Off Topic The Politics Thread

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

  • Stay in

    Votes: 56 47.9%

  • Get out

    Votes: 61 52.1%
  • Total voters
    117
  • Poll closed .
Stroller said:
Srewart Lee.....

I had planned to incinerate all the flags I tore down from bridges over the M6 last August bank holiday. But because they were made of a cheap Chinese plastic polymer they just melted into a congealed mess and stained the patio. I was disappointed not to see the flags engulfed in purifying flame. But at least the multicoloured residue they left behind was a good metaphor for the vibrant mix of cultures that is modern British national identity.

I don’t know why I tore all the flags down. Somewhere south of the Scottish border I just snapped. So whenever I pulled in for petrol I weaved my way through the service station back entrances to the nearest bridges and ripped dozens off the railings. Cars passing beneath tooted, whether in support or anger I didn’t know. Or care. Like the noble comedians that played the Saudi Arabian comedy festival last week, I didn’t do what I did for public approval or financial gain. I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do.

One driver pulled up on a bridge and sat watching me, doubled up with laughter. Was he chuckling supportively, or was he enjoying the ultimately futile efforts of a hot fat man trying in vain to stem the incoming tide of fascism? Either way, it was nice to have provoked unalloyed joy, something I rarely experience in my professional life as an “achingly politically correct, alleged comedian” (Sarah Vine, Daily Mail).

But are the flags that now bedeck our suburbs and estates patriotic or racist? It’s a nuanced notion unlikely to be adequately interrogated in a world where the main forum for public debate is an algorithmically amplified digital dogfighting pit presided over by a ketamine-cranked egomaniac. (Yes, that Elon Musk, who recently appeared on a big screen in Trafalgar Square alongside a throb-veined and fraudulent sunlounger magnate, apparently trying to incite a race war.)

For example, the phrase “Free Palestine” is not of itself antisemitic, but if that phrase is shouted aggressively after a goal is scored against a football team of young Jewish schoolboys, as a radio phone-in caller reported last week, it probably is. That said, I’ve never understood “the culture of football”, which just sounds to me like an unpleasant mould growing in an unwashed corner of Ron Atkinson.

As I drove east through Portsmouth last month towards Southsea, the proliferating England flags became conspicuously clustered outside mosques – intended, of course, to intimidate. They called to mind the territorial markers of human heads on sticks in Italian cannibal exploitation cinema that explorers ignore before being disembowelled by racist caricatures of indigenous people, albeit in a way that simultaneously asks questions about human nature and showcases Ursula Andress at her most fetching.

Later that same day I arrived further east along the coast in Emsworth, suddenly needing a haircut. But when I saw the massive England flags in the barber’s window I decided to stay shaggy. A cascade of prejudiced assumptions against probably blameless ordinary folk meant I didn’t want to have to listen to someone who, in the current climate, would choose to fly an England flag. And who, let’s not forget, would also have a collection of very sharp objects. I appreciate this is my problem. But symbols change their meaning. My flag is lost.

For example, the swastika is actually an ancient good luck charm, but its appropriation by the Nazis last century means you would be unlikely to send a drawing of one unsolicited to someone the night before their driving test. Similarly, the England flag is, once again, no longer a uniformly positive symbol, particularly to generations of Asians who can remember being beaten up in the 1970s by bands of flag-festooned fascist skinheads, a tradition commemorated in Claudette’s forgotten 1970 ska hit Skinheads A Bash Them. Remember when songs used to be about something?

Let’s not lie about what’s going on. We accept that a minority of the anti-genocide protesters may be antisemitic, yet politicians of all persuasions maintain the fiction that the flag-waving coke-thugs rabbit-punching the police and pissing everywhere on Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom marches are an expression of patriotism as innocent as morris dancing, cheese rolling and dwile flonking; and it’s just a coincidence, for example, that over two-thirds of the people arrested at Bristol’s anti-immigration Save Our Kids riots last summer had previous contact with the police over reports of domestic abuse. And, as the comedian Alasdair Beckett-King pointed out to me backstage at a benefit on Monday, their comical chant of “Allah? Allah? Who the **** is Allah?” is unlikely to represent a genuine inquiry. We have Google for that.

My problem with what flags mean is that I am old enough to remember my grandparents, whom I lived with as a child and who were otherwise kind and generous, being part of a delegation sent round to stop their neighbour selling his house to an Asian family in the Midland suburb of Shirley in 1974; and being told, when the five-year-old me questioned this, that it wasn’t racist but was about protecting house values. Oddly, we also had to have the television turned over whenever black people came on. Perhaps that was about economics too. Maybe Ken Boothe’s “coloured” face, singing Everything I Own on Top of the Pops, used up more expensive electrical energy than Colin Crompton dinging a bell on The Wheeltappers And Shunters Social Club?

