Off Topic Politics Thread

The answer to your first line is probably money. Too many people standing to make too much money from the companies who profit from military spends.

 

The set of posts above and the interview are just what I detest about politics. Politicians, media, general public. All interested in "catching out" or setting "traps" for all sides, to score points.

So one politician doesn't agree with his colleague and was tricked into saying it. Shock. Another politician said something 33 years ago and an interviewer tries to force her to regret her words. Shock.

They behave worse than me on a forum! In fact it is almost like being on a live forum.

I wish they'd cut out all the playground crap.

 

Oh God, I do so agree. Tony Benn will always be one of my political heroes for two reasons. He had principles and he refused to be dragged into name calling. Policies not personalities I heard him say on many an occasion. The fact that I thought a number of his ideas were unworkable/totally mad didn't detract from my admiration of him for this very reason.

I'm beginning to warm to Corbyn for similar reasons. Yesterday Laura Kuenssberg told us on radio 4 that JC was going to express a view "he'd always believed in" as if this was new kind of heresy. Oh God, a politician in 2017 with firm beliefs. Heaven help us. We are all treated like children. There are decent intelligent people in Parliament but no-one is allowed to shape an argument without it slipping into a "so what you are saying is" (add absurdly extreme interpretation). FLT, I worked as a secondary teacher in the distant past, and I heard better debates in the playground!

 

Exactly

 

You haven't commented on Corbyn's speech yet Imps, not quite the "Kinnock moment" that you predicted was it?.

 

Why I don't like Neil. Guy doesn't give people the chance to talk. He just wants to get the views by getting the controversial stuff on air. The guy just shouts all the time.

 

That's because, like on this thread, social media posts up the nasty Tory videos and then lots of lovely social media people keep sharing it around. Like it or not this age is full of people jumping on bandwagons. At least this one is real but there are lots of cases where people are already up in arms about something that wasn;t true in the first place.

Like people on here complain that a newspaper will print a headline and front page that turns out to not be true but then their correction the next day will be a little snippet hidden away on page 7. Twitter is full of trigger happy posts that fire people up and who shares apologies when they are incorrect? No-one.

Fallon got skewered. Couldn't answer it because he had been skewered and he knew it.

 

Corbyn's speech was fine with me. I have no problem with it.

By Kinnock moment I meant going from looking good in the polls to dwindling away again.

You can't judge what people think of that speech until the next few polls come out and show what effect it has had. Winning elections isn't about speeches directed at those who already agree with you. It is about trying to sway those that don't agree with you and to do that it is best to steer clear of anything that could be controversial and definitely don;t hand your opposition any free ammunition.

 

Totally agree but in this day and age with twitter, facebook etc thoughts are now there forever in type and the 24 hour news circle has teams that are busy searching out and watching every clip ever made to try and get their scoop.

This is what I mean r.e. Corbyn though. He just said we should get around the table and discuss possibilities with people that we don;t necessarily agree with. I'm fine with that however we then get a constant feed of people being hung by what they said last week, last year, last decade, 30 years ago etc. Your colleague said this 10 years ago and now you say this.

While you and I are willing to accept that Leopards can change their spots and that people can change their minds, learn or even educate themselves the modern bubble (a lot of society as well as the media circle) is hypocritical of that concept.

In an age where people quite obviously don't think Leopards can change their spots, as shown by how they dig up sometimes ancient speeches to say "this is what you think", the how is Corbyn saying we need to get around a table with "these people" going to go down.

If we got the IS leader around the table and ended up with a peace deal in 10, 20 years if he had said he had changed what would people do? They would be digging up the 10, 20 year old clips and transcripts and saying "You said this back then."

Someone says something dodgy and we will get a false insincere apology. Anybody makes a mistake or says something there are immediate calls for a resignation.

I'm not saying I like these traps or trying to catch people out but that is the game the media play and they are also fed by tip offs from politicians and their teams. The politicians have to play by the rules that are there and if the rules of the day are to "not get caught out" then it is best not to get caught out.

Say tomorrow some sensible politician comes out and says what you said (and I agree with) what will the media and public's opinion be? "What have you got to hide."

The whole media bubble think that this is investigative journalism when the reality is it is cheap point scoring of you said this and now you don't. If the politician had changed his/her mind the media just wouldn;t let go until the unfortunate politician came out with a poor choice of words that they could spin into him/her either lying that they had changed or being opportunistic etc.

That is the world we live in. Not my choice. It is the 24 hour media (including social media) frenzy.

 

Except that ONLY way peace between any peoples has been arrived at, ultimately, is by them talking to each other, even if it's only to discuss surrender terms. Even the Taliban in Afghanistan joined in talks, as did the North Vietnamese Army, the political wings on both sides in Northern Ireland, the various factions in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Kosovo, and of course the ANC in South Africa. Not many people nowadays criticise those who initiated any of those talks, however uncomfortable everyone felt before the peace settlements came about. Eventually, at some unimaginable point in the future, the IS leaders will also sit down around a table with western leaders, because that is the way history always works in the long run.

I appreciate what you say about the media bubble and the obsession with sound bites and point scoring, but I prefer to think that the majority of the population are not the complete morons the media would like us all to be.

 

"To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."...Winston Churchill, 1954.

 

My political hero is ..............Peter Mandelson!! No more needs to be said ....... and of course Harold Wilson.

 

One problem,! ISi is an umbrella term for many different factions that have littlle or nothing in common.

 

Listening and watching the media, I agree with people above that the smear campaign and point scoring against corbyn is a complete disgrace.

I am who has always been an 'on-the-fence' voter, and base my choice each election on reading manifesto's and general research.

For me, voting labour is an absolute no-brainer in this election. I genuinely believe in Jeremy Corbyn. Never has a politician in my life time been so willing to listen to everybody, and take a fair and balanced view of things.
I don't think he will win - the "terrorist sympathiser" bollocks has sunk into the sun readers But I genuinely have high hopes in a political figure for the first time.

 

Isn't it funny Os how people read what They want to read. I started that point and others joined in. The point was not about point scoring against Corbyn, but point scoring against anybody!

Made I laugh that

 

Fallon fell for the Boris speech again...

(On the Preston show)

 

Labour have done a great job in buttoning down social media and making sure everything on their appears to be anti Tory. Very clever and I'm surprised the right wingers haven't fought back but appear to have ceded the advantage.
Together with the clever promises to the young over university fees, reduced match fees for footie and the like, they're unashamedly going after the youth vote.
As for me - I'm done and dusted. Postal vote in and I leave for Oireland next week and expect to come back to a country still deeply divided, unsure of its future in Europe and the world, deeply in debt for generation, a nasty undercurrent of racism in places and with the NHS still struggling.
But I wouldn't live anywhere else .......

 

Disappointed to find that my local Pirate Party aren't offering a pint of rum a day and the bringing back of the lash for miscreants .....
Apparently they're all to do with copyright protection and their candidate doesn't appear with an eyepatch, a parrot and a wooden leg .....

 

Did you not see how the Tories bought advertising on Google, so that any mention of Dementia Tax would list their response to it at the top of the search?

 

Yeah, not sure about the social media thing. There are far more members of the public stating their support for Labour/Corbyn than the Conservatives/May but that's normal. Apparently this is the most-watched video on any of the parties' pages: