BS: Brexit & other UK political topics

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 01:27 PM

The best way to engender panic buying is a government minister telling us not to panic buy. They never learn, do they?

I remember way back in the 70s when we had a petrol shortage. The fuel gauge on our Morris Minor had completely packed up and (as we both used the car) we never had a clue how much juice there still was in the tank. On one occasion I was mortally embarrassed when I went to fill the tank and could fit just over half a gallon in there...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Rain Dog
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 12:58 PM

Bonzo, all those other motorists no doubt popped out to top up their fuel, cursing all the other selfish drivers while they did so.

Don't panic! Does that phrase ever work?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 12:20 PM

Yep, empty shelves in the shops, NHS gone to the dogs, lorry drivers gone, no petrol, Christmas threatened (again) - welcome to Soviet-Tory-Union Britain!

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 12:12 PM

And so why do we have unnecessary queues at the very few petrol stations open today? I took my wife's (our!!!) Qashqai to top up the petrol this afternoon - stupidly at Friday school leaving time, and both of our nearest garages had all the pumps taped up.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 11:35 AM

I never had an affluent well connected family and public school education

And you think I did?"


btw...

any smug comfily retired old folkies with the powers of mind reading and fortelling the future,
should have seen I couldn't resist that cheeky little wind up...!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 10:15 AM

I'm the only one from my old gang of 4 or more close Grammar mates
who came from a council estate..
That was a stigma I had to deal with at such a snobby school in the early 70s..

We were the arty farty clique who didn't follow sensible traditional career paths..

I was the only one of us who didn't benefit from inheriting hundreds of thousands in my 40s/50s,
to provide a much needed comfy foundation for older age...

My parents were principled working class lefties
who believed in social housing.
and rejected all offers/persuasion to buy their council home..

That's why my mum had a stable good quality home for half a century
until social services put her in a care facility recently during lockdown.

The first wave of sold off right to buy homes on the estate
didn't remain in the purchasers hands for too long,
because the estate factory cruely closed down suddenly
leaving many unable to afford their new mortgages...

Can only guess what those houses with big gardens might be worth now...???

It's a tory dominated town, and building new social replacement homes
doesn't seem to have been too high on the agenda
since the 1980s...

A limited few blocks of flats did get built after right to buy
removed too many decent family council houses from the estate,
but they soon enough turned into squalid sink holes for youngsters
with serious problems that became more the norm
after so long of thatcher in power......

Reinforcing the popular media prejudices of 'nightmare' council tenants...
which is now essential propaganda for promoting 'affordable' over 'social' new homes..

Yep, even Labour goes along with that cynical voter bait..

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 10:04 AM

I was once in the Thornleigh cricket team that beat De La Salle.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Raggytash
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 08:52 AM

I doubt it Dave, Tony Neary was at the school at the time and the furture captain of England under 15's was in my class around 1969/70.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 08:24 AM

There were two of us who in the first year of secondary school (1964) were interviewed for what was effectively a "12+". Neither of us were deemed suitable grammar school material. The other lad, Mick Robinson, went on to play rugby for England schoolboys. I think De La Salle, a keen RL school, regretted their decision about Mick!

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: DMcG
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 08:10 AM

I passed the 11 plus with flying colours but the local Catholic grammar (De La Salle) didn't want me

We had something similar with my daughter. No-one from her Catholic primary school had sat the 11+ for decades, but almost everyone did from the Anglian school round the corner. We were told if she sat the 11+ and passed, all well and good, but if she sat it and failed, the Catholic senior school would not offer her a place.

It was not quite that blunt, of course. We had to rank our preferences for senior school, and it was explained if the Catholic senior school was not in first place, they would be sufficiently subscribed that with first choices and second choices, anyone putting them third did not stand a chance. So if you put both of the local grammar schools before it, you would not get in.   Put a grammar in first place, and the Catholic in second, and the grammar over subscribed? That's quite a gamble; you might or might not get in. Put the Catholic school in first place, and you would get in, but there was no point in taking the 11+

Very manipulative, I thought. But they did not know my daughter's determination. She went and took the 11+ in the Anglican school (without most of the practise they had had); passed, and got the Grammar school of her choice. In subsequent years, there were always a few who did the same.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 07:51 AM

Oh, BTW, I passed the 11 plus with flying colours but the local Catholic grammar (De La Salle) didn't want me. Mind you, cheating on my homework at primary may have had something to do with that. I should have tried for Eton... :-D

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 06:40 AM

I never had an affluent well connected family and public school education

And you think I did?

Born to a Polish immigrant manual worker and a shop girl in a two up two down terraced house with no bathroom. After they pulled that down, lived on council estates until I married and bought a two up two down terraced house with an upstairs bath but the toilet was downstairs and only inside by virtue of the fact that someone had built a lean to next to it. Educated in catholic primary and secondary modern. Went to 6th form but dropped out after 3 months. I didn't even get to university like some I could mention...

But let's not get into the four Yorkshiremen sketch :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Rain Dog
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 06:14 AM

Seventeen arrests have been made this morning after Insulate Britain blockaded the Port of Dover, just days after they were told they face jail if they shut down the M25 again.

Orange-bibbed activists campaigning for the government to insulate all houses in the UK have sat across the entrance and exit to Europe's busiest ferry port.

Insulate Britain block Port of Dover after M25 injunction

PS

I have not been paid for posting this link as the contract remains to be signed.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 06:01 AM

Dunno.. I've been displaced in limbo between working and middle class cultures
since I was torn from my council estate environment and bussed to Grammar School
for social gentrification...?????

.. What that process didn't equip me with was the essential family contacts network,
and property inheritances, that could elevate me even anywhere near the higher levels of glass ceilings...

If I hadn't passed the 11 plus I might have had my own White Van tradesman business
and bought an ex council house on the estate,
might even have had a tribe of kids and grandkids, and a staffy bull terrier..
..instead of ending up a skint unemployable arty farty bolshie non conformist lefty
in a dilapidated terraced house in a run down town centre...???


Wot.. me envious I never had an affluent well connected family and public school education...

Advantages necessary for a modern career in the British folk music industry...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 04:15 AM

Right wing does not equal troll, Eliza. Purposely winding people up and causing dissent does.

FWIW, my best friend is a Tory. We have agreed to disagree. I have never espoused, like some, that Tories are evil. Just sadly mistaken. However I don't understand your liking for Boris. Not even other Tories like him. He is a prime example of a lying, cheating product of privilege. I agree that he has had a lot on his plate with Covid. No-one could have envisaged that. As for the rest, well. He was a prime mover in conning people into believing that Brexit would be marvelous with no down sides. He is now reaping what he sowed but, sadly, so are the rest of us.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Senoufou
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 03:50 AM

I really love my Daily Mail. I like the puzzles (keeps me quiet, a real bonus for my husband) the horoscope and the letters page. There's a giant cryptic crossword on Saturdays. My posh, clever sister has the Times, and does that crossword in a few minutes, which is quite an achievement.
I also vote Conservative, and I like Boris. I feel sorry that he's had such an awful lot to cope with, but I approve of what he's achieved so far.
But I wouldn't say I'm a troll. And I respect anyone's opinion. It pains me to read the unkind, vituperative comments here and the in-fighting, insults and skirmishes. I like a friendly, funny and respectful sort of discussion.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: DMcG
Date: 24 Sep 21 - 02:38 AM

‘A system on its last legs’: NHS forced to deny chemotherapy for cancer patients

I am not sure why this appears in the backwaters of the 'Health' pages rather than more prominently, but there you are.

As I commented in the article's thread, I am particularly interested in why the Trust thought it worth spending "hundreds of thousands of pounds applying for Magnet status from the American Nurses’ Credentialing Center."

What is that all about, I wonder?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 09:23 PM

" I don't recall your outrage about the tens of thousands of little old ladies that this government, in effect, murdered in the early stages of this pandemic..."

.. well some of your memory outages are checkable...
.. so for your information as a memory jogger..

