hight IQ fallacy.
Think of the grain of rice problem on a chess board that gets doubled on the next square and doubles again on the next square etc.
It’s a tiny bit more complicated than that
Er, it really isn't. I speak as someone with a degree in mathematics, although frankly this is GCSE maths or lower.
You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grand parents, etc. Keep going back until say the year 1000 with say a generation every 25 years and see how many great grandparents we all have and compare it to the population at the time (and that isn't including lines that died out, who obviously don't have descendent. You will then see that they will all be your g.grandfather several times over.
The nature of warfare is changing very fast. Last year Ukraine produced more than 1.3m drones for its military to use, comfortably more than anyone else in the world. This year there will be considerably more. How much longer will the Russian manpower advantage even be relevant?
The Russians, in contrast, have largely been dependent upon running down huge stocks of artillery and tanks together with imports paid for by capital reserves which are now exhausted.
This war is not developing to Russia’s advantage, not at all. The balance is swinging in Ukraine’s favour but they still need financial help to keep their government running, the economy moving and the Russians at bay until the swing becomes more decisive. Hopefully they will get it today.
It’s weird how much Trump has misjudged this. It’s almost as if they were getting their information from Russia.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
I didn't forget cousin marriage, I explicitly mentioned that we have the same people appearing in the ancestry many times over.
However the odds of each of the hundreds of trillions of possible permutations, even reduced, not being hit once is utterly miniscule. And while the nobility tended to marry the nobility, that was only for the lines that continued the noble line which relied heavily on primogeniture, eventually the 4th child of the 4th child of the 4th child etc isn't getting noble marriages anymore though they still have the same direct ancestry.
The odds of anyone on this board not being a direct descendent by now are so close to zero they effectively are zero.
I think that is too high an estimate and doesn’t take account of realistic heritage. Just applying the law of big numbers doesn’t work without understanding the rules. Your assumption is of random breeding for say 48 generations but that won’t have been the case.
That kind of DNA evidence isn’t suggesting quite what you think it is. For instance people in rollo’s time would also have have had an awful lot of shared DNA, so genetics isn’t clear cut unless there was a specific Rollo gene that only he had and then passed on.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
Not when you have 300,000,000,000,000 ancestors to distribute between probably 25,000,000 people, it isn't.
It's the old story of the human mind struggling with compounding, such that it's so hard to appreciate that a single penny doubled each day for a month would net you nearly eleven million pounds, even when you know the answer already.
No, it’s not. You are making the doubling mistake from covid. Take an isolated Scottish village, or Cornish, or wherever. Until the 20th century most people rarely move away and tended to marry and breed locally. They would have had the same ancestors popping up all over their family past by dint of geography. Yes we are have vast numbers of ancestors but you cannot just use x! to say we all have the SAME ancestors when x is large enough.
The flaw in your thinking is the same as Leon's - inability to appreciate the scale of the numbers we're talking about. The words "most" and "rarely" and "tended" are where you're going wrong. For sure, each of us will have a bias in those 300,000,000,000,000 ancestors toward certain geographies or ethnicities, as DNA testing can now reveal. But over all that time it takes just one person to enter that isolated community and your conclusion collapses.
My family, going back to the late 1800s, all come from London or thereabouts, and given its cosmopolitan history my spread of ancestors is likely to be more evenly distributed over a Dark Ages population than Leon's, assuming a significant chunk of his family originates from somewhere remote like Cornwall. That he may have one link established through documentation probably doesn't tilt the odds in his favour.
I’d just like to point out that not only I am one of the vanishingly few provable direct descendants of Rollo of Normandy I am also about to miss my plane to Shanghai
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
I didn't forget cousin marriage, I explicitly mentioned that we have the same people appearing in the ancestry many times over.
However the odds of each of the hundreds of trillions of possible permutations, even reduced, not being hit once is utterly miniscule. And while the nobility tended to marry the nobility, that was only for the lines that continued the noble line which relied heavily on primogeniture, eventually the 4th child of the 4th child of the 4th child etc isn't getting noble marriages anymore though they still have the same direct ancestry.
The odds of anyone on this board not being a direct descendent by now are so close to zero they effectively are zero.
Exactly. Very well explained. In fact it is essential there are multiple cousin marriages although some might be 100s of times removed so not a cousin in the accepted sense (ie we are all cousins) as the power of 2 calculation will come to a number greater than the entire population many times over.
So not only are we all direct decedents, but we are multiple times over.
Ah, the joy of a Political Betting discussion on... Ancestry. I'm loving it!
