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Off Topic The Politics Thread

Discussion in 'Queens Park Rangers' started by Stroller, Jun 25, 2015.

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Should the UK remain a part of the EU or leave?

Poll closed Jun 24, 2016.
  1. Stay in

    56 vote(s)
    47.9%
  2. Get out

    61 vote(s)
    52.1%
  1. ELLERS

    ELLERS Well-Known Member

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    #61101
  2. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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  3. Goldhawk-Road

    Goldhawk-Road Well-Known Member

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    It's wrong Bob. All the EU countries are miles behind the UK. Israel and UAE are doing best
     
    #61103
  4. Bwood_Ranger

    Bwood_Ranger 2023 Funniest Poster

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    Steve Baker‘s concerns on poverty are touching.

     
    #61104
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  5. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    they hate publicity so much they are going on oprah
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    whats Amanda done
     
    #61105
  6. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    refund the police

    BREAKING: Minneapolis to spend $6.4M to hire more police officers after residents experienced longer response times and an increase in violent crimes following the defunding of their police dept. -ABC
     
    #61106
  7. Willhoops

    Willhoops Well-Known Member

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    I like Megan, my favourite royal.
     
    #61107
  8. Bwood_Ranger

    Bwood_Ranger 2023 Funniest Poster

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    She likes avocados though so is in fact a mass murderer.
     
    #61108
  9. Willhoops

    Willhoops Well-Known Member

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    Someone on LBC comments section to try and put an end to Harry’s parenting debate tried to suggest it can’t be in question as he looks like Diana’s brother <laugh>
     
    #61109
  10. Goldhawk-Road

    Goldhawk-Road Well-Known Member

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    Not difficult to understand how publicity shy Meg may feel it's best to appear on Oprah Winfrey to tell everyone
     
    #61110
    ELLERS and rangercol like this.

  11. Bwood_Ranger

    Bwood_Ranger 2023 Funniest Poster

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    She was a high profile actress. Not sure publicity was ever an issue. Just the absolute crucifying she got in much of our media.
     
    #61111
  12. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    was she a high profile actress
     
    #61112
  13. Bwood_Ranger

    Bwood_Ranger 2023 Funniest Poster

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    Suits was good.
     
    #61113
  14. rangercol

    rangercol Well-Known Member

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    Megan and Harry were treated incredibly favourably by all the media up to and including their wedding.
    It was universally acknowledged that a mixed race person being introduced into the Royal Family was a fantastic thing and could only bring them more up to date.
    The couple have brought most of the criticism they have received on themselves, although I acknowledge that some of the press have been over the top in their criticism, which is the nature of the beast.
    I wish her a successful pregnancy and I hope Harry lives a happy life.
    He deserves it imo.
     
    #61114
    qprbeth and Goldhawk-Road like this.
  15. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    For gods sake will people like Winfrey not leave these people alone??

    All they want is a quiet life with mansions, worldwide adulation, billions in the bank & to get to choose who is President.

    Respect their privacy!!!!
     
    #61115
    rangercol and Goldhawk-Road like this.
  16. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    Nicola Sturgeon threatens to CLOSE the England-Scotland border if Boris Johnson fails to adopt her tougher quarantine rules for travellers from EVERYWHERE to go into hotel isolation
    • All international arrivals in Scotland must self-isolate in government hotels
    • But in England hotel quarantine only applies to arrivals from 'red list' countries
    • Scottish government concerned people may fly to England then go to Scotland
    • Nicola Sturgeon said she does not rule out closing England-Scotland border
    • That would likely see the Scottish government introducing checks at the border
    By Jack Maidment, Deputy Political Editor For Mailonline

    Published: 02:44 AEDT, 16 February 2021 | Updated: 04:14 AEDT, 16 February 2021



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    Nicola Sturgeon today threatened to close the England-Scotland border unless Boris Johnson adopts her stricter hotel quarantine rules.

    All international arrivals in Scotland have to self-isolate for 10 days in a government-approved quarantine hotel.

    But in England the requirement only applies to travellers arriving from 33 'red list' countries which have recorded significant outbreaks of coronavirus variants.

    The Scottish government is concerned that people could fly into England before then heading to Scotland, avoiding the tougher hotel quarantine rules north of the border.

    As a result, Ms Sturgeon is urging Mr Johnson to adopt the same measures as Scotland or at the very least to work with Holyrood to put in place a system to stop people circumventing the restrictions.

