not sure it can be any worse tbh.. think they will can him in new yearQuote:
Originally Posted by walpurgis
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not sure it can be any worse tbh.. think they will can him in new yearQuote:
Originally Posted by walpurgis
If the next government is Labour, things will be worse. Endless infighting and 'woke' crap and all the minority agendas being thrust at us.Quote:
Originally Posted by struth
Talk about 'the devil and the deep blue sea'. Regular folk have no chance of a look in either way.
I don't think so. People said that about Thatcher in 1980.Quote:
Originally Posted by struth
You don't dump a leader whose recently won you a massive majority. Tories are many things but they are not daft.
I predict he'll still be here at the next election and will win again although with lower majority.
Alternative view could be that there will be pressure from "newly elected" Conservative MP's in "traditional Labour" seats for something to be done to regain public confidence - that something would be dumping Boris?Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
might upset many stove users/
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...cer-risk-study
I don't think that will happen. Perfectly normal for a government in mid term to be polling low and losing by-elections, even without a global pandemic. Next election still a long way off and a week is a long time in politics let alone three years.Quote:
Originally Posted by guy
Plus new MPs don't really have any say in how the party (:D) is run.
It looks like most Christmas parties this year will be cancelled, and probably a good idea. Those determined to have a right old knees up might have to resort to wandering round Westminster with a bottle of single malt.
couldnt make it up. the guy the tories put in to check their partying, was partying himself and is stepping down.. pity he didnt own up before he was caught.. its just institutionalised lying.
I thought some of the Tory fightback against the Woke agenda was heartening, but like many Tory promises, they are largely hot air. Woke ideas have been firmly entrenching themselves in the UK since the 80s, back then it was called Political Correctness. Charities, universities, healthcare, much more push back is needed. Pregnant mothers are now routinely referred to - collectively anyway - in NHS literature as 'pregnant people', it's so Orwellian, and shows complete disdain for normal folk, on the one hand, a lot of this crap doesn't matter in our day to day lives, but on the other, you wonder how far it will go, until it does. I was also utterly dismayed by all the BLM stuff over the last year or two, I find the narrative has been completely skewered, same with these woke types constantly banging about Britain's colonial past, with statues quietly been removed all over the country. Again not really the sort of thing that matters to people in their everyday lives, it feels performative, who really cares about statues anyway? Unless they start gunning for more important figures like Churchill or Queen Victoria, personally not a fan of either, but what does scare me is the Maoist 'Year zero' thinking of these zealots. One things for sure, important matters like affordable housing, immigration, and the state of our town centres post covid, will hardly be addressed, to be honest, politicians are really of no use to us, we have to do these things ourselves, and with the almost complete lack of public action these days, that results in 'every man for himself'.Quote:
Originally Posted by walpurgis
When I visited Namibia, back in the '90s, the topic of what to do with all the numerous statues of the German colonialists cropped up as a national debate. Most people said that despite having suffered under original German colonial rule, and later British rule (undertaken by the South African government), the statues were part of their history and should remain.
The statue of Edward Colston was erected to celebrate his being a major benefactor to the City of Bristol, establishing two schools and several other city projects. The fact that his wealth was generated through the slave trade with all the suffering that involved, was not mentioned. It is right that these statues should be removed and put into a museum, where the true history can be displayed for all to read.
It may not matter to you, but if you are black or have black friends, then it will.
Disagree.
I'd be surprised if prior to all the fuss if even one in a thousand Bristolians were even aware of the statue or knew who it was.
A lot of nonsense designed to divide people.
Really? The statue was in the centre of the city, and anyone who was at all interested in the history of their city would have been aware the wealth of the city was due to the slave trade.
not getting into the slave trade, but i think majority of those type of statues in public view have long outlived themselves. It was a dispicible trade and i dont see why they should be honoured for giving some of their dirty money to a town or institution.
that said, i kinda agree with macca that the majority, unless told wouldnt have likely noticed who it was or what he did.
yes really. What percentage of people are interested in history? Very small number.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
The wealth of Bristol - and Colston - was derived from global trade, only a percentage of that was slavery. I was watching a very poor documentary about Liverpool the other day where it was stated that the city owed its wealth to slavery. Despite the fact that in the 1800s sixty percent of all global trade passed through Liverpool. Presumably that didn't generate any money at all.
