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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. Stroller

    Stroller Well-Known Member

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    Perhaps Mike Graham (whoever he is) and Frank Warren should consult Joan Salter about the government's anti-refugee rhetoric. She's the actual holocaust survivor who confronted Suella Braverman, saying the home secretary's rhetoric reminded her of the language the Nazis used to justify murdering her family.
     
    #84161
  2. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    Keir Starmer played key role in blocking Tony Blair's plan to block asylum seekers' right to claim benefits 20 years ago
    By GLEN OWEN and BRENDAN CARLIN

    PUBLISHED: 12:04 AEDT, 12 March 2023 | UPDATED: 12:10 AEDT, 12 March 2023



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    Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer played a key role in overturning an attempt by Tony Blair 20 years ago to strip asylum seekers of the right to claim benefits.

    The action – which can be revealed just days after Rishi Sunak announced plans to extinguish the right of small-boats migrants to claim asylum – was taken by Sir Keir after Labour introduced the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act in 2002.

    The then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, tried to use the legislation to deal with visa over-stayers who suddenly claimed asylum and then spent years trying to establish their claim, during which time they were able to claim state benefits.



    The law said that if claimants didn’t apply for asylum ‘as soon as reasonably practicable’ after arriving in the country, they would be ineligible for benefit payments. It was challenged by human rights lawyer Sir Keir in the High Court in 2003, acting on behalf of five asylum seekers on the grounds that it contravened the ‘right to food and shelter’ enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.

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    Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer played a key role in overturning an attempt by Tony Blair 20 years ago to strip asylum seekers of the right to claim benefits

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    The action – which can be revealed just days after Rishi Sunak announced plans to extinguish the right of small-boats migrants to claim asylum – was taken by Sir Keir after Labour introduced the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act in 2002

    TRENDING

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    Childcare and pension tax breaks in Hunt's 'back to work' Budget

    After the High Court ruled in Sir Keir’s favour, Mr Blunkett said: ‘I am personally fed up with having to deal with the situation where Parliament debates issues and the judges overturn them.’

    Last week the Prime Minister called Sir Keir ‘just another Lefty lawyer standing in our way’.

    Lord Blunkett, who has warned that the Government’s plan to tackle illegal immigration is ‘not doable’, said last night that at the time Sir Keir ‘was doing his job and I was doing mine’. The Labour leader declined to comment.
     
    #84162
  3. Goldhawk-Road

    Goldhawk-Road Well-Known Member

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    I heard that. But balance it with all the Jewish groups that said they were grossly insulted by the implications to the Holocaust of what Mr Sensitive (except for Qatar) Jugs had said.
     
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  4. Stroller

    Stroller Well-Known Member

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    Ah yes, the Association of Jewish Tories wasn't it?
     
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  5. Goldhawk-Road

    Goldhawk-Road Well-Known Member

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    Not according to the Jewish Chronicle. But we know there aren't many Jews left in Labour, and we know why.
     
    #84165
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  6. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    William Pish (just call me Suzy)

    @WilloWispish

    I genuinely hate the way the world is going.
    If I can't have a car, or a foreign holiday, or a warm house, or nice food, or any other creature comfort, I want it to be because I didn't work hard enough to earn it, not because some rich ****s decided that I couldn't have it!
     
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  7. Bwood_Ranger

    Bwood_Ranger 2023 Funniest Poster

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    Robbie Gibb and Stephen Pollard’s Jewish Chronicle.

    Your support for the Jews is appreciated as ever, mein Fuhrer.
     
    #84167
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  8. Stroller

    Stroller Well-Known Member

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    Robbie Gibb is on the board of the BBC and is therefore fiercely independent and unbiased.
     
    #84168
  9. Goldhawk-Road

    Goldhawk-Road Well-Known Member

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  10. Goldhawk-Road

    Goldhawk-Road Well-Known Member

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  11. Bwood_Ranger

    Bwood_Ranger 2023 Funniest Poster

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    You’re no longer in the lead but the competition remains open until midnight.
     