I was one of the first mudcatters venting my angry suspicions
the tories were inclined to use covid as an oportunist method
of culling expensive pensioners,
as well as killing off frontline teachers they despicably malign as marxist feminist brainwashers of young boys...

I still suspect I was fairly spot on...???

Do I have to list all my outrages on all topics for your approval
every time I check in at mudcat...?????

Nah.. don't think so...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 08:31 PM

.. you do get worked up talking presumptious bollocks about other mudcatters at times...

Mr ooh I might sound a bit daily mail [but I'm not really] mask objector...

Well.. hello..

I'm mr ooh I might sound a bit daily mail [but I'm not really] road protest objector...


I might be having a bit of a chuckle generalising with sterotypes,
but chances are I'm more than likely right
about the social demographic specifics of so many eco protesters...

Bloody affluent big city hippy new agers been invading and buying up all the best homes in Scrumpyshire since Glasto Festival
went part of the corporate / aristo social calender..
Coinciding with when thatcher started selling off all the good quality local council social housing...

I remember in the early 70s when we had just one friends of the earth family sending kids to our school.
They were an even rarer novelty than catholics and Jews...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: DMcG
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 06:12 PM

've never forgotten is that if you ram into someone from behind IT'S YOUR FAULT EVERY TIME. Not the guy in front, no matter what unexpected or capricious thing he did

A very good rule of thumb, but of course there are still the odd exceptions.

I was following a car with a trailer at a roundabout around a decade ago. He decided to go, then changed his mind, and stopped abruptly. I stopped several feet behind him. The guy behind me also stopped with a couple of feet gap. Then someone behind him failed to stop, hit his car, shunted it forward into mine, and mine forward into the trailer. Some crumpling of the front of my car, but the trailer got away with a cracked light cover.

The insurance companies, police and indeed everyone else, declared the final driver the only one responsible.

Now of course you could argue if I had left an extra foot it would have prevented the crumpling and rear light damage. But none of the people I mentioned - drivers, police, insurance - thought my positioning at fault in any way.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 05:55 PM

Hey, Dick, don't stoop to BWM's level! ;-)

Greta is a damn sight more mature than most of the dissembling bloody adults who speechify their bloody platitudes about man-made global heating. Never was it more apt to speak of more heat than light...yet we get all hoity-toity about people who take direct, non-violent action to highlight the terrible climate crisis we're in. Gosh, how you'll feel for those poor M25 drivers who got so horribly inconvenienced when we are, in a decade or two's time, in a world full hundreds of millions of refugees...Bangladesh, population 163 million...mean altitude of most of them one metre above sea level... maybe those indignant M25 drivers have houses big enough to take a couple of dozen of them each...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 04:36 PM

.. yebut.. it's 2021 now...

.. and I do sincerely hope youthful iconic figurehead Greta
matures into a more poweful adult campaigner,
who can be even more politically effective than she already is...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 04:24 PM

Don't you bloody start.

When the miners went on strike in the early 70s (fully justified in m'humble), which precipitated the three-day week, they didn't go all nicey-nicey to protect old people from freezing to death. Because it wasn't their fault that they were forced to take action. During the winter of discontent (when public sector workers finally snapped after years of cuts in services and lousy pay) it wasn't the gravediggers' fault that corpses went unburied or the binmen's fault that mountains of rubbish piled up in the streets. Greenhouse gas emissions are still going ballistic. All we've had is bloody talk. We have a clown running the country who has tried to divert attention away from the shocking state of this country by coming the statesman with fine speeches telling the world that it's time we grew up when it comes to climate change. Boris Johnson (I won't insult children by calling him childish) telling us to grow up. Well, well. So the world heads inexorably for burning times because we can't wean ourselves off fossil fuels, yet you whinge about protesters who actually impede the use of fossil fuels to make their point...Good grief...Talk about riding the establishment horse...

And actually Greta Thunberg isn't much past seventeen. I'm with her every time. So that insult don't wash either.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 03:47 PM

.. btw.. are you 70 or 17...???

