Off Topic Politics Thread

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This article is a good read.
In a nutshell the author is asking that people don’t allow the beliefs and actions of a few, to distract from the importance of the BLM movement.
His concern is that many will use the political interference by some to give themselves an excuse to ignore the ongoing fight for equality.


https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/darren-lewis-wanting-equality-not-22311321
 
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ChilcoSaint said:
Insightful stuff from “Charlie Hebdo” (you may remember the magazine, the French equivalent of a far-left Private Eye. They have been the subject of two terrorist attacks in the last 10 years):
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St Badger said:
I think this is spot on.

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Preaching to the converted (mostly) on here chaps messages that need to be widely disseminated.
 
St Badger said:
I think this is spot on.

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Johnson has been talking up what a great outcome no-deal would be, saying we could have an “Australia-style” trade agreement with the EU.

There is no trade agreement between Australia and the EU, although the EU is Australia’s second-largest trading partner. Talks have been in progress towards a Free Trade Agreement since 2018, but as any fool do kno, these things take time.

Johnson is a liar, a gibbering incompetent idiot whose political allies are either also idiots or Machiavellian schemers who wish to make tax avoidance easier for their mega rich financial backers.
 
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Saints_Alive said:
Here is Johnson trying to mug the British public off again, he is completely shameless like Trump...:steam:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53315178

I hope that they don't get off the hook when the truth comes out about the callousness and incompetence of the care home scandal comes fully to light.
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Many care homes went into lockdown at least a couple of weeks before the government decided to do what had been screamingly obvious. They followed what became procedures before there were procedures.

Part of the public enquiry following the pandemic will have to be a detailed review of the status of care homes in this country. My wife has worked as a nurse in quite a few different ones in her career, and it is fair to say there is a wide disparity in standards across the board. The best run and best resourced tend to be those run on a non-profit basis, either by charities like Methodist Care Homes, or by the NHS itself. The privately-run, owned either by large organisations like Barchester, or by individual owners, tend to have a higher turnover of staff because of poor working conditions and low pay, and are generally of poorer quality despite the astronomical fees they charge the residents, and are essentially money-making machines for the owners.

If I could wave a magic wand I would take every single care home under the auspices of the NHS, pay for them all out of the social care budget, and impose rigorous standards on all of them.

Having said that, I hold none of them to blame for having to clean up the mess created entirely by an incompetent government.
 
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St Badger said:
This article is a good read.
In a nutshell the author is asking that people don’t allow the beliefs and actions of a few, to distract from the importance of the BLM movement.
His concern is that many will use the political interference by some to give themselves an excuse to ignore the ongoing fight for equality.


https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/darren-lewis-wanting-equality-not-22311321
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I have sympathy with the position, but "forcibly, wrongfully dragged from his car" is just fishing for indignation. The police authorities have seen the whole footage on dashcam and on the personal police cameras and are satisfied everything was done properly - but this guy, based on a few seconds of shaky mobile camera footage, is able to state this as categorically as this? I am not bored of politicisation but of deliberately emotive responses with no effort to look at the facts dispassionately. I am also in the public sector and am tired of the police in this country being tarred with the racist brush by people with an agenda.

And I do support BLM. I just think we need to be careful about looking at the world with a skewed perspective.
 
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I have sympathy with the position, but "forcibly, wrongfully dragged from his car" is just fishing for indignation. The police authorities have seen the whole footage on dashcam and on the personal police cameras and are satisfied everything was done properly - but this guy, based on a few seconds of shaky mobile camera footage, is able to state this as categorically as this? I am not bored of politicisation but of deliberately emotive responses with no effort to look at the facts dispassionately. I am also in the public sector and am tired of the police in this country being tarred with the racist brush by people with an agenda.

And I do support BLM. I just think we need to be careful about looking at the world with a skewed perspective.
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I think I would be looking for a deliberately emotive response, if this had happened to me 20 times previously.
That is the issue not this man’s video.
As for the police response, that is to be expected, and could also be considered a skewed perspective.
 
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St Badger said:
I think I would be looking for a deliberately motive response, if this had happened to me 20 times previously.
That is the issue not this man’s video.
As for the police response, that is to be expected, and could also be considered a skewed perspective.
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You see. This is my point exactly. The expectation - your words - that the police are biased and self-serving. They are doing a very hard job - made harder by incorrect links to American policing which has no links to ours whatsoever. American police are responsible for 1000 deaths per year, while the UK police are responsible for a figure closer to... ONE.
 
