Blah Blah

And this is precisely why there are problems around politicians managing public health. Politicians are constantly thinking of how to stay or get elected. This skews everything. A second wave is coming. I think every agrees on that. How bad or easy it is to manage, will be entirely down to government preparations, but the spin almost certainly will seek to pit the people against the people, just as it always does. Be that left vs right, poor vs deserving poor, class division or those who abide by the rules, and those who don't. This government are experts at it. It is how they conned people into voting for Brexit after all. Easing lockdown and reopening businesses where people can not socially distance effectively was always going to be difficult to be fair. And come the winter, when people can not eat and drink outside, what happens then? Many pubs are not even abiding by the government rules requiring contact details to be taken. Why? Because it is difficult to do that with people who are drinking on pavements only. You only have to look at the pictures of Soho last night to see why that might be. Anyone who has served in a busy bar knows how faffing about with registration forms was never going to work in the UK.

SpringTime Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I'm also for higher taxes. Stuck with me for the > better part of 30 years when a teacher told me > "this country needs the f****** sh** taxed out of > it" - sounded extreme at the time but keeps making > more and more sense. Happy to be schooled by > anyone in the know but as I remember things the > French were taxed proper from the early 1980s and > look at the difference now between France and the > UK. It's embarrassing. There's so much scorn for > public services here, and at the same time some > people seem to want Scandinavian levels of > provision on US levels of tax. Doesn't work, > sorry. An even better comparison is with the Nordic countries. Sweden has very high tax but Finland has an income tax rate that comes in at about 32%. It has the lowest tax gap in Europe (people actually pay more tax than they need to) and its standard of living is much better for everyone. It also has much better unemployment support and has eradicated homelessness. It can be done.

Effra Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Blah Blah Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > >When are we going to have a government > > that builds the homes we actually need, over > > investment opportunities for the private > sector. > They get it from taxes. Do you want higher taxes > or do you want your children and grand children to > pay it back, with interest on top? Yes I would support higher taxes so that families don't have to live in a single room in bed and breakfast. I would pay higher taxes so that people don't have to burn to death in tower blocks clad with unsafe materials (so much for the building regs you cite btw). There have (I believe) been three meaningful waves of social and council home building that all addressed housing crisis at the time. In the 70's, most households lived in council housing, until they could afford to buy. We have become too reliant on a private rental sector that makes saving a deposit impossible for most working people. There should be a balance and government can deliver that with the right investment and regulation. We have had it that way before after all.

That makes perfect sense Siduhe.

Yes, it is smoke and mirrors, to enable Boris to sound like he is delivering on manifesto pledges, when in reality he is not. Most of the investment is staggered over 12 years too, so it waters down pretty fast. And nowhere in any of that is a pledge to maintain what formerly were EU grants to the poorest regions (worth around ?4bn a year). In addition, most of the investment is set up to directly benefit government cronies who will profit from the contracts. Housing especially is worth scrutinising. No effort to address the real issue of affordability. Once again, setting up the market for yet more homes for sale at market prices. When are we going to have a government that builds the homes we actually need, over investment opportunities for the private sector.

ianr Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > And the WHO, of course, colluded > > by NOT slapping on an air travel ban > > What authority would they have to do so? The WHO have no authority to tell any country to do anything. All they can do is advise and provide resources. The general consensus is that by the time the virus was detected, it was already firmly spread, meaning that an immediate air travel ban would likely have changed very little.

But Covid is NOT a conspiracy theory Uncleglen. It is a zoonotic virus transmission, that has led to a global pandemic, that has killed half a million people in just six months. So lets leave the conspiracy nonsense at the bin where it belongs. On pubs. I can see all kinds of issues, that only get worse once people are drunk. Better managed in Summer, impossible to manage in Winter. Around a quarter of pubs can not open at all, unable to enforce any kind of social distancing, and then there is the issue of people giving their names and other details. Some won't want to do it, or will give false data. Even with the majority of the public complying with lock down measures, that R number hasn't got much below 1 so far. So we will have to see how it goes.

But migrants ARE the scapegoat. Brexit was entirely fought on that basis. You can see the same backlash across Europe, in countries like Poland and Hungary, exacerbated by the Syrian War and the refugee crisis born from that. And just as with the rise of Hitler, the collapse of economies raises the notion of anyone considered an outsider, being pushed out of the system.

The genuine hard left would be those to subscribe to the ideas around revolutionary communism PK. Anarchists who want to smash the capitalist system and install pure socialism for example, and think achieving that by force if necessary, is a valid position to take. What typifies those on both ends of the political spectrum is the rejection of consensus. Ideologues have no place for that usually.

