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Reply | Why did the media and police lie so readily
at 09:11 17 Sep 2025
The tone of replies here is pretty much the same across the board. Express a silly opinion on the football board and people will be sarky, condescending, over the top in response. Express a left wing opinion on general and people who disagree will be plenty sarky, condescending, over the top (for e.g., there's someone defending Corbyn on the Burnham thread and getting just as short shrift as onceablue is getting here).
Only difference is that some conservatives here (and in wider British society) think theirs is a special order of opinion that needs to be treated like a delicate little flower and anything else "isn't free speech". [Post edited 17 Sep 9:13]
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Reply | Why did the media and police lie so readily
at 07:35 17 Sep 2025
Pretty much anyone who ever goes on a demonstration claims they've been undercounted.
Given that pretty much every newspaper bar maybe 2 is absolutely desperate for a Farage government as soon as possible I'm not sure who exactly would organise this conspiracy. Perhaps the well-known liberal sissies at the Metropolitan Police? [Post edited 17 Sep 7:38]
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Reply | If there was an election today, who would get your vote?
at 19:13 16 Sep 2025
Can't stand the sitting Labour MP in my constituency (or the government more generally), so will vote for the party that finished second place last time (the Greens).
If I lived in Ipswich I might hold my nose if it looked like being Labour vs. Reform and vote for the incumbent. |
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Reply | Andy Burnham watch ....
at 17:48 16 Sep 2025
In fairness to Burnham I think all three candidates imagined, as we all did, that the Labour Party had been largely captured by the post-Thatcher consensus and that they'd all be fighting a contest well within the permissible range of centrist political opinion. Then they all got absolutely steamrollered when they discovered a large cohort of members old and new were actually anti-Blairism and anti-austerity.
Don't think he'd have the same issue this time (partly because the context is different and partly because he's different). [Post edited 16 Sep 17:50]
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Reply | Andy Burnham watch ....
at 11:24 16 Sep 2025
The pre-election promises of growth were very silly politics really.
The economy has not grown significantly really since the 2008 crisis, having "the economy is suddenly going to grow dramatically faster" as a core offer but without any real underlying theory of why it would was just a recipe for disaster. |
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Reply | Andy Burnham watch ....
at 11:11 16 Sep 2025
Don't get me wrong, not that I've got faith in the process or any illusions about how fair the Labour NEC hacks are.
But what they did in 2023 should be put in context - Crick aside, they got (and required) a tremendous amount of cover to pull off those stitch ups. You can merrily strike people off constituency selection long lists when no-one knows who they are and basically the entire media and party machine is in total agreement that the Labour Left needs to be buried and the coffin nailed shut.
Given the absolute state they're in now, I doubt they'd get the required cover to do the same to someone as well-known as Burnham. |
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Reply | Andy Burnham watch ....
at 10:49 16 Sep 2025
Yeah, think it would be difficult in this context - the actual longlist/shortlist is decided by representatives from the Constituency branch and only really 'overseen' by the National Executive Committee representative.
If he applied and the CLP Selection Committee put him on the list then the NEC Rep would need to actively veto his inclusion and that would cause a huge stink for which you'd need to provide some sort of justification, not just "Keir doesn't want the competition". [Post edited 16 Sep 10:51]
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Reply | Anyone you know?
at 10:15 16 Sep 2025
Hold any opinion on immigration that you like, but surely people get that being part of this is something else, don't they?
You have speakers on the main stage overtly calling for violence, talking about 'mass remigration', you have every thug Neo-Nazi skinhead from across the country attending, every hate group in Britain attending and you're just standing there innocently clutching your flag, quietly muttering "honestly, I don't wish harm on anyone, I just want stronger controls on immigration"?
My family is mixed, my son is mixed race, this is the city I live in, can we get a vague sense of empathy for what it feels like to have 100,000 people standing shoulder to shoulder with bloody Patriotric Alternative here? [Post edited 16 Sep 11:54]
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Reply | Erm. Ted's pies
at 10:38 12 Sep 2025
The hot sauce is also extremely underwhelming. Slightly spicy ketchup.
Given how much of his youth he spent hanging round West London with Caribbean and African folk, he should know better! |
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Reply | Would you start Hirst tonight? (n/t)
at 10:00 12 Sep 2025
He's joint 3rd in the division for big chances missed (3) and 3rd for xG (2.4). So, relative to other strikers in the division he's getting good chances but not taking them.
You can read that as a good thing, he's getting in good positions and if he keeps doing that the goals will come. Don't think his finishing ability has historically been a massive concern. |
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Reply | 2 children drowned in the Channel today
at 11:44 11 Sep 2025
Think the idea that the 21st Century refugee situation is wildly different to that imagined by the people drafting the 1951 UN Convention doesn't particularly work.