I’m also old enough to remember when mainstream British politicians, who should know better, stirred up racial hatred as a path to power. You’re old enough to remember this too because it was last Tuesday. And it was Robert Jenrick. And if you still vote Conservative after that speech then you, sir, are a veritable scoundrel. Now, is anyone in the market for a flag residue paperweight?
Click to expand...
Not reading all that.
 
start of a civil war

Clashes erupt between Hamas forces and armed clan members in Gaza City
3 hours ago
Share
Save
Rushdi AbualoufGaza correspondent in Istanbul
You must log in or register to see images
AFP via Getty Images
At least 27 people have been killed in fierce clashes between Hamas security forces and armed members of the Dughmush family in Gaza City, in one of the most violent internal confrontations since the end of major Israeli operations in the enclave.

Masked Hamas gunmen exchanged fire with clan fighters near the city's Jordanian hospital, witnesses said.

A senior official in the Hamas-run interior ministry said security units surrounded them and engaged in heavy fighting to detain them. The ministry said eight its members were killed in "an armed assault by a militia".

Medical sources said 19 Dughmush clan members and eight Hamas fighters had been killed since fighting began on Saturday.


Eyewitnesses said the clashes erupted in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood in southern Gaza City after a Hamas force of more than 300 fighters moved to storm a residential block where Dughmush gunmen were entrenched.

Residents described scenes of panic as dozens of families fled their homes under heavy gunfire, many of them displaced multiple times during the war.

"This time people weren't fleeing Israeli attacks," one resident said. "They were running from their own people."

The Dughmush family, one of Gaza's most prominent clans, has long had a tense relationship with Hamas, and its armed members have clashed with the group on several occasions in the past.

The Hamas-run interior ministry said its forces were seeking to restore order, warning that "any armed activity outside the framework of the resistance" would be dealt with firmly.

Both sides traded accusations over who was responsible for triggering the clashes.

Hamas earlier said Dughmush gunmen killed two of its fighters and wounded five others, prompting the group to launch an operation against them.

However, a source from the Dughmush family told local media that Hamas forces had come to a building that once served as the Jordanian Hospital, where the family had taken refuge after their homes in the al-Sabra neighbourhood were destroyed in the recent Israeli attack.

The source claimed that Hamas sought to evict the family from the building to establish a new base for its forces there.

Hamas has recalled about 7,000 members of its security forces to reassert control over areas of Gaza recently vacated by Israeli troops, according to local sources.

Reports suggest armed Hamas units have already deployed across several districts, some wearing civilian clothes and others in the blue uniforms of the Gaza police. The Hamas media office denied it was deploying "fighters in the streets".
 
kiwiqpr said:
start of a civil war

Clashes erupt between Hamas forces and armed clan members in Gaza City
3 hours ago
Share
Save
Rushdi AbualoufGaza correspondent in Istanbul
You must log in or register to see images
AFP via Getty Images
At least 27 people have been killed in fierce clashes between Hamas security forces and armed members of the Dughmush family in Gaza City, in one of the most violent internal confrontations since the end of major Israeli operations in the enclave.

Masked Hamas gunmen exchanged fire with clan fighters near the city's Jordanian hospital, witnesses said.

A senior official in the Hamas-run interior ministry said security units surrounded them and engaged in heavy fighting to detain them. The ministry said eight its members were killed in "an armed assault by a militia".

Medical sources said 19 Dughmush clan members and eight Hamas fighters had been killed since fighting began on Saturday.


Eyewitnesses said the clashes erupted in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood in southern Gaza City after a Hamas force of more than 300 fighters moved to storm a residential block where Dughmush gunmen were entrenched.

Residents described scenes of panic as dozens of families fled their homes under heavy gunfire, many of them displaced multiple times during the war.

"This time people weren't fleeing Israeli attacks," one resident said. "They were running from their own people."

The Dughmush family, one of Gaza's most prominent clans, has long had a tense relationship with Hamas, and its armed members have clashed with the group on several occasions in the past.

The Hamas-run interior ministry said its forces were seeking to restore order, warning that "any armed activity outside the framework of the resistance" would be dealt with firmly.

Both sides traded accusations over who was responsible for triggering the clashes.

Hamas earlier said Dughmush gunmen killed two of its fighters and wounded five others, prompting the group to launch an operation against them.

However, a source from the Dughmush family told local media that Hamas forces had come to a building that once served as the Jordanian Hospital, where the family had taken refuge after their homes in the al-Sabra neighbourhood were destroyed in the recent Israeli attack.

The source claimed that Hamas sought to evict the family from the building to establish a new base for its forces there.

Hamas has recalled about 7,000 members of its security forces to reassert control over areas of Gaza recently vacated by Israeli troops, according to local sources.

