The decline in reading is a threat to British national security because it leaves children more vulnerable to Russian disinformation, Bridget Phillipson has warned...
rolls eyes....
I am but an ill- educated serf (non-Oxbridge) and on reading your Tory propaganda multiple times a day I am often tempted to vote Conservative. After a lie-down the feeling fortunately passes. So she has a point.
I see new year, no change in your lies and bullshit about me.
OK anti-government propaganda. Tory propaganda was unfair.
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
Are you advocating Reform or the LDs, being as your lot were equally chaotic?
Anyway, I'm shocked at your admission that "we don't have to vote Labour again", suggesting you did last time around. Understandable mind.
I didn't.
The author is whinging about welfare being splurged, well it was Labour backbenchers who forced the scrapping of the 2 child benefit cap the last Tory government brought in and Starmer and Reeves who abandoned welfare reform.
It is Labour who has increased the minimum wage and NI for employers and which is bringing in new administrative burdens on small businesses and the extra regulatory burdens he is also whinging about with the new Employment Rights Act.
It is Ed Miliband paying wind turbine operators not to produce energy and Labour importing antisemitic Islamists as with the recent Egyptian brought to the UK, two further whinges from the author.
Kemi even suggested means testing the triple lock so it only went to low income not millionaire pensioners but she had to backtrack after Labour shouted her down
An opposition having to abandon policy because the government "shouts them down" doesn't suggest one which is ready for taking their place.
It does suggest Kemi at least has identified the necessary policy changes needed though unlike Starmer and Farage
Hold on a second. Isn't Farage plotting a stealthy sale of NHS healthcare to US Insurance provision. That should save a bob or two.
Well the author didn't moan about the NHS, perhaps surprisingly, although there may be a case to move to funding healthcare more by social insurance like most OECD nations
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
First point is two thirds of those who voted did NOT vote Labour (such as thee and me I suspect) but the FPTP system delivered a huge landslide which raises an obvious question or two.
As for the Ovenden critique, what I'm struck by is not how much has changed under Starmer but how little. Not much of what he has said started on July 5th 2024 and indeed much of it was present under previous Conservative administrations.
One of the reasons I've never supported Labour is they are an authoritarian party - you only have to remember how Straw and Blunkett were as Home Secretaries and see how Mahmood fits comfortably into that role. The days of Roy Jenkins are long past but he oversaw the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974 (albeit as a temporary measure).
Yet there's an authoritarianism in the electorate as well which responds to such ideas as restricting citizenship to your place of birth so the politics works.
I'm struggling with the Process State as espoused by @Malmesbury and others. I worked in local Government for a number of years - what I saw was less process than consultation. Decisions needed a lot of consultation - everyone wanted to be involved including the local Councillors as well as heads of other Services etc. That process also involved the formulaic production of reports to Cabinet or other forums and too much time was taken up on these.
There was also the notion consultation offered protection for all sides. The more people involved, the argument went, the less likely something would be missed or forgotten or not considered. I kept bumping up against the Star Trek argument, as I always called it, pace Spock - "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". You could argue that's not a bad way to run a country or a city but the "few" will use all means necessary to frustrate this so do you close down the avenues of those protests? Do you simply say something has to happen because it's needed?
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
Of course they are. But the political hit job wasn't about an honest change of views. There were those targeted in the book who were indeed "guilty men" if that meant opposing rearmament. But the authors didn't have clean hands themselves in that respect, and were intentionally or not quite wrong in their attacks on Chamberlain.
Foot is always painted as a politician of principle (which he often was, however deluded he might have been). But in this case it was just low politics.
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
Are you advocating Reform or the LDs, being as your lot were equally chaotic?
Anyway, I'm shocked at your admission that "we don't have to vote Labour again", suggesting you did last time around. Understandable mind.
I didn't.
The author is whinging about welfare being splurged, well it was Labour backbenchers who forced the scrapping of the 2 child benefit cap the last Tory government brought in and Starmer and Reeves who abandoned welfare reform.
It is Labour who has increased the minimum wage and NI for employers and which is bringing in new administrative burdens on small businesses and the extra regulatory burdens he is also whinging about with the new Employment Rights Act.
It is Ed Miliband paying wind turbine operators not to produce energy and Labour importing antisemitic Islamists as with the recent Egyptian brought to the UK, two further whinges from the author.
Kemi even suggested means testing the triple lock so it only went to low income not millionaire pensioners but she had to backtrack after Labour shouted her down
I seem to remember the welfare burden going through the roof on your watch. I am all for a return to the safety net notion of welfare and the overhauling of pensions.
Both Labour and the Tories have gone after the low hanging, non- voting fruit. It will be remarkable if the removal of the triple lock makes it into your manifesto.
Nope, IDS brought in universal credit to ensure work always paid without always losing your benefits, The Tories also brought in the 2 child benefit cap this Labour government has just scrapped
There were significantly more lead swingers on the sick during the last 15 years than there were during the Blair years, and your lot were happy to pay for it. And the burgeoning reach of Motability, introduced to replace the three wheeler Invacars trikes that wound up as a subsidy for a new Mercedes Benz.
“If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” - President DONALD J. TRUMP
Totally irrelevant side issue, but why does he always include that last sentence?
He sees it as a tannoy announcement to the whole world, with everyone stopping dead in their tracks the moment he puts finger to keypad to concentrate intently. It's him saying you can go back to your work now.
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
Are you advocating Reform or the LDs, being as your lot were equally chaotic?
Anyway, I'm shocked at your admission that "we don't have to vote Labour again", suggesting you did last time around. Understandable mind.
I didn't.
The author is whinging about welfare being splurged, well it was Labour backbenchers who forced the scrapping of the 2 child benefit cap the last Tory government brought in and Starmer and Reeves who abandoned welfare reform.
It is Labour who has increased the minimum wage and NI for employers and which is bringing in new administrative burdens on small businesses and the extra regulatory burdens he is also whinging about with the new Employment Rights Act.
It is Ed Miliband paying wind turbine operators not to produce energy and Labour importing antisemitic Islamists as with the recent Egyptian brought to the UK, two further whinges from the author.
Kemi even suggested means testing the triple lock so it only went to low income not millionaire pensioners but she had to backtrack after Labour shouted her down
An opposition having to abandon policy because the government "shouts them down" doesn't suggest one which is ready for taking their place.
It does suggest Kemi at least has identified the necessary policy changes needed though unlike Starmer and Farage
Hold on a second. Isn't Farage plotting a stealthy sale of NHS healthcare to US Insurance provision. That should save a bob or two.
Well the author didn't moan about the NHS, perhaps surprisingly, although there may be a case to move to funding healthcare more by social insurance like most OECD nations
You are right, the NHS is currently unsustainable, but Bernie Sanders was on this morning cautioning against the Farage preferred US model of healthcare.
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
First point is two thirds of those who voted did NOT vote Labour (such as thee and me I suspect) but the FPTP system delivered a huge landslide which raises an obvious question or two.
As for the Ovenden critique, what I'm struck by is not how much has changed under Starmer but how little. Not much of what he has said started on July 5th 2024 and indeed much of it was present under previous Conservative administrations.
One of the reasons I've never supported Labour is they are an authoritarian party - you only have to remember how Straw and Blunkett were as Home Secretaries and see how Mahmood fits comfortably into that role. The days of Roy Jenkins are long past but he oversaw the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974 (albeit as a temporary measure).
Yet there's an authoritarianism in the electorate as well which responds to such ideas as restricting citizenship to your place of birth so the politics works.
I'm struggling with the Process State as espoused by @Malmesbury and others. I worked in local Government for a number of years - what I saw was less process than consultation. Decisions needed a lot of consultation - everyone wanted to be involved including the local Councillors as well as heads of other Services etc. That process also involved the formulaic production of reports to Cabinet or other forums and too much time was taken up on these.
There was also the notion consultation offered protection for all sides. The more people involved, the argument went, the less likely something would be missed or forgotten or not considered. I kept bumping up against the Star Trek argument, as I always called it, pace Spock - "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". You could argue that's not a bad way to run a country or a city but the "few" will use all means necessary to frustrate this so do you close down the avenues of those protests? Do you simply say something has to happen because it's needed?
Nonetheless Labour won a landslide and have used it to scrap the 2 child benefit cap and expand welfare, create a new Employment Rights Act imposing burdens on employers etc. Any fall in net immigration is also due to the tighter measures the Sunak government brought in not Labour
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
Are you advocating Reform or the LDs, being as your lot were equally chaotic?
Anyway, I'm shocked at your admission that "we don't have to vote Labour again", suggesting you did last time around. Understandable mind.
I didn't.
The author is whinging about welfare being splurged, well it was Labour backbenchers who forced the scrapping of the 2 child benefit cap the last Tory government brought in and Starmer and Reeves who abandoned welfare reform.
