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Off Topic The Politics Thread

Discussion in 'Queens Park Rangers' started by Stroller, Jun 25, 2015.

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

Poll closed Jun 24, 2016.
  1. Stay in

    56 vote(s)
    47.9%
  2. Get out

    61 vote(s)
    52.1%
  1. Bwood_Ranger

    Bwood_Ranger 2023 Funniest Poster

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    You don’t actually know it’s correct. You’ve grabbed some headlines that suit a narrative. Well done.

    Again, it’s the very first link when I searched for it.
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...onavirus-economy-shrinks-latest-a9647396.html
     
    #59821
  2. BobbyD

    BobbyD President

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    i know mate, i was just messing with you with the move to china stuff. But if you don't like people criticizing the local governemnt, you should move to china :p
     
    #59822
    bobmid likes this.
  3. ELLERS

    ELLERS Well-Known Member

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    You tell me the day that was on their front page? Truth is Watford you will always find the odd story but I am talking about the consistent main headlines. Many people know how they have been reporting. The witch-hunt towards Dominic Cummings was ridiculous (even if he was a pr2t). I bloody remember posting on here how a commentator said "The Guardian spends all its time on the DC witch-hunt".
    Cr2p paper.
     
    #59823
    jeffranger likes this.
  4. ELLERS

    ELLERS Well-Known Member

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    I don't care who criticises who tbh I just just like a bit of even and impartial news. The funniest thing is that The Independent calls itself The Independent? <doh>
     
    #59824
  5. Bwood_Ranger

    Bwood_Ranger 2023 Funniest Poster

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    You tell me. You’re the one pretending to scour newspapers for articles not sufficiently praising our dear leaders.

    Not sure why you’d expect them to put anything about the Eurozone on the front page when we have so much domestic news to report on, almost all of which is dismally bleak and/or demonstrates just how terrible the government is by any objective metric.

    Cummings was huge news across almost all the media for days and rightly so. It was a test of the government’s new “we’re all in this together” mantra and they queued up like the gutless lemmings they are to make excuses for him.
     
    #59825
  6. ELLERS

    ELLERS Well-Known Member

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    Once again you just moan about the government. Your comments on the Eurozone show how little you really know. Come back when you can say something worth debating.
     
    #59826
    jeffranger likes this.
  7. Bwood_Ranger

    Bwood_Ranger 2023 Funniest Poster

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    Which Eurozone topics would you like to be front page news in this country to compete with the topics of Brexit and our handling of Coronavirus in newspapers you disregard when quoted by other people on here?
     
    #59827
  8. bobmid

    bobmid Well-Known Member

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    **** me, Ellers is on a roll here!
     
    #59828
  9. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    Brexit was a typically English revolution – one that left the elites unharmed
    Rafael Behr
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    Our ruling class is expert in maintaining a myth of continuity, and absorbing supporters from the ranks of the aggrieved

    @rafaelbehr
    Tue 19 Jan 2021 11.27 EST
    Jacob Rees-Mogg’s star has waned since his glory days leading backbench rebellions against Theresa May. He is on TV less, playing to smaller crowds. I caught him the other week on the BBC Parliament channel telling the Commons that fish unable to reach EU markets were “better and happier” because Brexit makes them more British.

    Watching his performance, I recalled the perennially startling fact about Rees-Mogg: he is younger than Kylie Minogue (also Noel Gallagher and Damon Albarn, but Minogue is the more arresting comparator for some reason).

    No one expects politicians and pop stars from the same generation to sound and dress alike, but how many people realise that the artist known to fans as Moggy is of Kylie’s generation? His style implies something ancient, but that is the point. It is a look, tailored for an audience – just like any theatrical costume. Except his stage is parliament.

    That is not to accuse Rees-Mogg of fakery. He hams up the fogeyism, but he plays it with conviction. He is an authentic adherent to a fashion subculture. Tory anachronism was his lifestyle choice, its uniform worn as sincerely as those of the punks, new romantics and goths who were around in his formative years. All are valid modes of Britishness, but not all include the hint at having sprung from some antique source of nationhood.

    Costumes, like pageantry, have an important function in public life. The Queen’s speech, the ermine-clad Lords and bewigged clerks are all parts of the mechanism that excludes the masses while drawing them into complicity with their exclusion. They fence off politics as a spectacle for consumption, not an activity for participation. They promote a sentimental, passive detachment from power. The veneration of British democracy’s lineage is meant to demonstrate how archaism provides security through stability.