Reports suggest armed Hamas units have already deployed across several districts, some wearing civilian clothes and others in the blue uniforms of the Gaza police. The Hamas media office denied it was deploying "fighters in the streets".
Click to expand...
On the bright side Hamas have found their uniforms again after being in the wash for months.
 
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Stroller said:
Srewart Lee.....

I had planned to incinerate all the flags I tore down from bridges over the M6 last August bank holiday. But because they were made of a cheap Chinese plastic polymer they just melted into a congealed mess and stained the patio. I was disappointed not to see the flags engulfed in purifying flame. But at least the multicoloured residue they left behind was a good metaphor for the vibrant mix of cultures that is modern British national identity.

I don’t know why I tore all the flags down. Somewhere south of the Scottish border I just snapped. So whenever I pulled in for petrol I weaved my way through the service station back entrances to the nearest bridges and ripped dozens off the railings. Cars passing beneath tooted, whether in support or anger I didn’t know. Or care. Like the noble comedians that played the Saudi Arabian comedy festival last week, I didn’t do what I did for public approval or financial gain. I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do.

One driver pulled up on a bridge and sat watching me, doubled up with laughter. Was he chuckling supportively, or was he enjoying the ultimately futile efforts of a hot fat man trying in vain to stem the incoming tide of fascism? Either way, it was nice to have provoked unalloyed joy, something I rarely experience in my professional life as an “achingly politically correct, alleged comedian” (Sarah Vine, Daily Mail).

But are the flags that now bedeck our suburbs and estates patriotic or racist? It’s a nuanced notion unlikely to be adequately interrogated in a world where the main forum for public debate is an algorithmically amplified digital dogfighting pit presided over by a ketamine-cranked egomaniac. (Yes, that Elon Musk, who recently appeared on a big screen in Trafalgar Square alongside a throb-veined and fraudulent sunlounger magnate, apparently trying to incite a race war.)

For example, the phrase “Free Palestine” is not of itself antisemitic, but if that phrase is shouted aggressively after a goal is scored against a football team of young Jewish schoolboys, as a radio phone-in caller reported last week, it probably is. That said, I’ve never understood “the culture of football”, which just sounds to me like an unpleasant mould growing in an unwashed corner of Ron Atkinson.

As I drove east through Portsmouth last month towards Southsea, the proliferating England flags became conspicuously clustered outside mosques – intended, of course, to intimidate. They called to mind the territorial markers of human heads on sticks in Italian cannibal exploitation cinema that explorers ignore before being disembowelled by racist caricatures of indigenous people, albeit in a way that simultaneously asks questions about human nature and showcases Ursula Andress at her most fetching.

Later that same day I arrived further east along the coast in Emsworth, suddenly needing a haircut. But when I saw the massive England flags in the barber’s window I decided to stay shaggy. A cascade of prejudiced assumptions against probably blameless ordinary folk meant I didn’t want to have to listen to someone who, in the current climate, would choose to fly an England flag. And who, let’s not forget, would also have a collection of very sharp objects. I appreciate this is my problem. But symbols change their meaning. My flag is lost.

For example, the swastika is actually an ancient good luck charm, but its appropriation by the Nazis last century means you would be unlikely to send a drawing of one unsolicited to someone the night before their driving test. Similarly, the England flag is, once again, no longer a uniformly positive symbol, particularly to generations of Asians who can remember being beaten up in the 1970s by bands of flag-festooned fascist skinheads, a tradition commemorated in Claudette’s forgotten 1970 ska hit Skinheads A Bash Them. Remember when songs used to be about something?

Let’s not lie about what’s going on. We accept that a minority of the anti-genocide protesters may be antisemitic, yet politicians of all persuasions maintain the fiction that the flag-waving coke-thugs rabbit-punching the police and pissing everywhere on Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom marches are an expression of patriotism as innocent as morris dancing, cheese rolling and dwile flonking; and it’s just a coincidence, for example, that over two-thirds of the people arrested at Bristol’s anti-immigration Save Our Kids riots last summer had previous contact with the police over reports of domestic abuse. And, as the comedian Alasdair Beckett-King pointed out to me backstage at a benefit on Monday, their comical chant of “Allah? Allah? Who the **** is Allah?” is unlikely to represent a genuine inquiry. We have Google for that.

My problem with what flags mean is that I am old enough to remember my grandparents, whom I lived with as a child and who were otherwise kind and generous, being part of a delegation sent round to stop their neighbour selling his house to an Asian family in the Midland suburb of Shirley in 1974; and being told, when the five-year-old me questioned this, that it wasn’t racist but was about protecting house values. Oddly, we also had to have the television turned over whenever black people came on. Perhaps that was about economics too. Maybe Ken Boothe’s “coloured” face, singing Everything I Own on Top of the Pops, used up more expensive electrical energy than Colin Crompton dinging a bell on The Wheeltappers And Shunters Social Club?

