UK Election June 08

[peejaye]

Meanwhile in the Telegraph on Sunday, Simon Heffer trotted out that old canard about British Marxists: that Corbyn hates Britain.

I think Heffers quote on Corbyn should read[ he hates everything about Britain] to be more appropriate. I grew up in 70's Britain, it wasn't exactly happy days but all the Tories go on about is the 3 day week, power-cuts & Trade Unions being in control of everything!
Very few people were living in poverty back then compared to today!

[holzz]

While it is true that over the course of 800 years of Anglo-Irish relations the British made catastrophic mistakes, I don't see how any observer of the Troubles since 1968 can either justify the violence committed on both sides in the Province, or detonating bombs in pubs in Birmingham, and litter bins in Warrington in England, to cite just two examples. In these cases it was not the 'UK' that was the aggressor but the Provisional IRA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_pub_bombings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrington_bomb_attacks

The IRA issue is part of the centuries' old domination. Or more accurately a consequence/culmination of it. Irish indepedence started long before the Collins Civil War, or the modern IRA. it's a complex issue, and to the IRA it's about liberation from occupation going back centuries.

[broncofan]

The IRA issue is part of the centuries' old domination. Or more accurately a consequence/culmination of it. Irish indepedence started long before the Collins Civil War, or the modern IRA. it's a complex issue, and to the IRA it's about liberation from occupation going back centuries.

It is possible to identify with a group's political aims without justifying acts of violence deliberately directed against civilians. If you believe there is a particular history that justifies murdering random people in a pub, don't you think the burden is on you to establish it? Saying it is complex doesn't do it really.

[Stavros]

The IRA issue is part of the centuries' old domination. Or more accurately a consequence/culmination of it. Irish indepedence started long before the Collins Civil War, or the modern IRA. it's a complex issue, and to the IRA it's about liberation from occupation going back centuries.

Your post only makes sense if you ally yourselves with the minority who opposed the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty who at various stages between 1926 and 1997 attempted to use the armed struggle to create a United Ireland. Such an alliance cannot accept that the 1921 Treaty was a legal arrangement, cannot accept that the majority of Irish citizens accepted it -the refuseniks were defeated in the Civil War-, and denies the right of Protestants in the Northern provinces that remained in the UK to rule the six counties. This places you on the fringe of history, and on its violent fringe if you subscribe to the fiction that the six counties were 'under occupation', a legal nonsense.

The irony of this rejection of Carson and his followers, is that no intelligent Irish citizen would take away from its history the Gaelic Revival through which Lady Gregory (Protestant), William Butler Yeats (Protestant), and JM Synge (Protestant) led a phenomenal explosion of Irish creativity that lasts to this day, and not just in the Abbey Theatre. Whatever role the Revival played in creating a practical and cultural identity for Ireland as a country independent from the British Empire -and it was the first 'colony' to break away and achieve its independence- should be factored in, not deleted from the account.

The problem is that revolutionaries -or romantic revolutionary wannebes- are addicted to violence as the physical means to change the status quo, but the 'armed struggle' created more problems than it solved, and in the end, there was a negotiated solution that could have been agreed upon years before had the parties not been so rigidly attached to their positions, as is the case in most conflict zones today be it Israel-Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and so on.

It comes down to simple questions implied in Broncofan's post above: does violence achieve anything? What did violence achieve in Northern Ireland?

[holzz]

Your post only makes sense if you ally yourselves with the minority who opposed the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty who at various stages between 1926 and 1997 attempted to use the armed struggle to create a United Ireland. Such an alliance cannot accept that the 1921 Treaty was a legal arrangement, cannot accept that the majority of Irish citizens accepted it -the refuseniks were defeated in the Civil War-, and denies the right of Protestants in the Northern provinces that remained in the UK to rule the six counties. This places you on the fringe of history, and on its violent fringe if you subscribe to the fiction that the six counties were 'under occupation', a legal nonsense.

The irony of this rejection of Carson and his followers, is that no intelligent Irish citizen would take away from its history the Gaelic Revival through which Lady Gregory (Protestant), William Butler Yeats (Protestant), and JM Synge (Protestant) led a phenomenal explosion of Irish creativity that lasts to this day, and not just in the Abbey Theatre. Whatever role the Revival played in creating a practical and cultural identity for Ireland as a country independent from the British Empire -and it was the first 'colony' to break away and achieve its independence- should be factored in, not deleted from the account.

The problem is that revolutionaries -or romantic revolutionary wannebes- are addicted to violence as the physical means to change the status quo, but the 'armed struggle' created more problems than it solved, and in the end, there was a negotiated solution that could have been agreed upon years before had the parties not been so rigidly attached to their positions, as is the case in most conflict zones today be it Israel-Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and so on.

It comes down to simple questions implied in Broncofan's post above: does violence achieve anything? What did violence achieve in Northern Ireland?

Violence solves nothing, but even that depends.

I just think whilst terrorism is wrong, ignoring past events is foolish. It's never that black and white. ISIS is doing wrong, but then they were bombed by Bush and Blair for no good reason (that we know of). So it cannot be so black and white really.

