He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Have you ever been to Rome with an attractive girl? Possibly not but you wouldn't make it to the Colisium from the Trevi Fountain without hearing 'bella figa' a dozen times. Different cultures are different. I don't know what happened in Epping I wasn't there but if you say to someone 'Come to Africa with me so we can make babies' I don't think they would be meaning it literally.
Here are the two most reliable reports. It just struck me that it sounded like a joke that didn't translate. And as for 'touching' a knee does not sound like a full sexual assault. Well probably not in Etheopea anyway. It could be he's a sex pest but maybe not, But 'A Dangerous Paedophile' as described by Chris Philip?
I don’t know whether it’s a factor in the polarisation and shift to the extremes of U.K. politics, but it is interesting to note that the 2026 Russian Federation budget includes the following:
“ The government intends to allocate $1.78 billion for mass media, up 6.6% from last year, with $317 million going to the Institute for Internet Development, which produces youth-oriented propaganda. The Russia in the World programme — designed to promote ‘traditional spiritual and moral values’ among foreign youth — will receive $145.2 million, more than double the 2025 allocation”
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Have you ever been to Rome with an attractive girl? Possibly not but you wouldn't make it to the Colisium from the Trevi Fountain without hearing 'bella figa' a dozen times. Different cultures are different. I don't know what happened in Epping I wasn't there but if you say to someone 'Come to Africa with me so we can make babies' I don't think they would be meaning it literally.
Here are the two most reliable reports. It just struck me that it sounded like a joke that didn't translate. And as for 'touching' a knee does not sound like a full sexual assault. Well probably not in Etheopea anyway. It could be he's a sex pest but maybe not, But 'A Dangerous Paedophile' as described by Chris Philip?
Any sexual contact with a child is abhorrent despite your efforts to downplay this issue
This is the Home Secretary statement this morning
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she "pulled every lever" to deport Kebatu.
"I am pleased to confirm this vile child sex offender has been deported. Our streets are safer because of it," she said.
Now let’s pull every lever to send a perv back to Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Let us pull every lever to get a trial, based on the existing criminal law, before a judge and jury.
Just like this chap.
I’m sure the British authorities are pulling out the stops to enact such a trial, just as the minor princeling will be desperate to clear his name. If your willing to pay out £12m to someone you’ve never met, a trial will be a minor inconvenience.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Have you ever been to Rome with an attractive girl? Possibly not but you wouldn't make it to the Colisium from the Trevi Fountain without hearing 'bella figa' a dozen times. Different cultures are different. I don't know what happened in Epping I wasn't there but if you say to someone 'Come to Africa with me so we can make babies' I don't think they would be meaning it literally.
Here are the two most reliable reports. It just struck me that it sounded like a joke that didn't translate. And as for 'touching' a knee does not sound like a full sexual assault. Well probably not in Etheopea anyway. It could be he's a sex pest but maybe not, But 'A Dangerous Paedophile' as described by Chris Philip?
Reform are holding their poll position and the rest nowhere
The Greens are trending upwards, and I think not only labour, but the Lib Dems need to look over their shoulders as they are all fishing in the same left pool
Politics now has choices on the extreme right and left who are squeezing out centre parties and the consequences are entirely unpredictable
I really do think Starmer and Badenoch will be fortunate to be in post this time next year
Looking at the opinion poll graph on wikipedia, it is remarkable how static the polling for Reform/Tories/Lib Dems has been since about June - I guess when the fallout from the local elections had settled down. The move in the polls since then has been of about 4 points in support from Labour to the Greens.
Actually that graph just shows how precipitous labour have fallen and no sign of levelling out
Reform are holding their poll position and the rest nowhere
The Greens are trending upwards, and I think not only labour, but the Lib Dems need to look over their shoulders as they are all fishing in the same left pool
Politics now has choices on the extreme right and left who are squeezing out centre parties and the consequences are entirely unpredictable
I really do think Starmer and Badenoch will be fortunate to be in post this time next year
If Starmer and Badenoch are replaced following dire local election results for their parties, their replacements could benefit from the disasters in local government when they are run by inexperienced Reform, Green or independent councillors.
Reform are holding their poll position and the rest nowhere
The Greens are trending upwards, and I think not only labour, but the Lib Dems need to look over their shoulders as they are all fishing in the same left pool
Politics now has choices on the extreme right and left who are squeezing out centre parties and the consequences are entirely unpredictable
I really do think Starmer and Badenoch will be fortunate to be in post this time next year
If Starmer and Badenoch are replaced following dire local election results for their parties, their replacements could benefit from the disasters in local government when they are run by inexperienced Reform, Green or independent councillors.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Have you ever been to Rome with an attractive girl? Possibly not but you wouldn't make it to the Colisium from the Trevi Fountain without hearing 'bella figa' a dozen times. Different cultures are different. I don't know what happened in Epping I wasn't there but if you say to someone 'Come to Africa with me so we can make babies' I don't think they would be meaning it literally.
Here are the two most reliable reports. It just struck me that it sounded like a joke that didn't translate. And as for 'touching' a knee does not sound like a full sexual assault. Well probably not in Etheopea anyway. It could be he's a sex pest but maybe not, But 'A Dangerous Paedophile' as described by Chris Philip?
I don’t know whether it’s a factor in the polarisation and shift to the extremes of U.K. politics, but it is interesting to note that the 2026 Russian Federation budget includes the following:
“ The government intends to allocate $1.78 billion for mass media, up 6.6% from last year, with $317 million going to the Institute for Internet Development, which produces youth-oriented propaganda. The Russia in the World programme — designed to promote ‘traditional spiritual and moral values’ among foreign youth — will receive $145.2 million, more than double the 2025 allocation”
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
If the Greens were a clear second, in 2029, I think Reform would win comfortably,
More voters would opt for Reform than for a party of the far left.
According to the polls, most voters are opting for Reform over every other party. That's the point. But Caerphilly taught us there will be a tactical vote against Reform. If the Greens get that (and it's a big if) then they get lots of seats.
But that doesn't mean Sean is wrong. Greens are an acceptable tactical vote for many if they are not actually going to win (both because you can signal a desire for a movement in a particular political direction without signing up to the specifics of the end point, and also because they will get less scrutiny if people don't think they'll actually win).
Once there is a realistic prospect of Greens leading a government, many will stay at home rather than vote for them. So tactical voting will weaken considerably.
You’re starting with an overall Right vote of 31% in Caerphilly, from 2024, and 20%, from 2021. The median constituency has a Right vote of 40%, from 2024.
The Conservative vote in Caerphilly switched en masse to Reform, while the Labour vote switched en masse to Plaid, and both parties gained previous non-voters. The Right vote rose to 38%.
In a more Right-leaning constituency, those sorts of vote shifts would favour Reform over its left wing challenger.
WRT the Greens, I don’t see a platform of leaving NATO, unilateral disarmament, and big tax rises gaining traction in a median constituency.
Yes Polanski has a platform designed to win inner city and university town seats from Labour.
Beyond that it is a platform designed to send swing voters in marginal seats in the suburbs and commuter belt, seaside and industrial towns to Farage and rural areas too would overall strongly vote Reform over a Polanski led Greens
I could see the Greens doing well in parts of Inner London next year as long as they aren't competing with "Your Party" slates.
In my part of the world, the Greens are likely to run third behind Labour and the Newham Indepdendents - they'll hold the Stratford seat they already have and might pick up some more if there is a tacit electoral arrangement with the Newham Independents whereby the latter work the Muslim dominated Wards and the former the other Wards.
The tantalising question is whether the Independents and the Greens are capable of taking down the Labour majority on Newham Council - it's a big ask, they basically need to take 30 seats off Labour. I can see the Newham Independents winning 20 and the Greens certainly 4-6 but beyond that, I'm much less certain.
OK, how many London councils do we think Labour will lose next year? I think it could be lots, probably mostly to NOC. I'm probably going to be standing in my council area as a LibDem candidate (in a ward we don't have much chance of winning!). I'm in Camden. I think the Greens will pick up a few seats, I think the LibDems will pick up quite a few seats, I can't see the Tories or Reform doing well. Maybe Your Party wins something? The council is currently Labour (45), Liberal Democrats (6), Conservative (3) and Green (1), so Labour have to lose 17, which seems a lot, but look at their polling! I think Camden goes NOC.
Your Party has just launched a "Crowd Editing Tool" that allows Your Party members to suggest edits and additions to their four founding documents — Political Statement; Year 1 Organisational Strategy; Constitution; and Standing Orders.
The Online Editing complements the regional assemblies being held around the country, where members are discussing the documents face-to-face. The draft documents will be updated as they go, before being debated by attendees at their founding conference, with all members given the final say in online, one-member-one-vote ballots.
This is very impressive and ambitious! I wonder who is the driving force behind this.
I see it as typical of the far left to get bogged down in such procedural stuff of interest only to the most obsessive activists.
Meanwhile Polanskis Greens are sweeping up their supporters. Your Party are still on the starting blocks while Zack storms ahead.
Yes - it's quite a contrast in approach.
The Your Party approach quite appeals to me because I'm an obsessive activist and like small print. But I recognise I'm in a very small minority and the Polanski approach is the winning approach.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I trust the judge sentencing him considered all the facts.
There seem to be many more sets of Sentencing Remarks published these days, which is good (given much in the media is different flavours of culture war bollocks). These are the ones for Kepatu:
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Have you ever been to Rome with an attractive girl? Possibly not but you wouldn't make it to the Colisium from the Trevi Fountain without hearing 'bella figa' a dozen times. Different cultures are different. I don't know what happened in Epping I wasn't there but if you say to someone 'Come to Africa with me so we can make babies' I don't think they would be meaning it literally.
Here are the two most reliable reports. It just struck me that it sounded like a joke that didn't translate. And as for 'touching' a knee does not sound like a full sexual assault. Well probably not in Etheopea anyway. It could be he's a sex pest but maybe not, But 'A Dangerous Paedophile' as described by Chris Philip?
I don’t know whether it’s a factor in the polarisation and shift to the extremes of U.K. politics, but it is interesting to note that the 2026 Russian Federation budget includes the following:
“ The government intends to allocate $1.78 billion for mass media, up 6.6% from last year, with $317 million going to the Institute for Internet Development, which produces youth-oriented propaganda. The Russia in the World programme — designed to promote ‘traditional spiritual and moral values’ among foreign youth — will receive $145.2 million, more than double the 2025 allocation”
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
I did wonder about that. The rhetoric - just as Kirk's was - is pretty unpleasant, but it's a bit of a stretch to call him a "raging anti-semite" on the basis of that quote, if you don't think Kirk was a racist.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.
Is Trump going to impose tariffs on the Senate now ?
Senator Mitch McConnell says he will support the resolutions to block Trump’s tariffs:
“The economic harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule. And no cross-eyed reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise. This week, I will vote in favor of resolutions to end emergency tariff authorities.” https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1983293590542463194
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Have you ever been to Rome with an attractive girl? Possibly not but you wouldn't make it to the Colisium from the Trevi Fountain without hearing 'bella figa' a dozen times. Different cultures are different. I don't know what happened in Epping I wasn't there but if you say to someone 'Come to Africa with me so we can make babies' I don't think they would be meaning it literally.
Here are the two most reliable reports. It just struck me that it sounded like a joke that didn't translate. And as for 'touching' a knee does not sound like a full sexual assault. Well probably not in Etheopea anyway. It could be he's a sex pest but maybe not, But 'A Dangerous Paedophile' as described by Chris Philip?
Any sexual contact with a child is abhorrent despite your efforts to downplay this issue
This is the Home Secretary statement this morning
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she "pulled every lever" to deport Kebatu.