It is Labour who has increased the minimum wage and NI for employers and which is bringing in new administrative burdens on small businesses and the extra regulatory burdens he is also whinging about with the new Employment Rights Act.
It is Ed Miliband paying wind turbine operators not to produce energy and Labour importing antisemitic Islamists as with the recent Egyptian brought to the UK, two further whinges from the author.
Kemi even suggested means testing the triple lock so it only went to low income not millionaire pensioners but she had to backtrack after Labour shouted her down
An opposition having to abandon policy because the government "shouts them down" doesn't suggest one which is ready for taking their place.
It does suggest Kemi at least has identified the necessary policy changes needed though unlike Starmer and Farage
Hold on a second. Isn't Farage plotting a stealthy sale of NHS healthcare to US Insurance provision. That should save a bob or two.
Well the author didn't moan about the NHS, perhaps surprisingly, although there may be a case to move to funding healthcare more by social insurance like most OECD nations
You are right, the NHS is currently unsustainable, but Bernie Sanders was on this morning cautioning against the Farage preferred US model of healthcare.
Most OECD nations have mostly public social insurance schemes to fund health with some private insurance on top, not the US model and not our mainly tax funded NHS
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
Are you advocating Reform or the LDs, being as your lot were equally chaotic?
Anyway, I'm shocked at your admission that "we don't have to vote Labour again", suggesting you did last time around. Understandable mind.
I didn't.
The author is whinging about welfare being splurged, well it was Labour backbenchers who forced the scrapping of the 2 child benefit cap the last Tory government brought in and Starmer and Reeves who abandoned welfare reform.
It is Labour who has increased the minimum wage and NI for employers and which is bringing in new administrative burdens on small businesses and the extra regulatory burdens he is also whinging about with the new Employment Rights Act.
It is Ed Miliband paying wind turbine operators not to produce energy and Labour importing antisemitic Islamists as with the recent Egyptian brought to the UK, two further whinges from the author.
Kemi even suggested means testing the triple lock so it only went to low income not millionaire pensioners but she had to backtrack after Labour shouted her down
An opposition having to abandon policy because the government "shouts them down" doesn't suggest one which is ready for taking their place.
It does suggest Kemi at least has identified the necessary policy changes needed though unlike Starmer and Farage
Hold on a second. Isn't Farage plotting a stealthy sale of NHS healthcare to US Insurance provision. That should save a bob or two.
Well the author didn't moan about the NHS, perhaps surprisingly, although there may be a case to move to funding healthcare more by social insurance like most OECD nations
You are right, the NHS is currently unsustainable, but Bernie Sanders was on this morning cautioning against the Farage preferred US model of healthcare.
Most OECD nations have mostly public social insurance schemes to fund health with some private insurance on top, not the US model and not our mainly tax funded NHS
That is probably where a future Conservative Government will wind up, and I am not sure I am averse to that. If you lose to Farage next time around I suspect Reform already have US interested parties on speed dial.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
ah, a lot of words to say 'always sometimes else fault'
Ah, a lot of words to say 'I am a retard'.
This post was unkind and deserved its flag. I apologise.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
ah, a lot of words to say 'always sometimes else fault'
Ah, a lot of words to say 'I am a retard'.
This post was unkind and deserved its flag. I apologise.
My recollection of cognitive tests when my late grandmother was losing her mind to Alzheimer's were basic questions like "who is the Prime Minister?". I am assuming American doctors ask "who is the President?"
Ukrainian Defense Intelligence has published a video that was made to "prove" the death of Denys Kapustin.
A video showing the work of two combat drones was created for this purpose: one drone hit a bus where Kapustin was, and the other filmed the "aftermath" of the strike, a burning vehicle.
Several days ago, information appeared that Denys Kapustin, commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps, has been killed defending Ukraine.
Turns out, Denys Kapustin is alive and well!
Ukrainian Defense Intelligence has performed a complex special operation to save the life of Denys Kapustin, and reveal those who ordered his killing. The operation lasted over a month... https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/2006721992125215032
Report: Israel Asked Qatar to Increase Funds Transferred to Hamas in Gaza a Month Before Oct. 7
The request came after Hamas made threats of violent escalation. Qatar had informed Israel that Hamas was seeking to maintain stability during talks with Israeli officials
“If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” - President DONALD J. TRUMP
My recollection of cognitive tests when my late grandmother was losing her mind to Alzheimer's were basic questions like "who is the Prime Minister?". I am assuming American doctors ask "who is the President?"
Trump would answer "I am" when Biden was in office.
My recollection of cognitive tests when my late grandmother was losing her mind to Alzheimer's were basic questions like "who is the Prime Minister?". I am assuming American doctors ask "who is the President?"
There are a few notable sports people who struggle to pass their HIA because they are so dense that light bends around them and its a real stretch to answers the simple questions like...What venue are we at today? / Which half is it now? / Who scored last in this match? / What team did you play last?...regardless of if they had a bang on the noggin or not.
Twitter released a function whereby Grok will transform any picture posted there. Lots of people immediately used it to generate porn, including images of children. Rob Ford comment seems apt:
My recollection of cognitive tests when my late grandmother was losing her mind to Alzheimer's were basic questions like "who is the Prime Minister?". I am assuming American doctors ask "who is the President?"
The one that made me stop and think was the requirement to count backwards from 100 in 7's; 93, 86, 79, 72 and so on.
I practice every so often just to make sure I can still do it!
My recollection of cognitive tests when my late grandmother was losing her mind to Alzheimer's were basic questions like "who is the Prime Minister?". I am assuming American doctors ask "who is the President?"
The one that made me stop and think was the requirement to count backwards from 100 in 7's; 93, 86, 79, 72 and so on.
I practice every so often just to make sure I can still do it!
I'd struggle to do that. I'd be surprised if Trump could count forward in sevens from 7.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
Their growth was quite spectacular, carrier numbers especially given the punishing losses early in the war. By mid 1942 the USN had precisely zero operational fleet carriers in the Pacific and had to borrow HMS Victorious from the RN.
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
First point is two thirds of those who voted did NOT vote Labour (such as thee and me I suspect) but the FPTP system delivered a huge landslide which raises an obvious question or two.
As for the Ovenden critique, what I'm struck by is not how much has changed under Starmer but how little. Not much of what he has said started on July 5th 2024 and indeed much of it was present under previous Conservative administrations.
One of the reasons I've never supported Labour is they are an authoritarian party - you only have to remember how Straw and Blunkett were as Home Secretaries and see how Mahmood fits comfortably into that role. The days of Roy Jenkins are long past but he oversaw the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974 (albeit as a temporary measure).
Yet there's an authoritarianism in the electorate as well which responds to such ideas as restricting citizenship to your place of birth so the politics works.
I'm struggling with the Process State as espoused by @Malmesbury and others. I worked in local Government for a number of years - what I saw was less process than consultation. Decisions needed a lot of consultation - everyone wanted to be involved including the local Councillors as well as heads of other Services etc. That process also involved the formulaic production of reports to Cabinet or other forums and too much time was taken up on these.
There was also the notion consultation offered protection for all sides. The more people involved, the argument went, the less likely something would be missed or forgotten or not considered. I kept bumping up against the Star Trek argument, as I always called it, pace Spock - "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". You could argue that's not a bad way to run a country or a city but the "few" will use all means necessary to frustrate this so do you close down the avenues of those protests? Do you simply say something has to happen because it's needed?
Nonetheless Labour won a landslide and have used it to scrap the 2 child benefit cap and expand welfare, create a new Employment Rights Act imposing burdens on employers etc. Any fall in net immigration is also due to the tighter measures the Sunak government brought in not Labour
I think it's fair to judge Labour at the time of the next election but as you are a Conservative I recognise you are more of the view everything they do is wrong.
It's more nuanced - look at Employment Rights for example. Should workers not have rights or is it all about "the burden" to employers? There are two sides - where I do think there's been a problem is the Covid business rates relief for the hospitality industry which has been badly handled by successive Governments - there's an analogy with Council Tax revaluation here. IF you put in something as a temporary measure, make sure it is temporary and doesn't become permanent by stealth.
We also know the immigration issue is much less about net numbers than "the boats" and you could certainly argue Starmer is as bereft of a viable solution as was Sunak (Rwanda might be viable assuming there's enough money to pay for it and it has the deterrent effect some believe). The problem for Starmer (and the opportunity for Reform) is come the spring, absent a practical solution, the boats will start coming again across the Channel when the weather clears just in time for the May local elections to become a referendum on immigration.
You might argue the election of Bardella as French President in 2027 might be the game changer - perhaps but it's by no means certain he would beat Philippe in a run off (the last poll I saw had Bardella ahead 53-47 but that's hardly decisive at this stage and the 2024 legislative election showed FN not always polling in actual votes what they promise in opinion polls) and we don't quite know what his policy vis a vis migrants attempting to reach the UK from northern France is going to be. In any case, even if he wins, he'll have to deal with Starmer until 2029.
