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  1. #31
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    Default Re: A Strange Tinge To British Politics At The Moment

    I want to take some heat out of the thread. I think you're stating your honest beliefs and so am I. If you don't think they are being sincere, you're entitled to it. It's possible we both come to opposite conclusions honestly.

    I realize my comments about some Labour supporters were hard-hitting but they weren't about every person in the party and while I've been very compulsive about it, I didn't set out to overstate things.

    I looked through the thread and while initially I thought the "supposedly" meant that you weren't sure about the prevalence of anti-Semitism, a disagreement over that doesn't mean I thought you agreed with the statements I posted, only that you weren't aware of them. The stuff I complained to you about was discourse stuff; for instance what the conversation was about, whether "supposedly" was about the existence of the stuff they were complaining about or about their sincerity.

    There is a difference between talking about a phenomenon you think exists within a party and assuming anyone in the party is guilty of it. Beyond that, I'm going to speculate that we got crossed up, each said things that irritate each other and feel strongly enough about the issues involved that it wasn't easy. It doesn't have to be a truce, but it's an explosive enough issue without being antagonistic with each other. Cease-fire maybe, but with you getting the last word on this particular subject?

    BTW, I did think about the abuse I've heard Diane Abbott gets and wondered whether it was from Labour members or mostly from Tories directed at her.


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  2. #32
    filghy2 Silver Poster
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    Default Re: A Strange Tinge To British Politics At The Moment

    Quote Originally Posted by broncofan View Post
    you are a good example of the fact that there are many confused leftists among Corbyn supporters support Trump or see him as a lesser evil. It's a level of confusion I'll never understand, but you are not an anomaly.
    Quote Originally Posted by peejaye View Post
    Anything that fucks you lot off will always float my boat.
    I think the answer is summed up in that one sentence. Some people are motivated not by what they are for, but by what they are against (the politics of resentment). That means they are attracted to anyone who is against the same things, even though they may be for totally different things. "You lot" seems to be anyone who is well-educated, liberal-minded and internationalist in their outlook (the dreaded 'elites').

    Some writers see Corbynism as just a left-wing version of Trump's populism, with the same tendency to divide the world into "us" and "them" and the same attraction to simplistic solutions.
    https://unherd.com/2019/01/corbyns-intolerant-populism/
    https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-democracy-mps

    It looks like you've made it onto peejaye's hate list. Wear it as a badge of honour. If you are lucky he will block you and you will be spared the bile-filled responses.


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  3. #33
    Eurotrash! Platinum Poster Jericho's Avatar
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    Default Re: A Strange Tinge To British Politics At The Moment

    Quote Originally Posted by broncofan View Post
    I want to take some heat out of the thread. I think you're stating your honest beliefs and so am I. If you don't think they are being sincere, you're entitled to it. It's possible we both come to opposite conclusions honestly.

    BTW, I did think about the abuse I've heard Diane Abbott gets and wondered whether it was from Labour members or mostly from Tories directed at her.
    Column A, Column B, probably both stiffened each others arsehairs a bit!

    Yes, Diane, first female black mp. I think she gets abuse from all sides, but especially online right-wing shitheads. Read something about her recently. During the last election, apparently she got 10x more abuse than any other female mp online.
    Tough old bird, bless her.


    I hate being bipolar...It's fucking ace!

  4. #34
    Senior Member Gold Poster Laphroaig's Avatar
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    Default Re: A Strange Tinge To British Politics At The Moment

    Quote Originally Posted by Jericho View Post
    Column A, Column B, probably both stiffened each others arsehairs a bit!

    Yes, Diane, first female black mp. I think she gets abuse from all sides, but especially online right-wing shitheads. Read something about her recently. During the last election, apparently she got 10x more abuse than any other female mp online.
    Tough old bird, bless her.
    How much of the abuse of Diane Abbott is racially motivated though? I'm not saying there hasn't been any, but I haven't seen any directly targeting the colour of her skin. Black, white, red, blue or green, I don't care what colour she is, but little scares me more her in charge of anything. She is thick as two short planks...