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  12. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    did any of them have anything to say about teachers in batley being forced from their jobs
     
    #84172
  13. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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    This was a woke putsch against the BBC
    The Lineker rebellion was an elite power-grab, not a fight for free speech.

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    BRENDAN O'NEILL
    CHIEF POLITICAL WRITER

    14th March 2023

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    FREE SPEECHPOLITICSUK
    I see that all the people who’ve spent the past few years insisting cancel culture doesn’t exist are now blubbing over cancel culture. They’ve put down their pitchforks, doused their torches, taken a break from demanding the censure of every witch who misgenders Sam Smith and every child who scuffs a page of the Koran, and decided not only that cancellation is real but that it’s bad, too. The Gary Lineker affair – now that’s cancel culture, these Johnny Come Latelys to liberty are saying.

    And they’re right. This was cancel culture. Not against Lineker, though. Not against their favourite woke millionaire. Not against that sainted spokesperson for the oppressed, like asylum-seekers and Guardian-reading Remoaners in Hampstead. No, against the BBC.

    Every now and then, the media representation of an event is so off, so estranged from reality, that I find myself wondering if they’ve all gone mad. Or if perhaps I have. L’affaire Lineker is one such story. It’s presented to us as a brave battle for freedom of conscience waged by the ‘hero’ Gary Lineker. As a showdown between the ‘decent and the popular’ – that’s Lineker and his barmy army of middle-class cheerleaders – and ‘indecent populists’: the government, the gammon, the usual. Even as a class rebellion – witness the branding of any Beeb sports presenter who dared to go on air as a ‘scab’ and the hailing of Lineker as a legendary defier of the boss class. His blow to BBC management is a ‘powerful victory for strike action’, yelped Owen Jones, as if a few overpaid sports brats flouncing off the airwaves was the Battle of Orgreave Part 2.

    The wrongness of these takes seems almost pathological to me. To my mind, what we’ve just witnessed is a woke putsch against the BBC. An insurrection of the privileged against the public broadcaster. A middle-class coup against the Beeb’s longstanding institution of impartiality. What started as a scuffle between the Match of the Day host and his higher-ups morphed into clash between the broader cultural elite that believes its ideologies should be the dominant ones – everywhere, always – and a bruised national broadcaster faintly pleading: ‘Not here, though. Not on our impartial airwaves. Please.’

    The Beeb’s climbdown in the Lineker scandal suggests the self-serving insurgents have won, scoring yet another victory for their political dogma and cultural clout and a blow, in this case, to the ideal of having a nationally funded neutral broadcaster. Cue the further colonisation of the institutions by the woke and the shrinking of the space for different or just non-ideological ways of thinking. Cancel culture indeed.

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    RECOMMENDED
    The shameful story of Britain’s backdoor blasphemy laws
    TOM SLATER

    There are two reasons we can be confident that the Lineker revolt – by which I mean not only Gary and Co’s refusal to go on air but also the gushing support they won from the political clerisy – was not about freedom of speech. The first is the obvious one: these people don’t believe in freedom of speech. At all. As Tom Slater wrote on spiked last week, they’ve either shrugged their shoulders or rubbed their hands in glee over recent acts of cancel culture. From that poor autistic schoolkid suspended for ‘mishandling’ a Koran to the women threatened with rape and death for saying ‘Men aren’t women’, most of the Lineker-loving converts to free speech said nothing. Seems they’re fine with women and children being persecuted for blasphemy, but not with a rich sports presenter being told to tweet less.

    Indeed, when that other BBC stalwart Jenni Murray was reprimanded by her bosses for wading into TERF territory, they were schtum. They want BBC presenters to have the freedom to liken the Tories to fascists but not to say that if you have a cock and balls you’re a fella. That’s because it isn’t freedom they’re defending at all – it’s the further institutionalisation of their own correct-think, of their illiberal ideologies.