The NHS is embracing new technologies and going cashless. This will save the lives of young children.
Hospital changes parking system to go cashless
A hospital is set to change its car parking system in the new year to go cashless.
Banbury's Horton General Hospital, in Oxfordshire will be using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR).
From the 5 January the new parking payment machines will accept card and contactless payments as you leave the site rather than before you visit.
Lisa Hofen, Chief Estates & Facilities Officer at OUH, said: "We're committed to making hospital visits as stress-free as possible for patients and visitors, and ensuring all parking is managed effectively."
The introduction of ANPR brings the Horton General in line with other OUH car parks.
Car parking charges remain unchanged, and the car parks continue to be managed by the Trust, with all income reinvested into patient and visitor services.
As visitors can pay on exit, they no longer have to guess how long they will need and, instead, just pay for the time they have used.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
I think I'e read that some of them are still there, rusting away.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
Their growth was quite spectacular, carrier numbers especially given the punishing losses early in the war. By mid 1942 the USN had precisely zero operational fleet carriers in the Pacific and had to borrow HMS Victorious from the RN.
If the Japanese Navy had managed to permanently eliminate every single ship stationed at Pearl Harbour and the rest of the US Pacific fleet, this would have delayed the date by which the US Navy was superior, in every category to the IJN.
By 4.5 months.
By late 1944, the US was shutting down construction of further warships in various categories - such as submarines - on the basis of having ridiculous oversupply.
Stuff the Commie bastards don't like you having because it puts you outside their control.
In all seriousness its far worse than that now. Palm print payment is a thing. Increasingly its a ticketless society, instead its attached to your government ID card e.g. train tickets. You can't get tickets without providing government ID card, you can't enter train stations, museums, etc without beeping your id. Increasingly you can't purchase by having a one on one interaction with food / beverage place, you must use the app (which will take payment via Aliplay) or miniapp within Alipay itself. The government knows every interaction you make.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
I think I'e read that some of them are still there, rusting away.
Post WWI, a lot of damage was done to various industries by selling off, for virtually nothing, surplus military equipment.
So, for Post WWII, the emphasis was on preventing such material entering the market.
I remain unsure of what I'm looking at. It doesn't seem to be some full scale organised insurrection but rather protests over the cost of living (we of course have GB News as an alternative to mobs attacking Government and Police buildings) where sanctions have exacerbated the underlying economic failings of the theocracy.
Such protests can become a more organised and serious challenge to an authoritarian Government but I see no figurehead, no leader, no alternative political organisation or coalition fronting any of this at this time.
I'm not sure about Trump's intervention - sometimes external forces can cause the internal opposition real problems as it can mobilise support for the Government.
For now, it's impossible to verify this sort of claim - or even if it's true, just how significant it is.
IRAN: As the anti-mullah uprising spreads, multiple IRGC Basij Force bases in in Hamedan, Fars and Khuzestan provenances have fallen to protesters. This is the fourth night of wide-spread demonstrations. https://x.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/2006885110172287163
But if the protests continue unchecked for another week...
For now, it's impossible to verify this sort of claim - or even if it's true, just how significant it is.
IRAN: As the anti-mullah uprising spreads, multiple IRGC Basij Force bases in in Hamedan, Fars and Khuzestan provenances have fallen to protesters. This is the fourth night of wide-spread demonstrations. https://x.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/2006885110172287163
But if the protests continue unchecked for another week...
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
I think I'e read that some of them are still there, rusting away.
Post WWI, a lot of damage was done to various industries by selling off, for virtually nothing, surplus military equipment.
So, for Post WWII, the emphasis was on preventing such material entering the market.
In the small town where I now live there was, from the end of the war, a scrap-metal merchant, who has become legendary. Among the tales is that he once had a tank in his scrapyard.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
I think I've read that some of them are still there, rusting away.
British planes were destroyed in the far east after the war because it wasn't economical or logistically possible to repatriate them. My friend's father was a Tempest pilot there. When he left everything was smashed up. He was very upset by it.
He was an interesting chap. He provided fighter escort for Vera Lynn when she visited the far east. He also took part in the Berlin Airlift after the war (as a co pilot being a single engine pilot before that) and broke his leg falling off a wing. He married the nurse who cared for him (my friends mum). He insisted he be buried when he died as he was terrified of being burnt alive in a crash. He crashed, I think, about 3 times during the war (landings or takeoffs). He took an instant dislike to Douglas Bader when they met at the end of the war.
Anthony Joshua's driver has been charged after a crash in Nigeria injured the boxer and killed two of his team members, police have said. Adeniyi Mobolaji Kayode, 46, was charged at the Sagamu Magistrate Court on Friday. Police sources told the BBC the charges included causing death by dangerous driving.
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
First point is two thirds of those who voted did NOT vote Labour (such as thee and me I suspect) but the FPTP system delivered a huge landslide which raises an obvious question or two.
As for the Ovenden critique, what I'm struck by is not how much has changed under Starmer but how little. Not much of what he has said started on July 5th 2024 and indeed much of it was present under previous Conservative administrations.
One of the reasons I've never supported Labour is they are an authoritarian party - you only have to remember how Straw and Blunkett were as Home Secretaries and see how Mahmood fits comfortably into that role. The days of Roy Jenkins are long past but he oversaw the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974 (albeit as a temporary measure).
Yet there's an authoritarianism in the electorate as well which responds to such ideas as restricting citizenship to your place of birth so the politics works.
I'm struggling with the Process State as espoused by @Malmesbury and others. I worked in local Government for a number of years - what I saw was less process than consultation. Decisions needed a lot of consultation - everyone wanted to be involved including the local Councillors as well as heads of other Services etc. That process also involved the formulaic production of reports to Cabinet or other forums and too much time was taken up on these.
There was also the notion consultation offered protection for all sides. The more people involved, the argument went, the less likely something would be missed or forgotten or not considered. I kept bumping up against the Star Trek argument, as I always called it, pace Spock - "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". You could argue that's not a bad way to run a country or a city but the "few" will use all means necessary to frustrate this so do you close down the avenues of those protests? Do you simply say something has to happen because it's needed?
Problem with Process State as a critique is that you actually want effective process. There's no point reinventing the wheel each time if the process in place efficiently delivers the outcomes you want.
The questions should be (1) What's your policy? This implies making decisions. (2) What's the best process to deliver that policy?
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
I think I've read that some of them are still there, rusting away.
British planes were destroyed in the far east after the war because it wasn't economical or logistically possible to repatriate them. My friend's father was a Tempest pilot there. When he left everything was smashed up. He was very upset by it.
He was an interesting chap. He provided fighter escort for Vera Lynn when she visited the far east. He also took part in the Berlin Airlift after the war (as a co pilot being a single engine pilot before that) and broke his leg falling off a wing. He married the nurse who cared for him (my friends mum). He insisted he be buried when he died as he was terrified of being burnt alive in a crash. He crashed, I think, about 3 times during the war (landings or takeoffs). He took an instant dislike to Douglas Bader when they met at the end of the war.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
I think I've read that some of them are still there, rusting away.
British planes were destroyed in the far east after the war because it wasn't economical or logistically possible to repatriate them. My friend's father was a Tempest pilot there. When he left everything was smashed up. He was very upset by it.
He was an interesting chap. He provided fighter escort for Vera Lynn when she visited the far east. He also took part in the Berlin Airlift after the war (as a co pilot being a single engine pilot before that) and broke his leg falling off a wing. He married the nurse who cared for him (my friends mum). He insisted he be buried when he died as he was terrified of being burnt alive in a crash. He crashed, I think, about 3 times during the war (landings or takeoffs). He took an instant dislike to Douglas Bader when they met at the end of the war.
Not bad judgment.
It wasn't just the Far East, and they turn up from time to time. This was a couple of years back:
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
I think I've read that some of them are still there, rusting away.
British planes were destroyed in the far east after the war because it wasn't economical or logistically possible to repatriate them. My friend's father was a Tempest pilot there. When he left everything was smashed up. He was very upset by it.
He was an interesting chap. He provided fighter escort for Vera Lynn when she visited the far east. He also took part in the Berlin Airlift after the war (as a co pilot being a single engine pilot before that) and broke his leg falling off a wing. He married the nurse who cared for him (my friends mum). He insisted he be buried when he died as he was terrified of being burnt alive in a crash. He crashed, I think, about 3 times during the war (landings or takeoffs). He took an instant dislike to Douglas Bader when they met at the end of the war.