In 1951 they're principally thinking about the situation before the war and the failure of other states to facilitate Jewish people fleeing Germany. That was millions of people and those that did escape were not just dumped over the nearest border to 'safety' (and just as well they weren't). They made onwards journeys.
They're thinking about the millions of displaced people in camps across Europe after the war and the millions of people living under authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe. Again, we're talking millions of people and again those people weren't just dumped over the nearest friendly border, they made onward journeys. 100,000s of people - Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians - settled in Britain.
The refugee convention is also explicit about granting refugees all sorts of social rights, so they can exist and have a life for however long they're in exile.
There isn't really much support for the idea that this was all set up for a different reality. What's different really is that in 1951 there was a widespread understanding that more should have been done to help people flee in the 1930s, sympathy for people displaced by the war and political sympathy for dissidents in the East.
Which is not so different to now really. Britain issued more than 400,000 visas to Ukrainians and Hong Kongers without widespread complaint, largely because there was an active effort on the part of politicians and media to paint their plight in a sympathetic light. You saw a brief flicker of something similar when Farage suggested we return people to Afghanistan and got at least some push back suggesting maybe sending people to be tortured and murdered by the Taliban might not be OK. [Post edited 11 Sep 12:11]
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Reply | 2 children drowned in the Channel today
at 20:46 10 Sep 2025
I suppose on the first thing, I take the view that 'safety' should mean the same thing for everybody, not one thing for us and another for people who we think different to us.
On the second thing. Firstly, Germany and France both get more asylum applications than Britain does. But secondly, surely you get that being a refugee puts you in a pretty vulnerable situation? British people can end up homeless, destitute and in difficult situations in Britain, a society where they have full citizenship from birth with all the rights that conveys! You can imagine how it might be if you didn't have all that. Wouldn't you seek out the place where you could get help from contacts? Could speak the language at least a little? |
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Reply | 2 children drowned in the Channel today
at 20:19 10 Sep 2025
What constitutes 'safety' to you?
Like I said above, if you had a family member living in a homeless encampment in a country where they didn't speak the language, would you consider them to be 'safe'?
Or might you suggest, perhaps, that it was a good idea to seek help from friends or family? [Post edited 10 Sep 20:20]
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Reply | 2 children drowned in the Channel today
at 18:39 10 Sep 2025
Think 'seeking a better life' and 'economic migrant' as categories are too blasé about the connections between survival and economic needs, especially when you're essentially destitute in a foreign country with no possessions.
If I had a friend or family member living in a homeless camp in France, I wouldn't consider them to be "safe". [Post edited 10 Sep 19:01]
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Reply | 2 children drowned in the Channel today
at 18:12 10 Sep 2025
Usually it's a question of (a) contacts, especially family/kinship networks (b) language skills, cultural knowledge
There's a bit of a tendency to imagine that as soon as you get to a place where you aren't in immediate danger of death that's it, that's you safe, end of problem.
But in reality if any of us were dumped with our family in a country with just the possessions we could carry, the first thing you'd have to address is how to survive (and even build a modestly prosperous life) and likely the first thing you'd think is 'how can I get to people I know and trust, who are more established and can help me survive', followed shortly by 'where is a place I might be able to find work and make money', which probably means a place where you speak the language. |
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Reply | GSTK 🏴🏴
at 14:30 10 Sep 2025
Think the cricket thing is sometimes overplayed a bit. When I lived in South Manchester Longsight was full of Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage kids who loved football, played it obsessively. Plenty of appetite to play.
I'd guess it's a bit of a vicious circle. You don't see any top class Asian footballers, so you can't convince your parents to invest the required time/energy in what seems like an unrealistic ambition. Meanwhile academy scouts/coaches don't see top class Asian footballers, which is going to shape their bias (consciously/unconsciously) when assessing future ability. |
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Reply | GSTK 🏴🏴
at 14:07 10 Sep 2025
though probably speaks to something that the first muslim to play for England is of Jamaican descent and an adherent of the Nation of Islam, rather than a South Asian... |
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Reply | People considering voting Reform
at 14:02 10 Sep 2025
As a society we allow people to do all sorts of things that might potentially cause them harm - alcohol, tobacco, skiing, skydiving, climbing Everest etc.
The debate about marijuana legality is surely not about whether it is potentially harmful but about relative harm, isn't it? Does keeping it illegal minimise harm to such an extent that justifies restricting people's personal choice?
When you take into account what prohibition does:
Makes the sale and distribution of the drug a criminal enterprise with all the violence that entails.
Makes it impossible to regulate the quality of the product.
Makes the relatively harmless cannabis an entry point to criminal contacts, who can supply the user with stronger drugs.
Makes people occlude their drug habit from people who might intervene to prevent their use becoming disordered.
Seems unlikely to me that criminalisation minimises harm. [Post edited 10 Sep 14:03]
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