Not the nicest of sentiments but one was 5 years ago and the other 7.
Frankly, is that it? Two comments?
~:smoking:
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Not the nicest of sentiments but one was 5 years ago and the other 7.
Frankly, is that it? Two comments?
~:smoking:
Again, matter of opinion.
For one thing, saying Johnson "hates" people is a bit of a stretch. Does he display that sort of vague, generalised, prejudice against everyone who didn't go to private school? Yes, frequently. Can it be shown to be malicious, or to have directly impacted policy making? Not really.
Boris Johnson is prejudiced in a similar way to Prince Philip, but less so... much less so.
Corbyn is prejudiced in the way Orwell's villains were in 1984.
You need to read more Orwell. Corbyn does not resemble the villains in 1984. It's the Communists in Orwell's essays that Corbyn resembles. But your attempt to excuse Johnson does not wash. Prince Phillip is from another era. People from that era grew up a certain way, and we allow for that. Boris Johnson was born in 1964. He was 21 at the time of the Broadwater Farm Riot, after which Britain took a good look at itself and changed its mores. Unless you want to argue that people of a certain class ought to be given leeway in how they behave.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cre0in5n-1E
The political campaign of the future, today!
I dont think words can express how simultaniously confusing and amusing this campaign is getting.
If we use the 2017 YouGov survey to the question: "British Jewish people chase money more than other British people",
True (Voter Sample)
Conservative: 27%
Labour: 14%
Lib Dem: 19%
Not True (Voter Sample)
Conservative: 45%
Labour: 60%
Lib Dem: 61%
That appears to indicate that those who vote Conservative are most likely to agree with antisemitic remarks than Labour voters given the sample used.
My point is that the claims of antisemitism is rather biased against Labour specifically, perhaps due Corbyn's views on topics such as Palestine, when similar arguments on antisemitism can be made against the Conservatives.
do you have any evidence that:
1. he hates anyone?
2. he is a racist? **
** by which i use the oxford deictionaries definition: "The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races."
Independent print a story about a study examining positive and negative articles about political parties in the first week of the election.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a9209026.html
Significantly skewed in favour of Conservatives.
I've seen this sort of poll before, and whilst this does indicate a certain level of racism there are acould of things to note:
1. 26% of Labour voters declined to answer.
2. 28% of Conservative voters declined to answer
3. 20% of Lib-Dems declined to answer.
4. Given the above there's a significant margin of error to the Con and Lab views, and this is probably confounded by the fact that Labour voters may feel group pressure to answer a certain way more so than Conservatives - especially when they know their party is getting hammered over the issue.
5. Whilst the averacious Jew is a nasty trope it's significantly less dangerous than the Rothschild Conspiracy, which is the more common form of Left-Wing antisemitism.
On the council tax, Labour's new manifesto proposes a second homes tax as "an annual levy on second homes that are used as holiday homes equivalent to 200% of
the current council tax bill for the property[...]" Elsewhere, I've found older reports that Labour was considering the replacement of council tax with property tax. Existing British property taxes include Blair's stamp duty on purchases of land and property, capital gains tax on sales thereof, income tax on income from property, inheritance tax (on global assets!), and annual tax on enveloped dwellings, which I don't understand well enough to summarize (it may have something to do with those rich foreigners). So a straight property tax on the value of land and property seems to be unknown in Britain, which is interesting.
But in the manifesto there's nothing about property tax, and the only other reference to council taxes is "giving councils new powers to tax
properties empty for over a year," which may or may not be related to the aforementioned second homes tax.
("The council tax database indicates that as of October 2018 there are 251,654 properties classed as ‘second homes’ for council tax purposes in England[...]")
I don't know, then, what the current Labour stance on the council tax is, or why they haven't committed to increasing bands. I doubt it has to do with a perception of electoral suicide in light of, you know, the entire rest of the manifesto.
Part of the purpose of nationalization (which is never named as such in the manifesto) is part and parcel with the overall program of decentralization. I guess that means local councils exercising much more decision-making over new and old infrastructure in their jurisdiction.
The number of declined answers is not a margin of error.
We could posit anti-Semitic Conservatives also feel latent social pressure not to report hard attitudes about Jews.
We've already discussed this months ago, where I presented major survey results that the (self-reported) far-left through center-right are roughly similar in anti-Semitic views expressed, but among the far-right the prevalence is several times higher. Due to the fact that the self-identified far-left and far-right make up such small proportions of the population, gross anti-Semitism such as it exists is ultimately a broadly-British phenomenon as opposed to a factional, political, or even religious (wrt Muslims) one. Thankfully, leaving aside relative proportions, the absolute incidence of serious anti-Semitic worldviews in Britain is fairly rare. By all accounts the Muslims have much more to worry about than the Jews.
