LJS

as I said - its a difficult subject.

I agree - I suspect most people ar unaware of he extent of Britain's involvement int he slave trade. not only through directly trading slaves but also through building vast fortunes on the backs of slave labour in the plantations of north America and the Caribbean. Yeah - i think its part of the awareness thing. I'm not a big fan of this but I can get where people are coming from. I think the ansqwer rather than tearing down statues & renaming buildings and streets would perhaps be to commemorate in some way those who worked to end slavery and thos who suffered. I think the subject of reparations is difficult - there is no doubt that Great Britain, as a country, owes much of its current wealth & status to the fruits of the slave trade' but who do you give the compensation to? Perhaps the Foreign Aid budget could be used to pay just a little more back to some of the countries we exploited.

Indeed. Its also sad to see him picking this moment ti make his announcement. Its almost like he wants the Tories to win. I can't see that anything has changed recently - so why do this now & not a year ago? Arse! in other news Scotland has now has no elected Brexit/Ukip representatives at any level of government. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-50475304 Hurrah!

So, to summarise, whilst all advanced economies may have experienced deindustrialisation, some suffered more than others for a number of reasons including bad management & ideologically driven Tory bastards. Seems reasonable to me. I wonder what Neil thinks.

Is it misrepresenting the facts any more than someone who excuses Thatcher's assault on British manufacturing industry by say deindustrialisation happened everywhere. This glosses over the callous & calculating way Thatcher accelerated the (probably) inevitable. Is it worse than what Boris is promising? If we assume that Boris means Brexit & Labour means referendum & maybe remain, I'd argue that they are both equally unrealistic. Buy for some bizarre reason, the supposed labour supporters on here think bashing labour & labour alone is the way to go.

So a self avowed left-wing publication produces an analysis of events which is selective in its use of fact to support their view. Please tell me how this is different from The Telegraph. Mail or Express? Except they are worse because they are not open about their political bias in the way that sites like Red Pepper are. Some supposedly left-leaning folk on here seem far too eager to swallow the media's mealy mouthed justifications for the ideologically driven assault by thatcher on the Unions with large swathes of industry destroyed along with the communities that relied on them seen as acceptable collateral damage.

Neil, you know Thatchers sale of state assets was on an unprecedented scale & driven by ideology.

Its the front page. Since when were opinion pieces on the front page? Frankly, in comparison, red Pepper is a beacon of impartiality.

what a ridiculous preposition proposition!

Yeah, the telegraph keeps news & opinion clearly separate...

Well, as is often the case with Jeremy, things change all the time... The problem the SNP have is the compelling argument for a quick Indy ref depends on Brexit going ahead. They, not unreasonably, want a referendum while the UK is still in the transition reasoning that it will be easier for us effectively to stay in the EU. Of course, Brexit is most likely to happen if Boris wins a majority and all the signs are that he is not minded to allow indyref 2. If there is no Boris majority & we somehow get a EUref2 via some sort of Labour minority government, and the vote is to remain, then that weakens the SNP's argument as we won't have been dragged out out of the EU kicking & screaming against our will. The other problem Sturgeon has is that a lot of SNP supporters are getting impatient with Wings over Scotland and his legions of followers even threatening to launch his own party to contest the next Holyrood election. Unless the results of the election are remarkable, i think the question is academic as polling suggests there is unlikely to be a minority labour government that doesn't need SNP and LibDem support and that would be a very unstable alliance which would be unlikely to last for much longer than it would take to have EUref2.

Not everything that is true needs to be said. Anyone who doesn't realise that should not pick politics as a career.

Maybe she shouldn't have sued them. That's a judgement she had to make.

You're right. A more balanced approach would be better. I'd say about 98% pro-Palestine & 2% neutral would be about right.

I defended Corbyn on here for months but I have run out of patience with his endless obfuscation on Brexit. The UK is in crisis facing a likely Boris Brexit that will damage (& possibly end) the UK. Labour should be leading the charge against this and working with all remainers parties to try and avert it at any cost.