I don't think the center failed Springtime, I think this is always the pattern after a global financial crash. Even localised recessions open the door to the fringes of the political spectrum, where ideas that belong to the edges begin to seep into the mainstream. These are always crucial times, which at their most anarchic, lead to revolutions, or war. And the pattern is always the same. As economies struggle, migrants become the first scapegoats. Then comes the attack on foreign trade and a return to protectionism. We are already seeing that. Resurgence of nationalism then comes too which draws out polarised battles between political extremes. It happened in 1906. It happened in 1929. And it has happened in 2008. Take a look at the decade that followed all of those major economic contractions, and the same pattern emerges. And the Pandemic is about to sink the entire world into a recession. Have a think about what that means. Major unemployment. More refugees and economic migrants desperate to find a better existence, at the very time countries are lifting their drawbridges. Will nations work together to get economies going again, or will it be every nation for herself? The thing that caused the 2008 crisis is the very same thing that led to the 1929 crisis. It was not the center ground that took us there, but the greed of the libertarian free market. The removal of all the regulations put in place after 1929, in the mad belief that speculators and city traders wouldn't make the same mistakes again! The removal of the Glass Steagall Act by Clinton being the biggest mistake of all. There is a lot wrong with our financial systems. But there is even more wrong with our aversion to regulation.

People are not allowed to have sensible middle of the road opinion anymore. On the one side, you have right wing bigots (like Uncle) calling anyone who challenges them hard left (nonsense). And then you do have a genuine hard left who are equally intolerant to any criticism of their views. These people are in a minority, but they bark very loudly at the moment, because they are emboldened by populist charlatans that have stolen mainstream parties and found their way to government. This will crash and burn in the same way it always does eventually.

And that is the usual diatribe of those on the political fringes of opinion Effra. Instead of asking why their views are so offensive, they sneer at those correctly pointing out the offense. Bigotry will always be shunned by the mainstream for good reason. Racism, xenophobia, etc for the same reasons. Encouraging a bigot like Uncle to 'sock it to them' is everything that is wrong with the world.

Yes I can agree Mrs Brown's Boys isn't that funny Spartacus ;) It feels very dated to me but my cousin loves it, so there is an audience for it. This is where it is impossible to avoid the complexity of all of this. Drag and especially pantomime drag, feeds into the gender constructs that for example, render older women as unattractive and/or invisible (irregardless of whether they actually are or not). But it is complex because in many family units, the eldest female is the matriarch, who often rules the roost. So we often also see the matriarch as a character in drag. This is where Mrs Brown's Boys sits. And what part does the history of theater play too? Men historically have played female roles, and not always as a form of satire either. Similarly, the theaters of Victorian England had many an impersonator. Women who assumed the character of wandering dandies, or city gents, whilst singing a song or two. There is also the further layer of sexual orientation. In a culture where homosexuality was illegal, theater was often the safest environment for those who did not fit into any heteronormative norm. The same was true for all kinds of people outcast for all kinds of reasons. There is no one answer to your question on degradation Spartacus, for all of those reasons. Feminists would argue that men ridicule women they do not find attractive, and there is some truth to that. Neuroscience now has research that suggests we are hardwired as a species to have aversion to faces we do not find asymmetrical for example, even when we are not trying to display any aversion. And it had been understood for a long time that our DNA is wired to seek out seemingly physically healthy partners. How does that play on a gender basis? There are nuanced differences there, but all genders have aversion indicators. So there are some biological things underlying some unconscious bias. Because it is unconscious, can we ever be entirely free of it? In my opinion, there are things that can definitely be tackled, like inequality of opportunity. We can ask the questions around upward social mobility, but the answers will often draw on a wide range of inequalities that go beyond ethnicity, gender etc. Answering the question of how to stop unconscious bias however, is impossible to answer. And I would also say that culture aversion is just as strong a factor in unconscious bias. We never really talk about culture in debates around racism, but we should.

Whataboutery!

DulwichBorn&Bred Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > A really good watch and educational: The school > that tried to end racism. > https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-school-tha > t-tried-to-end-racism I thought this programme was thought provoking (in a good way). What I found most interesting is how the already established differing levels of confidence affected the thought process of the kids. But I also came away with hope. Children are far smarter than we sometimes give them credit for, and at that age, they have a simple approach to life that says everything must make logical sense. That is a key impetus of learning at that age anyway. I really liked the way the programme sought to empower everyone around their culture and identity. The key to ending racism is exactly that - finding value in our own culture and identity, as much as others. Tackling inequality in turn, is then something everyone can work together on.

Yes I second that. Isolation is particularly challenging for alcoholics. Socially distanced counselling isn't going to be enough probably. You could try contacting the community mental health team on Lordship Lane. https://www.together-uk.org/southwark-wellbeing-hub/the-directory/8650/cmht-lordship-lane-dulwich/ They are likely to know best what help is available at the moment for someone in his circumstances. Also, he can get a referral to them from his GP if he has one. All CMHT's have crisis teams, so I suggest you ask to speak directly with someone from that. It sounds to me as though he needs some kind of outreach visit to assess his needs. That he confided in you is a good sign that he is willing to get back to the recovery stage he was at. So I would stress that it would possibly be productive for any resources to be made available to him.