We can point to policies that have been pursued by both Labour and Conservatives that have harmed Muslims, and that will harm Muslims in the future. What policies have Labour pursued (in contemporary history), or intend to pursue, that will harm Jews?
My only misgiving is that in that one well-known 2018 survey of British Jews, almost all report belief in pervasive anti-Semitism in Labour. Certainly there is almost no polling on these questions so distortions in methodology may come through, but to find almost all of a sample in agreement on something is still remarkable. A quarter of British-Jewish votes were for Labour in 2017, so they can't all be Tories, and these beliefs can't all be attributed to media narratives. One way or another there's clearly something Labour is doing wrong. Since the proportion (86%) who ranked the Labour Party as highly anti-Semitic is the same as the proportion in that survey who think Corbyn is anti-Semitic, it is possible a certain transitive effect has taken hold whereby Labour will always be viewed as anti-Semitic not through the organizational culture or actions of individual members, but according to the status of Corbyn in itself. If this is the case then the corollary is that there are no steps the Labour Party can take to change this perception other than removing Corbyn.
What are the p values for the survey? Don't have spssx at home and do not want to crank the formulas manually tonight. But the best you can say absent those values is that conservative voters are somewhat more (not most) likely to agree with statements that are considered anti-Semitic.
Its a wierd statement to use as an example of antisemitism, any value judgement in it requires the reader to agree to bad connotations in the term "chase money" as opposed to positive ones, something the capitalist minded would take issue with.
LIES!
https://twitter.com/BeccyRyan/status...32664144601090
SO MANY LIES!!!
which is my gently made point about getting all worked up over politicians presenting their package in the most appealing light possible.
You are such a Tory.
Completely unafraid and unconcerned about people who look and sound like you talking about fuzzy-wuzzies or anything else. You've never recognised or cared about institutionalised racism and prejudice, therefore it doesn't really exist.
However you will comb through all and every comment by a socialist, working class or Muslim and cry racist.
As Alexei Sayle has said:
Quote:
it's absurd to see people who have spent a lifetime campaigning against racism be called racist by racists
This isn't racism. Jews are not a race they are a religion - a matrilineal one which means in about 100 years the ethnicity of a Jew can change completely. Corbyn appears to be anti-Zionist since he is pro-Hamas who are also mainly ethnic Semites. Is criticising any facet of Israel somehow not allowed now? What about if the UK government had tackled the IRA the way Israel tackled uprisings? We blockade Ireland on the air, land and sea, we sent in tanks and troops and kill anything that looks like a threat and so on and so on. No, in fact the UK is still lambasted more for the acts they did which is nonsensical.
Viewing Jews as wanting to accrue money isn't always negative. Sikhs also as a cohort do so and like displaying wealth. Hell, I also like accruing money and am more focused than my siblings. I haven't had a day off work in over 4 years (I'm self employed). We are different, not right / wrong.
Increasing council tax on holiday homes is a good start... Note it is not second homes required for work, since that might affect MPs!
Gordon Brown always preferred stealth taxes that would bite in the future to visible ones in the present. And rather like how treating alcohol and tobacco in the same way as all other drugs and rating them according to their danger just isn't going to happen due to the past, the UK really has a fetish with homes and owning them and even somewhat redistributive taxes on homes is suicide - not to mention the much more extreme tax on land utility (the basic difference being the former is a tax on what is there now, and the latter is a tax on the potential of the land - so it helps optimise land usage at the expense of sentiment).
I think Labour realises that people are happy to advocate for "rich bastards" to loose their companies and for the State to grab companies but when it is something literally closer to home like the value of their house then the loss of money is much more real.
Nationalisation often leads to centralisation, not localisation. After all, before the railways were nationalised they were integrated companies and run in geographic areas which made sense - compared to the current split of the trains, the lines and the stations which makes no sense. Surely if decentralisation was the purpose, letting local government have control of different taxes would be the way to go rather than central government annexing companies.
~:smoking:
You may recall the thread where I described Monty's presentation of the history of racism in the US Army Air Force as "banal". What you might call "lazy" racism is everywhere, what Corbyn peddles is something rather more than that. It's not just the sideways look, the muttered word, it's not even the spitting and the crossing the street.
No, it's the racism of old men in back rooms talking about how to "solve" the "problem", how to "free" themselves from the pernicious "influence".
