Saturday 10th & Sunday 11th February 2024

[refitman]

Morning all.

[gilsey]

Good morning.


I struggle to imagine anyone thinking it's a good idea to write this, and do the Times think they're helping her by publishing it?
Disgusting individual.

[refitman]

Hey, remember when people were sacked from the Shadow Cabinet for calling for a ceasefire?

[AnatolyKasparov]

The leadership line has been "a *sustainable* ceasefire" for a while now.

[refitman]

The leadership line has been "a *sustainable* ceasefire" for a while now.

Yes and they still sacked people for saying Israel should stop slaughtering innocent people.

This right here:



This is on Starmer and the Labour right for not even entertaining the possibility that Israel should maybe ease off on the killing of civilians from the very start.

[AnatolyKasparov]

You do know that collective responsibility applies in these things, if you look at the motion Labour proposed for that debate it was totally reasonable.

Starmer understood a few front benchers wouldn't feel able to vote for it, and accepted their departures totally amicably.

It was all a stunt by the SNP, cynically colluded in by the Tories. That's probably why more front benchers didn't resign.

[refitman]

You do know that collective responsibility applies in these things, if you look at the motion Labour proposed for that debate it was totally reasonable.

Starmer understood a few front benchers wouldn't feel able to vote for it, and accepted their departures totally amicably.

It was all a stunt by the SNP, cynically colluded in by the Tories. That's probably why more front benchers didn't resign.

You mean the one from November - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67417726? When Starmer said that a ceasefire would just help Hamas? Oh get to fuck.

You know, sometimes not killing people is actually the right thing to do and saying that not slaughtering civilians is also a good thing. Something noted HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER Kier Starmer should know.

[refitman]

Can you imagine being sooooooooo cynical, as to want people not to die. Fucking slimy, duplicitous SNP.

[AnatolyKasparov]

I'm going on what was actually voted on at the time. You prefer a BBC summary (no actual quote, you will notice) of what Starmer supposedly said.

OK then, but being permanently outraged will do you no good. The reality is that a UK opposition party has next to no power to change anything in this conflict - I mean, Netanyahu even treats the POTUS (one of the few outsiders with genuine influence here) with barely disguised contempt.

That is where we are.

[frog222]

A nice surprise, for a change .

Daniil is still at liberty !

[refitman]

I'm going on what was actually voted on at the time. You prefer a BBC summary (no actual quote, you will notice) of what Starmer supposedly said.

OK then, but being permanently outraged will do you no good. The reality is that a UK opposition party has next to no power to change anything in this conflict - I mean, Netanyahu even treats the POTUS (one of the few outsiders with genuine influence here) with barely disguised contempt.

That is where we are.

So, just because they have no actual power, they just have to tow the line? That's really the argument here?

I mean, what they're actually doing is haemorrhaging support from Muslims and people who are generally opposed to children being blown up.

But they're not floating Tory voters, so why bother with them, eh? 'Cause that's all Labour's current messaging seems to be targeted at - scrapping the climate spending that had previously been a commitment (completely hanging Miliband out to dry in the process). Rowing back on increasing taxes for the top of society.

[frog222]

First lol of the day ....

[frog222]

Thread ...

[gilsey]

.... and the second

[frog222]

An interesting read if you can get 'translate' to work, mine is intermittent !

https://newtimes.ru/

albats @albats
Russia, Ph.D. in polsci Harvard U, author The State Within A State.KGB and Its Hold on Russia: Past, Present, and Future

Yevgenia Albats reposted this one on the apparent prisoner swap proposition --

[frog222]

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Amen.

The Tory right’s radicalisation should trouble us all

One of the main anchors of our politics has become increasingly unmoored from reality. By Lewis Goodall

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/20 ... ble-us-all

The Conservatives, facing a potentially apocalyptic election defeat, are engaged in a long process of radicalisation. This week’s Popular Conservatism launch was the latest landmark on this journey. It is partly born of an inability to contain the kinetic, relentless energy of Brexit and the dying embers of the Thatcherite project. Both reshaped the Conservative psyche and left a faction within the party always hungry for combat: craving enemies, seldom conserving and reflexively aggressive.