"I am pleased to confirm this vile child sex offender has been deported. Our streets are safer because of it," she said.
Now let’s pull every lever to send a perv back to Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Let us pull every lever to get a trial, based on the existing criminal law, before a judge and jury.
Just like this chap.
I’m sure the British authorities are pulling out the stops to enact such a trial, just as the minor princeling will be desperate to clear his name. If your willing to pay out £12m to someone you’ve never met, a trial will be a minor inconvenience.
His protection from trial is most probably the way that Epstein spread his influence to all parties (and those of no party) in the US.
Has anyone, apart from Maxwell and Epstein been charged, anywhere in the world?
A few (very few, sadly) more Republicans seem to be realising they do after all possess a spine.
GOP Rep. Mo Brooks just broke ranks:
“I’m a Republican. The House Speaker is a Republican. Adelita Grijalva is a Democrat. But what is right is right and what the Republican House Speaker is doing to her is wrong. Period.” https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/1983236829701681559
If the Greens were a clear second, in 2029, I think Reform would win comfortably,
More voters would opt for Reform than for a party of the far left.
According to the polls, most voters are opting for Reform over every other party. That's the point. But Caerphilly taught us there will be a tactical vote against Reform. If the Greens get that (and it's a big if) then they get lots of seats.
But that doesn't mean Sean is wrong. Greens are an acceptable tactical vote for many if they are not actually going to win (both because you can signal a desire for a movement in a particular political direction without signing up to the specifics of the end point, and also because they will get less scrutiny if people don't think they'll actually win).
Once there is a realistic prospect of Greens leading a government, many will stay at home rather than vote for them. So tactical voting will weaken considerably.
You’re starting with an overall Right vote of 31% in Caerphilly, from 2024, and 20%, from 2021. The median constituency has a Right vote of 40%, from 2024.
The Conservative vote in Caerphilly switched en masse to Reform, while the Labour vote switched en masse to Plaid, and both parties gained previous non-voters. The Right vote rose to 38%.
In a more Right-leaning constituency, those sorts of vote shifts would favour Reform over its left wing challenger.
WRT the Greens, I don’t see a platform of leaving NATO, unilateral disarmament, and big tax rises gaining traction in a median constituency.
Yes Polanski has a platform designed to win inner city and university town seats from Labour.
Beyond that it is a platform designed to send swing voters in marginal seats in the suburbs and commuter belt, seaside and industrial towns to Farage and rural areas too would overall strongly vote Reform over a Polanski led Greens
I could see the Greens doing well in parts of Inner London next year as long as they aren't competing with "Your Party" slates.
In my part of the world, the Greens are likely to run third behind Labour and the Newham Indepdendents - they'll hold the Stratford seat they already have and might pick up some more if there is a tacit electoral arrangement with the Newham Independents whereby the latter work the Muslim dominated Wards and the former the other Wards.
The tantalising question is whether the Independents and the Greens are capable of taking down the Labour majority on Newham Council - it's a big ask, they basically need to take 30 seats off Labour. I can see the Newham Independents winning 20 and the Greens certainly 4-6 but beyond that, I'm much less certain.
OK, how many London councils do we think Labour will lose next year? I think it could be lots, probably mostly to NOC. I'm probably going to be standing in my council area as a LibDem candidate (in a ward we don't have much chance of winning!). I'm in Camden. I think the Greens will pick up a few seats, I think the LibDems will pick up quite a few seats, I can't see the Tories or Reform doing well. Maybe Your Party wins something? The council is currently Labour (45), Liberal Democrats (6), Conservative (3) and Green (1), so Labour have to lose 17, which seems a lot, but look at their polling! I think Camden goes NOC.
I was looking at the results for my old patch of Redbridge earlier. Labour now has some massive majorities, the few remaining Tories are clinging on in the north, and the LibDems don't have the level of organisation or activity as heretofore. Reform might make an impact but only in a few of the northern wards, and that might indeed make Labour's taking them easier. Given the inexorable demographic change, only a strong independent challenge that captures much of the Muslim vote poses Labour any threat - and that is possible, such an independent having won a by-election in March, and another non-Muslim independent missing out by just one vote in another by-election recently.
London voters along with the rest of us are clearly in a mood to throw Labour councillors out, but where will those votes go, when the Tories are equally unpopular, Reform remains untested in the capital and on stony ground excepting parts of the far NE and SE, LibDem campaigning in the capital isn't what it was and the Greens or Indys lack organisation and are appealing to constituencies (young voters and ethnic minority voters) that typically don't turn out strongly for local elections?
Camden was my very first local party in London - I played a small role in electing the very first LibDem there, when Flick won her ward, and I stood myself in a no-hope H&H ward that year. Best of luck - are they sending you off to the unfertile south?
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
Okay fair enough, there may be a wider story here. I was not aware that Israelis had been involved in training American police, and don’t know the scale of such things that did happen.
It’s fair to say that Mamdani’s connects haven’t gone down well with the average New Yorker though, outside of his base.
FPP(and maybe P)T: @Casino_Royale you flummox me, you do.
In most ways I have you pegged as a thoughtful, patriotic, right of centre astute political analyst.
But I don't get this. You say you'd pick Trump over Corbyn. Granted, it's a terrible, terrible forced choice (and I can admit that even despite an instinctive desire for a leader who will dismantle the more egregious aspects of our current vulture capitalism; Corbyn is not that man).
But I would pick a right-of-centre incompetent over someone intent on pulling apart democracy every time. Can you show your working for picking Trump over Corbyn please?
(Not a dig, I'm genuinely interested. It feels to me like an emotional reaction to Corbyn causing some cognitive dissonance about quite how catastrophic Trump 2's actions are for global democracy and the relative supremacy of the West Vs China.)
Labour and the Tories now tied and only just ahead of the Greens and LDs shows that both the main parties are finding it difficult to distinguish themselves. Labour are losing votes to their left to the Greens and to the centre to the LDs and the Tories have already lost the right to Reform and under Kemi are losing centrist voters to the LDs as well.
Reform ahead clearly but only on 27% so still very vulnerable to anti Farage tactical voting
It's a fascinating time to be involved in politics! There is a very simple message from the electorate - they're mad as hell and they're not going to take it any more. The party who can offer the most convincing fix for the mess will win.
You don't think the winner will be the Party offering the most attractive illusion?
I think there are two more cycles: Reform and then radical left (Green or Sultana) And then we may consider facing up to our problems. But we are not at rock bottom yet.
Radical Left would be apocalyptic.
No-one would come out with any private assets intact out the other side, and it'd take us decades to recover, and many of us never would.
Interesting question? Would we prefer a Corbyn/Foot type government or Farage/Trump type of Government?
I appreciate it sounds like a choice of which foot would you like to shoot, but if I had to choose I would go for Corbyn/Foot because although they might be worse at running the economy (maybe?) they aren't obviously destroying the democracy. Further left and of course that is also a possibilty
I'd go for Farage/Trump every time, and it's not even close.
So would most of the country.
Then most of the country are wrong, as are you.
I don't think so. Plenty of people on here (many reading this now, and even posting) would handwring about it publicly, and then still vote for them in the voting booth.
Farage is a pub bore and a bit of an ass, but I'd far rather him in power than Corbyn/Foot.
My concern with him isn't his shtick, it's that I don't think he could manage a team or do the job and his economics are fantasy land.
I did vote for Corbyn in 2016 (for the regional vote in the Holyrood elections), but I couldn't now vote for anyone who doesn't take the threat from Russia seriously. Not for Corbyn. Not for Polanski. Not for Farage.
I'm surprised at the number of PB Righties prepared to overlook Farage's support for Putin.
I think the conflation of Farage and Trump here is unhelpful.
@Casino_Royale I'd be interested in whether you'd go for Trump over Corbyn. I can understand you choosing Farage (populist right, roughly in line with Trump's first term perhaps). But Trump now?
Imv we all need to carefully consider which of the options at our next election are best placed to preserve and strengthen democracy in the face of a pretty crap set of political choices that will need to be made in the next generation or two.
One can have a sensible argument over whether Farage (playing to the gallery, keeping people engaged in politics) or Starmer (stolid respect of the rule of law) are best placed to keep our democracy healthy (neither is a great choice). But Trump is way out on the extremes on this.
Yes, I'd go for Trump over Corbyn.
I'm not convinced democracy is any safer under Corbyn than Trump. If he isn't a communist himself he's certainly very comfortabke in the company of communists. And terrorists. And Corbyn's friendship with the west's enemies seems rather stronger than Trump's. So politically, they are at worst level pegging. Meanwhile despite politicak misgivings, America actually seems to be doing relatively well economically. Which a Corbyn led UK certainly would not. So, forced choice, for the above reasons, UK-Trump over Corbyn.
I reject a choice between chopping off an arm and chopping off a leg.
It can be hard to escape a forced choice with FPTP, but the only way to get something different is to reject the forced choice. One of the unique features of the 2019 GE was that the obvious alternative - the Lib Dems - also presented an extreme option, of revoking article 50 without a second referendum, and so an escape from the forced choice between Johnson and Corbyn was even harder than it might otherwise have been.
Yes: bad though our system is, it isn't totally a forces choice between only two awful alternatives like the American system.
The Green surge is real, but may be temporary. Many lefties disillusioned by Starmerism are torn between the Greens and Your Party, but are waiting to see if the latter transforms from a mirage into something real. If it does, the left vote will split more between the Greens and YP.
In the longer term, many of those same lefties would do pretty much anything to avoid a Reform government, even to the extent of holding their noses and voting Labour (or LD) if that's what it takes in their own constituency. The proportion of those willing to do that will increase if the government actually enacts a few left-wing policies over the next three years, and if Gaza fades from its current centrality.
Yes, that's all a good summary (and I'm a current CLP chair and former MP through 13 years, not all that left-wing), though it omits the quite real possibility of a Green-YP alliance and division of seats. A sense that the Labour leadership sees itself as representing a coalition from left to right, as Blair and Brown both did, would make an important difference. Currently I feel the leadership's attitude to the left ranges from indifference to hostility, and the polls reflect that among other things.
Is Trump going to impose tariffs on the Senate now ?
Senator Mitch McConnell says he will support the resolutions to block Trump’s tariffs:
“The economic harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule. And no cross-eyed reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise. This week, I will vote in favor of resolutions to end emergency tariff authorities.” https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1983293590542463194
That would cut Trump down a fair bit, I'd say. He's having an absolute ball with tariffs. They're a perfect instrument for making news and boosting his personal power.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I trust the judge sentencing him considered all the facts.
There seem to be many more sets of Sentencing Remarks published these days, which is good (given much in the media is different flavours of culture war bollocks). These are the ones for Kepatu:
It is one of the truly good features of the modern justice system. Written in non-technical English as well.
So, if you take the sentencing guidelines (also online), you can see how the judge “built” the sentence based on the facts.
Transparency in justice
Incidentally -
1. Hadush Geberslasie Kebatu, you have been convicted of the following offences: i. Attempted Sexual Assault on a Child aged 14 ii. Incite or Causing a Child aged 13 to 15 to Engage in Sexual Activity iii. Sexual Assault on a Female (aged 14) iv. Harassment without Violence v. Sexual Assault on a Female
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.
More like he didn’t expect his comments to travel wider than the audience he was addressing, definitely didn’t expect to be fact checked by his opponents, and has hastily come up with the name of someone now deceased who is unable to confirm or deny the story.
The Green surge is real, but may be temporary. Many lefties disillusioned by Starmerism are torn between the Greens and Your Party, but are waiting to see if the latter transforms from a mirage into something real. If it does, the left vote will split more between the Greens and YP.