    The second reason the Lineker revolt is clearly not a struggle for the liberty to utter is because it’s just so riddled with intolerance. It feels more puritanical than liberal. That’s the dark irony in all this – the unforgiving mob mentality of cancel culture has been more in evidence in the pro-Lineker camp than in the Beeb’s agitation with Lineker’s anti-Tory tweets. Yes, the BBC overreacted. My quaint, old-fashioned belief is that no one should be sacked for expressing a political view. Even people at the Beeb. There are surely calmer, more liberal ways for BBC bosses to sort these things out. But for frothing anger at other people’s views, for that dark urge to silence wrongthink, you need to look to the pro-Lineker agitators, not the Beeb.

    The vibe of the witch-hunt swirls around the Lineker revolt. Profane St Gary and you’re in trouble. When the BBC’s senior football reporter, Ian Dennis, decided to carry on working, he was roundly demonised as a ‘scab’ by the Twitterati. He had to disable his Twitter replies. Other sports presenters felt ‘targeted’ too, reports The Times. A cloud of fear descended on the BBC sports department. Some were ‘afraid to be the first presenter to appear on-air’, lest they likewise be mauled by middle-class scab-hunters. The shelving of some sports shows, after big-name presenters walked out, was not ‘unanimously supported’ by staff. But what could they do? What could they say? They knew that if they spoke out they’d be mobbed by media-studies grads who think screaming ‘FASCIST’ at people online is the modern equivalent of joining the International Brigades.

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    ELLA WHELAN

    Workers feeling threatened into silence? That’s cancel culture, no? This isn’t the first time privileged pseudo-lefty youths have cosplayed as working-class radicals to silence people. Spotify staff likewise used the language of ‘strikes’ when they threw their tantrum demanding that Joe Rogan be No Platformed. Privileged young members of the new elite appropriating the lingo of trade unionism to pursue their petty, censorious agendas is a new low. Their belief that Lineker and Co’s foot-stomping was a ‘strike’ against corporate interests confirms how utterly they’ve lost touch with reason. If Lineker’s a class radical, Rachel Dolezal’s a Black Panther.

    The liberal elite’s putsch against the Beeb doesn’t only have the feel of a witch-hunt – it could have the consequences of one, too. The chattering class has pretty squarely conquered the BBC in this clash. Lineker’s a ‘conquering hero’, as one headline put it. The democratic ideal of impartial broadcasting that serves the entire public, not just the sharp-elbowed, well-connected sections of it, has been badly wounded. The Lineker-loving influencers instinctively recognise that this affair has benefitted their class and its creeds at the expense of the broader public. That’s why some are crowing over the body blow this revolt has dealt to ‘indecent populists’. Because their true aim is not to defend freedom of speech or public broadcasting, but to further elevate what they view as correct thought, as so faithfully embodied in the anti-Brexit, anti-Tory, anti-gammon worldview of Mr Lineker.

    A cancellation has occurred, there’s no doubt about that. Not of Gaz, though – of you.
     
    #84173
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  14. Quite Possibly Raving

    Quite Possibly Raving Well-Known Member

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    Ganesh spot on in the FT imo.

    Britain embraces trivia because it is stuck on the big issues
    Janan Ganesh, FT

    To south-east Asia, with its EU-dwarfing population, its aspirations beyond middle-income, its clout as a hinge region in the tussle between the US and China. How to explain to someone here the almost subatomic littleness of the main story in the UK?

    You see, we have this sports presenter. And he tweeted something noble but hyperbolic. And the response was even less measured. And the fuss consumed MPs and the national broadcaster. Yes, for a week. No, we don’t have 5 per cent growth and industrial peace. We aren’t immersed in this trivia because the big things are going too well.

    In fact, perhaps the opposite is true. It just takes a bit of geographic distance to appreciate it. Britain, I suggest, is a nation that gets lost in froth and frivolity because, on the serious stuff, it is stuck.

