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Author Topic: Let's Get Political!  (Read 1996819 times)
Pax Romana

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« Reply #7395 on: Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 15:41:16 »

I think you mean 1918 not 2018!

I take your point, but if you take that to it's logical conclusion then effectively no individual vote has any relevance.  I think that the last tie in a parliamentary constituency was 1886 and not sure that there have been any margins less than 2 since then.

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Ardiles

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« Reply #7396 on: Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 16:26:09 »

I stand corrected!  Thanks.
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Reg Smeeton
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« Reply #7397 on: Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 17:43:53 »

Or mine.  My constituency was created in 2018.  And in the 101 years since then, there have been 29 General Elections and 6 MPs...every one of them a Tory.  Voting, for me, is nothing more than a protest that no-one will hear.  I might as well stay at home.

Some women as property holders would have had a vote for the 1st time in 1918, but all women didn't get a say until 1928. I always think of those in the past who fought for the opportunities we now take for granted. Our current democracy may be clunky and unfit for the times, but then it is up to us, like those in the past to do something about it.

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pauld
Aaron Aardvark

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« Reply #7398 on: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 09:14:34 »

Ooops:

https://www.sajidjavid.com/news/sajid-javid-only-thing-leaving-eu-guarantees-lost-decade-british-business
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Reg Smeeton
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« Reply #7399 on: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 10:08:44 »


As Johnson said "fuck business"

What he in fact meant was fuck the widget makers, who mainly trade within the single market.... the right wingers eyes are on financial gains to be made by hedge funds and turning UK an off shore tax haven.  This will be facilitated by a reduction in worker's rights, and environmental standards.
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pauld
Aaron Aardvark

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« Reply #7400 on: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 10:18:56 »

As Johnson said "fuck business"

What he in fact meant was fuck the widget makers, who mainly trade within the single market.... the right wingers eyes are on financial gains to be made by hedge funds and turning UK an off shore tax haven.  This will be facilitated by a reduction in worker's rights, and environmental standards.
It's surely just a coincidence that Rees Mogg is an advocate of "disaster capitalism", makes a lot of his private income from a hedge fund that's repeatedly shorted the pound in the lead-up to the various Brexit deadlines, and that Johnson's leadership bid was mainly financed by hedge fund billionaires. But I'm sure they'll look to govern in the best way they possibly can for the whole country.
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jayohaitchenn
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« Reply #7401 on: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 11:53:34 »

No love for Gideon but he is funny on Twitter...

https://twitter.com/George_Osborne/status/1187313091815628805
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pauld
Aaron Aardvark

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« Reply #7402 on: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 12:33:43 »

No love for Gideon but he is funny on Twitter...

https://twitter.com/George_Osborne/status/1187313091815628805
You might like one of the replies:

https://twitter.com/SpillerOfTea/status/1187315017470922752
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pauld
Aaron Aardvark

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« Reply #7403 on: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 12:41:56 »

Really good piece on how Johnson and Cummings are subverting democracy with Trump-style fake news, with the active connivance (or possibly helpful ignorance in the case of the BBC) of much of the press. Whichever side of the political divide you are on, this is important as a free and impartial press is one of the key pillars of a democracy. Even if you quite like Johnson and the way Cummings is manipulating the press for him in this way, you might not be so enamoured when it's Corbyn and Seamus Milne doing it. Or Farage and Banks. Or any of the horrors who haven't yet surfaced.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/british-journalists-have-become-part-of-johnsons-fake-news-machine/?fbclid=IwAR1LQfC9PGgE2x4gl5_v6rqGj1W-srB9L5q6Sa63gy-LQP0MVszcxTtSlpM
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Flashheart

« Reply #7404 on: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 12:52:47 »

Whichever side of the political divide you are on, this is important as a free and impartial press is one of the key pillars of a democracy.

Have they ever been impartial?
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pauld
Aaron Aardvark

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« Reply #7405 on: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 13:22:45 »

Have they ever been impartial?
Not fully no. But the article sets out the way that we now have the media being used to disseminate govt propaganda unchecked and unattributed. I'm not going to try and TLDR the author's well-written and well-argued discussion as to why this is a new threat and a bigger threat to democracy than old-fashioned newspaper bias as he puts it far better than I can summarise. It's worth taking 5 minutes to read.
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RedRag

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« Reply #7406 on: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 18:45:32 »

Not sure how easy it is to make comparisons between different eras but Blair with Alastair Campbell seemed to introduce "spin" in a very controlled and deceitful manner - and succeeded in getting into bed with Murdoch in an era when the Sun could claim, without much irony, that "it was the Sun wot won it".