  5. #35
    Eurotrash! Platinum Poster Jericho's Avatar
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    Default Re: A Strange Tinge To British Politics At The Moment

    Quote Originally Posted by Laphroaig View Post
    How much of the abuse of Diane Abbott is racially motivated though? I'm not saying there hasn't been any, but I haven't seen any directly targeting the colour of her skin. Black, white, red, blue or green, I don't care what colour she is, but little scares me more her in charge of anything. She is thick as two short planks...
    In fairness, it has to be said, she has never done well in televised interviews, but her most notable trainwreck appearances of late were down to her illness.

    And judging by her majority, her constituents would certainly disagree with you.

    (plus, an amendment to my post about her, it wasn't 10x more abuse than any other female mp, it was 10x more abuse than *any* other mp).


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    I hate being bipolar...It's fucking ace!

  6. #36
    Senior Member Gold Poster Laphroaig's Avatar
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    Default Re: A Strange Tinge To British Politics At The Moment

    Quote Originally Posted by Jericho View Post
    In fairness, it has to be said, she has never done well in televised interviews, but her most notable trainwreck appearances of late were down to her illness.

    And judging by her majority, her constituents would certainly disagree with you.

    (plus, an amendment to my post about her, it wasn't 10x more abuse than any other female mp, it was 10x more abuse than *any* other mp).
    I don't know what her constituency is, but in some safe seats you could have Baldrick as a candidate and they'd still win as long as they were standing for the correct party.

    I'm not convinced about the illness excuse. She hasn't been that much better recently.



  7. #37
    Eurotrash! Platinum Poster Jericho's Avatar
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    Default Re: A Strange Tinge To British Politics At The Moment

    Hackney North and stoke Newington.
    Which she's held since 86/87 something like that?
    Qwik google.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_...neral_election
    Type 2 diabetes.


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    I hate being bipolar...It's fucking ace!

  8. #38
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    Default Re: A Strange Tinge To British Politics At The Moment

    I cannot decide if social media has exposed views that have always existed but were not publicly expressed, or has created the opportunity to express them, to the point that it has legitimized them. Then I wonder why anyone would say such things, intended as they are to hurt.
    Hurt, and harm leads directly to the politics of hate, not as some occasional heckle but as part of a plan. 'Tommy Robinson' is currently losing some of his social media outlets, in part because of his criminal activities, but in part because he has a plan, which is to rid the UK of certain people, beginnig with Muslims. Social Media is not an innocent tool in his case, but a weapon of hate. It may be a necessary part of an open democracy to tolerate those who wish to exploit it for their own ends, to the point that we must allow peple to say offensive things, but recommeding or even urging illegal actions is not among them. Luckily for us, 'Tommy Robinson' never hides his criminality, he seems to see it as a badge of honour, but hate speech is illegal too, not least if someone excited by the provocative abuse of Jewish MPs -or any MP- decides to confront them on the street and kill them, as happened with Jo Cox in 2016.

    Even though I understand the way in which Margaret Thatcher would induce rage and anger, there was nothing to be gained from hurling verbal abuse at her in public, and in those days when I was in the Labour Party, it was something we deliberately did not do. It was always about the policy, not the person. It seems so bland now, but 'Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!, OUT! OUT! OUT! was as far as it got, and is as far as it should have gone, setting aside the campaigns of the Provisional IRA to kill her, occupying a different agenda from the one being discussed here.

    The question is, has social media facilitated, been the engine of this hate, and can it be stopped? Or was it always there and will only go underground if banned?

    Should governments and political parties abandon Twitter, for example? How many times have twitter posts been deleted, account holders forced to apologize for some inane or offensive remark? Facebook, I feel, is nearing the end of its curious life, or it may be in the process of changing its format, I don't use it so can't be sure, but having grown up in a world in which I was in my mid-30s before touching a computer, being on a list of people queueing up to use it, I have little connection to social media, other than Hung Angels and some occasional comments to articles in newspapers.