To pitch in with my two ha'penny worth:
@Leon should forget old Rollo - just as I should forget my family name connection to one of William's henchmen, Miles de Venoix - because we are both also descended from William the Conqueror himself of course - a much more significant ancestor!
Ah, but @Leon can prove the lineage to Rollo... Unfortunately, that is to forget that an estimated 5% of named fathers were not the biological father.
I’m reminded by a tweet from some outfit called Westminster Collection advertising a hideous geegaw that we’re hurtling towards the 80th anniversary of VE Day. I assume that international arrest warrants notwithstanding most of the participants will have high ranking representation present. That’ll be a jolly jamboree.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
Not when you have 300,000,000,000,000 ancestors to distribute between probably 25,000,000 people, it isn't.
It's the old story of the human mind struggling with compounding, such that it's so hard to appreciate that a single penny doubled each day for a month would net you nearly eleven million pounds, even when you know the answer already.
No, it’s not. You are making the doubling mistake from covid. Take an isolated Scottish village, or Cornish, or wherever. Until the 20th century most people rarely move away and tended to marry and breed locally. They would have had the same ancestors popping up all over their family past by dint of geography. Yes we are have vast numbers of ancestors but you cannot just use x! to say we all have the SAME ancestors when x is large enough.
The flaw in your thinking is the same as Leon's - inability to appreciate the scale of the numbers we're talking about. The words "most" and "rarely" and "tended" are where you're going wrong. For sure, each of us will have a bias in those 300,000,000,000,000 ancestors toward certain geographies or ethnicities, as DNA testing can now reveal. But over all that time it takes just one person to enter that isolated community and your conclusion collapses.
My family, going back to the late 1800s, all come from London or thereabouts, and given its cosmopolitan history my spread of ancestors is likely to be more evenly distributed over a Dark Ages population than Leon's, assuming a significant chunk of his family originates from somewhere remote like Cornwall. That he may have one link established through documentation probably doesn't tilt the odds in his favour.
Exactly. If anyone enters a "remote village" and has a child who has a child then before too many generations everyone in that remote village has the shared ancestry of the person who entered the village.
Rarely and never are two very different things and over enough instances all your "rare" occasions are still happening.
I’d just like to point out that not only I am one of the vanishingly few provable direct descendants of Rollo of Normandy I am also about to miss my plane to Shanghai
You also appear to have been banned. That's put paid to your argument.
Oh dear, looks like the conversation has prematurely ended, I assume because of all the AI rule breaking.
Just goes to show how crap the AI systems are though that they fail to understand such basic maths that most of us here, being educated people, can actually understand.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
I didn't forget cousin marriage, I explicitly mentioned that we have the same people appearing in the ancestry many times over.
However the odds of each of the hundreds of trillions of possible permutations, even reduced, not being hit once is utterly miniscule. And while the nobility tended to marry the nobility, that was only for the lines that continued the noble line which relied heavily on primogeniture, eventually the 4th child of the 4th child of the 4th child etc isn't getting noble marriages anymore though they still have the same direct ancestry.
The odds of anyone on this board not being a direct descendent by now are so close to zero they effectively are zero.
I think that is too high an estimate and doesn’t take account of realistic heritage. Just applying the law of big numbers doesn’t work without understanding the rules. Your assumption is of random breeding for say 48 generations but that won’t have been the case.
That kind of DNA evidence isn’t suggesting quite what you think it is. For instance people in rollo’s time would also have have had an awful lot of shared DNA, so genetics isn’t clear cut unless there was a specific Rollo gene that only he had and then passed on.
I don't think anything, haven't done the maths, nor studied the genetics. I'm trusting the authors Peter Ralph and Graham Coop's conclusions:
"What did you find?
There is a lot of information in the data. The main conclusions we came to are that: everyone is related, surprisingly recently; and there are regional differences in patterns of relatedness due to historical events.
Ubiquitous shared ancestry: We found that even people living on opposite sides of Europe are genealogically closely related to each other over the past thousand years. Even pairs of people as far apart as the UK and Turkey share a chunk of genomic material 20% of the time. Since the chance that two people inherit genetic material from any one shared ancestor from 1,000 years ago is incredibly unlikely (<10-10), to explain such sharing we need these pairs of individuals to share many ancestors. In fact, they need to share a number of ancestors that is far larger than the size of European population, indicating that any pair of individuals share as ancestors all of the individuals alive back at the time in Europe, each many times over.
This strange idea that everyone is everyone’s ancestor was actually predicted about ten years ago by Joseph Chang (and collaborators) using maths and simulations. In hindsight this is intuitively clear, due to the rapidly expanding number of ancestors you have as you go back further and further in time. You have 2 parents, 4 grand-parents, 8 great-grandparents, and so on doubling every generation. After k generations you have 2^k ancestors, and this number grows so quickly that just a thousand years back (~30 generations) you have roughly 1 billion ancestors, which is far larger than the population size of the Earth (let alone Europe) back then. The consequence is that anyone alive 1,000 years ago who left any descendants will be an ancestor of every European. While the world population is larger than the European population, the rate of growth of number of ancestors quickly dwarfs this difference, and so every human is likely related genealogically to every other human over only a slightly longer time period."
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
No, he's not.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
You all seem to be forgetting cousin marraiage. An awful lot of those huge number of ancestors are the same person many, many times over. Historically two things were true. The nobility tended to marry within the nobility. And people generally moved around a heck of a lot less. Think about regional accents. They have arisen because people didn’t mix that much. It’s entirely plausible that anyone on this board isn’t a direct descendent of Rollo.
Another issue, however, is that recorded trees of ancestry aren’t going to be very reliable. Quite a few people don’t have the father they supposedly have. Ergo, relying on some genealogical research that far back is pointless because actually your great great great granddaddy isn’t your great great great granddaddy.
Estimates of the number of children who are not the sons or daughters of their father range from 1% to 3%. On top of which there are smaller possibilities for the mother (switched babies, etc.).
If we take the lowest estimate of 1% for the father and ignore the mother, and apply it to the 48 generations over which Leon claims to have this link, there's a 40% chance that it was broken. At 2% there's nearly a 60% chance, and at 3% it's three to one that Leon's claim is false.
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
No. All Europeans today are definitely descendants of Rollo (if he has any living descendants)
What really seemed to upset Vance and Trump was Zelensky campaigning in Pennsylvania for the Democrats and that wasn't, in fairness, the smartest move. Thank goodness none of our parties were stupid enough to send supporters to campaign for Harris.
I agree this was definitely a trigger. In that context it's funny that Starmer got away with Labour's actions. Once again it shows that this was a hatchet job on Z.
Starmer didn't get away with anything Trump and Vance are seriously harsh about Starmer's restricting free speech and the Apple backdoor nonsense
Watch the WHOLE press conference
I mean specifically the Labour representatives going to campaign for Harris. I didn't see Trump or Vance use that against Starmer; did I miss it?
I think that all of this is a series of tactical exaggerations / misrepresentations, tbh.
Here is an FT piece about a group of Republicans coming to the UK in 2015 to help the Tories campaign in marginal seats. Campaigning with sister parties over the pond is just normal, and has been so since the time of Mrs Thatcher, and perhaps earlier (I wasn't around). https://www.ft.com/content/48d94f08-e82b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de
The President of Ukraine visiting a US Munitions plant with a representative of the US Govt to thank the workers for making shells for his country is actually exactly what Vance was demanding, ie gratitude. The issue is perhaps the Vance fantasises about the state as politicised against him. Vance's demands about "have you thanked us" are nonsense, the USA already having been thanked again at the start of the meeting. I say Vance's upset is entirely tactical.
The free speech stuff is weird. The examples in Vance's Munich speech were fabrications - whether because he's manipulating or because he's ignorant I cannot tell. "Facebook poster jailed for hurty words" claims I have seen have almost all been for far more serious offences, such as calling for hotels full of brown people to be burnt down with the brown people still in them. That's an attempted wedge issue by elements on the Right of our politics, in the hope of using talking points that used to belong to the BNP and similar to build a support base.
IMO it's all mainly Trump & Vance reacting to images they have projected on the inside of their own heads, or a deliberate political tactic. Vance gets seriously harsh when anyone refuses to kneel down and lick the boots.
Bollocks, people ARE doing jailtime for social media, and cops are knocking on doors for literally NON crime "hate incidents"
Free speech is under attack in the UK in a way we have not seen in many decades. Meanwhile we suddenly have a de facto blasphemy law that only protects Islam
There are many reasons to abhor Trump, one of them - for me - is this: his oafish, New Jersey Mafia Don impression is slowing the advance of the new right that will reverse all this shit. Cf Canada
It feels to me like Western Democracy - the amazing fruit of the Enlightenment - is dying.
What is clear is that Europe, plus Canada, Australia & NZ - these places will be the last bastions of Western Democracy, not the US.
The imminent failure of the US as key pillar of democarcy on the alt-right, no one else.