I'm a little hazy about facts, I admit, but I would imagine that there would have been a time when privileged journalists would be Chang-style "itk" but withhold certain info from the Plebs with stiff upper lip discretion.  Look at the Keeler and Profumo era and how the ruling class looked after its own.

And now we seem to be in an era of disseminating false news,  sometimes ridiculously false through targeted Facebook claims in manners where it is not easily discernible at all whom is the true author (eg Putin is obviously just one player).  And we, HYPO-critically but UN-critically believe or profess to believe the claims that support "our side".

It's sort of decadent and lacking in respect.

But oddly enough that's how I behave every Saturday watching the Town.  Acting outraged and shouting "Off! Off! Off!" at incidents I probably missed or even thought were not so bad.  Just to try and get my side an advantage, even if undeserved.  

Saturdays are a bit of a larf though.  Current lying is, imo, not making for a very nice or even intelligent society.
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michael
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« Reply #7407 on: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 19:03:43 »

Who knows what happens next but if opposition parties (and Labour in particular) have got anything about them at all they will make the Tory's go into a General Election campaigning Johnson's deal.
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Legends-Lounge

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« Reply #7408 on: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 19:25:04 »

Have they ever been impartial?

Probably not, though it does depend on who is paying the piper.
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Reg Smeeton
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« Reply #7409 on: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 19:56:35 »

Not sure how easy it is to make comparisons between different eras but Blair with Alastair Campbell seemed to introduce "spin" in a very controlled and deceitful manner - and succeeded in getting into bed with Murdoch in an era when the Sun could claim, without much irony, that "it was the Sun wot won it".

I'm a little hazy about facts, I admit, but I would imagine that there would have been a time when privileged journalists would be Chang-style "itk" but withhold certain info from the Plebs with stiff upper lip discretion.  Look at the Keeler and Profumo era and how the ruling class looked after its own.

And now we seem to be in an era of disseminating false news,  sometimes ridiculously false through targeted Facebook claims in manners where it is not easily discernible at all whom is the true author (eg Putin is obviously just one player).  And we, HYPO-critically but UN-critically believe or profess to believe the claims that support "our side".

It's sort of decadent and lacking in respect.

But oddly enough that's how I behave every Saturday watching the Town.  Acting outraged and shouting "Off! Off! Off!" at incidents I probably missed or even thought were not so bad.  Just to try and get my side an advantage, even if undeserved.  

Saturdays are a bit of a larf though.  Current lying is, imo, not making for a very nice or even intelligent society.

An interesting analysis, but the undermining of radical dissension by agents of the ruling classes has a long and not very distinguished history.  Something like the Zinoviev letter published by The Mail, being a classic example. Made up to undermine the Labour Party, just before the 24 election, nothing has changed.

This dirty trick was at the behest of the secret services... the mention you made of Profumo was because there were powers who didn't want Wilson... too left wing. Wilson's Labour government kept well away from Vietnam, unusual for HMG.

There has been rumours of a military coup against Wilson's government... with connivance from the The Times

Quote
A later memoir by Harold Evans, former Times and Sunday Times editor, observed that the Times had egged on King's plans for a coup:

    Rees-Mogg's Times backed the Conservative Party in every general election, but it periodically expressed yearnings for a coalition of the right-centre. In the late 1960s it encouraged Cecil King's notion of a coup against Harold Wilson's Labour Government in favour of a government of business leaders led by Lord Robens.

 Recognise a name there.... thought so.

 Dating back 200 years to the time of Peterloo, the government's favoured tactic was agent provocateur.... get your stooges to whip up the masses and then pick a few off for execution or transportation.  In the 70's we had the likes of Joe Gormley and Ray Buckton, leaders of the NUM and ASLEF on the payroll of the Special Branch.

GCHQ is massive, you don't hear about too much austerity going their way.
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