It's hard to tell from your overhyped pre-fab rhetoric...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 03:45 PM

You can't fend off other lefties who disagree with you
by accusing them of 'daily mailism'...

.. that don't cut it here...

Do road protesters keep a fast lane open for essential and emergency workers,
let alone ordinary folks with problems and stresses who need to get somewhere else important in a hurry...?????

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 03:31 PM

A road traffic accident is not the same as coming up against an obstruction caused by protesters and there would not be the same element of the unexpected if you were unlucky enough to encounter one. By the way, I passed my driving test 53 years ago and one golden rule learned from my dad (who taught me to drive) I've never forgotten is that if you ram into someone from behind IT'S YOUR FAULT EVERY TIME. Not the guy in front, no matter what unexpected or capricious thing he did, not a protester, not a cow on the road... As I said, the Daily Mailism don't cut it here. By the way, I haven't been rude to you, so consider desisting from the name-calling (which tends to make you look a little like a loser...)

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 03:20 PM

"Remember I live in a polarised area of Scrumpyshire dominated by tories and smug well off Glastonbury hippy sjw arseholes..

The working class have always been a deplored and denigrated underclass
round these ways...

.. round here we have to constantly put up with
two distinct middle class elitist cultures looking down on us...

.. and permanent safe seat tory MPs...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Rain Dog
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 02:46 PM

Possible solution to tbe haulage problem in the UK and beyond? (Though it will take the best part of 3 years)

Moving the nation.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 02:27 PM

Steve - No.. first and foremost there are blindingly obvious objective arguements
which the Mail culture war wanks appropriate, distort, and try to monopolise
as good right wing common sense...

Road protesters cannot know who they going to obstruct and delay,
or how vital, or life and death, their journeys may be...

Selfish pricks...

What if I needed to get to my mum's death bed in the nick of time,
and these self indulgent tits were blocking roads along the way...???

.. how justifiably angry would I feel.. and these fukwits are on my own side...!!!???

Remember I live in a polarised area of Scrumpyshire dominated by tories and smug well off Glastonbury hippy sjw arseholes..

The working class have always been a deplored and denigrated underclass
round these ways...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 02:25 PM

"On the whole, the aggressors are not "ordinary folks." They're the police, the agents of the state, who generally act under orders. One more thing: a bunch of protesters sitting on tarmac is not putting lives in danger. They are not carrying guns or swords or tasers and they are not driving tons of wheeled metal at high speed.

'Tons of wheeled metal' running up the back-end of a line of traffic, stopped on a motorway because 'a bunch of protestors' are sitting in the carriageway, is highly likely to result in someone, probably several someones, being killed or seriously injured.

You should talk to my brother-in-law, who was a traffic-cop in the Cambridgeshire Constabulary - you know, one of those 'aggressors' and 'agents of the state' of yours who, 'acting on orders', have to go and pick up the pieces of human remains and wash away the blood at the scenes of RTAs, and then go to break the news of someone's gruesome death to their devastated relatives, make cups of tea for them, sit with them, hold them as they scream and fall apart. He has some 'interesting' stories to tell. So 'interesting' he's been unable to work as a public-facing police officer for the past three years because of his PTSD, brought to a head when he was one of the first two officers on-scene at the Toronto city-centre van attack, when 10 people were killed and 16 critically injured.

For someone who thinks he knows more about everything than everybody, you really are bit of a thoughtless prick, aren't you?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 01:52 PM

"That's such a sneaky childish school playground tactic to deliberately wind up other kids
to the point of such anger they strike the first blow..

"So let's go out obstructing busy traffic and deliberately provoking ordinary folks into acts of road rage..."

This is a flawed argument. On the whole, the aggressors are not "ordinary folks." They're the police, the agents of the state, who generally act under orders. One more thing: a bunch of protesters sitting on tarmac is not putting lives in danger. They are not carrying guns or swords or tasers and they are not driving tons of wheeled metal at high speed. So who is really, if anyone, putting lives in danger in those demos? Let's avoid the Daily Mailist arguments, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: DMcG
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 12:58 PM

quasi-temporary nationalisation?