Katie Hopkins never sees anything wrong in the race baiting bile she posts though. So any explanation she offers is bs quite frankly.

I would argue that the slogan does its job perfectly well in the context of deaths in Police custody and the failure to hold anyone accountable afterwards. It could even be argued that it has resonance during a pandemic that disproportionately kills BAME people, many of them who were taking care of others in hospitals. No person should be taking offense at that slogan. White privilege is a bit more complex granted, because it involves dynamics around class structures that can impact white people too, and we have discussed that here in part.

No Cat, all you have done is post links to people who display the undertones of feeling some threat to their white identity because black people are fighting for equality again. That is their issue to deal with, not the problem of black people. I know this is a left wing platform, but every point they make here is statistical fact. I know that you agree that these disparities exist, so I am genuinely baffled as to why you take such exception to the slogan 'black lives matter'. https://bylinetimes.com/2020/06/08/black-lives-dont-matter-in-britain/

pk Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > if you think that you don't come across as obsessed with reeling off stuff about how black people use terminology that you don't like, most of which you proudly paraphrase off Spiked then you should probably review your posting history > > you really think Spiked is the answer to racism in the UK? Exactly this. Maybe Cat would like to state in plain English, just why he thinks the slogan 'black lives matter' alienates some people?

And there you make no sense Cat. You are trying to make this an issue of your free speech and your anecdotal opinion, while seeking to rewrite the free speech of black activism. I repeat again. It is not black activism that has the issue here. It is white people willfully failing to grasp the concept of a simple slogan. The only question there is why. Latent racism exists. Black people see it every day. You might do better to explore that.

But that activist organisation IS black people, and as such they have every right to express themselves as they wish. The two are not separable. The only obsessive person here on that is YOU. Black lives matter is not a difficult concept to understand, so why is the onus for black activists to change their slogan? You have willfully ignored my point too that those who take offense to it, do so deliberately. You know perfectly well why they do. THAT is what needs challenging. Not a simple slogan that any five year old could grasp the meaning of.

You seem to miss the key point Cat. 'don't tell them what language they can and can't use' THAT. Because that is exactly what you are doing. You are telling black people that slogans they feel succinctly convey their cause, aren't helping their cause (in effect). And you are saying that because some white people refuse to understand the concept behind those slogans. The people reacting with 'all lives matter' and worse still 'white lives matter' are doing so deliberately. They don't give a hoot what black people are complaining about, just that they are complaining. So how about we challenge those people instead, instead of finding fault yet again, with how black people express themselves?

Excellent post j.a. My own view is that to be offended by the slogan 'black lives matter', over understanding why black people are using it in the context of protest, is itself a display of latent racism. Because what actually offends that person, is that black people are asserting their experiences and seeking to change something. It comes from exactly the same place as the perception that ethnic minorities are treated better than their white counterparts. I watched a sky documentary about George Floyd which shows all the camera footage from the moment shop workers confront him about the use of fake notes, to the lifting of his limp (and obviously dead) body by paramedics onto an ambulance stretcher. It is the viewing of a murder. What strikes me is the abject lack of empathy in the face of the Police Officer suffocating him to death. It is not hard to see why any black person would see that lack of empathy as a racist response. Whatever the truth of that, he was a Police Officer who overreacted to the complaint of an already handcuffed man, and did so without any consideration for the life and wellbeing of George Floyd. I then watched a documentary about Sandra Bland. And once again, what is seen is a Police Officer who overreacts and abuses his powers, because a black woman dares to answer him back. Racism isn't always overt. It often is just that small difference in response to attitude that tips the balance one way or the other. Black people see this every time it happens. When the now Prime Minister calls Africans 'piccaninnies with water melon smiles', that matters. That he got away with it so lightly, also matters. That we also try to whitewash history of racism also matters. Churchill WAS a racist. We should be able to have a sensible conversation about that while at the same time acknowledging his leadership during WW2. So for me, what 'black lives matter' conveys, is that those experiences at the hands of racism, be it overt OR casual, matter. That should be a simple enough concept for anyone to grasp and agree with.

Yeah, I think most people will be holding what they have for the coming unemployment or fear of it. The furlough was to cover the costs of businesses making no income. The government is about to reduce that while many of those businesses are still making no income. Others not enough. Does anyone really think most restaurants are going to survive even when they reopen with measures? The same for pubs, theatres, music venues? And what about gyms, spas, etc? Some are already going to the wall.