    However, she said this afternoon she would be willing to take the nuclear option of closing the border between Scotland and England should the two sides fail to reach an agreement.

    Such an approach would likely involve the Scottish government introducing some form of border checks in a bid to keep track of international arrivals coming from England.

    It is unclear how such a system of checks could work but any proposals would be likely to pose significant logistical and political challenges for Ms Sturgeon.

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    Could Nicola Sturgeon actually close the England-Scotland border?
    Nicola Sturgeon is insistent it would be within her powers as First Minister to close the border between England and Scotland should she deem it necessary.

    However, such a move would present the Scottish government with massive logistical as well as political challenges.

    Logistically, the land border between the two countries is more than 90 miles in length.

    It is crossed by some 21 roads as well as two railway lines.

    Ms Sturgeon said this afternoon that she does not rule out checking people coming across the border.

    But even if this was done in a relatively light-touch manner, with police patrols conducting random stops rather than installing physical border infrastructure, it would still require significant resources.

    Politically, any move to restrict movement from England into Scotland would almost certainly prompt a furious row with Downing Street, especially amid growing concerns over the state of the Union.


    Ms Sturgeon told her daily coronavirus briefing in Edinburgh she wanted to focus on finding a solution with the UK Government but that she does not rule out closing the border if Mr Johnson does not budge.

    'There are two things that we want to continue to try to come to an arrangement around,' she said.

    'Firstly, and this would probably be the best arrangement, if the UK Government decided to apply on a comprehensive basis as well, but if not then to work with us so that people who are destined for Scotland but come in through an English airport that that requirement to isolate can be imposed at the point of arrival.

    'People will say why don't you check people coming across the England-Scotland border.

    'Now of course we don't rule anything out in terms of how we might have to deal with the risk of travel but in a sense if that is the solution we are already undermining the policy because somebody will have travelled quite a distance before they get to that point.

    'That is why isolation as close to the point of entry is so important here.'

    Asked directly if she would be willing to close the border, the Scottish First Minister said: 'I don't rule it out. I would like to have the most effective system in place here so I am not sure it is the best solution to have, now, if it is the only one I can put into place then it may come to that, but why let somebody travel half way across the UK before you do that?

    'It would be better if we had that four nations approach or certainly at least a three nations approach where the border of the island that Scotland, England and Wales share has the same provisions in place.'

    Scotland's Transport Secretary Michael Matheson warned on Sunday that the 'loophole' allowing overseas travellers to avoid hotel quarantine still existed which could 'potentially undermine the public health approach here in Scotland'.



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    Unless exempt, arriving passengers in Scotland must pay £1,750 to quarantine for 10-days in a room at one of six government-designated hotels.

    Those who arrive in England from a non-'red-list' country who then enter Scotland would still have to self-isolate for the 10-day period, but would not have to do so at a designated hotel due to a lack of agreement between Holyrood and Westminster.

    UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said this morning he is happy to discuss the matter with the Scottish Government.

    Six hotels have been block-booked in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, with up to 1,300 rooms available.
     
    #61116
  17. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    Why is the BBC so scared of criticising Islam?
    The Beeb’s removal of a clip featuring the new head of the Muslim Council of Britain is a chilling sign of the times.



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    Brendan O'Neill
    Editor



    15th February 2021
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    Topics Culture Free Speech Politics UK
    If you want to understand what’s going wrong at the BBC right now, you could do worse than look at the bizarre Zara Mohammed controversy. The Beeb has removed from social media a clip of Ms Mohammed, the new head of the Muslim Council of Britain, being interviewed on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. Cancel-culture mobs had complained that the interview was a form of ‘bullying’ and that it had undertones of ‘Islamophobia’. And now the BBC has caved to these crazy, unfounded criticisms and shoved the interview clip in the memory hole. This reveals a lot about the great moral anchoring of the BBC in the 21st century.

    Ms Mohammed is the first female head of the MCB. She and many of her supporters seem to have believed that this fact would generate gushing media coverage only, about Muslim community groups becoming more female-friendly, etc etc. But Emma Barnett of Woman’s Hour – being a journalist who, you know, likes to ask probing questions – had a different idea. Barnett put Mohammed on the spot in an interview aired on 4 February. She pressed her particularly on the issue of female imams. How many are there in the UK, she asked? She asked four times. Mohammed couldn’t answer. It was embarrassing.

