UK Politics

[al_yrpal]

Labour has 'no coherent plan' for country, says Blair - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx211r9nm3lo

Tone agrees with me then? Been saying this since Labour got elected...

Al

[Carlton green]

Blair, he didn’t get everything right but winning three elections wasn’t down to luck and was a fantastic achievement. imho the man’s not hung up on philosophical political points and instead he pragmatically gets on with stuff. The BBC article made some interesting points and imho Blair’s about right in much that he’s quoted as saying.

The most important feature of a Labour government is that the Tories aren’t in power, after that they need to protect the population from that greater evil (by winning successive elections) and then act in ways that listen to all the people. Blair was also very conscious of the power of the press and the importance of managing it. The press is far from impartial and is a weaponised political device who’s owners support right wing politics, propaganda gets people like Trump elected and we all need to be mindful of the lies and distortions feed to us by propaganda machines.

There are a few hopefuls who want Starmer’s job, imho some present better than Starmer but none of then will be as effective in office. I don’t like Burnham, but if he has the right people around him then there’s a chance of some ongoing success. Whether Burnham will win an MP’s seat (Makerfield by-election, 18th June) is another matter, and if he does then that’ll force an election for Manchester Mayor - an election which Labour might not win and which they will use precious resources in fighting.

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcg ... Makerfield
Currently Reform appear to be the firm favourites to win Makerfield. Yet another example of Labour Party self inflicted injury.

[al_yrpal]

As Blair days it doesnt matter who is PM its policy that determines whether we remain basket cases or stop the current rot, apply common sense, and move forward.

Al

[Carlton green]

As Blair days it doesnt matter who is PM its policy that determines whether we remain basket cases or stop the current rot, apply common sense, and move forward.

Yep, well broadly correct. A reasonably able leader is needed to keep the show on the road but after that it’s down to sensible policies that both work and don’t have unintended consequences. Throw the political posturing out of the window and get on with listening to voters and moving forwards with caution.

[cycle tramp]

Labour has 'no coherent plan' for country, says Blair - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx211r9nm3lo

Tone agrees with me then? Been saying this since Labour got elected...

Al

What's that Tony Blair?... Iran has weapons of mass destruction which they can unlease at Britain within forty five minutes?...
..and you're still not a war criminal, nor is Jack Straw?

...that's nice... now go away you murderer of mothers, children and babies... lets hope they bury you in an unmarked grave.
https://jonathonporritt.com/tony-blair- ... al-legacy/

[Carlton green]

Labour has 'no coherent plan' for country, says Blair - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx211r9nm3lo

Tone agrees with me then? Been saying this since Labour got elected...

Al

What's that Tony Blair?... Iran has weapons of mass destruction which they can unlease at Britain within forty five minutes?...
..and you're still not a war criminal, nor is Jack Straw?

...that's nice... now go away you murderer of mothers, children and babies... lets hope they bury you in an unmarked grave.
https://jonathonporritt.com/tony-blair- ... al-legacy/

What!? Saint Tony .

He didn’t get everything right - nobody does - and that (Iraq) is what you get for cosying up to the Yanks (they might be our Allies but they’re sure not our friends, ‘cause friends don’t treat you bad and they don’t lie to you either).

[mjr]

Do the Tea Party fans on here have nothing to say about their heroes Musk, Robinson/Yaxley-Lennon and For-sale Farage exploiting tragedy to incite yet more riots and pogroms, reportedly coordinated online?

When will Starmer find a spine and boot Musk's media out of the UK?

[mjr]

Well, at least three political parties have leaders willing to challenge the media misreporting these pogroms and riots as if they're law-abiding protests. Here's one of them, Ross Greer of the Scottish Greens: https://www.thenational.scot/news/26181 ... r-belfast/

I wonder if Badenoch still regards Musk as a "goodie"? https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MAv4j02VybE

[Mike Sales]

Do the Tea Party fans on here have nothing to say about their heroes Musk, Robinson/Yaxley-Lennon and For-sale Farage exploiting tragedy to incite yet more riots and pogroms, reportedly coordinated online?

I am sure that you can guess which of those scoundrels has been called 'the fag-ash Fuhrer.'

[cycle tramp]

Do the Tea Party fans on here have nothing to say about their heroes Musk, Robinson/Yaxley-Lennon and For-sale Farage exploiting tragedy to incite yet more riots and pogroms, reportedly coordinated online?

When will Starmer find a spine and boot Musk's media out of the UK?

