The Politics Thread 2020

[Wolfie]

7 minutes ago, Highgate said:

So let's say if you lived in Bristol in 2020 and the city is having a vote on whether to keep the Colston statue where it is or not.  Do you vote to;

a) Leave it where it is. 

b) Take it down and put it in a museum somewhere. 

c) Take it down and roll it down the hill and dump it in the harbour.

Personally?. a) but with a big plaque, covering the good and bad of the man. Make people think a bit.

Just my opinion.

[Archied]

7 minutes ago, Van Wolfie said:

I don't understand that. Is she saying that they can't go back and finish the training as originally planned and there is no job for them?

Read it as they took up 6 months of work but are now being let go earlier than 6 months?

[Alph]

1 hour ago, GboroRam said:

That is when we do get into the Jimmy Savile realms though. We don't keep his name on the hospital wards, even though they commemorate his good acts. We balance all his life and weigh up that the negative vastly outweighs the positives.

It's not forgetting history. In fact it is actually showing truth. When you only mention Savile the marathon-running, charity supporting man you wipe out the vast part of his history. It's whitewashing (if that's not an offensive word to use) his true history to not represent that part of his life that was the base, child-molesting abuser.

I just think the argument that we keep statues as history is strange. We built statues as a mark of respect to the individual it represents. Perhaps sometimes those people don't deserve the respect we give them, on reflection with the passage of time.

I would just say that Savile didn't do things that were acceptable at the time. 

In war a man may kill another man and be a hero. Outside of war he's a villain. You can carry a gun in America but having a magnum strapped to your hip in ASDA would be frowned upon in Spondon

Context is everything. 

That's all I would ask of anyone. Debate statues. That's absolutely fine. But we should always consider historic context. 

If it was legal to marry a 13 year old girl in the 10th century then a statue of someone who married a 13 year old girl in 950 isn't endorsing messing with kids. 

I just think to ask if they acted within the acceptable terms of the times and did good for their people/religion. 

Wouldn't like to think what people might say about us one day.

[sonofmidnight]

3 hours ago, 86 Schmokes & a Pancake said:

Seriously considering starting a Go-Fund Me page to fund having Katie Hopkins strapped to a Space-X rocket and fired into the sun. Horrible, horse-faced hate-monger that she is ?

 

Extremely offensive to horses though.?

[Alph]

48 minutes ago, SchtivePesley said:

That is a good point. Another good thought exercise is - what about statues of Hitler/Stalin in Germany/USSR - should they have been left standing in place if the tenets of your argument were applied objectively?

 

Possibly. But who does Hitler instill with national pride? Who does he inspire? What nation or people celebrate him? 

They chose to remove any celebration of him because they feel his mark on this world was overwhelmingly negative. 

Although I would never want any Nazi history destroyed would you? 

It is a huge part of the 20th century and changed the world. It might be offensive now but in a hundred years, five hundred years there will be people who want to know and see how Nazi Germany was born, lived and died. 

[Alph]

24 minutes ago, Highgate said:

So let's say if you lived in Bristol in 2020 and the city is having a vote on whether to keep the Colston statue where it is or not.  Do you vote to;

a) Leave it where it is. 

b) Take it down and put it in a museum somewhere. 

c) Take it down and roll it down the hill and dump it in the harbour.

Based on them? 

B)

But I'm not from Bristol and I have no interest in it's history as such and certainly no pride. 

But I'd rather vote A) Leave it and tell the wider story. The sad history of how Bristol prospered. 

That's just something that's lost on people who don't care for history. Although I think everyone cares about history it's just they haven't found out which bit!

[Highgate]

9 minutes ago, Van Wolfie said:

Personally?. a) but with a big plaque, covering the good and bad of the man. Make people think a bit.

Just my opinion.

I really should had that choice as option d}.   ?

I'd find it difficult to choose between options b and c myself. 

