Off Topic The Politics Thread

George Floyd's killer will get what he deserves for kneeling on his neck for 9 minutes and killing him, and thank God for video evidence, both body camera and bystanders using their phones. Without it, the case may never have been brought. Worth remembering the next time the civil liberty people want to ban cameras in crime hotspots etc. Video can bring justice.

 

Anyone got Johnsons number? Could do with sorting my tax out

 

02072194682

 

has anyone spoken to the pope about an upcoming sainthood

• 
  
  please log in to view this image
  
  Joanna Walters
  @Joannawalters13
  Tue 20 Apr 2021 22.17 BST
  Last modified on Tue 20 Apr 2021 23.10 BST
  
  The life of George Floyd: ‘He knew how to make people feel better’
  How a gentle giant beloved by family and community became a man who would ‘change the world’
  
  • Derek Chauvin verdict – follow live updates
  please log in to view this image
  
  The George Floyd Memorial at the site where he died outside Cup Foods at East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis. Photograph: Chris Tuite/ImageSPACE/Rex/Shutterstock
  
  George Floyd’s loved ones said at his funeral on 9 June last year that his tragic killing at the hands of police was “going to change the world”.
• 
  But who was George Floyd and why did his excruciating demise, out of so many thousands of police-involved deaths in the US, make his name one that, to quote his family again, “everybody is going to remember”?
  
  
  
  Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was living in Minneapolis when the police pinned him to the street during an arrest for an alleged misdemeanor on 25 May 2020, and Derek Chauvin, a white officer, kneeled on his neck for – a jury later heard – nine minutes and 29 seconds.
  
  
  But he was born George Perry Floyd, Jr, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on 14 October 1973 and grew up in Houston, Texas, where he was eventually laid to rest, his six-year-old daughter talking in the days after his death about how much she would miss him.
  
  Growing over 6ft tall as a teen and ultimately to 6ft 6in, and a popular, formidable athlete, he was best known in his Texas youth affectionately as a gentle giant and “Big Floyd”, the tremendous football and basketball player, which he hoped would be a ticket out of his poor neighborhood.
  
  Advertisement
  It did not prove to be. Floyd was unable to escape the clutches of drug crime and ended up in prison, but after he was free again he campaigned against violence, mentoring young men and being mentored in many ways himself by other community leaders and his involvement with an outreach ministry.
  
  Getting good work was hard, however, and Floyd moved to Minneapolis with a friend in 2014 to start a new chapter. He worked at a variety of jobs and was doing security work at a Salvation Army shelter when he met Courteney Ross.
  
  She became his girlfriend and gave heart-wrenching testimony at Derek Chauvin’s murder trial about how she and Floyd slipped into opioid dependency after being prescribed painkillers, just two more people out of millions hit by America’s opioids crisis.
  
  Every day of the three weeks of opening arguments and testimony in Chauvin’s trial, members of Floyd’s family, usually one of his brothers and more often that not Philonise Floyd, occupied the single seat in the courtroom allocated to Floyd friends and relatives amid tight coronavirus restrictions.
  
  Philonise was also allowed to address the court about his older brother’s character.
  
  He told the jury George Floyd “was so much of a leader to us in the household”.
  
  “He would always make sure that we had our clothes for school,” he recalled. “He made sure that we all were going to be in school on time. He just was like a person that everybody loved around the community. He just knew how to make people feel better.”
  
  
  please log in to view this image
  
  Philonise Floyd puts his arm around his sister LaTonya Floyd as the family speaks during the funeral for George Floyd, at the Fountain of Praise church in Houston. Photograph: Godofredo A Vasquez/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
  He also said: “He was a big mama’s boy,” describing Floyd’s relationship with their mother.
  
  When she died in May 2018, Philonise recalled, “He would just say ‘Mama, Mama’ over and over again.
  
  And it was what George Floyd cried out as he was dying under Chauvin’s knee on that south Minneapolis street, having ultimately not been able to escape the legion consequences of growing up Black and poor in America and having to navigate the criminal justice system and the dangers of being confronted by the police.
  
  Those cries were caught on the bystander video that went viral, as well as Floyd’s repeated pleas for mercy as he said he could not breathe and onlookers, including an elderly man and a nine-year-old child, begged the police to let up and “get off of him”.
  
  The stark video left no room for cover-up.
  
  And the graphic analogy expressed by many protesters and activists since then was that this was not just one more white police officer killing a Black man but the proverbial continuation of a white America that has been pressing its knee into the neck of Black America with impunity since 1619.
  

 

Cheers kiwi

 

Juventus chief blames Brexit for Super League collapse
https://www.politico.eu/article/juventus-chief-blames-brexit-for-super-league-collapse/

 

The biggest jumblesale in our village is the Tory party jumble sale, and they have all the best crap...and books...you should see the books. A mountain of beautiful books

(Hope that justifies the next bit)

Because of that over the last 30 years I have spent so much money on the Tory Party. I mean the books...you should see the beautiful books.
Anyway I feel I am a Tory Party donor, and so I should be able to claim special tax conditions, and a refund.

I suggested that to the Tory canvasser who came to our door for the May elections that are coming up.

He was not very polite and walked off.


Do they actually realise how much money I put into the Tory party!

 

You could claim an inch squared share in Boris new wall paper!

 

I listened to two separate radio phone-ins this morning discussing the Johnson/Dyson tax scandal. Nicky Campbell on the communist BBC had a queue of ordinary Joes calling up to say 'nothing to see here, what's all the fuss about?', whilst James O'Brien had several people who are actually in the business of ventilators calling up to say that there was never a hope that Dyson could have come up with anything usable in the timescales, whilst their own companies, which could, couldn't even get a response from the government. Why would Johnson favour Dyson and JCB, I wonder?

 

You can’t just expect ventilators to be bought from companies who make ventilators. Where’s the grift in that?

 

is china on board with this
or are they just going to continue building coal fired power plants
and how exactly are they going to do it

please log in to view this image

Kwasi Kwarteng
@KwasiKwarteng


Tomorrow, we will set the world’s most ambitious climate target into law, cutting emissions by 78% by 2035 compared to 1990 levels

This will see us go further and faster than any other major economy to achieve a carbon neutral future

 

Now that would be just daft

 

Another day, more dodgy dealings.


Nobody is surprised

 

And nobody cares.

 

please log in to view this image

 

Oh some of us care ... just not enough. Do you think they laugh themselves to sleep with the **** the continue to get away with.

 

They always will while they control the media.

 

It's not that we don't care enough, it's that too many don't care at all. I listened to a string of people on the Nicky Campbell phone-in - probably Tory 'red-wall' converts - who seemed to think it outrageous that there should be any questioning of Johnson and the Tories at all. The lying, sleaze and corruption is expected and accepted.