We constantly see these attempts to rewrite history. I'm fine with them deleting slavers from history but only so long as they cover all of the bases equally - so all the African rulers who made the people into slaves in the first place, and every other culture that had slavery which is pretty much every culture on every continent (maybe excepting the aboriginals of Australia and New Zealand, not sure about them). Let's not just pick on the white English people. But that won't happen as it doesn't suit their agenda.
the arab countries probably had more of them than went west
Quite right, and slavery is alive and well in African countriesQuote:
Originally Posted by Macca
Not to mention China and the Indian subcontinent, hundreds of thousands of slaves there. Possibly millions. Are we going to be taking down all the statues of their past rulers too?Quote:
Originally Posted by struth
It's utter nonsense.
yep. The pyramids are next!Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
I wonder whether that view has changed in Nambia since the 90s? And if as a country under direct colonial rule decided to keep the statues of its oppressors, then why not a country where the oppressors were actually from, I guess that's it, our collective guilt, as performed by 'the woke', who decide daily what we should and shouldn't atone for.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
in fairness to the 'woke' if it wasn't for the 'woke' kicking up a fuss in the 18th century we might still have slavery now. But that battle was won a long time ago. What they want now is something entirely different.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikeandvan
I agree with Macca, although I'm not sure 'the point' is to divide us, but that certainly ends up being the result. The thing is before the George Floyd/BLM thing happened, the issue of 'problematic' (a favourite Woke term) statues wasn't so pressing. It seemed to be confined to statues in the grounds of elite universities, specifically Oxford 'Rhodes must fall' and Cambridge - a 'looted' statue of a cockerel that was handed back to Nigeria in 2021. One wonders that hundreds of years after the event, what these performative displays are supposed to achieve. The main reason given for the removal of these statues is that they are offensive to students of colour, so it boils down to an issue of student welfare, the same sentiment that the 'cry bullies' of Durham university are now expressing after their outrage that Rod Liddle should be able to give a speech there https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-59552264. If these students felt so strongly about learning at a university so directly wedded to Britain's establishment, then one does wonder how they can even bring themselves to study there in the first place, let alone eat directly from the demon hand which oppressed their ancestors by accepting a Rhodes scholarship! The G Floyd incident was May 2020, the Colston statue was pulled down in June 2020, then a few months after councils all over the country are nervously having meetings about which statues in their boroughs may be problematic. And so we end up with a statue of the Scouts founder being considered for removal, and so on, where does it end? These activists are so short sighted, so sure of their righteousness that they are calling for the Churchill statue in Whitehall to be removed, down here in Brighton the huge Queen Vic statue on one of our main avenues has also been targeted, and considering the right on nature of our local council, I wouldn't be surprised to find it gone! There is a similar argument going on in Spain at the moment around statues linked to Franco, this I think is quite different, with some still grieving over the victims of that conflict, the same rawness is nowhere near being felt in the UK statue debate.
That many other countries practiced slavery (and some still do, but not in name), makes it all right then? :doh:
Makes what 'all right'? Slavery? Obviously not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
It does mean that you can't blame any one particular country or culture for it though. They all culpable in that the concept of slavery was accepted and practiced by all of them.
Agreed, nothing makes that ok. At time of course it was, but the UK were one of the first to outlaw it.
1807 - Britain passes Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, outlawing British Atlantic slave trade.
and then
1833 - Britain passes Abolition of Slavery Act, ordering gradual abolition of slavery in all British colonies. Plantation owners in the West Indies receive 20 million pounds in compensation. (£20 million in 1883 is the equivalent of about £2.3 billion today)
It's sick isn't it? And they were still paying the comp in the twentieth century apparently! The British establishment did some truly awful things, including getting half of China hooked on opium, one does wonder when they'll take their revenge.......Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
:rolleyes:not at all, but wouldn't our energies be better spent wiping out slavery where ever it is going on today?Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
Or do we go the whole hog and destroy all relics/buildings/statues celebrating any empire from past times which made money from slavery - thats any statues from Ancient Rome fucked for starters.