I'll be the first to admit that i don't like any of them. However as an anarchist, they have the same right to express their views, as i do, as distasteful as i find them - the prinicipals of freedom of speech being 'i dislike what you say, however i respect the right to say it' - the alternative being i become a dictator and everyone has to ride steel framed bikes with 26 inch wheels - and write nice threads about riding them...

The named people, and many more like them are best percieved as a lightening rod to many of the spoken and unspoken fears that alot of people have, many of which have been ignored.

The very fact that these fears exist point to non existent or failed attempts to get society to intergrate to a higher level, and i for one would actually welcome mixed religous places of worship, where both christians, muslims, hindus, those of the jewish faith and any other can worship together.

As lightening rods, the above named persons seek to raise these fears into something else, in the same way Trump, Vance and Hitler have done - leverage for their own agendas which will seek to profit them any very few others.

There is always hope. There are still a few years, when rather than re-act in fear, we can reach out with, if not love, perhaps a willingness to share our world with our neighbours and ask them to do the same with us.. for the record, i would dearly like to find out more about other religous festivals which happen thoroughout Britain, to know what they mean both spiritually and on a more human personal scale of each individual..

The above named people will often point to our differences, and yet in my previous life as a custimer advisor to the council, where i've spoken to a wide variety of people (from Lords and Ladies, through to the homeless and even a few refugess)- our similarities out number our differences... the desire for a better life for children, security for themselves, friends and family, a decent home, and someplace where they can safely be themselves.

[Cugel]

Do the Tea Party fans on here have nothing to say about their heroes Musk, Robinson/Yaxley-Lennon and For-sale Farage exploiting tragedy to incite yet more riots and pogroms, reportedly coordinated online?

When will Starmer find a spine and boot Musk's media out of the UK?

I'll be the first to admit that i don't like any of them. However as an anarchist, they have the same right to express their views, as i do, as distasteful as i find them - the prinicipals of freedom of speech being 'i dislike what you say, however i respect the right to say it' - the alternative being i become a dictator and everyone has to ride steel framed bikes with 26 inch wheels - and write nice threads about riding them...

"An anarchist" - generally a political expression meaning that any ole politics can be chosen and followed. The old-fashioned meaning pertaining to freedom of thought, expression and deed used to assume certain shared values and views of reality but these days the values may be as exotic and unconnected to reality as one likes. So .... would you like to define your own meaning to your particular anarchism?

Freedom of speech is one aspect of many claimed anarchisms. Personally I seem to have inherited to generally tolerant attitude to the notion. Even the wildest imaginings and intents of a would-be politician need to understood, especially if we're to reject them as mad, bad and dangerous. However ......

There's cogency in the notion of propaganda being an effective weapon of war, despotism and other conditions which tend to be highly deleterious to the humans affected and, these days, the whole planet. Should the USA have allowed such a degree of free speech that the whole cultural edifice now governing life in the USA could arise, be promulgated and now be trashing their whole country, including not just the "wrong"-coloured and "wrong" believing inhabitants but (in the longer term) their whole socio-economic wherewithal - and possibly that of the rest of the world?

One aspect of a virulent "free-speech" (AKA total package of lies) propaganda giving rise to the sort of politics and its "thought" like that of the USA, Nazi Germany, Maoist China and similar places is that it immediately suppresses free speech (any speech except praise of itself, in fact) then murders millions who fail to conform to the ever-changing and often impossible definitions of a "true patriot".

In short, the laws of libel and slander, as well as something akin to the notion of truth, turn out to be easily swamped by "free speech" to, paradoxically, produce not any sort of associated free actions but the polar opposite.

[cycle tramp]

Do the Tea Party fans on here have nothing to say about their heroes Musk, Robinson/Yaxley-Lennon and For-sale Farage exploiting tragedy to incite yet more riots and pogroms, reportedly coordinated online?

When will Starmer find a spine and boot Musk's media out of the UK?

I'll be the first to admit that i don't like any of them. However as an anarchist, they have the same right to express their views, as i do, as distasteful as i find them - the prinicipals of freedom of speech being 'i dislike what you say, however i respect the right to say it' - the alternative being i become a dictator and everyone has to ride steel framed bikes with 26 inch wheels - and write nice threads about riding them...

"An anarchist" - generally a political expression meaning that any ole politics can be chosen and followed. The old-fashioned meaning pertaining to freedom of thought, expression and deed used to assume certain shared values and views of reality but these days the values may be as exotic and unconnected to reality as one likes. So .... would you like to define your own meaning to your particular anarchism?