[TuffLuff]

Ooer, might have caused a bit more a stir than the original intention

Just to be clear:

Im making the point that it’s ok for us to say passive comments which we can ignore rather than trying to act about them. The Rashford story was the biggest political story up until yesterday yet no one bothered to mention it up until they could talk about Katie Hopkins involvement. The trend is similar to the ongoing statues saga on this thread. Everyone enjoys talking around the edges but how many people are talking about statues rather than the black lives matter protests. We say these comments so we don’t have to act, not because it’s the truth.

No, I didn’t reference anyone by name or by post. Partly because it wasn’t overly relevant but mainly because I didn’t want to get into a tit for tat style argument and finger pointing. I wanted to make a point and I didn’t want that lost by going ‘and look what x said here’. Although I do wonder whether those who quoted me now are taking in my actual point or that they are annoyed I’m not allowing them to change the narrative.

I wasn’t wanting to use the Rashford story to talk about the colour of his skin, that’s obviously bogus as I’ve said before, it was an example of the trend to make a bigger point. If anyone genuinely believes it was inappropriate then I’m very sorry, but I fear once again it’s being used to undermine the point.

Let’s be right about it too, I used the actual timeline of this thread (and the forum!), no tricks or nothing! It’s what we were doing in real time. So let’s face it, if you are angry at me for pointing it out ,then you should be angry with yourself.

 

[Highgate]

4 minutes ago, Alpha said:

Based on them? 

B)

But I'm not from Bristol and I have no interest in it's history as such and certainly no pride. 

But I'd rather vote A) Leave it and tell the wider story. The sad history of how Bristol prospered. 

That's just something that's lost on people who don't care for history. Although I think everyone cares about history it's just they haven't found out which bit!

So like @Van Wolfie then.  A) with a big explanatory plaque. ?

The Hitler/Stalin comparison is interesting.  Even without their statues, it's fair to say they haven't been forgotten by history.  I feel the slave trade is in a similar category. 

[1967RAMS]

37 minutes ago, Archied said:

Read it as they took up 6 months of work but are now being let go earlier than 6 months?

The government have signed contracts for covid19 testers who are sitting on their arse all day doing nothing and contact tracers, equally sitting around doing nothing. It stands to reason they will have similar over staffing in hospitals. What the lady doesn’t appreciate is, the NHS trusts offered her the contract and not the government. 

[Alph]

2 hours ago, SchtivePesley said:

 Is this us?

I think anyone can protest anything but how you do it decides how it's received. 

I could protest the missus being in control of the remote by wind milling in front of the telly. 

[1of4]

30 minutes ago, 1967RAMS said:

The government have signed contracts for covid19 testers who are sitting on their arse all day doing nothing and contact tracers, equally sitting around doing nothing. It stands to reason they will have similar over staffing in hospitals. What the lady doesn’t appreciate is, the NHS trusts offered her the contract and not the government. 

Seems odd that the NHS would be terminating nurses contracts. Didn't the government promise the funding for thousands of extra nurses, during the last election?

[1967RAMS]

23 minutes ago, 1of4 said:

Seems odd that the NHS would be terminating nurses contracts. Didn't the government promise the funding for thousands of extra nurses, during the last election?

It’s not nurses contracts. It’s the short term contracts the trainees were offered to cover the influx of patients. As it turned out, hospitals have been virtually empty thus all the extra staff not needed. They will now get the remainder of their education. Still should have their entire student debt written off though in my opinion. If they serve 5 years in the NHS 

[AndyinLiverpool]

30 minutes ago, 1of4 said:

Seems odd that the NHS would be terminating nurses contracts. Didn't the government promise the funding for thousands of extra nurses, during the last election?

I saw it on the side of a bus

[Sasha]

23 hours ago, A Ram for All Seasons said:

The comments under the articles on the Derby Telegraph site are pure Katie Hopkins. There are a lot of people like her about.

Me for one.   Love her. 

[Eddie]

Regarding the erasure of history...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/16/boris-johnson-lying-history-britain-empire?fbclid=IwAR1GFrVsbnGWoDNSeuL7HXCdnAocnoPwi12hWAVQ_oxYFBkFZmr3TpOhW3Y

[Archied]

4 hours ago, TuffLuff said:

Ooer, might have caused a bit more a stir than the original intention

Just to be clear:

Im making the point that it’s ok for us to say passive comments which we can ignore rather than trying to act about them. The Rashford story was the biggest political story up until yesterday yet no one bothered to mention it up until they could talk about Katie Hopkins involvement. The trend is similar to the ongoing statues saga on this thread. Everyone enjoys talking around the edges but how many people are talking about statues rather than the black lives matter protests. We say these comments so we don’t have to act, not because it’s the truth.