A what? A temporary quasi-nationalisation I could understand. Or is quasi-temporary like income tax, which was supposed to be temporary, and we all know how that turned out.

Perhaps Nigel is needed!

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Rain Dog
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 12:12 PM

We are living in strange times.

From the BBC

Ministers prepare for worst in gas price crisis


"BBC has been told that ministers believe the current system for managing the failure of energy companies, which allows companies to recoup losses through an industry-wide levy, is working satisfactorily, even though it will add costs to millions of customers' bills.

Our business editor says ministers do accept that the existing system of reallocating customers would not work if one of the bigger challenger firms went bust.

In that case, the government has the power to appoint a special administrator, in what would be a quasi-temporary nationalisation."

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 11:57 AM

.. errmm..

Ok full disclosure..

I'll confess I'd mentally blocked
the few years I spent as a postgrad ideology student, with a completely shaved head
except for a warrior top knot like Taras Bulba..

Those were my lost years as an ineffectual very loony laughing-stock textbook lefty...!!!

Lessons were painfully learnt...
.. and feet eventually placed very firmly back on the ground...

Remembering my roots..
I'm the son of a council estate factory trades unionist, and care home cleaner..
I'll leave the fancy dress protest charades to more comfortably well-off and socially connected 'progressives'...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 11:53 AM

Spot-on, pfr.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 11:39 AM

For a start, 'real' lefties should seriously consider
the back-firing damage they cause our movement
by persistently conforming to alienating stereotypes which keep us out of power...

Understand and know our tory enemy.
If it helps, to dress and look like them as a confusion tactic.
New labour made the mistake of dressing up in expensive suits and ties..

Personally I look and talk like the kind of ordinary bloke in the street
who might read tory newspapers and support UKIP.
That's not an elaborate constructed disguise,
I've always looked like that.

(Apart from a few days when I was a student and had purple hair,
after getting drunk at a party with a Bristol punk band)..

Pass undetected mingling with the enemy
engaging as much as possible in constructive rational conversation.

We only shoot ourselves in the feet if all we can do is browbeat and lecture folks with textbook ideology
from on high,
looking down on them
from a crumbling ivory tower vantage pulpit...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 11:15 AM

Have you been on the M25, PFR? It's like that most of the time anyway!

Give us your methods for protesting and we can see if they might work any better.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 11:02 AM

It's a thin line between 'non violent' protest,
and 'passive aggressive' extremely provocative antagonistic protest...

.. That's such a sneaky childish school playground tactic to deliberately wind up other kids
to the point of such anger they strike the first blow..

"So let's go out obstructing busy traffic and deliberately provoking ordinary folks into acts of road rage against poor defensless innocent us;
so we can play the victim of bullying and claim the moral high ground"...

No.. you just look like sanctimonious spoilt twats putting yours and other lives in potential danger...!!!

Remember the green cross code, don't play silly buggers on busy roads...
At least back in the day, Swampy and his tree climbing and tunnel digging protest movement
could still retain some public sympathy and support...

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 10:31 AM

My point is that non-violent protests should not be met with violence or threats of prison. That's China, Russia and the US.

Yes, but how then do you stop the protests?

Or do you believe that the civil liberties of the protesters are more important than the liberties of drivers who wish to go about their daily business?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 09:27 AM

Well how do you assess that? And I note that "alienate" is now the buzzword of the week. Even Ed Miliband was at it on the one o'clock news...

Let the protesters worry about their tactics. My point is that non-violent protests should not be met with violence or threats of prison. That's China, Russia and the US.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 09:23 AM

DMcG - Well.. you definitely get it...

As for any football loving eco lefties..

They ought to understand the concept of "own goals"...???


.. and armchair conspiracy theorists can consider the methods
how tory govt and it's dominant media culture
can so easily manipulate silly useful idiot puppet eco road stunt protesters...???

It's a key winning tory strategy, always has been, to marginalise and dismiss progressive resistance
by making the mass public believe we are all such loony lefties and dopey hippy tree huggers...