    To most listeners this will have come across as a standard newsy interview. A public figure being put on the spot, being pushed for answers, being badgered (gently) for information. Nothing to see here. Interviews like this happen every day. But the identitarian brigade saw things differently. To them, the interview was an act of racism. It was an ‘exercise in Islamophobia’, said one commentator. A writer for the Guardian said Barnett’s line of questioning provided ‘yet more ammunition to a media machine that takes pleasure in savaging Britain’s Muslims’. Across social media Barnett and the BBC were called out for victimising Ms Mohammed.

    This is baloney of the highest order. Barnett said nothing whatsoever that was racist or Islamophobic. She merely interrogated – quite lightly, as it happens – a newly appointed public figure, the head of a body whose work and beliefs are matters of public interest. The mad accusations of ‘Islamophobia’ sum up what a censorious weapon that i-word has become. Tackling so-called Islamophobia is not about challenging genuine anti-Muslim bigotry, which is something the vast majority of people would like to see challenged. No, it’s about demonising and punishing any criticism of Islam or of Islamic organisations and practices. It is an underhand accusation of racism designed to stymie perfectly legitimate discussion about a religion.

    The Islamophobia industry – the Muslim community groups and their army of online supporters who keep their eyes peeled for any media coverage that is even mildly critical of Islamic ideas or Muslim practices – is best understood as an enforcer of neo-blasphemy laws. They pose as being in the tradition of the noble anti-racists of the past, who rightfully challenged demeaning commentary about ethnic-minority people. But in truth their aim is to circumscribe what may be said about Islam. They marshal the modern politics of identity to the pre-modern and regressive end of branding as ‘phobic’ – that is, mentally disordered, morally suspect – anyone who is anything less than effusive about their religion.


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    There’s another, even more worrying aspect to this crusade against ‘Islamophobia’: it contains its own kind of racism. The idea that Muslims must be shielded from difficult questions or from open, frank debate about the problem of radical Islam is itself racist. It infantilises Muslims. It separates them off from the rest of the community and says they need special protection from the rough and tumble of public life. There is a neo-colonialist feel to the belief among sections of the well-paid, middle-class commentariat that they must protect Muslims like Ms Mohammed from perfectly normal forms of public engagement. This implicit denigration of Muslims’ capacity to partake in public discourse, this diminishing of their intellectual and moral agency, contains far higher levels of racial paternalism than the media commentary that the warriors against Islamophobia complain about.

    And now, alarmingly, the BBC has surrendered to the criticisms of the Woman’s Hour interview and removed the clip from social media. This is a serious moral failure on the part of the public broadcaster. And it isn’t the first time the BBC has caved to flimsy criticisms from vocal Islamic activists. Last September it edited a headline on its website that said the Manchester Arena bomber had been ‘seen praying’ before blowing himself up. That this was true – eye-witnesses told the inquiry into that atrocity that they saw the bomber praying – mattered not one jot. The MCB and others complained about the headline, claiming it was ‘unacceptable’, and the BBC duly rewrote it. Is the BBC now more interested in appeasing identitarian campaign groups than in reporting the truth?

    The removal of the Woman’s Hour clip runs counter to the BBC’s own editorial guidelines. These state that, ‘Unless content is specifically made available only for a limited time period, there is a presumption that material published online will become part of a permanently accessible archive and should be preserved in as complete a state as possible’. In removing the clip in response to noisy, baseless complaints, the BBC has broken its own guidelines, shown that it is willing to sacrifice its news content at the altar of identitarian sensitivities, and undermined one of its star reporters and its own moral authority.

    In a free society, we should be able to discuss everything, including Islam. In a free media, broadcasters and editors should not be browbeaten into removing or rewriting content just because others find it offensive. A free society and a free media – does the BBC believe in these things anymore?
     
    #61117
  18. bobmid

    bobmid Well-Known Member

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    Thought it was to he fair, I know that they had given 2 doses to around 250,000 a few days ago and around 2 million first doses.
     
    #61118
  19. bobmid

    bobmid Well-Known Member

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    Always quite liked Megan. Cant see why theres a fuss about her.
     
    #61119
  20. Goldhawk-Road

    Goldhawk-Road Well-Known Member

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    So was Jim'll Fix It
     
    #61120

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