news & politics:discussion

[Gilgamesh69]

Too many people in here putting the blame on Corbyn and not the PLP.  

 

Alas, real change wont come through voting. We need to change the system entirely. Death to the neoliberal oligarchy. They are a cancer upon society that have been allowed to exist for far too long.

[eFestivals]

29 minutes ago, Homer said:

I've read that John McDonnell has even closer IRA ties than Corbyn - and he's not particularly bothered who knows it either.

Diane Abbott is on record saying she hoped the IRA won.

It's a view, but it would be wierd for the people of a country to wish defeat on itself.

[eFestivals]

24 minutes ago, Haan said:

This is where the controlling the conversation bit comes into play tho, legalisation and decriminalisation does massively reduce drugs in a community.

Decriminalisation caused more weed smoking not less. Which is why it got reversed.

 

 

24 minutes ago, Haan said:

 

 

[eFestivals]

21 minutes ago, Gilgamesh69 said:

Too many people in here putting the blame on Corbyn and not the PLP.  

Corbyn put himself forward. It all went downhill from there, because he was unsuitable as leader.

Sadly he was too vain to realise everything about what he'd done.

 

 

21 minutes ago, Gilgamesh69 said:

 

Alas, real change wont come through voting. We need to change the system entirely. Death to the neoliberal oligarchy. They are a cancer upon society that have been allowed to exist for far too long.

Yeah, threatening death onto part of the electorate is bound to have them support you 😛

[Homer]

5 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

Diane Abbott is on record saying she hoped the IRA won.

It's a view, but it would be wierd for the people of a country to wish defeat on itself.

It's not the most obvious vote winning ploy, I'll give you that.

And she's a Londoner too. Presumably if she got injured by a bomb she'd have to thank the IRA for doing it.

[Ozanne]

 

 

[mattiloy]

1 hour ago, Homer said:

The thing that kills me about the left is people tying themselves in knots and in fighting over stuff that no normal person really gives a shit about. As already said, the average person doesn't care about politics. I regard myself as being more switched on than the average person, but I still don't know much about/have an opinion on the situation in Israel. Not sure that's going to have much cut-through on the doorstep.

How many times did Corbyn bring palestine up in his campaign?

About none.

1 hour ago, eFestivals said:

Diane Abbott is on record saying she hoped the IRA won.

It's a view, but it would be wierd for the people of a country to wish defeat on itself.

 

I know that the wounds are raw for people of a certain age but for people who werent born during the conflict, like myself, it strikes me as strange that those that would celebrate mandela would also condemn the IRA in the same breath. Both were engaged in a movement to overcome an apartheit regime left behind after the withdrawal of an oppressive colonialist empire...

The worst part of nationalism is seeing the actions of your nation as morally infallible without examining the actions.

[eFestivals]

11 minutes ago, mattiloy said:

How many times did Corbyn bring palestine up in his campaign?

About none.

How many times did conference wave Palestinian flags but not British flags?

How many times did Palestine get the debate but not important at all brexit?

 

 

Quote

 

I know that the wounds are raw for people of a certain age but for people who werent born during the conflict, like myself, it strikes me as strange that those that would celebrate mandela would also condemn the IRA in the same breath. Both were engaged in a movement to overcome an apartheit regime left behind after the withdrawal of an oppressive colonialist empire...

The worst part of nationalism is seeing the actions of your nation as morally infallible without examining the actions.

Do you celebrate the deaths of British people by Islamic terrorists?

It doesn't require the denial of past bad acts to think terrorism - murder - is wrong.

Your view is the outlier.

Edited February 24, 2021 by eFestivals

[mattiloy]

20 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

How many times did conference wave Palestinian flags but not British flags?

How many times did Palestine get the debate but not important at all brexit?

Once right?

+ Pretty sure Brexit was debated more.

Even so, not the point - conference is for labour members and tbh an even smaller clique of enthusiastic members. Homer talks of how Corbyns palestine position penetrated through to those who are not super interested in politics, which he counts himself in to some degree, more frequently as than his other politics. I’m simply pointing out that this is not because Corbyn went around banging the drum for palestine. His focus was almost always on economic injustice. So why is his palestine position the one that penetrated? A hostile press and a hostile party using the issue to smear.

 

26 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

Do you celebrate the deaths of British people by Islamic terrorists?

It doesn't require the denial of past bad acts to think terrorism - murder - is wrong.

Your view is the outlier.

Dont remember writing that I celebrated the killing of British people by the IRA? Dont remember Diane Abbott saying that either.

I refer to a post I think I made earlier in the thread which discusses the centrist dad’s tendency towards black and white thinking.

It is possible to empathise with all the victims of such a conflict - the victims of the oppression that caused it, and the victims of the conflict.

[eFestivals]

30 minutes ago, mattiloy said:

Once right?

+ Pretty sure Brexit was debated more.

Even so, not the point - conference is for labour members and tbh an even smaller clique of enthusiastic members. Homer talks of how Corbyns palestine position penetrated through to those who are not super interested in politics, which he counts himself in to some degree, more frequently as than his other politics. I’m simply pointing out that this is not because Corbyn went around banging the drum for palestine. His focus was almost always on economic injustice. So why is his palestine position the one that penetrated? A hostile press and a hostile party using the issue to smear.

No. Because Palestine was more of his focus than British affairs.

And conference can debate what it likes, just as people can form an opinion on that it likes. These things do get noticed.

 

Quote

Dont remember writing that I celebrated the killing of British people by the IRA? Dont remember Diane Abbott saying that either.

But you are looking to excuse the taking of lives (Abbott went further).

I'm sure you're smart enough to know how badly a similar view about Islamic terrorism would go down today with the average Joe. It was no different with the IRA back then, and those strong opinions tend not to go away.

And why would it go away? Humanity doesn't generally agree with indiscriminate murder even when there is a just cause somewhere in the area.

 

Quote

I refer to a post I think I made earlier in the thread which discusses the centrist dad’s tendency towards black and white thinking.

Sorry that you think you have the wrong electorate. When you find one that will go along with all strands of your cannot compromise stance, I'll be dead and you'll be long past centrist dad. You might even understand that an electorate that disagrees with you often has reason behind it at least as good as your own.

Quote

It is possible to empathise with all the victims of such a conflict - the victims of the oppression that caused it, and the victims of the conflict.

No shit Sherlock - while also thinking murder is wrong.

Ps: these murders were the electorates husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, children, uncles, aunts, townsfolk, etc. And it might have been you next.

Edited February 24, 2021 by eFestivals

[blutarsky]

1 hour ago, mattiloy said:

I know that the wounds are raw for people of a certain age but for people who werent born during the conflict, like myself, it strikes me as strange that those that would celebrate mandela would also condemn the IRA in the same breath. Both were engaged in a movement to overcome an apartheit regime left behind after the withdrawal of an oppressive colonialist empire...

I 100 per cent see your point, and agree that objectively there's no difference, but people in this country see the two differently because one happened in the UK and one didn't. The politics of me in simplest form. 

[Simsy]

"Job losses in pandemic due to performance issues, say nearly half of Britons"

And this is why we won't get a lefty government, too many people in this country think that the people worse off than them deserve it. They don't want to pay more tax to support people they think are lazy scroungers.

Also from the same article, 4% think racial inequality is because 'most black people have “less in-born ability to learn”'. WTF is wrong with this country?

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2021/feb/25/job-losses-in-pandemic-due-to-performance-issues-say-nearly-half-of-britons?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

[gizmoman]

I happened to see this on youtube earlier and found it quite interesting,

Then I spotted this,

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/revealed-migrant-worker-deaths-qatar-fifa-world-cup-2022?CMP=share_btn_tw

Revealed: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar as it gears up for World Cup

The Mail picked the story too.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9299033/More-6-500-migrant-workers-died-building-Qatars-World-Cup-infrastructure.html

 

Looks like we haven't advanced much as a species.

[Haan]

2 hours ago, gizmoman said:

I happened to see this on youtube earlier and found it quite interesting,

 

I studied this in uni! A lot of historians have argued that slavery was purely economic but there is a lot of evidence to suggest otherwise. I can dig up my essay's bibliography if you're interested but there's evidence that it was cheaper to enslave Europeans in the 1800s, and the fact that the white slaves in Virgina were allowed to bare arms and white women didn't work the fields, which shows that even in areas with both white and black slaves there was racism and mistreatment. I think overall, slavery would not have happened if it wasn't economically viable, but racism was a huge factor too.

