General Discussion of UK Politics

[tamada]

"And while the Conservatives don’t much seem to mind where donor money originates, they certainly care about where asylum seekers and refugees hail from.

I’ve always found the joyful cruelty of British nationalism to be abhorrent, but under the Conservatives it has grown to become more celebrated than ever.

Suella Braverman’s recent refusal to apologise for using the same rhetoric as the Nazis to demonise people fleeing war and discrimination is not unique. Contemporary right-wing movements often delight in “owning the libs”, finding humour in actions whose sole purpose is to cause hurt over any meaningful political goal.

The news from yesterday that scores of children seeking asylum have been abducted from Home Office-run hotels – something that was allowed to happen despite numerous warnings – only underscores the inhumanity of the United Kingdom.

It is estimated that a hotel run by the Home Office in Kent is losing 10% of its young asylum seekers to gangs snatching them off the street every week. The absence of care that has led to this situation is unforgivable. ..."

https://www.thenational.scot/politics/2 ... fabric-uk/

[AlexO]

Deary me Tam, really clutching at straws now. Quoting from the joke SNP comic The National?
If they said today was Tuesday I would check elsewhere.
Who brought these "asylum" seekers over in illegal, highly dangerous boats from a peaceful, prosperous European mainland?
Are you really trying to convince people that unaccompanied youngsters are dumped in Home Office funded hotels in amongst the normal military aged males who form the vast majority of illegal Migrants and then abducted by more people trafficking gangs without any cry's of outrage from the likes of the BBC etc.
Sorry but methinks you have cried 'wolf' on this one a wee bit too often.
The National FFS, really?

[AlexO]

I’ve always found the joyful cruelty of British nationalism to be abhorrent, but under the Conservatives it has grown to become more celebrated than ever.

As opposed to Scottish Nationalism, which is a loving, caring, socialist and tolerant form of Nationalism.
Please read the article that Tam asks us to accept as a fair, accurate fact of what is happening in the UK.
The moon is made of green cheese, fact, or as factual as The National will ever be.

[tamada]

Umberto Eco Makes a List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism

While Eco is firm in claiming “There was only one Nazism,” he says, “the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change.” Eco reduces the qualities of what he calls “Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism” down to 14 “typical” features. “These features,” writes the novelist and semiotician, “cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”

1 The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”

2 The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”

3 The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”

4 Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”

5 Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”

6 Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”

7 The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”

8 The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

9 Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”

10 Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”

11 Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”

12 Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of non-standard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”

13 Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”

14 Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umb ... scism.html

Tory box-checking time.

For our friends from across the Atlantic, Republican box-checking time but don't post a comment about American politics here. There's a US Politics thread for that.

Ta
tam

[tamada]

The Tory answer to improved community police services... the tiny police station.

Miniature police station no bigger than a shed opens to tackle knife crime

Sussex officers unveil ‘smallest’ base in the country after stabbings in Crawley, with nowhere to put anyone who is arrested

Sussex Police secured money for the new police station from a government fund set up to deal with knife crime and violence in town centres.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/1 ... ey-sussex/

[AlexO]

Umberto Eco Makes a List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism

While Eco is firm in claiming “There was only one Nazism,” he says, “the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change.” Eco reduces the qualities of what he calls “Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism” down to 14 “typical” features. “These features,” writes the novelist and semiotician, “cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”

Honestly Tam.
From quoting the 'National' to copying the rantings of an obscure, up his own rectum Italian Theorist (just read what a semiotician is in Google) on what is Fascism you must be having a bad day.
Take a cool cloth, place on forehead and have a wee lie doon.

[tamada]

As the Covid enquiry progresses, some worrying but not unexpected revelations on the thoughts of the Tory Prime Minister and "a lot" of his backbenchers at the time.

"Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, made the comments in his diary on 14 December 2020, amid a huge Covid wave that led to the third national lockdown and killed 1,000 people a day at its peak.

Vallance claimed Johnson said that a lot of his party “thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just nature’s way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them”.

The following day, Vallance wrote that the then Conservative chief whip, Mark Spencer, said “I think we should let the old people get it and protect others.” Johnson backed this statement, according to Vallance, allegedly responding: “A lot of my backbenchers think that and I must say I agree with them.”

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/boris- ... e-inquiry/

You can also read about it on BBC, Sky and Reuters.

[tamada]

Oh, the irony.

Deputy PM Oliver Dowden said the world must “protect ourselves” against the risks posed by artificial intelligence...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... r-starmer/

[AlexO]

Vallance claimed Johnson said that a lot of his party “thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just nature’s way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them”.

The following day, Vallance wrote that the then Conservative chief whip, Mark Spencer, said “I think we should let the old people get it and protect others.” Johnson backed this statement, according to Vallance, allegedly responding: “A lot of my backbenchers think that and I must say I agree with them.”

If we were honest Tam, there were more than a few on this Forum and many millions across the globe that felt the same.
The Global economy and the education of whole swathes of children and adult students never mind the mental health effects suffered by millions, caused by taking the 'easy option' of shutting down everything, was for me a total over reaction by the world's leaders to a virus that almost exclusively affected the elderly and already infirm adults.
I will bet you any money you like, Boris was not the only National Leader thinking the same way.

[jackspratt]

Let the old buggers die, for the greater good.

Sounds very communist to me.

[AlexO]

Let the old buggers die, for the greater good.

Sounds very communist to me.

So not Fascist or Filthy Money Grabbing Tories. Thats a pleasant change.

[tamada]

[AlexO]

Another unbiased view. Would not allow that thing to consume oxygen far less procreate.

[Earnest]

Covid inquiry hears Matt Hancock wanted to decide who lived and died

By Nick Triggle

Former health secretary Matt Hancock wanted to decide "who should live and die" if the NHS was overwhelmed, the Covid inquiry has heard.
The revelation came to light in evidence presented by Sir Simon Stevens, the former NHS England chief.
In his witness statement, he said Mr Hancock thought he, not doctors or the public, should decide who to prioritise if hospitals became overwhelmed.
Sir Simon said: "Fortunately this horrible dilemma never crystallised."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-67297446

[tamada]

During a small, illicit, no-alcohol Covid lock-down beer drinking session, the youngest member of the law breakers, a good friend, expressed the opinion to let the older, Covid-infected people die. This would make it a lot better for the younger and "healthier" of the species get their lives back to normal. Luckily, like many others who may have shared this opinion, he wasn't a politician.

[jackspratt]

I wonder whether your good friend shared this gracious suggestion with his parents & grandparents.

[tamada]

I wonder whether your good friend shared this gracious suggestion with his parents & grandparents.

Don't know, but he had to get his own beer from the fridge after that.

[AlexO]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67238144
Seems like the 'Fascist' UK Government are not the only ones starting to take a stand against Illegal Invaders.
Germany (the least right-wing member of the EU) starting to object to other Nations not processing these invaders, just allowing them to pass through to the Countries with bigger pots of honey as far as the invaders are concerned.
Love the BBC's new terminology, no longer Refugee's, or desperate Migrants. Now they are 'Irregular Migrants', new WOKE term for Illegal Invaders.

[tamada]

The term "irregular migrants" is a recognised classification for those who have entered Germany illegally and/or had their asylum claim denied but remain in the country and/or resist repatriation.

It has been the chosen terminology of the Federal German government since at least 2016.

https://www.bmi.bund.de/EN/topics/migra ... -node.html

[AlexO]

But the BBC have just started using it, Tam. Just a politically correct term for illegal invaders.