Interesting! (And poor chap.) That's how stories of buried Spitfires in Burma would have begun, no doubt - stuff chucked in holes and covered over. Bit like the Roman legionary fortress in central Scotland far beyond the Walls - when the legions withdrew, lots of kit buried deeply in the rather bizarre hope the locals would not dig them up (at least the deeper ones survived till the C20). .
Part of that was because when the war ended anything on Leaselend, rather than having been paid for, had to be either returned to the USA or scrapped etc. But that would have been for US produced stuff. The RN had to chuck a lot of planes over the side on their carriers.
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
First point is two thirds of those who voted did NOT vote Labour (such as thee and me I suspect) but the FPTP system delivered a huge landslide which raises an obvious question or two.
As for the Ovenden critique, what I'm struck by is not how much has changed under Starmer but how little. Not much of what he has said started on July 5th 2024 and indeed much of it was present under previous Conservative administrations.
One of the reasons I've never supported Labour is they are an authoritarian party - you only have to remember how Straw and Blunkett were as Home Secretaries and see how Mahmood fits comfortably into that role. The days of Roy Jenkins are long past but he oversaw the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974 (albeit as a temporary measure).
Yet there's an authoritarianism in the electorate as well which responds to such ideas as restricting citizenship to your place of birth so the politics works.
I'm struggling with the Process State as espoused by @Malmesbury and others. I worked in local Government for a number of years - what I saw was less process than consultation. Decisions needed a lot of consultation - everyone wanted to be involved including the local Councillors as well as heads of other Services etc. That process also involved the formulaic production of reports to Cabinet or other forums and too much time was taken up on these.
There was also the notion consultation offered protection for all sides. The more people involved, the argument went, the less likely something would be missed or forgotten or not considered. I kept bumping up against the Star Trek argument, as I always called it, pace Spock - "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". You could argue that's not a bad way to run a country or a city but the "few" will use all means necessary to frustrate this so do you close down the avenues of those protests? Do you simply say something has to happen because it's needed?
Problem with Process State as a critique is that you actually want effective process. There's no point reinventing the wheel each time if the process in place efficiently delivers the outcomes you want.
The questions should be (1) What's your policy? This implies making decisions. (2) What's the best process to deliver that policy?
The process is the policy. Thinking that a mere elected politician can impose his will on the process is populism.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
I think I've read that some of them are still there, rusting away.
British planes were destroyed in the far east after the war because it wasn't economical or logistically possible to repatriate them. My friend's father was a Tempest pilot there. When he left everything was smashed up. He was very upset by it.
He was an interesting chap. He provided fighter escort for Vera Lynn when she visited the far east. He also took part in the Berlin Airlift after the war (as a co pilot being a single engine pilot before that) and broke his leg falling off a wing. He married the nurse who cared for him (my friends mum). He insisted he be buried when he died as he was terrified of being burnt alive in a crash. He crashed, I think, about 3 times during the war (landings or takeoffs). He took an instant dislike to Douglas Bader when they met at the end of the war.
Not bad judgment.
It wasn't just the Far East, and they turn up from time to time. This was a couple of years back:
Morning, I noticed Con majority at next GE was in to around 10/1 or thereabouts, having been 16/1 or higher a couple of months ago.
Tories have definitely stemmed the flow away from them, and Kemi Badenoch will be happy to see her approval rating (relative to Starmers) in the yougov poll
I still think the Tories are a long way back from power, a lot will depend on Farage (and his health) for the next 3 and a half years
It will be a very split electoral map in 2029. FPTP is great for betting opportunities, but I dont think it can survive long once it fragments into a 5 or 6 way split
I'm less convinced, regrettably.
Neither Labour nor Conservative show any desire to switch to a proportional system which would ensure not only that all votes are counted but every vote counts.
And some get counted more than once…
The fundamental reality is that PR tends to drive towards mediocrity / the least offensive. Our current crop of politicians is decidedly poor but let’s not build in an institutional bias as well.
Ultimately PR looks as the nation and says the government should reflect the split of votes nationwide.
FPTP looks at local communities and says Cumbria may have different interests to London - let them select their representative. And then the representative is simply the person with the most votes. A traditional head count - easy to understand and well accepted by everyone except a few obsessives who post on board like this…
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
First point is two thirds of those who voted did NOT vote Labour (such as thee and me I suspect) but the FPTP system delivered a huge landslide which raises an obvious question or two.
As for the Ovenden critique, what I'm struck by is not how much has changed under Starmer but how little. Not much of what he has said started on July 5th 2024 and indeed much of it was present under previous Conservative administrations.
One of the reasons I've never supported Labour is they are an authoritarian party - you only have to remember how Straw and Blunkett were as Home Secretaries and see how Mahmood fits comfortably into that role. The days of Roy Jenkins are long past but he oversaw the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974 (albeit as a temporary measure).
Yet there's an authoritarianism in the electorate as well which responds to such ideas as restricting citizenship to your place of birth so the politics works.
I'm struggling with the Process State as espoused by @Malmesbury and others. I worked in local Government for a number of years - what I saw was less process than consultation. Decisions needed a lot of consultation - everyone wanted to be involved including the local Councillors as well as heads of other Services etc. That process also involved the formulaic production of reports to Cabinet or other forums and too much time was taken up on these.
There was also the notion consultation offered protection for all sides. The more people involved, the argument went, the less likely something would be missed or forgotten or not considered. I kept bumping up against the Star Trek argument, as I always called it, pace Spock - "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". You could argue that's not a bad way to run a country or a city but the "few" will use all means necessary to frustrate this so do you close down the avenues of those protests? Do you simply say something has to happen because it's needed?
Problem with Process State as a critique is that you actually want effective process. There's no point reinventing the wheel each time if the process in place efficiently delivers the outcomes you want.
The questions should be (1) What's your policy? This implies making decisions. (2) What's the best process to deliver that policy?
The Process State is where the Process becomes the goal, rather than the outcome. So the piles of documentation grow ever higher, everything takes longer, but the results are often *worse*.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
I think I've read that some of them are still there, rusting away.
British planes were destroyed in the far east after the war because it wasn't economical or logistically possible to repatriate them. My friend's father was a Tempest pilot there. When he left everything was smashed up. He was very upset by it.
He was an interesting chap. He provided fighter escort for Vera Lynn when she visited the far east. He also took part in the Berlin Airlift after the war (as a co pilot being a single engine pilot before that) and broke his leg falling off a wing. He married the nurse who cared for him (my friends mum). He insisted he be buried when he died as he was terrified of being burnt alive in a crash. He crashed, I think, about 3 times during the war (landings or takeoffs). He took an instant dislike to Douglas Bader when they met at the end of the war.
Do you know why he took a dislike to Bader?
Bader really wasn't a very nice man. I remember reading his columns in the Sunday Express when I was young. Sometimes though, the sort of personality he was, was just the right sort you needed for the role in war time. Bader himself commented that the film 'Reach for the Sky' was a rather sanitised view of him. His Wikipedia page is worth reading to get a flavour. I also heard he was not liked at Colditz by the more senior officers.
My friend's father was a little of the same character but much less so. He commented of himself that he thinks he was picked for fighters rather than bombers as he was not a team player. And he took an instant dislike to Bader so you can imagine what Bader was like.
Morning, I noticed Con majority at next GE was in to around 10/1 or thereabouts, having been 16/1 or higher a couple of months ago.
Tories have definitely stemmed the flow away from them, and Kemi Badenoch will be happy to see her approval rating (relative to Starmers) in the yougov poll
I still think the Tories are a long way back from power, a lot will depend on Farage (and his health) for the next 3 and a half years
It will be a very split electoral map in 2029. FPTP is great for betting opportunities, but I dont think it can survive long once it fragments into a 5 or 6 way split
I'm less convinced, regrettably.
Neither Labour nor Conservative show any desire to switch to a proportional system which would ensure not only that all votes are counted but every vote counts.
And some get counted more than once…
The fundamental reality is that PR tends to drive towards mediocrity / the least offensive. Our current crop of politicians is decidedly poor but let’s not build in an institutional bias as well.
Ultimately PR looks as the nation and says the government should reflect the split of votes nationwide.
FPTP looks at local communities and says Cumbria may have different interests to London - let them select their representative. And then the representative is simply the person with the most votes. A traditional head count - easy to understand and well accepted by everyone except a few obsessives who post on board like this…
Depends on how you manage the boundaries. Doesn't look, from the way the Irish manage their system, as if locals are discriminated against.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
I'd reckon they should be favourites. But 2.02 when we are likely three and a half years from an election are not attractive odds. I'd probably want something closer to 2.5 before putting my money down.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
I think I've read that some of them are still there, rusting away.
British planes were destroyed in the far east after the war because it wasn't economical or logistically possible to repatriate them. My friend's father was a Tempest pilot there. When he left everything was smashed up. He was very upset by it.