[Stavros]

I am not sure if we learned anything from last night's tv debate. Theresa May does not look comfortable being tested in public by the public, which in a way is odd for someone who has chosen to go into public life and has the top political job in the country. I understand her strength is in one-to-one discussions, but that is no good for tv. Nevertheless, she repeated most of what we know, and as we do not know how the Brexit negotiations will proceed, we still have no really clear idea how it will affect the UK economy over the next five years, which makes both Tory and Labour promises on spending look and sound hollow.

In Corbyn's case, his personal opposition to nuclear weapons has been set aside because the party has made a decision and that is what he must go with. But this suggests that if the party is going to be the source of policy, presumably as expressed at the annual Conference, then the Parliamentary party merely becomes a group of delegates to the House of Commons from that Conference, and that voters are not in fact electing someone to represent their constituency but someone who represents the party. This is a re-run of the attempt that was made in the 1980s to make the Parliamentary party accountable to the membership as a whole, and while this might sound reasonable it is in fact an erosion of parliamentary democracy given that MPs are elected to represent a place, not a party. It has already been demonstrated that Corbyn cannot control his own party in Parliament, so I don't see how this new format can work. Conference will make policy, MPs will refuse to support it -what happens then?
Tony Benn once said he thought the Cabinet should be elected by the party membership, and this is the trend that Corbyn represents, as with many economic policies, a return to the ideas we thought had been buried by electoral failure. But what it also shows is that the party has not adjusted to the 21st century to offer any new thinking on defence or education -the same is true of the Tories- so that we have a debate at a critical moment for the UK that has offered the public a re-hash of failed policies with not a single idea that has any substance because the great unknown, the UK outside the EU, remains what it is.

On balance, May retains her lead in the polls, and though it is remarkable how Corbyn has managed to close the gap, in part because a lot of people like Labour policy, in part because of flaws in the Tory manifesto, the Tories should be returned but with a slightly better majority rather than the landslide the Polls predicted when the election was called. The problem as usual is that many people have already made up their minds, and while the first time voters seem to be pro-Labour, they have to vote on the day, if they have not already cast their postal ballots, so I am not sure if these tv debates achieve anything.

[Jericho]

On balance, May retains her lead in the polls, and though it is remarkable how Corbyn has managed to close the gap, in part because a lot of people like Labour policy, in part because of flaws in the Tory manifesto, the Tories should be returned but with a slightly better majority rather than the landslide the Polls predicted when the election was called. The problem as usual is that many people have already made up their minds, and while the first time voters seem to be pro-Labour, they have to vote on the day, if they have not already cast their postal ballots, so I am not sure if these tv debates achieve anything.

Obviously, I'm biased...But I think May gave an absolutely dismal performance last night.
As for her lead in the polls, and being retuned with a slightly better majority, we shall see, Brother Stavros!

For those who missed it:


The 56:30 mark's a bit of a masterclass in not answering anything!

Though, if I had to choose a highlight, it would be the bloke at the end of the May segment who went to give her a Standing Ovation, saw he was on his own, and sat down again, right sharpish!

[Stavros]

Obviously, I'm biased...But I think May gave an absolutely dismal performance last night.
As for her lead in the polls, and being retuned with a slightly better majority, we shall see, Brother Stavros!
The 56:30 mark's a bit of a masterclass in not answering anything!
Though, if I had to choose a highlight, it would be the bloke at the end of the May segment who went to give her a Standing Ovation, saw he was on his own, and sat down again, right sharpish!

The nowithtsanding moment was indeed priceless, I would not be surprised if the Mail and Telegraph wonder if the audience was selected to be biased, not least as the veteran journalist David Dimbleby:

The veteran BBC broadcaster David Dimbleby has intervened in the election campaign to say that Jeremy Corbyn has not been treated fairly in the press.

The broadcaster, who is often regarded as the voice of the nation after decades of fronting Question Time, election night specials and state occasions, strayed into unfamiliar territory by backing a longstanding complaint by Corbyn’s supporters.

Speaking before a Question Time special on Thursday when he will interview the Labour leader and Theresa May, Dimbleby pointed out the rightwing bias of most British newspapers and complained of their “lazy pessimism”.

In an interview with the Radio Times, Dimbleby said: “I don’t think anyone could say that Corbyn has had a fair deal at the hands of the press, in a way that the Labour party did when it was more to the centre, but then we generally have a rightwing press.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...ish-newspapers

Dimbleby sold the family newspaper business for around £12 million in 2001 so he should know about a biased press. One wonders how long it will be before the Mail and Telegaph see this as confirmation that DD works for the Bolshevik Broadcasting Committee.
The polls still give May a lead but not as great as it was when the campaign began. But like I said, I think many people have made up their minds.
https://ig.ft.com/elections/uk/2017/polls/

[peejaye]

That's all a bit odd Stavros as I thought Dimbleby was "The Face of the British Establishment fronting the BBC1". Staggering if he's spoken out about the bias shown by his own media machine!
As for last night, yet again a personal attack on Jeremy Corbyn about things he allegedly said 35 years ago during the Falklands conflict, troubles in Ireland and his dealings with HAMAS! Didn't see the interview with Mr's May as the sound of her voice makes me physically ill, sorry for my own bias there!

[Jericho]

Are there any Conservatives here.
Come on, stop hiding, don't be embarrassed, it's all friendly fire!

Well, except this.
I always thought Boris was slightly amusing...For a cunt.
But this is disgraceful.
Fuqaduq, I'm almost ashamed for him!

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn-BUJJSsoQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">