As a consequence..

patel get's enhanced powers, and boris can now posture on the world stage
that he and his 'sensible' govt are the only 'true' eco saviours to be taken seriously...!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: DMcG
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 08:40 AM

As for "alienating people," tell me of a public protest or demo that DOESN'T alienate. The idea is to make people sit up and take notice. Generally, that in one way or another is going to alienate people

Well, yes. Any protest will alienate some and attract others. Your goal is to attract as many as possible and alienate as few as possible, so that after the protest you end up in a stronger position than before, not a weaker one.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 07:35 AM

"..so what about all the backed up stationary traffic
keeping their engines turning over pumping out toxic exhaust fumes...???"

Well they could TURN THEIR BLOODY ENGINES OFF!! Are they thick or something?

As for "alienating people," tell me of a public protest or demo that DOESN'T alienate. The idea is to make people sit up and take notice. Generally, that in one way or another is going to alienate people. And we have things like the Mail and the Sun, whippers-up-in-chief of confected outrage... I ask you again: is the right way to protest writing polite letters to the Guardian? Or maybe putting up petitions on Change.org that no-one takes any notice of? Or hire-a-celeb (Marcus is rather busy just now...)?? The very idea that non-violent protesters might be thrown in jail for sitting on a road is truly the thin end of a very worrying wedge... we've been forcing people to wear masks...we've been telling families they can't go into their loved ones' homes...we're telling care workers on the minimum wage that they'll lose their jobs unless they submit to vaccination...I wasn't allowed by law to sit with my ill and deaf mother for the last months of her life...we're threatening to turn back innocent people on unsafe dinghies mid-Channel... We should all be bloody worried.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 06:25 AM

Or, to quote Grouch Mark:

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them . . . well, I have others!"

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: DMcG
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 04:02 AM

I know very well a lot of posters here are not going to like Starmer's paper at all, but to my mind it is written for only one major purpose: to address the charge "no one knows what Labour/Starmer stand for."   You may well not like the answer he has given, but I think it goes a good way towards answering that charge. Many points in his position are open to interpretation, but so are all similar political statements of stance.

He will have to defend and elaborate each of his ten principles from those further left in the party and from the Tories, but at least these is now greater clarity of what those principles are. To that extent, I think it a significant step forward.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 03:45 AM

I know, Rain Dog, but one good chain rattle deserves another :-D

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: DMcG
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 03:17 AM

On the business of laws, by the way. We have in Priti Patel someone who needs little excuse to introduce laws limiting liberties. This action has given her the perfect excuse to introduce one - with a lot of public support - which will be to hand for every protest about anything from now on. It has severely restricted their future protests, but also everyone elses.

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: DMcG
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 03:07 AM

My biggest concern about the M25 protests is that they will alienate people rather than persuading people to be more concerned about the environment. If people are prevented from doing things they regard as important - going to work, getting to weddings, attending hospital appointments - it is likely to make them want to disassociate themselves from the protesters, not join them. This is similar to Extinction Rebellion losing public sympathy quite dramatically when they stopped a tube train at Canning Town which they later thought was a mistake.

Yes, they have got themselves into the news internationally, but have they succeeded in making people change their behaviour? Even worse, have they made some change it for the worse because they don't want to be associated with such actions?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Rain Dog
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 03:04 AM

Pfr normally mentions 'middle class twats' once per post. I am never too sure how serious/funny he is being when he does so. He does seem to like winding people up.

Worth a listen


Micky Flanagan: What Chance Change?

You want to be a van driver?

Subject: RE: BS: Brexit & other UK political topics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Sep 21 - 02:41 AM

Middle class eco twats?

Are they all middle class, PFR? Even if they are, what is wrong with that? Are the middle class not allowed to protest against the destruction of our planet?

Sorry, but this kind of reverse snobbery does you no favours. The only us and them should be between those doing all the taking and the rest of us who are having our assets stripped and our environment ruined. Not everyone who cares lives on a council estate and the working class don't provide all the heroes.