It really is dying. The stats don't lie
EIU’s 2024 Democracy Index: trend of global democratic decline and strengthening authoritarianism continues through 2024
Not much of a surprise. Full democracies has never been as numerous as people in the West think, and several places are backsliding. Any going in the other direction need to be celebrated.
I believe, long term, that democracy is dead
Well, we need to change that - pronto - because one thing linked to the death of democracy is a lack of respect for the sanctity of life.
Extra-judicial killings and violence is normal. And that could include you.
A lot of people like the idea of a strong man leader, a leviathan who who won't be constrained by the slowness of democratic systems and will do exactly what they want.
The problem is that one is equally likely to get a strong man leader who shares none of your views and values and who hates people like you: so @Leon ends up with a Jeremy Corbyn strongman, not a Marine Le Pen one.
And, then, of course: how do you get rid of them? The messiness of democracy suddenly looks a lot less unattractive.
What I think we need, though, is to tweak our democratic system so that politicians get the message they're making a mistake quicker. The Chagos deal, for example, is liked by (as far as I can tell) Starmer and... umm... Starmer's mum.
How do we introduce feedback systems around - say EU membership, or Chagos, or shooting up immigration, so that politicians can make smaller decisions quicker (incrementalism) rather than making massive changes (often over-corrections) every four years.
54% say "don't know", and the ludicrous costs of the "deal" were not mentioned, let alone the spurious connection to far away Mauritius
Well, that’s democracy for you. You can think other people wrong, because they’re not considering the full facts of the situation or they have been misled. You can try to persuade people. But you also have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, other people may settle on a different view to you. Maybe after public debate, the demos will swing around to your point of view, and maybe they won’t.
My point is not to defend or argue against the Chagos deal. It’s to note that rcs1000’s view that no-one likes the Chagos deal, and to use that as an example of democracy failing, is in error. Lots of people, rightly or wrongly, like the deal. I don’t disagree with rcs1000’s broader point, but for democracy to be seen to be working, we need mechanisms by which people can express their views and we need to get out of our own media bubbles.
Okay, my point is the vacuity of this kind of polling
Don’t back down Geoff, I think you were spot on first time - over 54% don’t know suggests an awful lot of people don’t feel they truly understand it, or feel they do understand it enough to not give a damn.
It is odd though, considering there has been a lot of frothy hatred of Chagos deal in the dead tree media, and absolutely no one on PB (I’m aware of) defending it, that polling keeps throwing up polls of support for Chagos Deal, and over half merely shrugging not at all worked up. From this same poll “politics” section, Conservatives are against, but only by 37% to 21% with 42% don’t know.
Before I started looking into it, I would have answered agains the deal, believing I knew enough about it to think it bad for national security and bizarre we are willing to unnecessarily pay so much good money for no good reason. Now I understand Chagos Deal inside out, my answer would still be strongly opposed to it going ahead, though for very different reasoning - my own preferred position (impossible though it is due to our ties to US defence systems) is now identical to the view Lord Dannatt expressed: just gift ownership to the US and India and walk away never to get involved again.
Gut reaction should be oppose because it don’t make any sense, going from a gut reaction to knowing what it’s really about, should also be strongly oppose, so I don’t understand why polls pick up so much support and so much indifference.
eh? "back down"? But your own take might have had much to be said for it except that we now realise that the USA (and India for that matter) may not be our steadfast allies
US, India and France have rarely shirked a chance for shafting the old colonial power UK at any point in the last 100 years. For dealing with Trump 2.0, it’s simply matter of keeping calm and steering it. As UK Prime Minister you will take decisions and act on basis Trump is just a 4 year thing, a blip.
There wasn’t much in tight US election race despite the price of eggs. If Biden stuck to his word being a bridge president, announced intention not to run in 2023 and allowed a Democratic Primary, the tight election could have been even tighter, even a different outcome.
Trumps campaign of backing away from Project 25 only to implement it from day 1, was fraudulent. he has no moral authority or popular support for anything he is doing. Even before the ruinous idiocy of Trumpnomics kicks in, we may already have passed peak power and influence from Trump 2.0.
Mug of tea. Keep calm, carry on.
We colonised France? Surely they colonised us…well the England bit anyway.
Shh. They were Norsemen. Norse Men. Who just happened to speak French and pay homage to the French throne, it's totally different, we swear.
It was because that Rollo fell out with his brother; I saw it on TV.
Rollo of Normandy is my great gggggggggggggg grandfather via my dad and his great grandfather
And mine.
In fact if Rollo has any living descendants than we all are.