In the longer term, many of those same lefties would do pretty much anything to avoid a Reform government, even to the extent of holding their noses and voting Labour (or LD) if that's what it takes in their own constituency. The proportion of those willing to do that will increase if the government actually enacts a few left-wing policies over the next three years, and if Gaza fades from its current centrality.
Yes, that's all a good summary (and I'm a current CLP chair and former MP through 13 years, not all that left-wing), though it omits the quite real possibility of a Green-YP alliance and division of seats. A sense that the Labour leadership sees itself as representing a coalition from left to right, as Blair and Brown both did, would make an important difference. Currently I feel the leadership's attitude to the left ranges from indifference to hostility, and the polls reflect that among other things.
Some sort of deal between the Greens and YPs is so obviously needed that it will surely come about - the Greens did such a deal with the LibDems before, after all, although most research suggests that neither party benefited greatly from it. The prior question is whether YP can form itself into any sort of coherent organisation - so far its been a chaotic story somewhere between tragedy and farce. In terms of electoral politics, they'd actually be better off not launching as a political party; in areas of Muslim population they should work with the emerging Gaza Independents and everywhere else going off to join Zack.
Is Trump going to impose tariffs on the Senate now ?
Senator Mitch McConnell says he will support the resolutions to block Trump’s tariffs:
“The economic harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule. And no cross-eyed reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise. This week, I will vote in favor of resolutions to end emergency tariff authorities.” https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1983293590542463194
That would cut Trump down a fair bit, I'd say. He's having an absolute ball with tariffs. They're a perfect instrument for making news and boosting his personal power.
Sadly, I expect that, after some threats, the Senate will fold.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
Okay fair enough, there may be a wider story here. I was not aware that Israelis had been involved in training American police, and don’t know the scale of such things that did happen.
It’s fair to say that Mamdani’s connects haven’t gone down well with the average New Yorker though, outside of his base.
Must have a wide base given that he is a clear leader the polls?
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
Sexually assaulting children, or attempting to do so, is a violent offence. Not a non violent offence.
Sexually assaulting any woman is a violent offence.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
Okay fair enough, there may be a wider story here. I was not aware that Israelis had been involved in training American police, and don’t know the scale of such things that did happen.
It’s fair to say that Mamdani’s connects haven’t gone down well with the average New Yorker though, outside of his base.
Must have a wide base given that he is a clear leader the polls?
The comments only came to light yesterday.
It’s unlikey to be enough to stop him getting elected, as with Corbyn today’s kids who have never experienced actual socialism seem to love him.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
The Green surge is real, but may be temporary. Many lefties disillusioned by Starmerism are torn between the Greens and Your Party, but are waiting to see if the latter transforms from a mirage into something real. If it does, the left vote will split more between the Greens and YP.
In the longer term, many of those same lefties would do pretty much anything to avoid a Reform government, even to the extent of holding their noses and voting Labour (or LD) if that's what it takes in their own constituency. The proportion of those willing to do that will increase if the government actually enacts a few left-wing policies over the next three years, and if Gaza fades from its current centrality.
Yes, that's all a good summary (and I'm a current CLP chair and former MP through 13 years, not all that left-wing), though it omits the quite real possibility of a Green-YP alliance and division of seats. A sense that the Labour leadership sees itself as representing a coalition from left to right, as Blair and Brown both did, would make an important difference. Currently I feel the leadership's attitude to the left ranges from indifference to hostility, and the polls reflect that among other things.
Some sort of deal between the Greens and YPs is so obviously needed that it will surely come about - the Greens did such a deal with the LibDems before, after all, although most research suggests that neither party benefited greatly from it. The prior question is whether YP can form itself into any sort of coherent organisation - so far its been a chaotic story somewhere between tragedy and farce. In terms of electoral politics, they'd actually be better off not launching as a political party; in areas of Muslim population they should work with the emerging Gaza Independents and everywhere else going off to join Zack.
As with the RefCon thing, the only thing stopping an arrangement is the egos of the participants.
~3.5 years is a long time but right now it feels likely that Farage is going to comfortably win a higher proportion of the vote than Starmer did. It feels like almost every day now, my phone pings with appalled messages from normally apolitical people about the latest migration related story. And contrary to the so called centrist narrative on here, many are either in mixed nationality marriages or migrants themselves.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
Okay fair enough, there may be a wider story here. I was not aware that Israelis had been involved in training American police, and don’t know the scale of such things that did happen.
It’s fair to say that Mamdani’s connects haven’t gone down well with the average New Yorker though, outside of his base.
Must have a wide base given that he is a clear leader the polls?
The comments only came to light yesterday.
It’s unlikey to be enough to stop him getting elected, as with Corbyn today’s kids who have never experienced actual socialism seem to love him.
The latest poll is Mamdani 44%, Cuomo 34% and Republican candidate Silwa 11%,
So if Silwa dropped out and his voters held their noses for Cuomo to beat Mamdani then Cuomo could still win.
~3.5 years is a long time but right now it feels likely that Farage is going to comfortably win a higher proportion of the vote than Starmer did. It feels like almost every day now, my phone pings with appalled messages from normally apolitical people about the latest migration related story. And contrary to the so called centrist narrative on here, many are either in mixed nationality marriages or migrants themselves.
Im not sure that centrist narrative exists anywhere but in your head. Not read it myself.
Was clear from the last US election that plenty of minorities were quite willing to vote for Trump. No reason it would be different here.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
Okay fair enough, there may be a wider story here. I was not aware that Israelis had been involved in training American police, and don’t know the scale of such things that did happen.
It’s fair to say that Mamdani’s connects haven’t gone down well with the average New Yorker though, outside of his base.
Must have a wide base given that he is a clear leader the polls?
The comments only came to light yesterday.
It’s unlikey to be enough to stop him getting elected, as with Corbyn today’s kids who have never experienced actual socialism seem to love him.
I suspect Mamdani will adopt a fair amount of pragmatism if elected. The comparison with Corbyn is pretty silly; he's considerably smarter.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
Okay fair enough, there may be a wider story here. I was not aware that Israelis had been involved in training American police, and don’t know the scale of such things that did happen.
It’s fair to say that Mamdani’s connects haven’t gone down well with the average New Yorker though, outside of his base.
Must have a wide base given that he is a clear leader the polls?
The comments only came to light yesterday.
It’s unlikey to be enough to stop him getting elected, as with Corbyn today’s kids who have never experienced actual socialism seem to love him.
The latest poll is Mamdani 44%, Cuomo 34% and Republican candidate Silwa 11%,
So if Silwa dropped out and his voters held their noses for Cuomo to beat Mamdani then Cuomo could still win.
There are a bunch of posters on here who think if they take the moral high ground in matters of morality it makes them look noble or even chivalrous. They are all of the right and at least one is a laughable hypocrite........
.....Some years ago I described Roman Polanski as 'a man more sinned against than sinning',.........
In brief a couple of girls went to his hacienda and asked him to have sex with them. He obliged and it transpired that despite looking early 20's they they were just 13 or 14. To avoid US jail he escaped to Europe where the laws on under age sex were more lax and he hadn't returned since. I wrote that he was a generational talent and he was a great loss to film making.
This must be at least ten years ago. But to this day all you need do if you are a rabid right winger is clutch your pealrs to you bosom and mention my name and Polanski and you are guaranteed the approval of at least five or six of your peers.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
Okay fair enough, there may be a wider story here. I was not aware that Israelis had been involved in training American police, and don’t know the scale of such things that did happen.
It’s fair to say that Mamdani’s connects haven’t gone down well with the average New Yorker though, outside of his base.
Must have a wide base given that he is a clear leader the polls?
The comments only came to light yesterday.
It’s unlikey to be enough to stop him getting elected, as with Corbyn today’s kids who have never experienced actual socialism seem to love him.
Not sure what counts as actual socialism in your mind but realistically its never been applied in the US, and its general application is well beyond the powers of the New York mayor. He is mostly popular as a reaction to Trump and the failed Democratic establishments opposition to Trump, rather than his own beliefs.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
For all the lads preferring Trump to Corbyn, are they also willing to take the throbbing haemorrhoid of Musk on the giant orange arsehole as part of the deal?
Elon Musk @elonmusk · 1h Civil war in Britain is inevitable.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.
Certainly elements of the right aren’t really learning from the mixed outcomes of going full Maoist bicycle on lefties they don’t like. It almost failed with Corbyn, did fail with Connolly in Ireland and looks likely to fail with Mamdani in NYC. The main outcome is that centrist people think these righties are ridiculous while the more extreme right gets further radicalised.
The Green surge is real, but may be temporary. Many lefties disillusioned by Starmerism are torn between the Greens and Your Party, but are waiting to see if the latter transforms from a mirage into something real. If it does, the left vote will split more between the Greens and YP.
In the longer term, many of those same lefties would do pretty much anything to avoid a Reform government, even to the extent of holding their noses and voting Labour (or LD) if that's what it takes in their own constituency. The proportion of those willing to do that will increase if the government actually enacts a few left-wing policies over the next three years, and if Gaza fades from its current centrality.
Yes, that's all a good summary (and I'm a current CLP chair and former MP through 13 years, not all that left-wing), though it omits the quite real possibility of a Green-YP alliance and division of seats. A sense that the Labour leadership sees itself as representing a coalition from left to right, as Blair and Brown both did, would make an important difference. Currently I feel the leadership's attitude to the left ranges from indifference to hostility, and the polls reflect that among other things.
Some sort of deal between the Greens and YPs is so obviously needed that it will surely come about - the Greens did such a deal with the LibDems before, after all, although most research suggests that neither party benefited greatly from it. The prior question is whether YP can form itself into any sort of coherent organisation - so far its been a chaotic story somewhere between tragedy and farce. In terms of electoral politics, they'd actually be better off not launching as a political party; in areas of Muslim population they should work with the emerging Gaza Independents and everywhere else going off to join Zack.
As with the RefCon thing, the only thing stopping an arrangement is the egos of the participants.
Which is probably enough.
I don't think that is right. The Greens have been working hard for decades to get noticed and to build a relationship with the voters. Every general election there is another left-of-Labour party that pops up, and insists that the Greens stand aside, interrupting this slow and methodical work, when that left-wing party likely won't exist by the election afterwards.
It doesn't make sense for the Greens to sabotage themselves by standing aside for left-wing parties with the longevity of mayflies.
The prolonged gestation of Your Party seems to be in part due to an attempt to keep all the left of Labour groups on board, and to build something that is more substantial than an electoral vehicle of convenience for the next general election. It might be worthwhile for the Greens to come to an arrangement, but they will not rush into anything, and will want to see some evidence that it won't be a self-defeating move.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.
Certainly elements of the right aren’t really learning from the mixed outcomes of going full Maoist bicycle on lefties they don’t like. It almost failed with Corbyn, did fail with Connolly in Ireland and looks likely to fail with Mamdani in NYC. The main outcome is that centrist people think these righties are ridiculous while the more extreme right gets further radicalised.
Until the hard left get in and tax the centrists assets and income to oblivion of course, then they realise the right might have been onto something after all!
~3.5 years is a long time but right now it feels likely that Farage is going to comfortably win a higher proportion of the vote than Starmer did. It feels like almost every day now, my phone pings with appalled messages from normally apolitical people about the latest migration related story. And contrary to the so called centrist narrative on here, many are either in mixed nationality marriages or migrants themselves.
Until one of your appalled messages is from an Albanian taxi driver your anecdotes will lack a certain force.
There are a bunch of posters on here who think if they take the moral high ground in matters of morality it makes them look noble or even chivalrous. They are all of the right and at least one is a laughable hypocrite........
.....Some years ago I described Roman Polanski as 'a man more sinned against than sinning',.........