I don't think that any nation has been served well by the idea of polticial ideologies. Especially now when the right is seen as anti-woke, pro-fossil fuels, pro-life, pro-big business, anti-immigration and isolationist, whereas the left is seen as LGBT friendy, anti-fossil fuels, pro-choice, pro-nature, and anti-capitalist. Its not really a choice that helps anyone, and has managed to fracturer partisian poltics. We've run out of time for ideologies. We need solutions to our problems, and to embrace the solutions we need to stop labelling them as left-ist of right-ist.

Further to this, the idea that poltics is down to personalities rather than poicies is idiotic - we are supposed to be rational, logical people. Poltics should be free of personalities, and further to this policies should be voted for on a case by case base and on a much more devolved level.

[Cugel]

"An anarchist" - generally a political expression meaning that any ole politics can be chosen and followed. The old-fashioned meaning pertaining to freedom of thought, expression and deed used to assume certain shared values and views of reality but these days the values may be as exotic and unconnected to reality as one likes. So .... would you like to define your own meaning to your particular anarchism?

I don't think that any nation has been served well by the idea of political ideologies.

But surely every nation state has been defined by a political ideology, including those that are based in a theology. What else defines a nation-state other than a commonly shared set of beliefs, universally recognised authorities and institutions along with commonly-followed modes of behaviour agreed as appropriate in serving those beliefs and the directives of the accepted authorities?

Some are relatively benign but many are toxic and lethal to their subjects. I can't recall any rational ones.

Further to this, the idea that poltics is down to personalities rather than poicies is idiotic - we are supposed to be rational, logical people. Poltics should be free of personalities, and further to this policies should be voted for on a case by case base and on a much more devolved level.

Politics has always operated via the dominance of various personalities, from the absolute such as a king/queen down to the merely persuasive of the moment; and every sort of antic of capering & gurning & ranting humans in between. Even rule via a faceless bureaucracy tends to have well recognised and approved personalities (kings/queens, prime minsters, presidents, war heroes et al) as the faces of authority.

As to the idea that nations should somehow generate policies spontaneously from the mass of the population then consider and vote on them in an entirely rational fashion ....... not on this planet, in history, now .... or ever! Do you not recall the brexity event of illogic, mad-emotions and barmpot shouting!? That's how we humans always behave when politics enters the excited state.

In short, your anarchy-model seems rather far from even the remotest possibility of being realised. Well, unless the AIs supplant us humans and do everything via immaculate algorithms of pure logic (although they'll have difficulty in forming reasonable objectives to be logical about).

************
Even today, with all the planet-wide human madness plain as a pikestaff, not to mention some rather better researched history than the skool-propaganda version we were all taught now available to anyone, the pipedream of Enlightenment utopia still seems to appeal. It's unicorns and fairy dust. We here have been very lucky to live in relatively benign post WWII times. It'll soon be a return to the 100 years war scenario albeit over more like 100 minutes, courtesy of nuclear tech or swarms of autonomous soldier drones. It was nice while it lasted, though, eh?

"Dreams of the perfect future". Cuh!

[cycle tramp]

.at the monoment, the idea that we vote for one poltical party is rather like chosing a set three course menu in the knowledge that you're going to have to eat all of it... even the bits you don't like.

The idea that you vote for policies rather than parties, is more like a buffett. You can pick and choose which ones you want to support and which ones you don't.

The thing about anarchisim is that its accepted it won't happen over night, or perhaps in our lifetime.. principly because it means raising a generation who are capable of thinking beyond their own needs and a accepting a level of responsibilty beyond supporting family and friends.. equally however is the present risk that if we stop attempting to raise this generation of wonder-beings, society itself is weakened..

In regards for voting without personalities, we do this everyday. Everyday we vote with tokens which we call money for the goods that we buy - and whether we are aware of it or not, the world is shaped by those companies for which we have voted.

[cycle tramp]

A further thought on freedom of speech..

..the biggest difficulty isn't that there is a segement of the population demanding that another segement is somehow removed from the planet (or at least the bit that they can see).. and making these demands under 'freedom of speech'..
..the biggest difficulty comes in trying to make people listen to all the arguements..

..if someone reads the posts of Musk or whoever demanding that the western world is somehow under threat, then that person should spend the same amount of time reading the personal stories of those who have had to flee, to be here..

..if someone reads the bible then they should equally spend the same amount of time studying other religious texts (and if they're anything like me, noting the simialiries)..

Freedom of speech its not in itself the problem. The problem lies in the fact that it is used by people to support their own pre-existing world view rather than to exist as a foil to it. Freedom of speech is of most value when we use it to challenge our own beliefs.