No, I didn’t reference anyone by name or by post. Partly because it wasn’t overly relevant but mainly because I didn’t want to get into a tit for tat style argument and finger pointing. I wanted to make a point and I didn’t want that lost by going ‘and look what x said here’. Although I do wonder whether those who quoted me now are taking in my actual point or that they are annoyed I’m not allowing them to change the narrative.

I wasn’t wanting to use the Rashford story to talk about the colour of his skin, that’s obviously bogus as I’ve said before, it was an example of the trend to make a bigger point. If anyone genuinely believes it was inappropriate then I’m very sorry, but I fear once again it’s being used to undermine the point.

Let’s be right about it too, I used the actual timeline of this thread (and the forum!), no tricks or nothing! It’s what we were doing in real time. So let’s face it, if you are angry at me for pointing it out ,then you should be angry with yourself.

 

Well I don’t know about anybody else but I’m not angry with you or me but I do find it disappointing that you do lots of finger pointing without actually pointing out who you are pointing to and for what, it’s just a scattergun approach that can’t be backed up if we narrow it down to specifics ,

you openly used the colour of rashfords skin to imply that If certain people didn’t post praise for rashford it was because of the colour of his skin ,you can go round the houses as much as you want and muddy the waters all you like but that’s what your post clearly implied ( scattergun finger pointing) 

come on ,if people have made racist comments call them out openly , if it’s there I will be the first to back you ,it’s a forum and personally I value plain speaking openness 

[Archied]

4 minutes ago, AndyinLiverpool said:

That’s not what’defunding the police’ means

Think that bit is from an interview where someone supposed to be speaking for BLM stayed his personal belief was all drugs should be legalised ,

personally my view is also all drugs should be decriminalised and all the money that’s spent on a losing war should be spent on getting people the help they need to get off them and the education for the young never to get on them , for me that s not a race issue

[Alph]

1 hour ago, Eddie said:

Regarding the erasure of history...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/16/boris-johnson-lying-history-britain-empire?fbclid=IwAR1GFrVsbnGWoDNSeuL7HXCdnAocnoPwi12hWAVQ_oxYFBkFZmr3TpOhW3Y

Just did a bit more digging on that. Got loads to read now. 

Horrific by the way. Not nice to read at all whether you're British or not. Hard to say what's worse. The torture and the cover up or that even now these stories are still not told.

I always find when you dig into other peoples history (Kenyan in this case) that it teaches you more compassion than anything else does. 

No history should be erased. Including 3.5 tons of Kenyan documents!! Interesting that Britain chose to apologise with £20m and monument in Nairobi. 

Even more recently I find some propaganda a bit sickening. Specifically concerning the middle East. 

I got caught up in an argument that nearly ended in a scrap about why and how it's easy for the likes of ISIS to recruit and radicalize young men. How much of the work is done for them etc etc

I'm not sure how much help history can be to moving forward. But there is a pro white, pro British Empire lean on our history. I still continue to bang my 'tell all history don't destroy any' drum. 

IF history can help us move forward it lies in expanding on it. Not arguing about who wronged who. In my opinion. I just can't see a way that Britain apologises for everything it built itself on. Knocks down monuments and tries to start fresh. I can see more division in that. 

As Morgan Freeman said "Black history is American history". Swap America for Britain and we might move forward a bit quicker. 

[Stive Pesley]

4 hours ago, Alpha said:

I think anyone can protest anything but how you do it decides how it's received. 

 

True - Whitey McSportsfan is certainly not a fan of BLM protesters, vandalising statues. Would he prefer a nice gentle peaceful protest?

Hmmmm thinking back to the sports stars in the US taking a knee in support of BLM - Whitey McSportsfan didn't like that either

That's why we need to read the book!