In brief a couple of girls went to his hacienda and asked him to have sex with them. He obliged and it transpired that despite looking early 20's they they were just 13 or 14. To avoid US jail he escaped to Europe where the laws on under age sex were more lax and he hadn't returned since. I wrote that he was a generational talent and he was a great loss to film making.
This must be at least ten years ago. But to this day all you need do if you are a rabid right winger is clutch your pealrs to you bosom and mention my name and Polanski and you are guaranteed the approval of at least five or six of your peers.
That is not what Polanski did, according to sworn testimony, in court.
To start with, he knew the age of the girl(s). He had personally signed the paperwork involved in working with minors.
Another good (and lengthy) thread on UK defence procurement.
The Troubled Saga of the UK’s New Medium Helicopter Programme
Views my own, corrections and comments welcome.
I have previous threads on this subject.
1/25 The procurement of military equipment by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has often been marked by ambitious goals that exceed both financial and strategic practicality, leading to programmes that escalate in cost, diminish in scope, and fail to provide timely capabilities to frontline users. The New Medium Helicopter (NMH) programme, initiated in 2021, stands as a prime example of this recurring issue. Originally conceived as a comprehensive effort to modernise the British Armed Forces’ rotary-wing fleet with a single versatile platform, it promised greater operational efficiency and flexibility. However, her we are in October and it has narrowed into a beleaguered competition fraught with bidder withdrawals, reduced ambitions, and severe funding challenges. This thread attempts to explore the programme’s flawed origins, its challenging progression as stakeholders and suppliers have exited, and its current status as essentially a sole-source procurement aimed solely at replacing the now-retired Puma HC2 fleet. Drawing on official documents, defence analyses, and recent reports, it contends that NMH illustrates a persistent MoD failure to procure equipment that effectively meets user requirements, transforming a basic tactical lift need into an overly complicated and precarious venture. Ultimately, simpler alternatives—like the US Marine Corps’ (USMC) UH-1Y Venom ‘Huey’—could offer a more cost-effective resolution, yet again exposing institutional shortcomings in defence acquisition... https://x.com/MtarfaL/status/1983121214181691554
When funding is constrained (which it will be for the rest of the decade at least), simple, cost effective, and proven systems should almost always be preferred (see also Ajax versus CV90, for example), particularly as some defence kit is likely to obsolete quite rapidly, with the changing nature of the battlefield.
We don't even have the excuse here of favouring domestic industry. And whatever system we eventually opt for, it should be possible to negotiate manufacturing offsets in the UK.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
So you do subscribe to the unique evil of the white slaver then?
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
Okay fair enough, there may be a wider story here. I was not aware that Israelis had been involved in training American police, and don’t know the scale of such things that did happen.
It’s fair to say that Mamdani’s connects haven’t gone down well with the average New Yorker though, outside of his base.
Must have a wide base given that he is a clear leader the polls?
The comments only came to light yesterday.
It’s unlikey to be enough to stop him getting elected, as with Corbyn today’s kids who have never experienced actual socialism seem to love him.
Not sure what counts as actual socialism in your mind but realistically its never been applied in the US, and its general application is well beyond the powers of the New York mayor. He is mostly popular as a reaction to Trump and the failed Democratic establishments opposition to Trump, rather than his own beliefs.
Also there's money to be made if he tanks the New York property market and then it bounces back when he's replaced by a more moderate Democrat. The right people will realise that and take advantage.
The crazy thing about the rise of populism in this country is that things aren't actually that bad. The economy is growing, unemployment is low, real incomes are rising again after being squeezed by a series of global economic shocks, and we face an international migration problem that is small by the standard of many countries and fixable with time and effort. Imagine the state of our politics if we were to face a real crisis! Pardon my lack of political correctness, but perhaps we just need to man up a bit? Plus of course, on the slow moving but very real problem the country is facing around the fiscal costs of ageing, the populists and mainstream politicians alike have nothing to say.
I would say that generally speaking things could be worse. Growth is pretty poor and nowhere near where Labour need it to be. We also have a real problem with energy costs, the solution to which is not reverting to to fossil fuels use, but fixing things like the pricing mechanism, transmission, and investing more in renewables with planning and development simplified.
If we could get a bit more growth — trend would be okay, higher than trend great but less likely now — and get energy prices under control I think most people would feel better off, and the longer term stuff like housing, transport, education, justice where to be fair to Labour they do broadly correctly identify the problems, if not yet have the solutions, would have time to improve.
When you consider what we've been through since the financial crash, and then Brexit (more for the log jam it created than anything else), a once in a lifetime pandemic, and huge spike in energy costs due to a major European war, and lately the Leader of the Free World now being a crooked lunatic, I honestly think we are doing quite well. It's certainly not been plain sailing, and no government over that time has had it easy, but none of them have really stuffed things up.
Labour's campaign in 2024 made it all sound too easy to quickly change things, and the public are impatient with some justification, but the last thing we need next is the country veering off in some extreme far-left or far-right direction.
Starmer need to make a better case for long-term change and hold steady, not make abrupt changes to policy or leadership.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
Okay fair enough, there may be a wider story here. I was not aware that Israelis had been involved in training American police, and don’t know the scale of such things that did happen.
It’s fair to say that Mamdani’s connects haven’t gone down well with the average New Yorker though, outside of his base.
Must have a wide base given that he is a clear leader the polls?
The comments only came to light yesterday.
It’s unlikey to be enough to stop him getting elected, as with Corbyn today’s kids who have never experienced actual socialism seem to love him.
Not sure what counts as actual socialism in your mind but realistically its never been applied in the US, and its general application is well beyond the powers of the New York mayor. He is mostly popular as a reaction to Trump and the failed Democratic establishments opposition to Trump, rather than his own beliefs.
Another good (and lengthy) thread on UK defence procurement.
The Troubled Saga of the UK’s New Medium Helicopter Programme
Views my own, corrections and comments welcome.
I have previous threads on this subject.
1/25 The procurement of military equipment by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has often been marked by ambitious goals that exceed both financial and strategic practicality, leading to programmes that escalate in cost, diminish in scope, and fail to provide timely capabilities to frontline users. The New Medium Helicopter (NMH) programme, initiated in 2021, stands as a prime example of this recurring issue. Originally conceived as a comprehensive effort to modernise the British Armed Forces’ rotary-wing fleet with a single versatile platform, it promised greater operational efficiency and flexibility. However, her we are in October and it has narrowed into a beleaguered competition fraught with bidder withdrawals, reduced ambitions, and severe funding challenges. This thread attempts to explore the programme’s flawed origins, its challenging progression as stakeholders and suppliers have exited, and its current status as essentially a sole-source procurement aimed solely at replacing the now-retired Puma HC2 fleet. Drawing on official documents, defence analyses, and recent reports, it contends that NMH illustrates a persistent MoD failure to procure equipment that effectively meets user requirements, transforming a basic tactical lift need into an overly complicated and precarious venture. Ultimately, simpler alternatives—like the US Marine Corps’ (USMC) UH-1Y Venom ‘Huey’—could offer a more cost-effective resolution, yet again exposing institutional shortcomings in defence acquisition... https://x.com/MtarfaL/status/1983121214181691554
When funding is constrained (which it will be for the rest of the decade at least), simple, cost effective, and proven systems should almost always be preferred (see also Ajax versus CV90, for example), particularly as some defence kit is likely to obsolete quite rapidly, with the changing nature of the battlefield.
We don't even have the excuse here of favouring domestic industry. And whatever system we eventually opt for, it should be possible to negotiate manufacturing offsets in the UK.
It’s very largely about bizarre attempts to “customise” when we buy abroad.
Because simply buying a foreign product wouldn’t generate lots of fun decisions and all that paperwork that justifies existences.
Some may recall the farce of the Chinook helicopters bought for Special Forces - to “save money” a bizarre requirement was created that led to unusable helicopters sitting in a hanger. Many years later they were downgraded to usability. At further cost.
What fewer might know, that about the time they finally got the helicopters out of the hanger, the Australians were retiring their Special Forces Chinook variant. They’d simply bought off the shelf, used them for decades and were retiring them as worn out through hard use.
The Green surge is real, but may be temporary. Many lefties disillusioned by Starmerism are torn between the Greens and Your Party, but are waiting to see if the latter transforms from a mirage into something real. If it does, the left vote will split more between the Greens and YP.
In the longer term, many of those same lefties would do pretty much anything to avoid a Reform government, even to the extent of holding their noses and voting Labour (or LD) if that's what it takes in their own constituency. The proportion of those willing to do that will increase if the government actually enacts a few left-wing policies over the next three years, and if Gaza fades from its current centrality.
Yes, that's all a good summary (and I'm a current CLP chair and former MP through 13 years, not all that left-wing), though it omits the quite real possibility of a Green-YP alliance and division of seats. A sense that the Labour leadership sees itself as representing a coalition from left to right, as Blair and Brown both did, would make an important difference. Currently I feel the leadership's attitude to the left ranges from indifference to hostility, and the polls reflect that among other things.
Some sort of deal between the Greens and YPs is so obviously needed that it will surely come about - the Greens did such a deal with the LibDems before, after all, although most research suggests that neither party benefited greatly from it. The prior question is whether YP can form itself into any sort of coherent organisation - so far its been a chaotic story somewhere between tragedy and farce. In terms of electoral politics, they'd actually be better off not launching as a political party; in areas of Muslim population they should work with the emerging Gaza Independents and everywhere else going off to join Zack.
I wonder what the non political voter (as opposed to us here) thinks the Greens represent. I would not be surprised if it is still of an environmentalist party rather than a party some way to the left of centre.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
The other factor is that the Atlantic slave trade took place almost entirely within the context of the Enlightenment which we are led to believe was a very fine thing. I wouldn’t expect your average African chief to be au fait with the principles of liberty, individualism and reason, but perhaps a higher benchmark should be applied to the great and the good of our merchant, political and ruling classes.
~3.5 years is a long time but right now it feels likely that Farage is going to comfortably win a higher proportion of the vote than Starmer did. It feels like almost every day now, my phone pings with appalled messages from normally apolitical people about the latest migration related story. And contrary to the so called centrist narrative on here, many are either in mixed nationality marriages or migrants themselves.
What's the problem with being a) centrist or b) mixed 'nationality' marriages and c) being migrants themselves? Are they disqualified from having an opinion?
There are a bunch of posters on here who think if they take the moral high ground in matters of morality it makes them look noble or even chivalrous. They are all of the right and at least one is a laughable hypocrite........
.....Some years ago I described Roman Polanski as 'a man more sinned against than sinning',.........
In brief a couple of girls went to his hacienda and asked him to have sex with them. He obliged and it transpired that despite looking early 20's they they were just 13 or 14. To avoid US jail he escaped to Europe where the laws on under age sex were more lax and he hadn't returned since. I wrote that he was a generational talent and he was a great loss to film making.
This must be at least ten years ago. But to this day all you need do if you are a rabid right winger is clutch your pealrs to you bosom and mention my name and Polanski and you are guaranteed the approval of at least five or six of your peers.
Polanski drugged and forcibly buggered a thirteen year old.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
Okay fair enough, there may be a wider story here. I was not aware that Israelis had been involved in training American police, and don’t know the scale of such things that did happen.
It’s fair to say that Mamdani’s connects haven’t gone down well with the average New Yorker though, outside of his base.
Must have a wide base given that he is a clear leader the polls?
The comments only came to light yesterday.
It’s unlikey to be enough to stop him getting elected, as with Corbyn today’s kids who have never experienced actual socialism seem to love him.