1.5 million living descendants according to Google; so yeah I’m not exactly unique (tho fuck knows how Google reached that number)
The uniqueness comes from the fact I have a traceable line - via one ultra posh “cornish” family
The family seat is still there, tho the 14th century manor was rebuilt after a calamitous fire and is now an exquisite regency mansion hard by the Helford River - a gorgeous corner of Britain
It sold for several million a few years ago
One extra piquant fact - my sister, niece, mum, nephew, cousins and brand new son-of-niece (2 weeks old!) all live within 10 miles or less of where “we” lived 800 years back
Still wrong.
Everyond who lived a thousand years ago who has any European descendants today is an ancestor of every European.
Both maths and DNA evidence tell you this.
+1
That's our village idiot properly pwned.
Np, @kamsko is making a common mistake confusing genealogical ancestor with direct ancestry
Why not think about it for a second before typing out more rubbish?
As I said above, it's a mathematical fact that both you and I have 300,000,000,000,000 direct ancestors if you go back 48 generations. If you went back to the tiny population back then, there will be a fair few people whose lines died out - statistically this will be people who had no children or whose children had no children (since once you go beyond that, the chances of an entire line dying out diminish toward zero very rapidly). For all the others, certainly in this end of Europe, we're all descended from all of them, and that 300,000,000,000,000 hits would have to be distributed over just a few tens of million people, with those whose lines haven't died out scoring an average of ten million hits each.
Both you and I are likely descended from Rollo some ten million times over.
You’re confusing direct descent with “being on the same family tree”. It’s your inverse Wykehamist Fallacy again
Nope. We are all direct descendants. Do the damn maths. Honestly the fact that you don't understand the really simple power of two problem really does put paid to the hight IQ fallacy.
Think of the grain of rice problem on a chess board that gets doubled on the next square and doubles again on the next square etc.
It’s a tiny bit more complicated than that
Indeed.
Its complicated by the fact you're incapable of doing the damn maths and so are relying upon AI to do it for you.
I have to say this is astounding that he can't do the maths. His whole world of high IQ claims has just imploded spectacularly. It is so trivial.
The nature of warfare is changing very fast. Last year Ukraine produced more than 1.3m drones for its military to use, comfortably more than anyone else in the world. This year there will be considerably more. How much longer will the Russian manpower advantage even be relevant?
The Russians, in contrast, have largely been dependent upon running down huge stocks of artillery and tanks together with imports paid for by capital reserves which are now exhausted.
This war is not developing to Russia’s advantage, not at all. The balance is swinging in Ukraine’s favour but they still need financial help to keep their government running, the economy moving and the Russians at bay until the swing becomes more decisive. Hopefully they will get it today.
It’s weird how much Trump has misjudged this. It’s almost as if they were getting their information from Russia.
Well said.
There is a reason Putin's shills are desperate for "peace" soon and it is because Russia is getting close to culmination.
Europe needs to stand firm and back Ukraine.
Trump was completely wrong to say Ukraine doesn't "hold any cards", it is Russia that is failing more than Ukraine. Russia's already raided its prisons and sent North Koreans in meatwaves to the front, they're running out of money and meat to send to the grinder.
If Europe backs Ukraine fully, then even if Trump cuts America's support, Ukraine still should win this war. If Europe stands firm, I doubt Putin will make it to the end of Trump's term, which would be quite an irony and what a legacy for Trump to be the US POTUS who upended America's relationships and backed the wrong horse.
The nature of warfare is changing very fast. Last year Ukraine produced more than 1.3m drones for its military to use, comfortably more than anyone else in the world. This year there will be considerably more. How much longer will the Russian manpower advantage even be relevant?
The Russians, in contrast, have largely been dependent upon running down huge stocks of artillery and tanks together with imports paid for by capital reserves which are now exhausted.
This war is not developing to Russia’s advantage, not at all. The balance is swinging in Ukraine’s favour but they still need financial help to keep their government running, the economy moving and the Russians at bay until the swing becomes more decisive. Hopefully they will get it today.
It’s weird how much Trump has misjudged this. It’s almost as if they were getting their information from Russia.
The amount of Russian kit destroyed is remarkable. These are the claimed "kills" by the Ukrainians:
Even if you halve them, that is still untold billions. The anti-aircraft systems alone are often cited as being $10m plus a pop. The Soviet stockpiles are gone. The troops are now often old men on crutches, forced to go back and finish the job of getting killed for Mother Russia.
Russia has battled on the assumpton that Trump will deliver a ceasefire. They've gone all in with men and materal. It’s weird how much Russia has misjudged this. It’s almost as if they were getting their information from Trump...