    Let us count the different kinds of deadlock in the kingdom. Britain knows that Brexit was a mistake. It also knows that revising the decision would open the gates of domestic political hell. And so the governing class prefers a conspiracy of, if not quite silence, then awkward terseness on the subject.

    Britain knows what can spur economic growth: housebuilding, a shift in taxation from the young to the asset-owning old. It also knows that Nimbies and pensioners slap anyone who fiddles with the existing settlement. And so the opposition Labour party does not propose to do much more than the ruling Conservatives to displease them.

    Britain knows that its public services could do with more cash. It also knows that its tax burden is nearing longtime highs. Even the state of the union is a kind of impasse. Scotland’s place in it is contested enough to bring constant stress but not so contested as to force a clarifying referendum in the medium term.

    This is a stalemate society. All the energy that would ordinarily go into the debating and doing of meaningful change now finds an outlet in proxy wars about petty things. The Gary Lineker affair (though not the refugee crisis about which he tweeted) is one such trifle. The rolling melodrama of Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is another.

    To be clear, there are worse things than stalemate. Britain isn’t a disaster zone. It might avoid a recession. It has broken a run of inadequate prime ministers. One outcome of always skirting hard questions is relative civic peace. (Britain is easier to inhabit now than it was when Brexit was a big subject.) Nor does net annual immigration of more than half a million suggest a country on which the world has given up. Bangkok, Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City are permeated with some of Britain’s abiding assets: the English language, the inescapable Premier League, the elites who choose the UK for part of their education (or property holdings).

    But to plateau at a high altitude is still to plateau. With no movement on the big questions, no projects to be getting on with, expect Britain to throw itself into ever more sagas about nothing. Consider these low-stakes simulations of the debates it should be having. At least France goes direct. At least it is ripping itself apart over something important. Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms entail vast public sums and the very contract between citizen and state. I had to be reminded, in the age of on-demand goals highlights, that Match of the Day still exists.

    The problem isn’t, or isn’t just, an unserious political class. Or an electorate in love with circuses. It is the insolubility of the UK’s problems. Brexit is as grim as the reopening of it would be. Fraying public services bother millions, but so would a net increase in taxation. The problem underlying everything, low growth, has cures that are as politically incendiary as the sickness itself. For Britain, on issue after momentous issue, there are no chess moves available that don’t hurt its position elsewhere on the board.

    One recent prime minister wasn’t so defeatist. She defined herself against the stalemate culture. She abhorred the polite ducking of hard choices. But Liz Truss will spend the rest of her life as a punch line. No wonder Britain thinks avoidance isn’t so bad after all. If the price is the diversion of national energies into such small potatoes as Lineker-gate, well, worse fates can befall a people.

    A phrase sticks in the mind from a different drama in a different country over a decade ago. “We do not have time for this silliness,” said Barack Obama as he released paperwork to confirm his American birth. Well, Britain has all the time in the world for silliness. What else is there to do?
     
    #84174
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  15. kiwiqpr

    kiwiqpr Barnsie Mod

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  16. Goldhawk-Road

    Goldhawk-Road Well-Known Member

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    Didn't get into that much detail
     
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  17. Bwood_Ranger

    Bwood_Ranger 2023 Funniest Poster

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    Fairly unsurprisingly this is today’s attack line from from various bots and right wing shills.

    “Starmer does job competently 20 years ago” would have been a **** headline though.
     
    #84177
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  18. sb_73

    sb_73 Well-Known Member

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    Sleepwalking into another banking crisis because the geniuses in charge didn’t think that their strategy of putting funds in long term bonds could leave them without liquidity if interest rates rose. Just like they have. Also seems like significant chunks of the western banking system are underwritten by Saudi Arabia. And, I’d bet, through more circuitous routes, China.

    Nothing learned from 2008, surprise surprise.
     
    #84178
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  19. Staines R's

    Staines R's Well-Known Member

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    #84179
  20. BobbyD

    BobbyD President

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