Not sure what counts as actual socialism in your mind but realistically its never been applied in the US, and its general application is well beyond the powers of the New York mayor. He is mostly popular as a reaction to Trump and the failed Democratic establishments opposition to Trump, rather than his own beliefs.
Rent Controls Free Buses “Hate Violence Prevention Programmes” City-owned Grocery Stores Free Childcare for U5s Removing Schoolyards $30 Minimum Wage Tax Rises on The Rich and Coprorations Non-Co-operation with Federal Police.
Funny thing is, quite a few MAGAs seem to like socialism. A 55-year-old man wearing “MAGA for Mamdani” gear said he voted for Trump twice but now he’s “making a switch” and voting for Mamdani.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
Okay fair enough, there may be a wider story here. I was not aware that Israelis had been involved in training American police, and don’t know the scale of such things that did happen.
It’s fair to say that Mamdani’s connects haven’t gone down well with the average New Yorker though, outside of his base.
Must have a wide base given that he is a clear leader the polls?
The comments only came to light yesterday.
It’s unlikey to be enough to stop him getting elected, as with Corbyn today’s kids who have never experienced actual socialism seem to love him.
I suspect Mamdani will adopt a fair amount of pragmatism if elected. The comparison with Corbyn is pretty silly; he's considerably smarter.
Anyway, we will likely get to find out.
Mamdani has absolutely no choice but to be pragmatic, as the most radical things he's pledging simply aren't within the powers of the Mayor of New York but rather sit with the Governor and state legislature. He may as well promise the moon on a stick.
The Green surge is real, but may be temporary. Many lefties disillusioned by Starmerism are torn between the Greens and Your Party, but are waiting to see if the latter transforms from a mirage into something real. If it does, the left vote will split more between the Greens and YP.
In the longer term, many of those same lefties would do pretty much anything to avoid a Reform government, even to the extent of holding their noses and voting Labour (or LD) if that's what it takes in their own constituency. The proportion of those willing to do that will increase if the government actually enacts a few left-wing policies over the next three years, and if Gaza fades from its current centrality.
Yes, that's all a good summary (and I'm a current CLP chair and former MP through 13 years, not all that left-wing), though it omits the quite real possibility of a Green-YP alliance and division of seats. A sense that the Labour leadership sees itself as representing a coalition from left to right, as Blair and Brown both did, would make an important difference. Currently I feel the leadership's attitude to the left ranges from indifference to hostility, and the polls reflect that among other things.
Some sort of deal between the Greens and YPs is so obviously needed that it will surely come about - the Greens did such a deal with the LibDems before, after all, although most research suggests that neither party benefited greatly from it. The prior question is whether YP can form itself into any sort of coherent organisation - so far its been a chaotic story somewhere between tragedy and farce. In terms of electoral politics, they'd actually be better off not launching as a political party; in areas of Muslim population they should work with the emerging Gaza Independents and everywhere else going off to join Zack.
I wonder what the non political voter (as opposed to us here) thinks the Greens represent. I would not be surprised if it is still of an environmentalist party rather than a party some way to the left of centre.
In terms of their Westminster team, they still are, aren't they? Not easy to see Ramsay or Chowns holding their seats on a Polanski agenda.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
The other factor is that the Atlantic slave trade took place almost entirely within the context of the Enlightenment which we are led to believe was a very fine thing. I wouldn’t expect your average African chief to be au fait with the principles of liberty, individualism and reason, but perhaps a higher benchmark should be applied to the great and the good of our merchant, political and ruling classes.
People can rationalise things to a remarkable degree. Freedom is for me, but not for thee. I struggle to understand how a man like Jefferson could see slavery as wrong in principle, but legitimate when he practised it.
There are a bunch of posters on here who think if they take the moral high ground in matters of morality it makes them look noble or even chivalrous. They are all of the right and at least one is a laughable hypocrite........
.....Some years ago I described Roman Polanski as 'a man more sinned against than sinning',.........
In brief a couple of girls went to his hacienda and asked him to have sex with them. He obliged and it transpired that despite looking early 20's they they were just 13 or 14. To avoid US jail he escaped to Europe where the laws on under age sex were more lax and he hadn't returned since. I wrote that he was a generational talent and he was a great loss to film making.
This must be at least ten years ago. But to this day all you need do if you are a rabid right winger is clutch your pealrs to you bosom and mention my name and Polanski and you are guaranteed the approval of at least five or six of your peers.
Polanski drugged and forcibly buggered a thirteen year old.
Is Trump going to impose tariffs on the Senate now ?
Senator Mitch McConnell says he will support the resolutions to block Trump’s tariffs:
“The economic harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule. And no cross-eyed reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise. This week, I will vote in favor of resolutions to end emergency tariff authorities.” https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1983293590542463194
That would cut Trump down a fair bit, I'd say. He's having an absolute ball with tariffs. They're a perfect instrument for making news and boosting his personal power.
Sadly, I expect that, after some threats, the Senate will fold.
The Green surge is real, but may be temporary. Many lefties disillusioned by Starmerism are torn between the Greens and Your Party, but are waiting to see if the latter transforms from a mirage into something real. If it does, the left vote will split more between the Greens and YP.
In the longer term, many of those same lefties would do pretty much anything to avoid a Reform government, even to the extent of holding their noses and voting Labour (or LD) if that's what it takes in their own constituency. The proportion of those willing to do that will increase if the government actually enacts a few left-wing policies over the next three years, and if Gaza fades from its current centrality.
Yes, that's all a good summary (and I'm a current CLP chair and former MP through 13 years, not all that left-wing), though it omits the quite real possibility of a Green-YP alliance and division of seats. A sense that the Labour leadership sees itself as representing a coalition from left to right, as Blair and Brown both did, would make an important difference. Currently I feel the leadership's attitude to the left ranges from indifference to hostility, and the polls reflect that among other things.
Some sort of deal between the Greens and YPs is so obviously needed that it will surely come about - the Greens did such a deal with the LibDems before, after all, although most research suggests that neither party benefited greatly from it. The prior question is whether YP can form itself into any sort of coherent organisation - so far its been a chaotic story somewhere between tragedy and farce. In terms of electoral politics, they'd actually be better off not launching as a political party; in areas of Muslim population they should work with the emerging Gaza Independents and everywhere else going off to join Zack.
I wonder what the non political voter (as opposed to us here) thinks the Greens represent. I would not be surprised if it is still of an environmentalist party rather than a party some way to the left of centre.
The question is whether they can engage and enthuse the young with what would essentially be Corbyn-2017 redux, using Zack's dynamism and social media, whilst hanging onto their middle aged voters worrying about hedgehogs and climate change. It'll be an issue in my seat, formerly a key Green target and where the Greens have at least pushed through to leading 'progressive' party, if behind both Reform and the Tories. They'll need to gather up a lot of the Labour vote to get into contention.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
The other factor is that the Atlantic slave trade took place almost entirely within the context of the Enlightenment which we are led to believe was a very fine thing. I wouldn’t expect your average African chief to be au fait with the principles of liberty, individualism and reason, but perhaps a higher benchmark should be applied to the great and the good of our merchant, political and ruling classes.
People can rationalise things to a remarkable degree. Freedom is for me, but not for thee. I struggle to understand how a man like Jefferson could see slavery as wrong in principle, but legitimate when he practised it.
Jefferson had considerable form in being two faced, TBF. Read Amercian Sphinx.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.
I call my parents’ Muslim friends auntie or uncle even if they aren’t related to us.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
The other factor is that the Atlantic slave trade took place almost entirely within the context of the Enlightenment which we are led to believe was a very fine thing. I wouldn’t expect your average African chief to be au fait with the principles of liberty, individualism and reason, but perhaps a higher benchmark should be applied to the great and the good of our merchant, political and ruling classes.
People can rationalise things to a remarkable degree. Freedom is for me, but not for thee. I struggle to understand how a man like Jefferson could see slavery as wrong in principle, but legitimate when he practised it.
An echo of our climate travails? Burning fossil fuels is bad, but I need to get to work?
There are a bunch of posters on here who think if they take the moral high ground in matters of morality it makes them look noble or even chivalrous. They are all of the right and at least one is a laughable hypocrite........
.....Some years ago I described Roman Polanski as 'a man more sinned against than sinning',.........
In brief a couple of girls went to his hacienda and asked him to have sex with them. He obliged and it transpired that despite looking early 20's they they were just 13 or 14. To avoid US jail he escaped to Europe where the laws on under age sex were more lax and he hadn't returned since. I wrote that he was a generational talent and he was a great loss to film making.
This must be at least ten years ago. But to this day all you need do if you are a rabid right winger is clutch your pealrs to you bosom and mention my name and Polanski and you are guaranteed the approval of at least five or six of your peers.
Polanski drugged and forcibly buggered a thirteen year old.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.
I call my parents’ Muslim friends auntie or uncle even if they aren’t related to us.
My son has a few aunties and and uncles that are actually just my friends. Its designed to help them recognise the wider group of people that will be important in his life.
A mixed bag of local by-elections tomorrow. We have Con defences in Barnet and Stirling, a Lab defence in Stevenage, a LD defence in Tunbridge Wells, and Ind defence in Thanet, and Ref defence in Worcestershire.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.
I call my parents’ Muslim friends auntie or uncle even if they aren’t related to us.
My son has a few aunties and and uncles that are actually just my friends. Its designed to help them recognise the wider group of people that will be important in his life.
Likewise - there are 2 family friends to which that rule was applied when I was a child and even now the Christmas card will read to Auntie xyz and hubby (he isn’t an uncle as her first husband died in the 90s).
And if I see her I still refer to her as aunt xyz - much to her annoyance and a bit of glee from me
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
The other factor is that the Atlantic slave trade took place almost entirely within the context of the Enlightenment which we are led to believe was a very fine thing. I wouldn’t expect your average African chief to be au fait with the principles of liberty, individualism and reason, but perhaps a higher benchmark should be applied to the great and the good of our merchant, political and ruling classes.
People can rationalise things to a remarkable degree. Freedom is for me, but not for thee. I struggle to understand how a man like Jefferson could see slavery as wrong in principle, but legitimate when he practised it.
An echo of our climate travails? Burning fossil fuels is bad, but I need to get to work?
People can only make choices within the system that exists, rather than the system that they wish existed. I still drive a diesel because it wouldn't be safe to cycle on the local roads, and we cannot yet afford an electric car.
Most action to tackle the climate crisis needs to be taken at a collective level, to make it easier for people to make good choices, or for people not to have to think about it at all. When all of our electricity is generated by zero carbon means then it simplifies things for people wanting to make the right choice (or they hardly have to make a choice at all), but this is something that needs to be done on a country-wide level. It's hard for an individual to make that change.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
The other factor is that the Atlantic slave trade took place almost entirely within the context of the Enlightenment which we are led to believe was a very fine thing. I wouldn’t expect your average African chief to be au fait with the principles of liberty, individualism and reason, but perhaps a higher benchmark should be applied to the great and the good of our merchant, political and ruling classes.
People can rationalise things to a remarkable degree. Freedom is for me, but not for thee. I struggle to understand how a man like Jefferson could see slavery as wrong in principle, but legitimate when he practised it.
An echo of our climate travails? Burning fossil fuels is bad, but I need to get to work?
People may have no realistic choice, but to do things that they disapprove of.
An obvious example is that of the revolutionary socialist who has to earn a living in the marketplace.
But,, Jefferson did have a choice. He could have done as several other Virginia slaveowners did, and emancipated his slaves, and leased out his estate to them. That would still have generated a solid rental income for him.
If the Greens were a clear second, in 2029, I think Reform would win comfortably,
More voters would opt for Reform than for a party of the far left.
According to the polls, most voters are opting for Reform over every other party. That's the point. But Caerphilly taught us there will be a tactical vote against Reform. If the Greens get that (and it's a big if) then they get lots of seats.