Comments
Rollo of Normandy would have hundreds of millions of direct descendants today.
However it should be noted that our family’s poshness didn’t last. Within ten generations we were down the tin mines that we used to own
In this context both Ukraine and Russia have similar issues. Casualtiesvthat can’t be replaced, economies in the toilet, massive war weariness.
Food for thought.
The number of generations is underestimated because it's used the current average maternal age at childbirth of just over 30, and applied it through history, which is obvious nonsense - and a figure in the mid-20s makes an absolutely huge difference. And after that it's failed to do any meaningful maths at all. You should stop relying on a search engine to think about stuff.
Trump's desire to become the new Gandhi notwithstanding, he and his people, in their desperate quest to achieve "peace" for their master's self promotion, have forgotten one key point. The current situation works well for a lot of vested interests.
Not, obviously, for the Russians, Ukrainians and North Koreans doing the fighting and dying and not for the civilians displaced but beyond them - both the leaderships in Moscow and Kyiv are empowered by the fighting. Neither faces serious opposition and both Putin and Zelensky, in their own very different ways, are portrayed as heroes to their people.
The other group doing well out of this is or are arms manufacturers - their products are now in demand and with increased defence spending across much of the western world (offsetting planned redictions in America) that means more orders, more work and more profit. More orders means employing more people which boosts regional and national economies at a time of weak growth.
A contained stalemated conflict therefore suits a lot of players and "changing" that creates new uncertainty and potential instability. Keeping Putin tied up in the Donetsk means he can't do much elsewhere. Even trying to pry him from Xi is a poor move in some respects - Xi's own armaments industry and that in North Korea are being kept busy by Russian orders for artillery and ammunition.
From memory, I recall the Iran-Iraq War being a similar situation with plenty of players providing plenty of arms to both sides to enable huge offensives which achieved nothing but leaving tens of thousands dead.
So, I'm back to where I was yesterday morning - what does a "peace" deal look like and who actually wants Brazilian, Nigerian or Indian troops patrolling the ruins of Mariupol ? Short answer, and I recognise this will be a deeply cynical viewpoint, no one. Keeping the current conflict going at the current level works well for some important players and the actions of the last few days seem predicated on keeping that conflict going as neither Putin nor Zelensky would survive a "peace" even on current terms.
Would be like assuming that Trump’s bizarre behaviour re Ukraine was a cover and behind the scenes he thinks about things the same way we do when in fact he really doesn’t so we have to deal with the real person not the wrongly analysed person.
You have hundreds of trillions of direct ancestors. 2^48
That's not "same family tree", that's not counting brothers and sisters, aunts or uncles or any other relatives, that's pure direct ancestry.
Now there have never been that many people alive, so obviously the same people appear in the direct ancestry many times over, but the point is that when it comes to ancestry, we all have the same ultimately. Through direct bloodlines, parent to child to the power of 48 generations.
Unless you are saying that you can trace your family tree back to then which of course most of us can't.
So for instance there is no difference between Danny Dyer and myself having a king from medieval times as our gggggg.. grandad except he can trace the line and I can't. But we both have that line.
relying on AI has already addled his brain, and we just have to hope is isn't leading the way for our species.
I see what you meant about Blackbeltbarrister a while back.
He’s certainly been on a journey. His channel and feed used to be worth following. Now it’s full of right of centre conspiracy stuff.
https://x.com/dshensmith/status/1896107150730211711?s=61
(Originally I was just winding up @IanB2)
Grok 3 has a very different take to DeepSeek and ChatGPT (which estimates 10s to 100s of thousands)
Grok:
“Thus, an approximate answer: Rollo likely has 10–50 million living descendants today, with only a tiny fraction (thousands) documented. This is a rough estimate, blending historical genealogy with population trends, and reflects the vast, untraceable web of descent over a millennium.”
So something like 1 in 20 Europeans (given that /9 much of his seed will now be widely scattered across the world)
Of course the PM matters at this point in time. But she’s just doing her job
Think of the grain of rice problem on a chess board that gets doubled on the next square and doubles again on the next square etc.
Is Posh another name for mongrel?
Try yourself on this simpler one. Does the fact that three AIs give three widely different - effectively conflicting - answers, more likely mean:
A: that it's a "genuine puzzle with much dispute"?
or:
B: that AIs have a very long way to go before we can rely on them to give accurate answers to complicated questions?
Take your time. Clue: it's either A, or B.