    There is truth in that idea, and much fiction. Every modern country tells stories about its origins that impose a narrative of continuity over messy reality. For England (different in this respect to other nations of the UK) the tendency is taken to extreme lengths. The greatest myth – a backdrop stretched so wide we hardly notice it’s there – is the succession of monarchs that links Elizabeth II to William the Conqueror.

    Generations have grown up thinking of 1066 as the origin of a line that, after some zig and zag, joins up with now. That long, casual stroke of the pen glides over savage occupation, butchery, usurpation, religious massacre, civil war, regicide, chaos, theocracy, military coup, foreign intervention, mass migrations, colonial genocides, and a constant cycle of rebellions and repressions. The treacherous, blood-drenched landscape has been covered with the polished parquet of National Trust houses, skated over effortlessly in period drama balls.

    The English cast themselves as a peaceful people, occasionally provoked to war by foreigners (Germans, mostly). We are no more or less bellicose than human nature dictates. There is a credible claim to have been world leaders in adherence to law. Magna Carta was truly a landmark on the road to civilisation. But it is also a monument built to disproportionate height, admired at an angle that lets us avoid seeing uglier sights closer at hand.

    But nothing matches victory over the Third Reich as a resource for making us feel better about ourselves. It was indeed a magnificent thing that Britain did (in alliance with others), but not the only significant thing that happened in modern times, as its compulsive dramatisation sometimes implies. The attachment to the collective endeavour of “blitz spirit” speaks to insecurity about national cohesion. We idealise the time we stuck together, from fear that the glue is thinly applied.

    Solidarity is a defence against trauma, which is why war metaphors abound in the struggle against Covid. But there is dishonesty in the claim that unity and patience are solutions to problems of government. The pandemic affects everyone, but not equally. There are limited resources and places to assign in the queue for help. Appeals to stoical togetherness camouflage the exercise of political priorities.

    A functional democracy recognises that societies contain competing interests. Parties represent those forces and mediate between them. Conflicts are managed without recourse to actual fighting. But British democracy has a subtly different mechanism. The ruling class defuses social grievance by selectively recruiting from the ranks of the aggrieved.

    The Conservative party is a brilliant machine for adapting to social pressure from below, remaking itself to absorb new supporters without the established elite having to surrender power. It happened in the early 1980s, with the sale of council houses. It happened with Brexit and the co-opting of working-class “red wall” voters. It is a pattern predating the modern party, going back to the 19th-century reform acts and selective extension of voting rights.

    Society’s upper echelons have been historically permeable, by European standards, admitting individuals from lowly backgrounds if they have the right education, wear the right clothes, speak with the right accent. That flexibility is one of the ways England avoided violent revolution on the French model.

    The price is dilution of the reforming spirit, coupled with a weird aristo-centric populism that conflates meritocracy and social climbing. Our version of the American dream is a perverse heritage myth that the lives of a tiny, rich minority can tell a shared national story. It is the fantasy that we all dressed in finery once upon a time. The servants and peasants who were chopped to bits to settle obscure vendettas between noble families must have been someone else’s great-great-great-grandparents.

    The genius of this system is its ability to contain violent upheavals behind the veneer of continuity. Brexit is just the latest iteration: upsetting the established order while somehow leaving the established order untroubled, a rebellion that succeeds by inflicting the highest economic cost on the places that rebelled.

    It is typically English: a revolution without emancipation. It ends with Jacob Rees-Mogg, in fancy dress, strutting the parliamentary stage as if he has been there for centuries, although he was born a year after Kylie Minogue. Take back control? We should be so lucky.
     
    #59829
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  10. Stroller

    Stroller Well-Known Member

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    Good win for the government tonight, overturning a House of Lords amendment that would have prevented them signing trade deals with countries committing genocide. Freedom!
     
    #59830

  11. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    Does the UK have a free trade agreement with china
     
    #59831
  12. ELLERS

    ELLERS Well-Known Member

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    Not a good result. I guess money comes before genocide? There is another chance though. I think in the end they would be hypocrites if they signed new deals with China.... saying that the EU has.
     
    #59832
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  13. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    Not all genocides are equal

    US: China 'committed genocide against Uighurs'

    Published
    1 hour ago
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    IMAGE COPYRIGHTREUTERS
    image captionChina says its facilities for Uighurs are for vocational education
    China has committed genocide in its repression of the Uighurs and other mainly Muslim peoples, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday.