He was an interesting chap. He provided fighter escort for Vera Lynn when she visited the far east. He also took part in the Berlin Airlift after the war (as a co pilot being a single engine pilot before that) and broke his leg falling off a wing. He married the nurse who cared for him (my friends mum). He insisted he be buried when he died as he was terrified of being burnt alive in a crash. He crashed, I think, about 3 times during the war (landings or takeoffs). He took an instant dislike to Douglas Bader when they met at the end of the war.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
Nobody as far as I know is asking that Farage be stripped of his British citizenship and deported, they're simply asking Farage to offer some credible response to the allegations. As far as I am aware the other chap has already apologized unreservedly for his comments, which is certainly a step in the right direction. My personal view is everyone should be accountable for what they say but nobody should be cancelled for it.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
Nobody as far as I know is asking that Farage be stripped of his British citizenship and deported, they're simply asking Farage to offer some credible response to the allegations. As far as I am aware the other chap has already apologized unreservedly for his comments, which is certainly a step in the right direction. My personal view is everyone should be accountable for what they say but nobody should be cancelled for it.
Well, I dunno. He's calling for it himself, although possibly without realising it.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
I think I've read that some of them are still there, rusting away.
British planes were destroyed in the far east after the war because it wasn't economical or logistically possible to repatriate them. My friend's father was a Tempest pilot there. When he left everything was smashed up. He was very upset by it.
He was an interesting chap. He provided fighter escort for Vera Lynn when she visited the far east. He also took part in the Berlin Airlift after the war (as a co pilot being a single engine pilot before that) and broke his leg falling off a wing. He married the nurse who cared for him (my friends mum). He insisted he be buried when he died as he was terrified of being burnt alive in a crash. He crashed, I think, about 3 times during the war (landings or takeoffs). He took an instant dislike to Douglas Bader when they met at the end of the war.
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
First point is two thirds of those who voted did NOT vote Labour (such as thee and me I suspect) but the FPTP system delivered a huge landslide which raises an obvious question or two.
As for the Ovenden critique, what I'm struck by is not how much has changed under Starmer but how little. Not much of what he has said started on July 5th 2024 and indeed much of it was present under previous Conservative administrations.
One of the reasons I've never supported Labour is they are an authoritarian party - you only have to remember how Straw and Blunkett were as Home Secretaries and see how Mahmood fits comfortably into that role. The days of Roy Jenkins are long past but he oversaw the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974 (albeit as a temporary measure).
Yet there's an authoritarianism in the electorate as well which responds to such ideas as restricting citizenship to your place of birth so the politics works.
I'm struggling with the Process State as espoused by @Malmesbury and others. I worked in local Government for a number of years - what I saw was less process than consultation. Decisions needed a lot of consultation - everyone wanted to be involved including the local Councillors as well as heads of other Services etc. That process also involved the formulaic production of reports to Cabinet or other forums and too much time was taken up on these.
There was also the notion consultation offered protection for all sides. The more people involved, the argument went, the less likely something would be missed or forgotten or not considered. I kept bumping up against the Star Trek argument, as I always called it, pace Spock - "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". You could argue that's not a bad way to run a country or a city but the "few" will use all means necessary to frustrate this so do you close down the avenues of those protests? Do you simply say something has to happen because it's needed?
Problem with Process State as a critique is that you actually want effective process. There's no point reinventing the wheel each time if the process in place efficiently delivers the outcomes you want.
The questions should be (1) What's your policy? This implies making decisions. (2) What's the best process to deliver that policy?
The Process State is where the Process becomes the goal, rather than the outcome. So the piles of documentation grow ever higher, everything takes longer, but the results are often *worse*.
Process is the means by which you deliver the policy outcome. It's a requirement for any effective organisation.
It has the benefits of being (a) Policy driven. This means that. The policy is the "this" including desired outcomes while the process is the "that" (b) Measurable. If a process doesn't work it's either because people aren't following it or because it needs change in discernable ways. This allows incremental improvements that are hard to make otherwise; (c) Efficient. Standardisation allows more to be done with the same resources.
So maybe it's a case of Bad Process State bad and Good Process State necessary.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
Nobody as far as I know is asking that Farage be stripped of his British citizenship and deported, they're simply asking Farage to offer some credible response to the allegations. As far as I am aware the other chap has already apologized unreservedly for his comments, which is certainly a step in the right direction. My personal view is everyone should be accountable for what they say but nobody should be cancelled for it.
Unreservedly’, no, it was couched with caveats and he even used the Alf Garnett defence.
He was also an adult when he made the comments, some very inflammatory to a large online audience.
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
First point is two thirds of those who voted did NOT vote Labour (such as thee and me I suspect) but the FPTP system delivered a huge landslide which raises an obvious question or two.
As for the Ovenden critique, what I'm struck by is not how much has changed under Starmer but how little. Not much of what he has said started on July 5th 2024 and indeed much of it was present under previous Conservative administrations.
One of the reasons I've never supported Labour is they are an authoritarian party - you only have to remember how Straw and Blunkett were as Home Secretaries and see how Mahmood fits comfortably into that role. The days of Roy Jenkins are long past but he oversaw the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974 (albeit as a temporary measure).
Yet there's an authoritarianism in the electorate as well which responds to such ideas as restricting citizenship to your place of birth so the politics works.
I'm struggling with the Process State as espoused by @Malmesbury and others. I worked in local Government for a number of years - what I saw was less process than consultation. Decisions needed a lot of consultation - everyone wanted to be involved including the local Councillors as well as heads of other Services etc. That process also involved the formulaic production of reports to Cabinet or other forums and too much time was taken up on these.
There was also the notion consultation offered protection for all sides. The more people involved, the argument went, the less likely something would be missed or forgotten or not considered. I kept bumping up against the Star Trek argument, as I always called it, pace Spock - "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". You could argue that's not a bad way to run a country or a city but the "few" will use all means necessary to frustrate this so do you close down the avenues of those protests? Do you simply say something has to happen because it's needed?
Problem with Process State as a critique is that you actually want effective process. There's no point reinventing the wheel each time if the process in place efficiently delivers the outcomes you want.
The questions should be (1) What's your policy? This implies making decisions. (2) What's the best process to deliver that policy?
The process is the policy. Thinking that a mere elected politician can impose his will on the process is populism.
I don't think the inertia is that bad, but I do think we are in an era where we simultaneously want politics to do a lot more, but also insist some things should be 'above' or 'beyond' politics, or that it would be wrong for politicians to be involved somehow, which is where we end up with unnecessary quangos being implied to be inviolable, or not trusting politicians to be the ones to make certain calls.
At its extreme people go so far as wanting politics cut out of it entirely with citizen assemblies et al, which whatever the merits one believes of them on, say, major moral questions, are not magical cures for a divided body politic.
Indeed, it is ok for us to be divided on some major issues, it is not a failing in itself, and expert evidence does need to be weighed up and big picture decisions made balancing competing factors - almost as though there's a reason we have politicians at all.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
Nobody as far as I know is asking that Farage be stripped of his British citizenship and deported, they're simply asking Farage to offer some credible response to the allegations. As far as I am aware the other chap has already apologized unreservedly for his comments, which is certainly a step in the right direction. My personal view is everyone should be accountable for what they say but nobody should be cancelled for it.
Undeservedly’, no, it was couched with caveats and he even used the Alf Garnett defence.
He was also an adult when he made the comments, some very inflammatory to a large online audience.
Farage was a child.
Indeed.
Good thing he accepts that you can be a twat while a child and have no consequences later.
It's this kind of arrogance that will do for the liberal elite.
You're assuming that because GB News has mentioned something that must be why it has got salience? Have you considered that maybe people were criticising the BBC and THEN GB News (unsurprisingly as a rival broadcaster) picked up on it?
The only person I quoted was Simon Schama who so far as I know has never appeared on GB News. Ultimately that TV channel is just a useful scapegoat for a certain elite opinion that can no longer accept criticism. There are too many young people at BBC news who've had their minds polluted with postcolonial bullshit. The protests in Iran don't really register with them. It's not a conspiracy or pro Ayatollah mentality just a blind spot. The protests deserved greater prominence and a better national broadcaster would have done that.
One thing I would say is that western leaders have remarkably silent on the whole thing.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Churchill seemed to have thought, at that period, that Hitler = Kaiser 2.0
That is, he might or might not be good for Germany. But what was good for Germany wasn't good for Britain.
So while there might or might be a war, a Germany strong enough to defeat Britain was unacceptable. To which, Churchill's answer was re-armament.
And, this was at a stage when the vast majority of Nazi evil had yet to be perpetrated. Kristallnacht, and the occupation of Bohemia/Moravia were probably where the scales dropped from the eyes of everyone, apart from creatures like Unity Mitford and Captain Ramsay.