However the odds of each of the hundreds of trillions of possible permutations, even reduced, not being hit once is utterly miniscule. And while the nobility tended to marry the nobility, that was only for the lines that continued the noble line which relied heavily on primogeniture, eventually the 4th child of the 4th child of the 4th child etc isn't getting noble marriages anymore though they still have the same direct ancestry.
The odds of anyone on this board not being a direct descendent by now are so close to zero they effectively are zero.
(In answer to the inevitable question, my preference would be pre 2014 borders, but the 2021 borders would be an ok ceasefire line. Plus something in addition for withdrawing from Kursk.)
Its complicated by the fact you're incapable of doing the damn maths and so are relying upon AI to do it for you.
It's the old story of the human mind struggling with compounding, such that it's so hard to appreciate that a single penny doubled each day for a month would net you nearly eleven million pounds, even when you know the answer already.
AFAIK there is no actual dispute. Did you read this?
https://gcbias.org/european-genealogy-faq/
It's actually very interesting, and written for a non-scientific audience, so you might be able to cope.
It answers these questions:
1. How did you learn about genealogical ancestry from genetics?
2. How did you find out when these shared ancestors lived?
3. What did you find?
Questions about the interpretation of genealogical ancestry and our results.
4. If all Europeans share the same set of common ancestors 1000 years ago, how can there be variation in the number of shared ancestors?
5. If you and I share all of our common ancestors 1000 years ago, why are we not genetically (almost) identical?
6. I know from the work on mtDNA that we all share a common ancestor tens of thousands of years ago, and yet you say that we all share a common ancestor only a few thousand years ago. Is one of these facts wrong?
7. How can it be that a person from the UK has more distant cousins in Ireland than in the UK?
8. What about recent immigrants to Europe?
9. How long ago did the most recent common ancestor of all modern humans live?
Questions about historical interpretations
10. Why do people on the Italian and Iberian peninsulas have relatively fewer common ancestors with other populations than other European populations?
11. Could population movements in the past 100 years explain the higher levels of sharing in some parts of the world?
12. Can your results about (insert population) be explained by (insert historical fact)?
Questions about our work and personal genomics results.
13. How does this relate to who my mitochondrial/Y-chromosomal haplogroup says I’m related to?
14. How can personal genomics companies (e.g. 23andme) place a European on the map of the Europe, if all Europeans are related to each other just a thousand years ago?
15. Personal genomics companies identify genetic connections (via shared genomic regions) between distant cousins. How long ago does this connections date too, and what do they mean in light of your results?
So not only are we all direct decedents, but we are multiple times over.
Unless your masters in Russia, the UK and other European countries believe that treaties between sovereign nations such as the UK and Ukraine should be stuck to
Motto?
"They slash them"
😀
My concern was later borne out by the debacle in the Oval Office. Starmer by inviting Trump to Balmoral did indeed bring shame on our nation. However his indiscretion is nothing compared to your necklace wearing lady friend who has gone full frontal Trumpster. Shame on her!
“Rollo of Normandy has somewhere between 2m to 50m direct descendants alive, worldwide, today”
So certainly not “everyone alive in europe” - but nonetheless even more than Elon Musk
A day to remember.
Nobility continued their records via primogeniture looking at their dad's, dad's, dad's, dad's, dad's etc dad and only bothering primarily with firstborn kids and a few others.
But you share just as much genetic material with every potential combination. Your dad's, mum's, mum's, dad's, dad's, mum's, mum's etc mum is just as much an ancestor and so on and so forth.
The potential combinations are so huge and it only takes one 'hit' and its in the bloodline.
Yes we are have vast numbers of ancestors but you cannot just use x! to say we all have the SAME ancestors when x is large enough.
But we should always remember that war is never fun. It should always be the last choice but sometimes it is necessary - in all cases an endeavour to be undertaken with a heavy heart
DNA evidence confirms this too: https://gcbias.org/european-genealogy-faq/
The scandal. I hope you get that lawyer struck off.
This is an interesting use case where AIs are showing obvious failings - but they still grasp it better than many on here
Problematically for the Elon haters it looks like Grok 3 is the most nuanced
(why do people insist on pedantry in reaction to jokes?)
https://gcbias.org/european-genealogy-faq/
and
http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/papers/Ancestors.pdf
which both say Europeans have the same ancestors 1000 years ago
and ask someone to point out where they are going wrong.
You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grand parents, etc. Keep going back until say the year 1000 with say a generation every 25 years and see how many great grandparents we all have and compare it to the population at the time (and that isn't including lines that died out, who obviously don't have descendent. You will then see that they will all be your g.grandfather several times over.