    President-elect Joe Biden's choice for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said he agrees with the finding.

    Rights groups believe that China has detained up to a million Uighurs over the past few years in what the state defines as "re-education camps".

    BBC investigations suggest that Uighurs are being used as forced labour.

    Tensions with China have been a defining feature of Mr Trump's term, from trade policies to the coronavirus pandemic.

    "I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uighurs by the Chinese party-state," Mr Pompeo said in a statement. It is his last day in office as part of Donald Trump's administration.

    While the statement puts pressure on China, it does not automatically introduce any fresh penalties.

    Mr Blinken was asked at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday if he agreed with Mr Pompeo's announcement, to which he answered: "That would be my judgment as well."

    Mr Biden's team made a similar allegation last August, saying the Uighurs had suffered "unspeakable oppression... at the hands of China's authoritarian government".

    media captionThe video Uighur model Merdan Ghappar filmed inside China's detention system
    Pressure on China - and Biden
    Analysis by BBC Chinese service

    On its very last day, the Trump administration has delivered its final "gift" to China, in the form of a parting shot.

    This is by far the strongest condemnation by any country regarding China's actions in its north-western region of Xinjiang. The EU, the UK and Australia, which have repeatedly criticised the human rights condition in Xinjiang, may consider following suit.

    It could lead to unprecedented international pressure facing China, but would that change Beijing's behaviour? Today's Beijing is emboldened by the consolidation of political power, positive economic growth amid a pandemic, and to some degree, political chaos in Washington. A Chinese state media representative has quickly hit back that the US has "committed genocide" of Americans with its botched handling of the pandemic.

    For many countries including the US, economic ties with China have become too substantial to be entirely cut off. Between human rights and economic interests, the balancing act towards China is getting increasingly difficult.

    Although the Biden team had referred to the suppression against Uighurs as "genocide", Xinjiang may not have been one of its priority issues. But the new administration will now be compelled to announce a concrete policy stand on Xinjiang. It's clear that the tit-for-tat between Beijing and Washington will not finish with Mr Trump's term in the White House.

    What is the situation in Xinjiang?
    China says it is fighting "three evil forces" of separatism, terrorism, and extremism in the far western region of Xinjiang, where most of the 11 million Uighurs live. It says its "training measures" in Xinjiang are necessary to combat these.

    In recent years, Xinjiang has seen a large influx of settlers from China's ethnic Han majority. Anti-Han and separatist sentiment has become more prevalent in the territory since the 1990s, flaring into violence on occasion.

    Campaigners say China is trying to eradicate the Uighur culture, by forcing Muslims to eat pork and drink alcohol.

    Last week, Mr Trump's administration banned the import of cotton and tomato products from the Xinjiang region of China, where the majority of Uighurs live.

    Xinjiang accounts for nearly a fifth of world cotton production, the US estimates.

    China has been widely accused of using detention camps in Xinjiang for forced labour, particularly in the cotton industry.

    An investigation by the BBC in 2019 suggested that children in Xinjiang were being systematically separated from their families in an effort to isolate them from their Muslim communities.

    Recent research shows Uighur women have been forcibly subjected to methods of birth control.

    China denies using forced sterilisations in Xinjiang.
     
    #59833
  14. Willhoops

    Willhoops Well-Known Member

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    Have you checked if this is from an Ellers approved source?
     
    #59834
  15. Willhoops

    Willhoops Well-Known Member

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  16. ELLERS

    ELLERS Well-Known Member

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    Oh dear Wills can’t even come up with something original. Stop knocking Watford’s lines!
     
    #59836
  17. Willhoops

    Willhoops Well-Known Member

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    If it’s his line he’s spot on. You look really silly with your obvious definition. Johnson himself would at least hide in a fridge rather than do.that all the time.
     
    #59837
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  18. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    It's the bbc
    No idea if they are left or right this week
     
    #59838
  19. ELLERS

    ELLERS Well-Known Member

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    Only thing that makes me look silly is this bloody thing that keeps changing my words. ‘Knicking’ not knocking. <steam>
     
    #59839
  20. rangercol

    rangercol Well-Known Member

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    Christ! The anti-English brigade on here will lap that up (if they can be arsed to read it all).
     
    #59840
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