I’m also old enough to remember when mainstream British politicians, who should know better, stirred up racial hatred as a path to power. You’re old enough to remember this too because it was last Tuesday. And it was Robert Jenrick. And if you still vote Conservative after that speech then you, sir, are a veritable scoundrel. Now, is anyone in the market for a flag residue paperweight?
Click to expand...
I’ve seen Stewart Lee live a couple of times and he’s brilliant. But this is exactly one of the things he takes the piss out of, celebrities who have opinions for money. It’s sad that his family were racists, and that Robert Jenrick is. But at least Stew has had a pay day out of it. Again.
 
How long before Hamas / Hezbollah start launching rockets into Israel who then responds in kind x 10?

Maybe I'm unduly cynical but I think this conflict is far from over

In the meantime we could start a top 10 of the issues that the permanent protesters backing the Palestinian cause will align themselves behind next. Is Paddy Power giving odds?
 
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SARQPR said:
How long before Hamas / Hezbollah start launching rockets into Israel who then responds in kind x 10?

Maybe I'm unduly cynical but I think this conflict is far from over

In the meantime we could start a top 10 of the issues that the permanent protesters backing the Palestinian cause will align themselves behind next. Is Paddy Power giving odds?
Click to expand...

Interesting that as soon as Israel withdraw hundreds of Hamas 'footsoldiers' emerge from nowhere all looking well-fed and ready to take retribution against 'collaborators'. While their people starved Hamas looked after themselves hijacking most of the aid that arrived. I'll be amazed if we get to Christmas without it kicking off again, as long as Hamas remain it will always be on a knife-edge...
 
Sooperhoop said:
Interesting that as soon as Israel withdraw hundreds of Hamas 'footsoldiers' emerge from nowhere all looking well-fed and ready to take retribution against 'collaborators'. While their people starved Hamas looked after themselves hijacking most of the aid that arrived. I'll be amazed if we get to Christmas without it kicking off again, as long as Hamas remain it will always be on a knife-edge...
Click to expand...

Imagine if all that energy from Tristram and Hatty wasted on calling for the obliteration of Israel had been channelled towards calling for the protection of Palestinians from their own.

Not actually that hard to imagine as nothing would be any different but still would’ve made the last two years marginally less mental.
 
Even if Hamas had all starved with the people how long before another group was rearmed by Iran to start the mayhem all over again
 
Mahmood says that immigrants coming here to work will have to speak English to ‘A’ level standard. There is no such measure of fluency, ‘A’ level English is a technical course (my daughter did it) which most British people, including me, wouldn’t have a chance at. Why not use a relevant measure, like a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) rating?

No problem with the requirement, as always I despair at the execution.
 
sb_73 said:
Mahmood says that immigrants coming here to work will have to speak English to ‘A’ level standard. There is no such measure of fluency, ‘A’ level English is a technical course (my daughter did it) which most British people, including me, wouldn’t have a chance at. Why not use a relevant measure, like a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) rating?

No problem with the requirement, as always I despair at the execution.
Click to expand...

In 2016 TfL controversially introduced an English language test for all non-English drivers but Mayor Khan claimed it was racist so TfL made all drivers take the test. Fortunately I had my 1970 O-Level certificate which was the equivalent level at which the test was set so that was accepted after a 6 month wait. Those with no certificates had to pay £180 for the test with the designated service provider which was actually a company linked to one of TfL's directors. It created a lot of problems with renewal of licences which often overran the four months application period resulting in drivers being unable to work. The test was modified a number of times but has now been linked to another test all drivers have to take and cost reduced to £36.

Despite these changes TfL continue to have major problems with renewing licences with hundreds of drivers facing time off road due to the incompetence of the processing. Despite having passed the criteria the two times I applied for renewal afterwards I was asked to provide evidence I had passed the test, the last time my licence was only renewed the day before it expired. Since I retired last year it's got even worse. I only hope however they organise this A-Level idea they actually use a reputable company to deal with it and actually make the test relevant to day-to-day use and not something even the average English person would struggle with. The reality is you could talk to a person and within a couple of minutes recognise their fluency but it seems bureaucracy has to complicate things...
 
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Interesting that Starmer has finally told his troops that it's OK to slag off Brexit. We're being braced, of course, for tax rises in the budget and they're going to blame Brexit for the state of the economy. There's undoubtedly a lot of truth in that, but it would carry more weight if they'd been saying it all along. Still, better late than never, and it'll hopefully encourage the odd brave journalist to ask Farage to justify himself and the disaster that his one political achievement has been.

Don't hold your breath, though.
 
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