But it is also born of necessity too – the Tory right have been ever more desperate to account for how, after 14 years of Conservative government, the country is less conservative. Rather than turning their gaze inwards, rather than asking whether the world can really be remade as they wish, they look outwards, they look anywhere else. They blame the courts, they blame the civil service, they blame the media, they blame quangos, universities, schools, Natural England, the National Trust, the BBC and, most of all, Tony Blair: a permanent political Prospero, who incredibly still exerts more influence on 2024 than they do. Everywhere they see a shadowy virus of wokeism and leftism which has infected every body of the state, all because conservative leaders have been willing to compromise too much, too often.

If this sounds frenzied it’s because it is. The less arresting but more accurate explanation is too horrible for them to contemplate, so they don’t: it isn’t that Britain’s stodgy state apparatus has been radicalised, it’s as unimaginative and narrow as ever. Rather they have been. They are the proverbial frog in the jar. They don’t know just how boiling the water has become. It has never occurred to them that it isn’t that the rest of Britain and its institutions have become more left-wing, it’s that they have become more and more eccentric, more and more off centre, less representative of the country they claim to love but largely lament.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Simon Danczuk is standing for Reform in Rochdale?

Regardless of what you might think about his 'political journey' surely Reform sending someone who was sacked for grooming a teenage girl to Rochdale is at best tasteless?

[AnatolyKasparov]

Labour's candidate - sigh.

They really should have picked Paul Waugh shouldn't they.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Touche.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I could add Mary Whitehouse, the Sex Pistols being banned from performing, the hysteria over 'video nasties', I'm sure there's plenty more examples.

On the other hand the Holiday Programme on the BBC was perfectly happy to show naked boobs just after teatime.

Weird times.

What would Ralph prefer, trigger warnings (or content warnings as they've been known for decades in Film and TV) or having his work actually banned like Straw Dogs, The Exorcist, The Evil Dead, even Derek and Clive?

Having lived through at least some of Ralph's youth the idea that they were tougher, less prohibitive times is laughable.

[refitman]

I watched that interview earlier. It was just a bizarre argument. Feels like he's been living in a hole for the last 50 years.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Ha ha, brilliant. I've just learned that the BBC banned this from Swap Shop because they thought it was promoting homosexuality.

Because of the title Enola Gay was thought by some to be a gay anthem. This being the Eighties it was consequently banned from the BBC’s Swap Shop.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artis ... hiroshima/

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Well I'm learning a few things this evening. Did you know that until 1968 all theatre scripts had to be licenced by the Lord Chamberlain's Office, a department of the royal household, which had carte blanche to ban or censor as it pleased?

This came to an end with the Theatres act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatres_Act_1968

It's 50 years since the end of stage censorship in Britain – but how free are artists really?

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 38226.html

So when Ralph was a nipper he would have have a hard time seeing any play deemed blasphemous, offensive to the royal family, or involving even a passing reference to homosexuality.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Last post on this subject and it doesn't apply to Ralph's youth because this was 1990 but this is nuts...

From Blondie to Lulu: The songs the BBC banned during the Gulf War

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/songs-bbc- ... -gulf-war/

Here's just a few.

ABBA – ‘Waterloo’
Blondie – ‘Atomic’
The Boomtown Rats – ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’
Phil Collins – ‘In the Air Tonight’
Roberta Flack – ‘Killing Me Softly with His Song’
Lulu – ‘Boom Bang-A-Bang’
Queen – ‘Flash Gordon’
The Specials – Ghost Town’
Rod Stewart – ‘Sailing’
Tears for Fears – ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’

Oh and this...

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Anyway...