Don't understand. There was clear rearmament and planning for it throughout the 1930s. RAF, for instance, was planned out - essentially creating cadres first for expansion; National factories established for expansion and movement from bombed areas, etc. etc. And a lot of that was under Chamberlain (as chancellor IIRC? and then PM).
There was such a thing as rearming too early and then finding your kit was out of date. As the French and Poles found with their planes (their tanks with those one man turrets unlike UK and Germany are an interesting question, perhaps more to do with their trench warfare doctrine).
Churchill advocated re-armament from the point where the pocket battleships were laid down - by the German Government *before* the Nazis.
He was part of group pushing Baldwin and later Chamberlin.
Churchill did so, at first, on the old basis that if another power had the ability to win a war with Britain, Britain was in danger. No matter the policies, sentiments etc.
Re-armament was unpopular in large sections of country. Much of the Left hated it as well - there was a widespread belief that armaments caused wars. As Orwell commented, there were many who wanted to oppose Hitler, with empty hands.
The left were the most dishonest in perpetrating what became postwar myths.
Michael Foot, for example, having been a strong advocate of disarmament himself, was one of the authors of The Guilty Men, which lambasted (amongst others) Chamberlain for appeasement, and did much to cement Chamberlain's reputation as a deluded pacifist.
Postwar, of course, Chamberlain was not around to defend himself.
Come on, people are allowed to change their views - this was before the age of Twitter when a tweet from a decade ago comes back as a millstone round your vitals.
I can understand, particularly from the perspective of those who fought on the Western Front in particular, the abhorrence of future conflict since it seemed likely cities would be destroyed by aerial attack and chemical weapons would be widely used with horrendous civilian casualties.
We know a lot now we didn't know then - had we resisted the German re-militarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler would likely have been forced to back off and face a political and military crisis. Many also saw the real enemy as Stalin and Communism and saw the ardent anti-Communist Hitler as a potentially useful ally in that struggle. I doubt many read Mein Kampf where Hitler's intentions were clearly stated.
As has been said, following the Anschluss and Munich, minds quickly changed and let's not forget Britain was the only country who fought every day of the war and didn't go to war because we were attacked - we went to war on the principle of protecting our ally, Poland. We failed at the time but that's not to in any way undermine what we achieved despite our national bankruptcy.
We saved the world from what would been a terrible nightmare.
You really can't beat the observation that the US provided the money, Russia provided the blood and we provided the time. It is WW2 in a sentence.
Indeed but the other side of that is both the USSR and USA only joined the war when directly attacked by Germany and Japan respectively and then Hitler declared war on the USA which legitimised Roosevelt's desire to sort out Europe before the Pacific. The American industrial production and armament numbers are staggering once the economy moved to a war time stance - they kept both us and the Russians going in terms of materiel and equipment.
The other thing is the Continental United States was never seriously attacked, production could continue - did I read somewhere by 1945, the US Navy was bigger than the German, Italian, Japanese and Royal Navies combined? The Americans started with five aircraft carriers and ended with twenty four, I believe.
My Economics teacher was in the Australian navy during WWII. He told us he saw masses of American non-military vehicles such as bulldozers, trucks, cranes, jeeps etc just left on Pacific islands because taking them back to the USA would have damaged the US vehicle manufacturing industry.
I think I've read that some of them are still there, rusting away.
British planes were destroyed in the far east after the war because it wasn't economical or logistically possible to repatriate them. My friend's father was a Tempest pilot there. When he left everything was smashed up. He was very upset by it.
He was an interesting chap. He provided fighter escort for Vera Lynn when she visited the far east. He also took part in the Berlin Airlift after the war (as a co pilot being a single engine pilot before that) and broke his leg falling off a wing. He married the nurse who cared for him (my friends mum). He insisted he be buried when he died as he was terrified of being burnt alive in a crash. He crashed, I think, about 3 times during the war (landings or takeoffs). He took an instant dislike to Douglas Bader when they met at the end of the war.
Do you know why he took a dislike to Bader?
Incoming justified flag.
Perhaps because Bader was always legless.
Douglas Bader was a heroic figure, but also, I believe, like many heroes, quite difficult in person. During the BoB, ISTR he had very much his own idea of how the fight should be executed which didn't necessarily accord with the views of Fighter Command. He liked to be at the head of 'the Big Wing', a large formation of fighters which would arrive from East Anglia at opportune moments.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
Nobody as far as I know is asking that Farage be stripped of his British citizenship and deported, they're simply asking Farage to offer some credible response to the allegations. As far as I am aware the other chap has already apologized unreservedly for his comments, which is certainly a step in the right direction. My personal view is everyone should be accountable for what they say but nobody should be cancelled for it.
Undeservedly’, no, it was couched with caveats and he even used the Alf Garnett defence.
He was also an adult when he made the comments, some very inflammatory to a large online audience.
Farage was a child.
Indeed.
Good thing he accepts that you can be a twat while a child and have no consequences later.
'There has been some anger on social media about the silence of NGOs, most obviously Amnesty International. But Amnesty long ago stopped being an organisation focused on freedom and liberty and became instead one of the world’s most lavishly funded hard left campaigning groups. There are few clearer examples of the red-green alliance between the left and Islamists than Amnesty. The global left abandoned Iranians decades ago because challenging the regime meant challenging the alliance. Amnesty would no more stand with the Iranian protestors than it would stand with the victims of the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023.'
The BBC isn't covering Iran properly doesn't seem to be a GB News "exclusive" angle, the likes of Omid Djalili and Tom Tugendhat seems quite exercised by it on twitter, and in particular I highly doubt Omid Djalili is a big GB News viewer.
I personally didn't see any issue and haven't mentioned it one way or another (and I am hardly the BBC's biggest fan), but it does seem that some think they have misstepped in their coverage.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
Nobody as far as I know is asking that Farage be stripped of his British citizenship and deported, they're simply asking Farage to offer some credible response to the allegations. As far as I am aware the other chap has already apologized unreservedly for his comments, which is certainly a step in the right direction. My personal view is everyone should be accountable for what they say but nobody should be cancelled for it.
Unreservedly’, no, it was couched with caveats and he even used the Alf Garnett defence.
He was also an adult when he made the comments, some very inflammatory to a large online audience.
An apology make it all okay ?
Farage was a child.
I'm not in the weeds on what he said but I am not in favour of cancelling people. For sure challenge him, hold him to account, get a real apology. People say stupid stuff sometimes. I'm not a fan of lifting stupid social media comments and starting a witch hunt about it. As for Farage, the issue isn't what he said as a child, it's the failure to engage with it now. Don't cancel him either, but try to figure out what he thinks of the behaviour now. The fact he won't engage is why the issue is a legitimate concern and won't go away. He is aspiring to lead the country and people deserve to know how he thinks about this stuff.
Some of the last major protests in the middle east ended with 14 years of civil war in Syria.
I think it's fair to temper expectations of what's going on in Iran. We haven't even got to the shooting protesters stage yet.
However, the case for reform and moving away from nuclear weapons to remove sanctions seems extremely strong. Iran is close enough to a growing economic powerhouse of India and rich Arab states. The US is no longer as interested in middle eastern regime change now it has so much oil itself.
A reformed Iran could be immensely wealthier than it is today.
We don't have to vote Labour again either so we avoid most of that being repeated
First point is two thirds of those who voted did NOT vote Labour (such as thee and me I suspect) but the FPTP system delivered a huge landslide which raises an obvious question or two.
As for the Ovenden critique, what I'm struck by is not how much has changed under Starmer but how little. Not much of what he has said started on July 5th 2024 and indeed much of it was present under previous Conservative administrations.
One of the reasons I've never supported Labour is they are an authoritarian party - you only have to remember how Straw and Blunkett were as Home Secretaries and see how Mahmood fits comfortably into that role. The days of Roy Jenkins are long past but he oversaw the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974 (albeit as a temporary measure).
Yet there's an authoritarianism in the electorate as well which responds to such ideas as restricting citizenship to your place of birth so the politics works.
I'm struggling with the Process State as espoused by @Malmesbury and others. I worked in local Government for a number of years - what I saw was less process than consultation. Decisions needed a lot of consultation - everyone wanted to be involved including the local Councillors as well as heads of other Services etc. That process also involved the formulaic production of reports to Cabinet or other forums and too much time was taken up on these.
There was also the notion consultation offered protection for all sides. The more people involved, the argument went, the less likely something would be missed or forgotten or not considered. I kept bumping up against the Star Trek argument, as I always called it, pace Spock - "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". You could argue that's not a bad way to run a country or a city but the "few" will use all means necessary to frustrate this so do you close down the avenues of those protests? Do you simply say something has to happen because it's needed?
Problem with Process State as a critique is that you actually want effective process. There's no point reinventing the wheel each time if the process in place efficiently delivers the outcomes you want.
The questions should be (1) What's your policy? This implies making decisions. (2) What's the best process to deliver that policy?