But that doesn't mean Sean is wrong. Greens are an acceptable tactical vote for many if they are not actually going to win (both because you can signal a desire for a movement in a particular political direction without signing up to the specifics of the end point, and also because they will get less scrutiny if people don't think they'll actually win).
Once there is a realistic prospect of Greens leading a government, many will stay at home rather than vote for them. So tactical voting will weaken considerably.
You’re starting with an overall Right vote of 31% in Caerphilly, from 2024, and 20%, from 2021. The median constituency has a Right vote of 40%, from 2024.
The Conservative vote in Caerphilly switched en masse to Reform, while the Labour vote switched en masse to Plaid, and both parties gained previous non-voters. The Right vote rose to 38%.
In a more Right-leaning constituency, those sorts of vote shifts would favour Reform over its left wing challenger.
WRT the Greens, I don’t see a platform of leaving NATO, unilateral disarmament, and big tax rises gaining traction in a median constituency.
Yes Polanski has a platform designed to win inner city and university town seats from Labour.
Beyond that it is a platform designed to send swing voters in marginal seats in the suburbs and commuter belt, seaside and industrial towns to Farage and rural areas too would overall strongly vote Reform over a Polanski led Greens
I could see the Greens doing well in parts of Inner London next year as long as they aren't competing with "Your Party" slates.
In my part of the world, the Greens are likely to run third behind Labour and the Newham Indepdendents - they'll hold the Stratford seat they already have and might pick up some more if there is a tacit electoral arrangement with the Newham Independents whereby the latter work the Muslim dominated Wards and the former the other Wards.
The tantalising question is whether the Independents and the Greens are capable of taking down the Labour majority on Newham Council - it's a big ask, they basically need to take 30 seats off Labour. I can see the Newham Independents winning 20 and the Greens certainly 4-6 but beyond that, I'm much less certain.
OK, how many London councils do we think Labour will lose next year? I think it could be lots, probably mostly to NOC. I'm probably going to be standing in my council area as a LibDem candidate (in a ward we don't have much chance of winning!). I'm in Camden. I think the Greens will pick up a few seats, I think the LibDems will pick up quite a few seats, I can't see the Tories or Reform doing well. Maybe Your Party wins something? The council is currently Labour (45), Liberal Democrats (6), Conservative (3) and Green (1), so Labour have to lose 17, which seems a lot, but look at their polling! I think Camden goes NOC.
Hopefully Leon will vote for you.
Wrong ward, sadly, as otherwise that's one vote I know I could rely on.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
The other factor is that the Atlantic slave trade took place almost entirely within the context of the Enlightenment which we are led to believe was a very fine thing. I wouldn’t expect your average African chief to be au fait with the principles of liberty, individualism and reason, but perhaps a higher benchmark should be applied to the great and the good of our merchant, political and ruling classes.
People can rationalise things to a remarkable degree. Freedom is for me, but not for thee. I struggle to understand how a man like Jefferson could see slavery as wrong in principle, but legitimate when he practised it.
An echo of our climate travails? Burning fossil fuels is bad, but I need to get to work?
People may have no realistic choice, but to do things that they disapprove of.
An obvious example is that of the revolutionary socialist who has to earn a living in the marketplace.
But,, Jefferson did have a choice. He could have done as several other Virginia slaveowners did, and emancipated his slaves, and leased out his estate to them. That would still have generated a solid rental income for him.
He preferred to hold them as slaves.
How about Labour politicians who attack private schools but then send their kids there?
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
So you do subscribe to the unique evil of the white slaver then?
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.
I call my parents’ Muslim friends auntie or uncle even if they aren’t related to us.
The crazy thing about the rise of populism in this country is that things aren't actually that bad. The economy is growing, unemployment is low, real incomes are rising again after being squeezed by a series of global economic shocks, and we face an international migration problem that is small by the standard of many countries and fixable with time and effort. Imagine the state of our politics if we were to face a real crisis! Pardon my lack of political correctness, but perhaps we just need to man up a bit? Plus of course, on the slow moving but very real problem the country is facing around the fiscal costs of ageing, the populists and mainstream politicians alike have nothing to say.
The real problem is total sclerosis in the system of the governing class. Which makes change next to impossible. It’s also their utter incompetence and lack of knowledge about what they are doing -
- the bat tunnel. No, not the cost. The specification, according to the chap who commissioned it, was “no bats could be allowed to be injured”. That is impossible. You could reduce the *probability* to 1 in a million. But eliminating risk completely requires infinite money. - The farce over the Small Reactors. Demanding that a percentage of the employees are asylum seekers? When asylum seekers can’t work, by law. - renting the asylum hotels at rates *above* the cost of block booking rooms. - Wanting more homes built, then piling up contradictory regulations until they manage to stop flats being built. And then wanting to - increase landfill costs….
The issue is fragmentation of responsibility.
You have someone who has a target to reduce landfill and believes pricing is the way to do it. They have no target related to house building.
You have someone whose objective is to build houses and has no incentive to reduce landfill.
They don’t talk and their objectives set them in competition with each other.
Ministers should set priorities but have lost control of the mechanism of government
It’s almost as if we should have a top minister at the top of government (First Minister??) who could appoint a series of sub ministers - one each for major tasks of the state. With more junior ministers below them.
They would handle their delegated tasks and deal with the aggregation of priorities at a national level.
Perhaps this should be Starmer’s reworking of government?
That’s what happens at the moment. But the landfill person is conspiring with the local government person against the housing person. And the money people aren’t paying attention because they like the idea of more money and don’t understand that house prices are a fundamental cause of societal disruption
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.
I call my parents’ Muslim friends auntie or uncle even if they aren’t related to us.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
The other factor is that the Atlantic slave trade took place almost entirely within the context of the Enlightenment which we are led to believe was a very fine thing. I wouldn’t expect your average African chief to be au fait with the principles of liberty, individualism and reason, but perhaps a higher benchmark should be applied to the great and the good of our merchant, political and ruling classes.
People can rationalise things to a remarkable degree. Freedom is for me, but not for thee. I struggle to understand how a man like Jefferson could see slavery as wrong in principle, but legitimate when he practised it.
People are messy- and one of the lessons I've learned from living in the vicinity of really good people is that you never really attain virtue; as you peel away one layer of bad, it just reveals another one.
Take John Newton. The outline of the story- slave trader turned abolitionist- is well known, but the details (that he was enslaved for a few years before this, and that his involvement with the trade continued long after his conversion) are wild.
ETA: See also that bloke who spoke about motes and beams. He really understood human nature.
If the Greens were a clear second, in 2029, I think Reform would win comfortably,
More voters would opt for Reform than for a party of the far left.
According to the polls, most voters are opting for Reform over every other party. That's the point. But Caerphilly taught us there will be a tactical vote against Reform. If the Greens get that (and it's a big if) then they get lots of seats.
But that doesn't mean Sean is wrong. Greens are an acceptable tactical vote for many if they are not actually going to win (both because you can signal a desire for a movement in a particular political direction without signing up to the specifics of the end point, and also because they will get less scrutiny if people don't think they'll actually win).
Once there is a realistic prospect of Greens leading a government, many will stay at home rather than vote for them. So tactical voting will weaken considerably.
You’re starting with an overall Right vote of 31% in Caerphilly, from 2024, and 20%, from 2021. The median constituency has a Right vote of 40%, from 2024.
The Conservative vote in Caerphilly switched en masse to Reform, while the Labour vote switched en masse to Plaid, and both parties gained previous non-voters. The Right vote rose to 38%.
In a more Right-leaning constituency, those sorts of vote shifts would favour Reform over its left wing challenger.
WRT the Greens, I don’t see a platform of leaving NATO, unilateral disarmament, and big tax rises gaining traction in a median constituency.
Yes Polanski has a platform designed to win inner city and university town seats from Labour.
Beyond that it is a platform designed to send swing voters in marginal seats in the suburbs and commuter belt, seaside and industrial towns to Farage and rural areas too would overall strongly vote Reform over a Polanski led Greens
I could see the Greens doing well in parts of Inner London next year as long as they aren't competing with "Your Party" slates.
In my part of the world, the Greens are likely to run third behind Labour and the Newham Indepdendents - they'll hold the Stratford seat they already have and might pick up some more if there is a tacit electoral arrangement with the Newham Independents whereby the latter work the Muslim dominated Wards and the former the other Wards.
The tantalising question is whether the Independents and the Greens are capable of taking down the Labour majority on Newham Council - it's a big ask, they basically need to take 30 seats off Labour. I can see the Newham Independents winning 20 and the Greens certainly 4-6 but beyond that, I'm much less certain.
OK, how many London councils do we think Labour will lose next year? I think it could be lots, probably mostly to NOC. I'm probably going to be standing in my council area as a LibDem candidate (in a ward we don't have much chance of winning!). I'm in Camden. I think the Greens will pick up a few seats, I think the LibDems will pick up quite a few seats, I can't see the Tories or Reform doing well. Maybe Your Party wins something? The council is currently Labour (45), Liberal Democrats (6), Conservative (3) and Green (1), so Labour have to lose 17, which seems a lot, but look at their polling! I think Camden goes NOC.
I was looking at the results for my old patch of Redbridge earlier. Labour now has some massive majorities, the few remaining Tories are clinging on in the north, and the LibDems don't have the level of organisation or activity as heretofore. Reform might make an impact but only in a few of the northern wards, and that might indeed make Labour's taking them easier. Given the inexorable demographic change, only a strong independent challenge that captures much of the Muslim vote poses Labour any threat - and that is possible, such an independent having won a by-election in March, and another non-Muslim independent missing out by just one vote in another by-election recently.
London voters along with the rest of us are clearly in a mood to throw Labour councillors out, but where will those votes go, when the Tories are equally unpopular, Reform remains untested in the capital and on stony ground excepting parts of the far NE and SE, LibDem campaigning in the capital isn't what it was and the Greens or Indys lack organisation and are appealing to constituencies (young voters and ethnic minority voters) that typically don't turn out strongly for local elections?
Camden was my very first local party in London - I played a small role in electing the very first LibDem there, when Flick won her ward, and I stood myself in a no-hope H&H ward that year. Best of luck - are they sending you off to the unfertile south?
Flick has been an institution, but has now retired! I'm probably standing in my own ward, Highgate, which is currently 1 Green & 2 Labour, but will surely go 3 Greens. I think we'll do well in the west of the borough. The big question is, indeed, what happens in the south, solidly Labour at present. I wonder if Andrew Feinstein (??Your Party) will stand.
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.
I call my parents’ Muslim friends auntie or uncle even if they aren’t related to us.
Same here amongst us non-Muslims
Yep used to do that. I guess it is because otherwise it is too familiar between young children and adults for the child to just use the first name. I grew out of that and started calling them by their first name when older regardless of whether they were pseudo Uncles/Aunts or real ones
My nephews and nieces (in law, I don't have any from my side of the family) often call me Uncle kjh. I ask them to call me kjh. Seems weird for 30 - 40 years to call me Uncle.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
The other factor is that the Atlantic slave trade took place almost entirely within the context of the Enlightenment which we are led to believe was a very fine thing. I wouldn’t expect your average African chief to be au fait with the principles of liberty, individualism and reason, but perhaps a higher benchmark should be applied to the great and the good of our merchant, political and ruling classes.
People can rationalise things to a remarkable degree. Freedom is for me, but not for thee. I struggle to understand how a man like Jefferson could see slavery as wrong in principle, but legitimate when he practised it.
People are messy- and one of the lessons I've learned from living in the vicinity of really good people is that you never really attain virtue; as you peel away one layer of bad, it just reveals another one.