    What strikes me about all this, is the lack of serious debate on serious issues, be it Brexit, Climate Change, Israel, Venezuela, you name it. The ability to shrink an argument into 150 words might be a useful tool in an age of instant communication, but it cannot replace a sustained argument opening up the full range of strengths and weaknesses in a policy. It suggests a world of instant gratification, instant knowledge, and instant opinion, but one which renders the serious trivial, the compex simple, and the important irrelevant.

    Israel is a good case because for all the anti-semitic abuse that MPs receive, there is little if any relevance to Israel itself, as if abusing someone for being a 'zionist bitch' actually contained any valid comment, when clearly it does not. It doesn't tell me anything about Israel, and nothing at all about the person, because even if they declare themselves to be a Zionist, it doesn't tell me what that means because the term has more than one meaning over and above 'the right of return'. One might as well say 'I am a Democrat' without offering any further explanation as to what that means, or how democracy works.

    For example, is Israel an 'apartheid state'? A tweet could use the term a thousand times and never mean anything, or repeat a thousand times something that is contested, or wrong -but it could also be challenged in simple terms: 'Apartheid is based on Race, Zionism is based on Religion: Israel cannot, by definition be an apartheid state.' But even that reduction of reality into a few words requires more explanation to have real meaning, for otherwise it has no more depth than a slogan.

    The point to me is crucial, because I see a difference between segregation and apartheid, and the sad fact that during and after the First Aliyah a form of segregation emerged in Ottoman Palestine that has carried over to the present day. But, a) it has not been universal and b) it was and has been practiced by the Arabs as well as the Jews, but to suggest a voluntary segregation seems nasty and deliberate, even imposed by government, when it may just be convenience in some cases, a matter of social geography in others. To truly understand not just why, but how Jews and Arabs came to live separate lives, requires a lot more detail than can be contained in a tweet, and in some cases -more than many would think- the details would reveal where and how those lives have not and are not separate at all.

    So what appalls me about all this is the ignorance, and often from people with the intelligence to know better, whether it is a 'tired' Angela Smith, or some anonymous twit who can spend 6 hours a day abusing people from his bedroom, but can't spend two hours reading a book or an article in a learned journal that will offer him a perspective which may at least give pause for thought. A pause we woud all welcome.


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    Last edited by Stavros; 03-01-2019 at 01:24 PM.

  9. #39
    Senior Member Gold Poster Laphroaig's Avatar
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    Default Re: A Strange Tinge To British Politics At The Moment

    Quote Originally Posted by Jericho View Post
    Hackney North and stoke Newington.
    Which she's held since 86/87 something like that?
    Qwik google.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_...neral_election
    Type 2 diabetes.
    I know it's been said she has diabetes. However, it was a very convenient excuse and if true showed questionable judgement for her to be in such a position when clearly unfit for the job. Whatever way you look at it, it's not good.


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  10. #40
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    Default Re: A Strange Tinge To British Politics At The Moment

    Quote Originally Posted by Laphroaig View Post
    I know it's been said she has diabetes. However, it was a very convenient excuse and if true showed questionable judgement for her to be in such a position when clearly unfit for the job. Whatever way you look at it, it's not good.
    I have type 2 Diabetes, not sure if that is why I write so much...! I don't dislike Dianne Abbott, and the abuse she suffers is on a par or because of social media probably worse than the abuse hurled at Bernie Grant -I once saw graffiti on the London Underground which stated 'Who will kill Bernie Grant?'. I just don't think she is a good public speaker, but then I don't have much admiration for either Emily Thornberry or Barry Gardiner. We have two front benches, government and opposition that to me are the weakest intellectually, and in terms of charisma, than I can recall. And it is not about to change.


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