The Process State is where the Process becomes the goal, rather than the outcome. So the piles of documentation grow ever higher, everything takes longer, but the results are often *worse*.
Process is the means by which you deliver the policy outcome. It's a requirement for any effective organisation.
It has the benefits of being (a) Policy driven. This means that. The policy is the "this" including desired outcomes while the process is the "that" (b) Measurable. If a process doesn't work it's either because people aren't following it or because it needs change in discernable ways. This allows incremental improvements that are hard to make otherwise; (c) Efficient. Standardisation allows more to be done with the same resources.
So maybe it's a case of Bad Process State bad and Good Process State necessary.
I think often the policy is misconceived, not that the process has taken over. I'm my city for example they seem to have decided new public toilets must be gender neutral. They are putting them where they are most needed, ie where people are most likely to congregate. Problem is the block has space for just 5 cubicles each with their own wash hand basin. They could accommodate three times the number of people with standard segregated toilets. I don't want to make a comment on gender neutral toilets per se, but prioritising gender neutral over having enough of them feels like the wrong policy decision to me.
He's in his late 80s now I believe - are there any indications that he is basically just a figurehead now, or is he still actively running the show? Mugabe was still dictatoring into his 90s, although by the end it was clear factions were manuevering more than him running things, which is why he was eventually removed.
The BBC isn't covering Iran properly doesn't seem to be a GB News "exclusive" angle, the likes of Omid Djalili and Tom Tugendhat seems quite exercised by it on twitter, and I highly doubt Omid Djalili is a big GB News viewer.
I personally didn't see any issue and haven't mentioned it one way or another (and I am hardly the BBC's biggest fan), but it does seem that some think they have misstepped.
It occurs to me that PB usually picks up on this kind of thing very early, and I don't recall anyone talking about this in the last few weeks (apols if I've missed a discussion on it.). The same goes for reddit, though it's not as quick as it used to be on picking up stuff like this.
I don't really understand the scandal here. There is a wider problem that the media doesn't pick up on international news as well as it could, but reporting on Iran is difficult and it's not specifically an issue with the BBC, I'd have thought.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
Nobody as far as I know is asking that Farage be stripped of his British citizenship and deported, they're simply asking Farage to offer some credible response to the allegations. As far as I am aware the other chap has already apologized unreservedly for his comments, which is certainly a step in the right direction. My personal view is everyone should be accountable for what they say but nobody should be cancelled for it.
Unreservedly’, no, it was couched with caveats and he even used the Alf Garnett defence.
He was also an adult when he made the comments, some very inflammatory to a large online audience.
An apology make it all okay ?
Farage was a child.
For some of the time when the quotes originated, he was 17, older than Shamima Begum was when she 'went' to Syria.
He's in his late 80s now I believe - are there any indications that he is basically just a figurehead now, or is he still actively running the show? Mugabe was still dictatoring into his 90s, although by the end it was clear factions were manuevering more than him running things, which is why he was eventually removed.
There are rumours - to put it no more strongly than that - that his son is doing most of the day to day work with a view to becoming Supreme Leader himself.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
Nobody as far as I know is asking that Farage be stripped of his British citizenship and deported, they're simply asking Farage to offer some credible response to the allegations. As far as I am aware the other chap has already apologized unreservedly for his comments, which is certainly a step in the right direction. My personal view is everyone should be accountable for what they say but nobody should be cancelled for it.
Unreservedly’, no, it was couched with caveats and he even used the Alf Garnett defence.
He was also an adult when he made the comments, some very inflammatory to a large online audience.
An apology make it all okay ?
Farage was a child.
For some of the time when the quotes originated, he was 17, older than Shamima Begum was when she 'went' to Syria.
I think Begum should come home but are you aware of what she was involved with out there? It wasn't making racist comments.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
Nobody as far as I know is asking that Farage be stripped of his British citizenship and deported, they're simply asking Farage to offer some credible response to the allegations. As far as I am aware the other chap has already apologized unreservedly for his comments, which is certainly a step in the right direction. My personal view is everyone should be accountable for what they say but nobody should be cancelled for it.
Unreservedly’, no, it was couched with caveats and he even used the Alf Garnett defence.
He was also an adult when he made the comments, some very inflammatory to a large online audience.
An apology make it all okay ?
Farage was a child.
For some of the time when the quotes originated, he was 17, older than Shamima Begum was when she 'went' to Syria.
And ?
I’ve never said I support her being stripped of citizenship
Farage never sewed people into suicide vests either or indulged in the support of a terrorist body.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
Nobody as far as I know is asking that Farage be stripped of his British citizenship and deported, they're simply asking Farage to offer some credible response to the allegations. As far as I am aware the other chap has already apologized unreservedly for his comments, which is certainly a step in the right direction. My personal view is everyone should be accountable for what they say but nobody should be cancelled for it.
Unreservedly’, no, it was couched with caveats and he even used the Alf Garnett defence.
He was also an adult when he made the comments, some very inflammatory to a large online audience.
An apology make it all okay ?
Farage was a child.
For some of the time when the quotes originated, he was 17, older than Shamima Begum was when she 'went' to Syria.
But did she do more than just go there and say bad things? Being a child is not a defence to everything, though it is to many things, presumably why we have an age of criminal responsibility in the first place.
Whether in her particular case people are satisfied with the punishment meted out given her circumstances and suggestions of grooming etc is something that will be debated for a long time I am sure, but that she was legally a child is obviously not an instant amelioration for her in itself.
Comments
As for the Ovenden critique, what I'm struck by is not how much has changed under Starmer but how little. Not much of what he has said started on July 5th 2024 and indeed much of it was present under previous Conservative administrations.
One of the reasons I've never supported Labour is they are an authoritarian party - you only have to remember how Straw and Blunkett were as Home Secretaries and see how Mahmood fits comfortably into that role. The days of Roy Jenkins are long past but he oversaw the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974 (albeit as a temporary measure).
Yet there's an authoritarianism in the electorate as well which responds to such ideas as restricting citizenship to your place of birth so the politics works.
I'm struggling with the Process State as espoused by @Malmesbury and others. I worked in local Government for a number of years - what I saw was less process than consultation. Decisions needed a lot of consultation - everyone wanted to be involved including the local Councillors as well as heads of other Services etc. That process also involved the formulaic production of reports to Cabinet or other forums and too much time was taken up on these.
There was also the notion consultation offered protection for all sides. The more people involved, the argument went, the less likely something would be missed or forgotten or not considered. I kept bumping up against the Star Trek argument, as I always called it, pace Spock - "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". You could argue that's not a bad way to run a country or a city but the "few" will use all means necessary to frustrate this so do you close down the avenues of those protests? Do you simply say something has to happen because it's needed?
But the political hit job wasn't about an honest change of views. There were those targeted in the book who were indeed "guilty men" if that meant opposing rearmament. But the authors didn't have clean hands themselves in that respect, and were intentionally or not quite wrong in their attacks on Chamberlain.
Foot is always painted as a politician of principle (which he often was, however deluded he might have been). But in this case it was just low politics.
Specifically, it snowed in Snowshill...
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jan/02/will-smith-accused-of-predatory-behaviour-and-grooming-by-tour-violinist
What does it mean when your doctors keep insisting you redo the cognitive exam
https://bsky.app/profile/crampell.bsky.social/post/3mbh5t6wcwk2g
Amber snow: A dog has shat in it.
Ukrainian Defense Intelligence has published a video that was made to "prove" the death of Denys Kapustin.
A video showing the work of two combat drones was created for this purpose: one drone hit a bus where Kapustin was, and the other filmed the "aftermath" of the strike, a burning vehicle.
Russian special services who ordered the killing of Kapustin were satisfied with the video and paid $500,000 to Ukrainian Defense Intelligence.
https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/2007049653984903508
Several days ago, information appeared that Denys Kapustin, commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps, has been killed defending Ukraine.
Turns out, Denys Kapustin is alive and well!
Ukrainian Defense Intelligence has performed a complex special operation to save the life of Denys Kapustin, and reveal those who ordered his killing. The operation lasted over a month...
https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/2006721992125215032
Talk about the horseshoe theory.
https://x.com/Ania_In_UA/status/2007011380696949245
https://bsky.app/profile/robfordmancs.bsky.social/post/3mbgypsor2s2s
I practice every so often just to make sure I can still do it!
I said, "Well, there's Botham, McKellen, Duncan-Smith”..
It's more nuanced - look at Employment Rights for example. Should workers not have rights or is it all about "the burden" to employers? There are two sides - where I do think there's been a problem is the Covid business rates relief for the hospitality industry which has been badly handled by successive Governments - there's an analogy with Council Tax revaluation here. IF you put in something as a temporary measure, make sure it is temporary and doesn't become permanent by stealth.