Take John Newton. The outline of the story- slave trader turned abolitionist- is well known, but the details (that he was enslaved for a few years before this, and that his involvement with the trade continued long after his conversion) are wild.
ETA: See also that bloke who spoke about motes and beams. He really understood human nature.
There are certainly numerous cases, throughout history, of ex-slaves who were enthusiastic owners and traffickers of people.
There are a bunch of posters on here who think if they take the moral high ground in matters of morality it makes them look noble or even chivalrous. They are all of the right and at least one is a laughable hypocrite........
.....Some years ago I described Roman Polanski as 'a man more sinned against than sinning',.........
In brief a couple of girls went to his hacienda and asked him to have sex with them. He obliged and it transpired that despite looking early 20's they they were just 13 or 14. To avoid US jail he escaped to Europe where the laws on under age sex were more lax and he hadn't returned since. I wrote that he was a generational talent and he was a great loss to film making.
This must be at least ten years ago. But to this day all you need do if you are a rabid right winger is clutch your pealrs to you bosom and mention my name and Polanski and you are guaranteed the approval of at least five or six of your peers.
Polanski drugged and forcibly buggered a thirteen year old.
I have increasing antipathy for left wing blokeism. Over time I'm not sure how they'll fit in with the female leaning 'woke' youth vote.
There are a bunch of posters on here who think if they take the moral high ground in matters of morality it makes them look noble or even chivalrous. They are all of the right and at least one is a laughable hypocrite........
.....Some years ago I described Roman Polanski as 'a man more sinned against than sinning',.........
In brief a couple of girls went to his hacienda and asked him to have sex with them. He obliged and it transpired that despite looking early 20's they they were just 13 or 14. To avoid US jail he escaped to Europe where the laws on under age sex were more lax and he hadn't returned since. I wrote that he was a generational talent and he was a great loss to film making.
This must be at least ten years ago. But to this day all you need do if you are a rabid right winger is clutch your pealrs to you bosom and mention my name and Polanski and you are guaranteed the approval of at least five or six of your peers.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
The other factor is that the Atlantic slave trade took place almost entirely within the context of the Enlightenment which we are led to believe was a very fine thing. I wouldn’t expect your average African chief to be au fait with the principles of liberty, individualism and reason, but perhaps a higher benchmark should be applied to the great and the good of our merchant, political and ruling classes.
People can rationalise things to a remarkable degree. Freedom is for me, but not for thee. I struggle to understand how a man like Jefferson could see slavery as wrong in principle, but legitimate when he practised it.
An echo of our climate travails? Burning fossil fuels is bad, but I need to get to work?
People may have no realistic choice, but to do things that they disapprove of.
An obvious example is that of the revolutionary socialist who has to earn a living in the marketplace.
But,, Jefferson did have a choice. He could have done as several other Virginia slaveowners did, and emancipated his slaves, and leased out his estate to them. That would still have generated a solid rental income for him.
He preferred to hold them as slaves.
How about Labour politicians who attack private schools but then send their kids there?
That's more clearly hypocritical, as they have viable alternatives.
Boxes reportedly containing snails were uncovered by Westminster City Council officers in West End offices.
It believes it is an attempt to avoid the payment of business rates (NNDR) through claiming that a commercial property is a snail farm and therefore exempt from business as a “a fish farm / agricultural use” property.
While in reality organisers of the scam know that the Valuation Office (central government agency) will never grant an agricultural business rate exemption, the council is forced to go through the legal hoops of winding up the shell company which is occupying the office space. As the council must hold the occupier of a property as liable for business rates, the landlord does not have to pay any business rates and therefore can be considered as complicit in this arrangement.
Westminster City Council has so far wound up four snail companies for non payment of business rates.
I think it just needs a declaration that the courts will hold the owner of a property liable for business rates
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.
I call my parents’ Muslim friends auntie or uncle even if they aren’t related to us.
That's fine but the clan culture we've imported from Pakistan is a real problem.
Some would argue that it was the breaking of clan culture that was the key to modern development/western individualism.
Another good (and lengthy) thread on UK defence procurement.
The Troubled Saga of the UK’s New Medium Helicopter Programme
Views my own, corrections and comments welcome.
I have previous threads on this subject.
1/25 The procurement of military equipment by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has often been marked by ambitious goals that exceed both financial and strategic practicality, leading to programmes that escalate in cost, diminish in scope, and fail to provide timely capabilities to frontline users. The New Medium Helicopter (NMH) programme, initiated in 2021, stands as a prime example of this recurring issue. Originally conceived as a comprehensive effort to modernise the British Armed Forces’ rotary-wing fleet with a single versatile platform, it promised greater operational efficiency and flexibility. However, her we are in October and it has narrowed into a beleaguered competition fraught with bidder withdrawals, reduced ambitions, and severe funding challenges. This thread attempts to explore the programme’s flawed origins, its challenging progression as stakeholders and suppliers have exited, and its current status as essentially a sole-source procurement aimed solely at replacing the now-retired Puma HC2 fleet. Drawing on official documents, defence analyses, and recent reports, it contends that NMH illustrates a persistent MoD failure to procure equipment that effectively meets user requirements, transforming a basic tactical lift need into an overly complicated and precarious venture. Ultimately, simpler alternatives—like the US Marine Corps’ (USMC) UH-1Y Venom ‘Huey’—could offer a more cost-effective resolution, yet again exposing institutional shortcomings in defence acquisition... https://x.com/MtarfaL/status/1983121214181691554
When funding is constrained (which it will be for the rest of the decade at least), simple, cost effective, and proven systems should almost always be preferred (see also Ajax versus CV90, for example), particularly as some defence kit is likely to obsolete quite rapidly, with the changing nature of the battlefield.
We don't even have the excuse here of favouring domestic industry. And whatever system we eventually opt for, it should be possible to negotiate manufacturing offsets in the UK.
It’s very largely about bizarre attempts to “customise” when we buy abroad.
Because simply buying a foreign product wouldn’t generate lots of fun decisions and all that paperwork that justifies existences.
Some may recall the farce of the Chinook helicopters bought for Special Forces - to “save money” a bizarre requirement was created that led to unusable helicopters sitting in a hanger. Many years later they were downgraded to usability. At further cost.
What fewer might know, that about the time they finally got the helicopters out of the hanger, the Australians were retiring their Special Forces Chinook variant. They’d simply bought off the shelf, used them for decades and were retiring them as worn out through hard use.
The US has its own issues... Speaking on board USS George Washington in Japan, Trump promises an executive order to revert US aircraft carriers back to steam-powered catapults.
EMALS initial development expensive and delayed but now working on the USS Gerald R Ford.
Benefits ✅Faster launch cycles of aircraft ✅Power adjustable to match size of aircraft, extending airframe life ✅Frees up space and weight ✅Big reduction in manpower requirements and high associated cost ✅Safer due to eliminating high-pressure steam lines ✅Reduces stress on other shipboard systems
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
So you do subscribe to the unique evil of the white slaver then?
That's what you took from that? Jeez.
You seem very keen to make out that the white mans role is all important.
He tried to kiss her, said he wanted to make babies with her and invited her back to his flat.
I don’t know what world you live in but that’s a long way past the line as far as I am concerned.
She’s a 14 year old child for goodness sake.
Yes, I agree, as I made clear in my post.
It should be dealt with by the police, but is a 12/12 custodial sentence appropriate for such a low level non-violent offence? And one that most teenage girls will have experienced since time immemorial?
If so, then no wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.
Maybe it had to be custodial because of his housing situation, but locking up every lecherous man is just impossible.
I'd be happy if we could lock up one lecherous man who committed worse acts, and is now President of the United States.
What we are seeing is culture war applied to everything.
I find the arguments strange. But then I try not pick a side.
@Foxy and @Roger are struggling with some BadFacts*. Facts which are Bad because they give ammunition to those they oppose.
As pointed out, the sentencing guidelines are clear and quite simple. Indeed, the sentencing guidelines are an example of a process that has much to commend it. They are available online, written in normal English and with quite moderate effort, an ordinary person can see the chain of reasoning that leads to a particular sentence.
*I was introduced to the idea of “Bad Facts” at a corporate seminar on equality. They are facts that are true, but shouldn’t be. Because of their effect on debate.
So someone actually stood up and said this in front of other people? Were they a comedian?
I started parroting back the slogans etc in the “exercises” during the course. A Russian colleague, who’d lived under the USSR, commented on the similarity to the political sessions in the military. And that I’d have make a good Zampolit’s Pet. Apparently there was always one guy who would give the “Right” answer…
This is how I feel about a lot of the stuff that HR makes us do. Recently we've all had to complete our 'Never Ok' training (or refresher). Fine - sum it up to "Don't be a dick" (with thanks to the Last Leg). But the issue is for much of the discourse around the modern world their seems to be one interpretation with is 'correct' and to deviate sees you as an outcast.
For example climate. Most people understand that man's behaviour is leading to changes in climate. But there is a wide ranging debate in the field about the future. How much warming? How best to mitigate? Is some warming actually an issue? But if you try to debate this, all too often you are labelled a denier.
Your example is pertinent too. The African slaves didn't migrate to the coast waiting to be picked up by passing ships. They were enslaved by other Africans and sold. But that is not something that is permitted when talking about the slave trade.
Anyone who knows anything about the save trade knows that African tribes sold prisoners to European and Arab slavers. So I disagree that talking about this is not permitted - if it weren't permitted then nobody would know about it. Of course a more nuanced take is to look at how the presence of slaving ports changed the incentives for warfare and enslavement among the people in the region via the usual mechanism of supply and demand. It's not like the slavers were passive participants who simply turned up at the coast to conveniently take surplus slaves off the locals' hands. But the idea that the role of Africans in the process is some kind of secret is laughable.
Perhaps I have phrased it poorly. Its the idea that slavery is only a crime perpetuated by whites against blacks that is the accepted facts.
I don't think those are the accepted facts. The accepted fact I think is that Europeans ran the transatlantic slave trade and owned the slaves and profited from their forced labour. That Africans sold other Africans to Europeans at slave ports is also well known. But once Africans were sold they and their descendents worked for free for Europeans for centuries, and suffered premature death, frequent rape, harsh punishments and were denied normal family life and education while their own cultural practices were suppressed. In such a context I think it's unsurprising that the focus is more on slave owners than on African slave sellers, indeed I would argue it is wholly warranted.
The other factor is that the Atlantic slave trade took place almost entirely within the context of the Enlightenment which we are led to believe was a very fine thing. I wouldn’t expect your average African chief to be au fait with the principles of liberty, individualism and reason, but perhaps a higher benchmark should be applied to the great and the good of our merchant, political and ruling classes.
People can rationalise things to a remarkable degree. Freedom is for me, but not for thee. I struggle to understand how a man like Jefferson could see slavery as wrong in principle, but legitimate when he practised it.
An echo of our climate travails? Burning fossil fuels is bad, but I need to get to work?
People may have no realistic choice, but to do things that they disapprove of.
An obvious example is that of the revolutionary socialist who has to earn a living in the marketplace.
But,, Jefferson did have a choice. He could have done as several other Virginia slaveowners did, and emancipated his slaves, and leased out his estate to them. That would still have generated a solid rental income for him.
He preferred to hold them as slaves.
How about Labour politicians who attack private schools but then send their kids there?
That's more clearly hypocritical, as they have viable alternatives.
This is an equivocation.
Believing that:
1) it is wrong that there are private schools
AND
2) individuals are not wrong to use private school should they exist
On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.
People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them
Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?
The next mayor of New York:
"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."
The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.
As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.
And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.
I call my parents’ Muslim friends auntie or uncle even if they aren’t related to us.