Or are you suggesting that it was only wrong for particular countries at certain points in history? What would be the criteria for wiping history :scratch:
I demand the old financial district around St.Pauls in London is demolished immediately, starting with the Bank of England, and that's just for starters.Quote:
Originally Posted by guy
I'm not suggesting we 'wipe' or re-write history, I am suggesting that it would be good idea to remove statues celebrating those who were involved in, and profited from the slave trade (including royalty, for example: Charles II).Quote:
Originally Posted by guy
As to slavery where ever it is going on today: well you could make a start with some Saudi households in London, as well as much of the domestic staff in Mauritania. The treatment of some of the Uighurs in north western China would be another area to look.
What makes you think it hasn't already started?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikeandvan
Please do tell us Barry why you think it would be beneficial to remove any statues of Charles II, wherever they may be!Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_African_CompanyQuote:
Originally Posted by Mikeandvan
In your own words?Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
????Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikeandvan
Oh dear. That's another made up stick to beat us with I'm afraid.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikeandvan
Opium use in China had been common for thousands of years. The Manchus, who were the ruling class (and not actually Chinese) banned it in order to get more work out of the peasants, thus creating a black market which was supplied from many different sources.
I've got to stop watching those Adam Curtis documentaries!!Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
what's really funny is that if these people wanted to make a list of 'bad things the British did' they could get a pretty long one without making stuff up.
It wouldn't be as long as the list for some of the other 19th century colonial powers though. And god forbid we include any of the Asian or African countries where the most astonishing cruelties were just a way of life.
History no longer taught properly in schools though so they can get away with this stuff as there's so few people with the knowledge to challenge them.
They're only interested in bad things done by white men, and that includes contemporary life too. Is it any wonder the Woke take so much out of the Maoism handbook?Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
The Chinese have a lot of things to be ashamed about - the 'annexation' of Tibet in 1950 for example, and the current treatment of the Uighurs in Chinese Turkistan.
They had their eyes on Bhutan, but abandoned any attempt after Indian moved thousands of troops near the border as a deterrence.
Sorry, to change the subject, but I’m fuming!
I will never help anyone again......EVER! I'm too kindhearted, or I'm too stupid..... [emoji20]
Yesterday it was so cold out that we took a man into our home out of the kindness of our hearts. We felt so sorry for him, poor thing was standing stiff and frozen out in the cold, but this morning he had just vanished. Not a word...not even a goodbye or a thank you for sheltering him.
The last straw?!?! When I realised he had peed all over the kitchen floor! That's the “thank you” I get for being good to people?!?!?!
Now I'm going to warn my friends to watch out for this man! He is heavy-set, wearing nothing but a scarf, he has a carrot-like nose, two black eyes, and his arms are stick skinny. Don't bring him into your house! What a mess he made on the floor. [emoji35]
:lol: Merry Christmas everyone!
Nice one Alex, well done! :)
Shamelessly pinched, but I thought it would raise a smile!Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
finally got around to putting the Xmas tree up:
https://i.ibb.co/qyG10T7/tree.jpg
its bigger than mine:D
I’m liking the snowy background effect too! :lol:
Don't be mocking his plastering skills, it's took him a year to get to that standard :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Alex_UK
That's genuine 1970s Artex that is.
You've got these hipsters paying a fortune now for 1970s sideboards you couldn't give away once upon a time. Artex has to be next.
That's cos they're wicked. Prices have gone a bit nuts on them though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macca
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced a $100 (£75) payment for anyone getting a booster jab before the end of the year.
Unveiling the incentive at a Tuesday media briefing, he said it would be a "challenging few weeks" for the city amid a fast "upsurge in cases" driven by Omicron.
New York state has reported record Covid-19 case numbers for four consecutive days, including 23,391 on Monday.
Mayor de Blasio said the infections appeared to be milder, pledging that New York would "weather the storm" of the variant and avoid further shutdowns.
one way to get a xmas bonus i guess