We also know the immigration issue is much less about net numbers than "the boats" and you could certainly argue Starmer is as bereft of a viable solution as was Sunak (Rwanda might be viable assuming there's enough money to pay for it and it has the deterrent effect some believe). The problem for Starmer (and the opportunity for Reform) is come the spring, absent a practical solution, the boats will start coming again across the Channel when the weather clears just in time for the May local elections to become a referendum on immigration.
You might argue the election of Bardella as French President in 2027 might be the game changer - perhaps but it's by no means certain he would beat Philippe in a run off (the last poll I saw had Bardella ahead 53-47 but that's hardly decisive at this stage and the 2024 legislative election showed FN not always polling in actual votes what they promise in opinion polls) and we don't quite know what his policy vis a vis migrants attempting to reach the UK from northern France is going to be. In any case, even if he wins, he'll have to deal with Starmer until 2029.
The NHS is embracing new technologies and going cashless. This will save the lives of young children.
Hospital changes parking system to go cashless
A hospital is set to change its car parking system in the new year to go cashless.
Banbury's Horton General Hospital, in Oxfordshire will be using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR).
From the 5 January the new parking payment machines will accept card and contactless payments as you leave the site rather than before you visit.
Lisa Hofen, Chief Estates & Facilities Officer at OUH, said: "We're committed to making hospital visits as stress-free as possible for patients and visitors, and ensuring all parking is managed effectively."
The introduction of ANPR brings the Horton General in line with other OUH car parks.
Car parking charges remain unchanged, and the car parks continue to be managed by the Trust, with all income reinvested into patient and visitor services.
As visitors can pay on exit, they no longer have to guess how long they will need and, instead, just pay for the time they have used.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyzllq7dlgo.amp
'Obsessed' BBC in fresh bias row as broadcaster's 'near-total silence on Iran' is torn apart.
https://x.com/GBNEWS/status/2007000727961612726
Analysis of unimpeachable objectivity,
Sir Ian..
It would be better if Sir Ian sounded like Syrian.
Pedantic point - there is no Sir Iain Duncan-Smith.
By 4.5 months.
By late 1944, the US was shutting down construction of further warships in various categories - such as submarines - on the basis of having ridiculous oversupply.
As a working class Yorkshireman in my accent Syrian sounds like Sir Ian.
Decline of cash credited for drop in NHS surgery for children swallowing objects
Figures reveal 29% fall in operations in England to remove foreign bodies from children’s airways, noses and throats
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/28/decline-of-cash-credited-for-drop-in-nhs-surgery-for-children-swallowing-objects
It makes my objection to id cards much stronger.
So, for Post WWII, the emphasis was on preventing such material entering the market.
Such protests can become a more organised and serious challenge to an authoritarian Government but I see no figurehead, no leader, no alternative political organisation or coalition fronting any of this at this time.
I'm not sure about Trump's intervention - sometimes external forces can cause the internal opposition real problems as it can mobilise support for the Government.
IRAN: As the anti-mullah uprising spreads, multiple IRGC Basij Force bases in in Hamedan, Fars and Khuzestan provenances have fallen to protesters. This is the fourth night of wide-spread demonstrations.
https://x.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/2006885110172287163
But if the protests continue unchecked for another week...
https://www.ovoarena.co.uk/events/detail/trans-mission
She's a huge Sugababes fan.
I want to see Christine and the Queens.
I guess that's me barred from joining Reform....
He was an interesting chap. He provided fighter escort for Vera Lynn when she visited the far east. He also took part in the Berlin Airlift after the war (as a co pilot being a single engine pilot before that) and broke his leg falling off a wing. He married the nurse who cared for him (my friends mum). He insisted he be buried when he died as he was terrified of being burnt alive in a crash. He crashed, I think, about 3 times during the war (landings or takeoffs). He took an instant dislike to Douglas Bader when they met at the end of the war.
The questions should be (1) What's your policy? This implies making decisions. (2) What's the best process to deliver that policy?
It wasn't just the Far East, and they turn up from time to time.
This was a couple of years back:
Ukraine finds British WW2 Hurricane planes outside Kyiv
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65955365
Part of that was because when the war ended anything on Leaselend, rather than having been paid for, had to be either returned to the USA or scrapped etc. But that would have been for US produced stuff. The RN had to chuck a lot of planes over the side on their carriers.
The fundamental reality is that PR tends to drive towards mediocrity / the least offensive. Our current crop of politicians is decidedly poor but let’s not build in an institutional bias as well.
Ultimately PR looks as the nation and says the government should reflect the split of votes nationwide.
FPTP looks at local communities and says Cumbria may have different interests to London - let them select their representative. And then the representative is simply the person with the most votes. A traditional head count - easy to understand and well accepted by everyone except a few obsessives who post on board like this…
My friend's father was a little of the same character but much less so. He commented of himself that he thinks he was picked for fighters rather than bombers as he was not a team player. And he took an instant dislike to Bader so you can imagine what Bader was like.
Perhaps because Bader was always legless.
It has the benefits of being (a) Policy driven. This means that. The policy is the "this" including desired outcomes while the process is the "that" (b) Measurable. If a process doesn't work it's either because people aren't following it or because it needs change in discernable ways. This allows incremental improvements that are hard to make otherwise; (c) Efficient. Standardisation allows more to be done with the same resources.
So maybe it's a case of Bad Process State bad and Good Process State necessary.
He was also an adult when he made the comments, some very inflammatory to a large online audience.
An apology make it all okay ?
Farage was a child.
Fair price 6/4
Value to back 2/1
Value to lay Evens
At its extreme people go so far as wanting politics cut out of it entirely with citizen assemblies et al, which whatever the merits one believes of them on, say, major moral questions, are not magical cures for a divided body politic.
Indeed, it is ok for us to be divided on some major issues, it is not a failing in itself, and expert evidence does need to be weighed up and big picture decisions made balancing competing factors - almost as though there's a reason we have politicians at all.
Good thing he accepts that you can be a twat while a child and have no consequences later.
https://www.gbnews.com/news/shamima-begum-nigel-farage-blasts-echr
You're assuming that because GB News has mentioned something that must be why it has got salience? Have you considered that maybe people were criticising the BBC and THEN GB News (unsurprisingly as a rival broadcaster) picked up on it?
The only person I quoted was Simon Schama who so far as I know has never appeared on GB News. Ultimately that TV channel is just a useful scapegoat for a certain elite opinion that can no longer accept criticism. There are too many young people at BBC news who've had their minds polluted with postcolonial bullshit. The protests in Iran don't really register with them. It's not a conspiracy or pro Ayatollah mentality just a blind spot. The protests deserved greater prominence and a better national broadcaster would have done that.
One thing I would say is that western leaders have remarkably silent on the whole thing.
Other views are available.
https://www.thejc.com/opinion/the-bbcs-silence-on-irans-protests-is-a-scandal-gpj1jurr
My favourite bit:
'There has been some anger on social media about the silence of NGOs, most obviously Amnesty International. But Amnesty long ago stopped being an organisation focused on freedom and liberty and became instead one of the world’s most lavishly funded hard left campaigning groups. There are few clearer examples of the red-green alliance between the left and Islamists than Amnesty. The global left abandoned Iranians decades ago because challenging the regime meant challenging the alliance. Amnesty would no more stand with the Iranian protestors than it would stand with the victims of the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023.'
https://x.com/aziz0nomics/status/2007076851072802955?s=61
I personally didn't see any issue and haven't mentioned it one way or another (and I am hardly the BBC's biggest fan), but it does seem that some think they have misstepped in their coverage.
As for Farage, the issue isn't what he said as a child, it's the failure to engage with it now. Don't cancel him either, but try to figure out what he thinks of the behaviour now. The fact he won't engage is why the issue is a legitimate concern and won't go away. He is aspiring to lead the country and people deserve to know how he thinks about this stuff.
I think it's fair to temper expectations of what's going on in Iran. We haven't even got to the shooting protesters stage yet.
However, the case for reform and moving away from nuclear weapons to remove sanctions seems extremely strong. Iran is close enough to a growing economic powerhouse of India and rich Arab states. The US is no longer as interested in middle eastern regime change now it has so much oil itself.
A reformed Iran could be immensely wealthier than it is today.
I don't really understand the scandal here. There is a wider problem that the media doesn't pick up on international news as well as it could, but reporting on Iran is difficult and it's not specifically an issue with the BBC, I'd have thought.
https://epc.ae/en/details/featured/another-power-struggle-in-iran-can-mojtaba-khamenei-succeed-his-father-
I’ve never said I support her being stripped of citizenship
Farage never sewed people into suicide vests either or indulged in the support of a terrorist body.
Whether in her particular case people are satisfied with the punishment meted out given her circumstances and suggestions of grooming etc is something that will be debated for a long time I am sure, but that she was legally a child is obviously not an instant amelioration for her in itself.