That's fine but the clan culture we've imported from Pakistan is a real problem.
Some would argue that it was the breaking of clan culture that was the key to modern development/western individualism.
One of my nieces-in-law still calls me uncle, and my wife auntie. And she's got two grown-up children.
Comments
(My college's deputy leader was the Vice Mistress. This got even better when an eminent chemist called Trevor was appointed to the role.)
From 2016
https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-police-departments-training-with-a-chronic-human-rights-violator-israel/
From 2023
US police agencies took intelligence directly from IDF, leaked files show
Analysis of BlueLeaks trove also shows police received training on domestic ‘Muslim extremists’ from pro-Israel groups
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/08/us-police-agencies-idf-files-blueleaks
From 2020
How the US and Israel exchange tactics in violence and control
Two decades of Israeli-US police cooperation includes training in racial profiling and violent suppression of protests.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/6/12/how-the-us-and-israel-exchange-tactics-in-violence-and-control
The Your Party approach quite appeals to me because I'm an obsessive activist and like small print.
But I recognise I'm in a very small minority and the Polanski approach is the winning approach.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Hadush-Kebatu-Sentence-Remarks.pdf
I’ve seen the HR reporting sheets* for a couple of companies. They actually put “exempt” against senior managers.
*was writing systems to replace the spreadsheets. Needed to import the real data…
MBS really doesn’t like Putin, and the Gulf states quite like the opportunity of taking out Russia once and for all.
The rhetoric - just as Kirk's was - is pretty unpleasant, but it's a bit of a stretch to call him a "raging anti-semite" on the basis of that quote, if you don't think Kirk was a racist.
Senator Mitch McConnell says he will support the resolutions to block Trump’s tariffs:
“The economic harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule. And no cross-eyed reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise. This week, I will vote in favor of resolutions to end emergency tariff authorities.”
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1983293590542463194
Has anyone, apart from Maxwell and Epstein been charged, anywhere in the world?
GOP Rep. Mo Brooks just broke ranks:
“I’m a Republican. The House Speaker is a Republican. Adelita Grijalva is a Democrat. But what is right is right and what the Republican House Speaker is doing to her is wrong. Period.”
https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/1983236829701681559
London voters along with the rest of us are clearly in a mood to throw Labour councillors out, but where will those votes go, when the Tories are equally unpopular, Reform remains untested in the capital and on stony ground excepting parts of the far NE and SE, LibDem campaigning in the capital isn't what it was and the Greens or Indys lack organisation and are appealing to constituencies (young voters and ethnic minority voters) that typically don't turn out strongly for local elections?
Camden was my very first local party in London - I played a small role in electing the very first LibDem there, when Flick won her ward, and I stood myself in a no-hope H&H ward that year. Best of luck - are they sending you off to the unfertile south?
It’s fair to say that Mamdani’s connects haven’t gone down well with the average New Yorker though, outside of his base.
So, if you take the sentencing guidelines (also online), you can see how the judge “built” the sentence based on the facts.
Transparency in justice
Incidentally -
1. Hadush Geberslasie Kebatu, you have been convicted of the following offences:
i. Attempted Sexual Assault on a Child aged 14
ii. Incite or Causing a Child aged 13 to 15 to Engage in Sexual Activity
iii. Sexual Assault on a Female (aged 14)
iv. Harassment without Violence
v. Sexual Assault on a Female
That’s not a “sex pest”
LockheedMartin Skunk Works®, in partnership with @NASA , announces successful X-59 first flight.
https://x.com/LMNews/status/1983259563177476540
Sexually assaulting any woman is a violent offence.
It’s unlikey to be enough to stop him getting elected, as with Corbyn today’s kids who have never experienced actual socialism seem to love him.
Which is probably enough.
So if Silwa dropped out and his voters held their noses for Cuomo to beat Mamdani then Cuomo could still win.
However Silwa won't drop out as he has said basically he considers Cuomo a scumbag even if he dislikes Mamdani's socialism and anti Israel rhetoric too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_New_York_City_mayoral_election#General_election
Was clear from the last US election that plenty of minorities were quite willing to vote for Trump. No reason it would be different here.
The comparison with Corbyn is pretty silly; he's considerably smarter.
Anyway, we will likely get to find out.
There are a bunch of posters on here who think if they take the moral high ground in matters of morality it makes them look noble or even chivalrous. They are all of the right and at least one is a laughable hypocrite........
.....Some years ago I described Roman Polanski as 'a man more sinned against than sinning',.........
In brief a couple of girls went to his hacienda and asked him to have sex with them. He obliged and it transpired that despite looking early 20's they they were just 13 or 14. To avoid US jail he escaped to Europe where the laws on under age sex were more lax and he hadn't returned since. I wrote that he was a generational talent and he was a great loss to film making.
This must be at least ten years ago. But to this day all you need do if you are a rabid right winger is clutch your pealrs to you bosom and mention my name and Polanski and you are guaranteed the approval of at least five or six of your peers.
Flooded and lots of damage.
https://x.com/volcaholic1/status/1983346159365304577
Best of luck to all involved in the rescue efforts.
It doesn't make sense for the Greens to sabotage themselves by standing aside for left-wing parties with the longevity of mayflies.
The prolonged gestation of Your Party seems to be in part due to an attempt to keep all the left of Labour groups on board, and to build something that is more substantial than an electoral vehicle of convenience for the next general election. It might be worthwhile for the Greens to come to an arrangement, but they will not rush into anything, and will want to see some evidence that it won't be a self-defeating move.
To start with, he knew the age of the girl(s). He had personally signed the paperwork involved in working with minors.
The Troubled Saga of the UK’s New Medium Helicopter Programme
Views my own, corrections and comments welcome.
I have previous threads on this subject.
1/25 The procurement of military equipment by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has often been marked by ambitious goals that exceed both financial and strategic practicality, leading to programmes that escalate in cost, diminish in scope, and fail to provide timely capabilities to frontline users. The New Medium Helicopter (NMH) programme, initiated in 2021, stands as a prime example of this recurring issue. Originally conceived as a comprehensive effort to modernise the British Armed Forces’ rotary-wing fleet with a single versatile platform, it promised greater operational efficiency and flexibility. However, her we are in October and it has narrowed into a beleaguered competition fraught with bidder withdrawals, reduced ambitions, and severe funding challenges. This thread attempts to explore the programme’s flawed origins, its challenging progression as stakeholders and suppliers have exited, and its current status as essentially a sole-source procurement aimed solely at replacing the now-retired Puma HC2 fleet. Drawing on official documents, defence analyses, and recent reports, it contends that NMH illustrates a persistent MoD failure to procure equipment that effectively meets user requirements, transforming a basic tactical lift need into an overly complicated and precarious venture. Ultimately, simpler alternatives—like the US Marine Corps’ (USMC) UH-1Y Venom ‘Huey’—could offer a more cost-effective resolution, yet again exposing institutional shortcomings in defence acquisition...
https://x.com/MtarfaL/status/1983121214181691554
When funding is constrained (which it will be for the rest of the decade at least), simple, cost effective, and proven systems should almost always be preferred (see also Ajax versus CV90, for example), particularly as some defence kit is likely to obsolete quite rapidly, with the changing nature of the battlefield.
We don't even have the excuse here of favouring domestic industry.
And whatever system we eventually opt for, it should be possible to negotiate manufacturing offsets in the UK.
If we could get a bit more growth — trend would be okay, higher than trend great but less likely now — and get energy prices under control I think most people would feel better off, and the longer term stuff like housing, transport, education, justice where to be fair to Labour they do broadly correctly identify the problems, if not yet have the solutions, would have time to improve.
When you consider what we've been through since the financial crash, and then Brexit (more for the log jam it created than anything else), a once in a lifetime pandemic, and huge spike in energy costs due to a major European war, and lately the Leader of the Free World now being a crooked lunatic, I honestly think we are doing quite well. It's certainly not been plain sailing, and no government over that time has had it easy, but none of them have really stuffed things up.
Labour's campaign in 2024 made it all sound too easy to quickly change things, and the public are impatient with some justification, but the last thing we need next is the country veering off in some extreme far-left or far-right direction.
Starmer need to make a better case for long-term change and hold steady, not make abrupt changes to policy or leadership.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/25/zohran-mamdani-platform-policies-issues/84350898007/
Rent Controls
Free Buses
“Hate Violence Prevention Programmes”
City-owned Grocery Stores
Free Childcare for U5s
Removing Schoolyards
$30 Minimum Wage
Tax Rises on The Rich and Coprorations
Non-Co-operation with Federal Police.
Because simply buying a foreign product wouldn’t generate lots of fun decisions and all that paperwork that justifies existences.
Some may recall the farce of the Chinook helicopters bought for Special Forces - to “save money” a bizarre requirement was created that led to unusable helicopters sitting in a hanger. Many years later they were downgraded to usability. At further cost.
What fewer might know, that about the time they finally got the helicopters out of the hanger, the Australians were retiring their Special Forces Chinook variant. They’d simply bought off the shelf, used them for decades and were retiring them as worn out through hard use.
A 55-year-old man wearing “MAGA for Mamdani” gear said he voted for Trump twice but now he’s “making a switch” and voting for Mamdani.
“This’ll be the first time I'm voting for a Democrat,” he said. “I like his policies.”
https://x.com/GrmelaJulian/status/1982657680985764071
A mirror image of Labour-Reform switchers ?
I missed this when published, but Cornwall’s become the first part of the UK to produce olive oil
https://x.com/arisroussinos/status/1983264673454797212
Surely he can press an article out of that raw material ?
Read Amercian Sphinx.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski#Sexual_abuse
And if I see her I still refer to her as aunt xyz - much to her annoyance and a bit of glee from me
Most action to tackle the climate crisis needs to be taken at a collective level, to make it easier for people to make good choices, or for people not to have to think about it at all. When all of our electricity is generated by zero carbon means then it simplifies things for people wanting to make the right choice (or they hardly have to make a choice at all), but this is something that needs to be done on a country-wide level. It's hard for an individual to make that change.
An obvious example is that of the revolutionary socialist who has to earn a living in the marketplace.
But,, Jefferson did have a choice. He could have done as several other Virginia slaveowners did, and emancipated his slaves, and leased out his estate to them. That would still have generated a solid rental income for him.
He preferred to hold them as slaves.
Take John Newton. The outline of the story- slave trader turned abolitionist- is well known, but the details (that he was enslaved for a few years before this, and that his involvement with the trade continued long after his conversion) are wild.
ETA: See also that bloke who spoke about motes and beams. He really understood human nature.
My nephews and nieces (in law, I don't have any from my side of the family) often call me Uncle kjh. I ask them to call me kjh. Seems weird for 30 - 40 years to call me Uncle.
Some would argue that it was the breaking of clan culture that was the key to modern development/western individualism.
Speaking on board USS George Washington in Japan, Trump promises an executive order to revert US aircraft carriers back to steam-powered catapults.
EMALS initial development expensive and delayed but now working on the USS Gerald R Ford.
Benefits
✅Faster launch cycles of aircraft
✅Power adjustable to match size of aircraft, extending airframe life
✅Frees up space and weight
✅Big reduction in manpower requirements and high associated cost
✅Safer due to eliminating high-pressure steam lines
✅Reduces stress on other shipboard systems
Steam cats are no longer in production and would be very expensive to change the design of future carriers
https://x.com/NavyLookout/status/1983488958324462076
That's going to thrown an enormous spanner into US plans for the next generation of ship borne aircraft.
As well as being imbecilic.
This is an equivocation.
Believing that:
1) it is wrong that there are private schools
AND
2) individuals are not wrong to use private school should they exist
... is not hypocritical.