The Russians, in contrast, have largely been dependent upon running down huge stocks of artillery and tanks together with imports paid for by capital reserves which are now exhausted.
This war is not developing to Russia’s advantage, not at all. The balance is swinging in Ukraine’s favour but they still need financial help to keep their government running, the economy moving and the Russians at bay until the swing becomes more decisive. Hopefully they will get it today.
It’s weird how much Trump has misjudged this. It’s almost as if they were getting their information from Russia.
FFS.
My family, going back to the late 1800s, all come from London or thereabouts, and given its cosmopolitan history my spread of ancestors is likely to be more evenly distributed over a Dark Ages population than Leon's, assuming a significant chunk of his family originates from somewhere remote like Cornwall. That he may have one link established through documentation probably doesn't tilt the odds in his favour.
FFS
To pitch in with my two ha'penny worth:
@Leon should forget old Rollo - just as I should forget my family name connection to one of William's henchmen, Miles de Venoix - because we are both also descended from William the Conqueror himself of course - a much more significant ancestor!
Ah, but @Leon can prove the lineage to Rollo... Unfortunately, that is to forget that an estimated 5% of named fathers were not the biological father.
Rarely and never are two very different things and over enough instances all your "rare" occasions are still happening.
FFS.
Just goes to show how crap the AI systems are though that they fail to understand such basic maths that most of us here, being educated people, can actually understand.
"What did you find?
There is a lot of information in the data. The main conclusions we came to are that: everyone is related, surprisingly recently; and there are regional differences in patterns of relatedness due to historical events.
Ubiquitous shared ancestry: We found that even people living on opposite sides of Europe are genealogically closely related to each other over the past thousand years. Even pairs of people as far apart as the UK and Turkey share a chunk of genomic material 20% of the time. Since the chance that two people inherit genetic material from any one shared ancestor from 1,000 years ago is incredibly unlikely (<10-10), to explain such sharing we need these pairs of individuals to share many ancestors. In fact, they need to share a number of ancestors that is far larger than the size of European population, indicating that any pair of individuals share as ancestors all of the individuals alive back at the time in Europe, each many times over.
This strange idea that everyone is everyone’s ancestor was actually predicted about ten years ago by Joseph Chang (and collaborators) using maths and simulations. In hindsight this is intuitively clear, due to the rapidly expanding number of ancestors you have as you go back further and further in time. You have 2 parents, 4 grand-parents, 8 great-grandparents, and so on doubling every generation. After k generations you have 2^k ancestors, and this number grows so quickly that just a thousand years back (~30 generations) you have roughly 1 billion ancestors, which is far larger than the population size of the Earth (let alone Europe) back then. The consequence is that anyone alive 1,000 years ago who left any descendants will be an ancestor of every European. While the world population is larger than the European population, the rate of growth of number of ancestors quickly dwarfs this difference, and so every human is likely related genealogically to every other human over only a slightly longer time period."
If we take the lowest estimate of 1% for the father and ignore the mother, and apply it to the 48 generations over which Leon claims to have this link, there's a 40% chance that it was broken. At 2% there's nearly a 60% chance, and at 3% it's three to one that Leon's claim is false.
NEW THREAD
There is a reason Putin's shills are desperate for "peace" soon and it is because Russia is getting close to culmination.
Europe needs to stand firm and back Ukraine.
Trump was completely wrong to say Ukraine doesn't "hold any cards", it is Russia that is failing more than Ukraine. Russia's already raided its prisons and sent North Koreans in meatwaves to the front, they're running out of money and meat to send to the grinder.
If Europe backs Ukraine fully, then even if Trump cuts America's support, Ukraine still should win this war. If Europe stands firm, I doubt Putin will make it to the end of Trump's term, which would be quite an irony and what a legacy for Trump to be the US POTUS who upended America's relationships and backed the wrong horse.
Tanks — 10241 (+8)
Armored fighting vehicle — 21274 (+25)
Artillery systems — 23959 (+51)
MLRS — 1306 (+2)
Anti-aircraft warfare — 1091 (+3)
Even if you halve them, that is still untold billions. The anti-aircraft systems alone are often cited as being $10m plus a pop. The Soviet stockpiles are gone. The troops are now often old men on crutches, forced to go back and finish the job of getting killed for Mother Russia.
Russia has battled on the assumpton that Trump will deliver a ceasefire. They've gone all in with men and materal. It’s weird how much Russia has misjudged this. It’s almost as if they were getting their information from Trump...