Edited February 25, 2021 by Haan

[eFestivals]

2 hours ago, gizmoman said:

I happened to see this on youtube earlier and found it quite interesting,

Then I spotted this,

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/revealed-migrant-worker-deaths-qatar-fifa-world-cup-2022?CMP=share_btn_tw

Revealed: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar as it gears up for World Cup

The Mail picked the story too.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9299033/More-6-500-migrant-workers-died-building-Qatars-World-Cup-infrastructure.html

 

Looks like we haven't advanced much as a species.

what they NEVER teach is that to find the UK's biggest slaving family you need to take a walk down The Mall.

[gizmoman]

17 minutes ago, Haan said:

I studied this in uni! A lot of historians have argued that slavery was purely economic but there is a lot of evidence to suggest otherwise. I can dig up my essay's bibliography if you're interested but there's evidence that it was cheaper to enslave Europeans in the 1800s, and the fact that the white slaves in Virgina were allowed to bare arms and white women didn't work the fields, which shows that even in areas with both white and black slaves there was racism and mistreatment. I think overall, slavery would not have happened if it wasn't economically viable, but racism was a huge factor too.

No doubt, I didn't post it to start a debate about black slavery, it was coincidental I saw that today and then saw the Qatar report, there is no doubt that slavery still exists and this report highlights it, I know from friends that have been that in Saudi some foreign workers are basically treated as slaves, they have their passports taken off them and are held in servitude. As in Qatar most are from other muslim countries so it's not really a racial issue, just plain old inhuman exploitation.

[Haan]

1 minute ago, gizmoman said:

No doubt, I didn't post it to start a debate about black slavery, it was coincidental I saw that today and then saw the Qatar report, there is no doubt that slavery still exists and this report highlights it, I know from friends that have been that in Saudi some foreign workers are basically treated as slaves, they have their passports taken off them and are held in servitude. As in Qatar most are from other muslim countries so it's not really a racial issue, just plain old inhuman exploitation.

Oh yeah no worries, just wanted to counter some of the Thomas Sowell stuff. The Qatar thing is truly awful, they should have never gotten the world cup. Very depressing

[gizmoman]

24 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

what they NEVER teach is that to find the UK's biggest slaving family you need to take a walk down The Mall.

Yes, and recent events have demonstrated just how much freedom their "subjects" have.

[gizmoman]

Talking of our betters, who gave them ownership of the seabed?

"the seabed within Britain's territorial waters is owned by the Crown Estate."

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1706754/Queens-38m-a-year-windfarm-windfall.html

[eFestivals]

2 hours ago, gizmoman said:

Talking of our betters, who gave them ownership of the seabed?

wait till you discover she still owns the land your house is on 😛 

despite the supposed 'freehold', It's only free for you to hold until she wants it back.

also see: Australia, Canada, and other places.

[gizmoman]

6 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

wait till you discover she still owns the land your house is on 😛 

despite the supposed 'freehold', It's only free for you to hold until she wants it back.

also see: Australia, Canada, and other places.

Yeah I knew that, the seashore one was news though, wanna go halves on a guillotine?

[eFestivals]

13 minutes ago, gizmoman said:

Yeah I knew that, the seashore one was news though, wanna go halves on a guillotine?

i'll buy the guillotine, you can do the capturing. 😛 

[steviewevie]

Drugs.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/25/drug-reforms-us-britain-war-on-drugs-politicians-narcotics

[topmarksbri]

On 2/24/2021 at 5:16 PM, Homer said:

I've read that John McDonnell has even closer IRA ties than Corbyn - and he's not particularly bothered who knows it either.

The impression that I'd always got from family/friends involved in Labour since the 70s was that JC was boring soft touch lefty whereas McD was the real hardline bastard and a bit unpleasant to deal with. Funny how perceptions change, I know lots of soft left who were begging for McD to take over as he'd be more palatable to the electorate! 

 

On 2/24/2021 at 8:05 PM, mattiloy said:

I know that the wounds are raw for people of a certain age but for people who werent born during the conflict, like myself, it strikes me as strange that those that would celebrate mandela would also condemn the IRA in the same breath. Both were engaged in a movement to overcome an apartheit regime left behind after the withdrawal of an oppressive colonialist empire...

The worst part of nationalism is seeing the actions of your nation as morally infallible without examining the actions.

You're talking about an emotive issue logically which doesn't really work, people hold all kinds of contradictory opinions. I also don't think it's that people see the troubles as the UK being morally right but that the terrorist actions of the IRA which killed British civilians as wrong.

[mattiloy]

See what happens?

This is what you get when you elect a blairite dinosaur.