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You see. This is my point exactly. The expectation - your words - that the police are biased and self-serving. They are doing a very hard job - made harder by incorrect links to American policing which has no links to ours whatsoever. American police are responsible for 1000 deaths per year, while the UK police are responsible for a figure closer to... ONE.
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Nope, you’ve got me beat there.
Show me where I have said that the police are “biased and self serving” (your words).
My purpose for sharing the article, is because it is a written report by a black reporter, (maybe you just looked at the video) who is asking people not to allow the politicising of the BLM movement to stop them from helping black people to achieve equal status in this country, by stopping their support of it.
As it says the media attention span is short and it won’t be long before people forget, or at least stop thinking about it, just as the need for reform has been ignored by the government, despite, I believe, 4 reports being carried out in recent years.
The latest one, by David Lammy, commissioned by David Cameron, has still not been implemented, despite Johnson recently lying in Parliament by saying most of it had been implemented.
I agree that the police have a difficult job, and they aren’t as bad as the American police, but a simple glance at the government’s own stop and search figures show that black people are being stopped more frequently than white, and this is part of the issue.
In the following link, the government’s own link, you can see that the stop and search figures are vastly different for white and black, which is one of the reasons why the police have been accused of systemic racism.

https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures...e-and-the-law/policing/stop-and-search/latest
 
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St Badger said:
Nope, you’ve got me beat there.
Show me where I have said that the police are “biased and self serving” (your words).
My purpose for sharing the article, is because it is a written report by a black reporter, (maybe you just looked at the video) who is asking people not to allow the politicising of the BLM movement to stop them from helping black people to achieve equal status in this country, by stopping their support of it.
As it says the media attention span is short and it won’t be long before people forget, or at least stop thinking about it, just as the need for reform has been ignored by the government, despite, I believe, 4 reports being carried out in recent years.
The latest one, by David Lammy, commissioned by David Cameron, has still not been implemented, despite Johnson recently lying in Parliament by saying most of it had been implemented.
I agree that the police have a difficult job, and they aren’t as bad as the American police, but a simple glance at the government’s own stop and search figures show that black people are being stopped more frequently than white, and this is part of the issue.
In the following link, the government’s own link, you can see that the stop and search figures are vastly different for white and black, which is one of the reasons why the police have been accused of systemic racism.

https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures...e-and-the-law/policing/stop-and-search/latest
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"As for the police response, that is to be expected, and could also be considered a skewed perspective."

So, you mean "that is to be expected" means it is to be expected because the police have integrity, have looked into it and are not self-serving. I can infer from this only two possible interpretations: 1) it is to be expected that the police look into things and that they should find this way as all police procedure was followed; or, 2) it is to be expected that the police look after their own (biased and self-serving).

Explain, without divergence to any other topic what you meant.

I am totally on board with David Lammy and we need more social and welfare reforms. I dislike efforts to make this BAME vs the police. That is not going well in America and it won't go well here.
 
Separate point, but to widen out my perspective. The idea that the American Police are racist is a total misunderstanding of the issue. America is deeply racist in every aspect of how society works. It is racist because it is a wealth economy that is based on rugged individualism. A society which still uses Wild West terminology and approaches when discussing law. It is a country doomed because it goes to war with everything. War on Terror. War on Drugs. War on Crime. Now they are at war with their police. ABOLISH POLICE, they cry, waving their guns around.

The truth is that America will only get better by making peace and making reforms. Reform the way taxes pay only for local services. Reform the way poor people can only fund poor schools. Reform the way guns make police edgy and violent - a cop is killed every three days in the US.

Here is a radical idea. Help the police. Reduce their workload. Make their jobs safer. Stop creating this war of distraction. The police are not your enemy - the rich people who are scared of you down the road (not because you are black but because you have nothing and they have everything - which is what racism is, really, fear) they are the enemy.

So, when I see this country - which has reformed its police so far and is working hard to keep the police reforming - tarred with that brush it annoys me. It is a deeply misguided approach to dealing with a deeply important issue.
 
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I did think that in the stop and search incident an opportunity was lost to defuse the situation. I'm broadly on the left ( Labour Party member again after a four year break) I understand the frustration of the black community and agree that they have been badly treated. What has happened is that young black men have very limited opportunities to succeed and that many who do, to extent of owning new Mercedes in their 20's, have done so by illicit means. This is a toxic cocktail, one that I can see no real solution to. Those people who put up signs saying" No blacks, no dogs, no Irish" have a lot to answer for.
 
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And more evidence that Rishi Sunak is possibly more right wing than Genghis Khan. Frontline workers who have their COVID-19 tests paid for by their employers are to pay income tax on the value of the test, as it is an earned benefit. Presumably if the entire NHS and care home workforce declines to be tested and dies of the virus, that would be a result for the Tories.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...in-uk-set-to-pay-extra-tax-for-covid-19-tests
 
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