Off Topic Politics Thread

And we have an oeuf leading the country

 

He’s a complete yolk.

 

Lol you crack me up.

At least it is Fry-day tomorrow.

 

Sad but true, more than sad. The Barclay brothers, Rothermere and Murdoch propaganda machines mislead, lie and continue to do. Point it out to those that complain at the risk of anger and insult.

 

Will it be black pudding fry day soon? I think so eggcellent news.

 

I have fallen out with one of my sisters many times for suggesting that older people, who don’t access the internet and get all their political information from a newspaper, are being duped by the lies and misrepresentation of truth.
She thinks I am being disrespectful to the older age groups and won’t accept that 50/60 years of reading Tory good, Labour bad doesn’t become their political mindset, especially when they don’t read anything to challenge it.
Given the circulation of the right wing papers, it just supports my ongoing belief that we get the government that they want and not what we need.

Hopefully it can only get better as I don’t think the young read newspapers as often as their parents and grandparents, thus getting their political information from more diverse areas.

 

I said from day one (and on here) when Cameron offered the referendum that the result would be decided by the media. I still believe it was.

 

Really interesting. Never seen it laid out so plainly. Need to google a circulation graph to see what this amounts to in headcount

Edit:
Actually to get full picture you also need a social class count and a bias weighting for each paper e.g. Mail and Express must be more right biased than Sun. Mirror more than Independent etc

 

Not to mention several million personalised targeted ads on social media by Cambridge Analytica and others, directed at the undecided voters.

 

https://www.bigissue.com/opinion/a-...e-hope-of-a-better-life-will-end-knife-crime/

 

I wonder if it's too late already.

Like let's say that Trump in the US loses or Brexit is somehow scuppered by the barest of margins. It's not going to be like people found a compromise or large numbers of one side changed their minds.

I'm still going to live in this country knowing that 40% of the people here didn't just support Trump, but did so vehemently and vociferously, and what they most supported about him was him being as a big a dick as possible to me. And I'm sure Trump supporters feel the same. The only thing will have happened is that a sliver of random idiots somehow voted for Obama and then Trump and then someone left of Obama. Which really, is even stupider than those who have stuck to one side or the other.

I see this as way beyond political now, and somewhat unsalvageable. Except that one side is way older than the other and will die soon, so one side wins by attrition. That's a pretty grim way to win.

 

The right are always on the wrong side of history mate. That's an immutable law. Sometimes social progress goes into reverse and the forces of reaction are in the ascendant for a while; but that's just a case of two steps forward and one step back.

 

You’ve seen the great hack?

 

Not yet, but Brexit, the Uncivil War dealt with the same issues.

 

I don't know if it is an age thing, or becoming more sensible, or just becoming a good human being. I have definitely over the last few years gone from being the wrong ethnic background to be as right wing as I was, to moving quite left.

Maybe it is the Italian in me that changes sides too easily

 

There is an old mistaken adage that as you grow older you become more Conservative [with a big C]. It alludes to a continual sense of personal well-being and economic stability. Basically, you get comfortable, draw up the drawbridge in your mind, and buy the story. You'll always think you're right because you'll never test yourself again. And if you feel yourself falling into that comfy way, then good luck to you, but we ain't gonna get along really. There's far too much injustice and inequality for anyone to sit there feeling comfortable.
When I was first able to vote, Mrs Thatcher had just become Tory leader and she said unifying things. Unfortunately, her deeds broke the country up. What her government did to communities and ordinary people should be illegal. If Blair is a war criminal, then Mrs Thatcher was absolutely a peace criminal. Under her St Francis steal, "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope." it was a total falsehood for many people who were just unlucky to be in her firing line. And miners were meant to retrain as coders and call service staff. What a joke that was. If they had had the choice of training they would most certainly had trained as plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc... They were trade people - they worked with their skilled hands. That's where their confidence lay. Of course, when you kick people out of jobs, you kick the retail and community services out that depend on those people being economically active. Thing was, I didn't really know this at the time. I just sensed the unecessary hardships those people were being put to, and many of them would live the rest of their lives handicapped by that huge setback. And the repercussions continue to this day for many of those affected families. But what do Tories care?
So I shifted Left pretty much from 1979-81 onwards. However, the Labour Party somehow had a mindset stuck in the 1930s, it seemed, and they paid no heed to the growing threat of Global Warming [as it was called then]. So I voted Liberal, who did, and I often still fluctuate between those two, because the lines between them get blurred anyway. But really the older I get, the more Left leaning I become, because I become more enlightened and continually check the story. The Labour Party doesn't get a free ticket from me, but at least their existence is to make the whole population healthier, more educated, and have better lives. Not just the top 1-2%.