A load of tosh. Repeat the lie until you believe it. This is clearly a deliberate and cynical tactic by the Tories. Their manifesto is empty, their promises are rhetoric, their leader is a bumbling liar and a fraud.
Last night when interviewed by Andrew Neil Corbyn had visible difficulty condemning the Rothschild conspiracy as antisemitic. I find that significant given that he wrote a forward to Imperialism: A Study where he described the book as "controversial at the time" but also "basically right".
That book blames World War I on the Rothschilds and other Jewish bankers - it asserts that they engineered the war so as to profit from the sale of armaments etc.
What so revolts many people about Corbyn is the suspicion that, deep down, he's antisemitic and can't see it. Contrast to Johnson who is completely unembarrassed about his various prejudices, which are superficial by comparison anyway.
So Corbyn released the leaked un-redacted documents about the UK-US trade talks and it appears that Corbyn was right along, not Boris.
"Crucially the documents show what US officials have demanded - not what the UK government has agreed to accept."
Nobody ever said the US didn't want direct access to the NHS drug markets - and there's apparently nothing in these papers showing the UK willing to give that access.
So where's the political coup here, exactly?
That won't work. The man has no shame.
What would you make of the coming Tory government if the PM minimises contact during the election and minimises PMQs and other non-moderated meetings during government? Our democracy is supposed to involve contact with the people, while government is supposed to be regulated by Parliament. So far in his reign he's tried to avoid both as much as he can get away with.
It's just a single survey, so it wouldn't contain any significance tests, right? But if you want a quick and dirty z-score between Conservatives and Labour over "Total yes" on that question, I got 8.8 for a p-value of < .00001.
I would be even more conservative and say it can only distinguish the selected groups on this one question, not overall likelihood to agree with anti-Semitic attitudes. The included total results from the previous such survey at least indicate stability in attitudes in the overall population (between samples). With more such questions on anti-Semitic attitudes it might become tempting to extrapolate. Here are the other questions in the survey and the party crosstabs:Quote:
But the best you can say absent those values is that conservative voters are somewhat more (not most) likely to agree with statements that are considered anti-Semitic.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
The differences between Conservative and Labour (or LibDem) respondents on these questions is visibly much smaller. From this one survey you probably can't tell a great deal about the crosstab of three parties (Labour, Cons, LibDem) on anti-Semitic attitudes, or what it all means put together. The safest hypothesis is that there isn't a great deal of distinction between average partisans when it comes to anti-Semitism. Which is what I reported in my post above. !!!!!! (That means hearken.)
You might like to look at the study I linked in the post above, which is more substantial and rigorous in doing this sort of thing. I have described some of the results.
You are noticing that racial tropes are not rational. But this one is much older than capitalism.
I have two questions about Neil's scenario (outside sources are solicited):
What is the basis of the calculation, and what is the prevalence of such financial arrangements that would be meaningfully affected by tax reform? I assume his scenario depends on elimination of the marriage allowance and taxing dividends as ordinary income. On dividends, "Labour will tax capital gains at the same level as income tax and abolish the lower income tax rate for dividend income." I note that currently most pensions and annuities are not taxed at all in the UK, and Corbyn does not intend to change that AFAIK, so if I have it right £2000 in dividends taxed as ordinary income would in fact incur zero liability because £2000 total taxable income would fall within the personal allowance (equivalent to the US standard deduction). I don't see then where Neil's figure of £400 tax liability could come from. There is a potential £250 loss from the elimination of the marriage allowance, not a new tax but a closing of a preference, but here we return to the second question of how many people affected, and for those what account for positive offset by new credits, allowances, and other increases in the manifesto.
Would definitely like to see the numbers, but I suspect Neil was trying to catch Corbyn with a real edge case. That would be fair enough if Corbyn has claimed for sure no one below a certain income threshold could possibly incur increased tax liability - but has he? For example, in Andrew Yang's Universal Income proposal, as it is currently structured a very small proportion of people currently living in poverty (correspondingly, an income under £14000 today is pretty well poverty) would see a decrease in their net incomes. This can hardly be called fatal, and to my knowledge Yang has never pretended that there is a direct monetary net benefit to exactly every citizen below a certain income.
Jews are functionally like a race.
It has long been accepted that "Semite" is synecdoche for Jew. It was a term that gained currency with respect to Germany's ethnic problems in the 19th century, and let me tell ya, there weren't many Arabs or Ugarites in 19th-century Germany.Quote:
pro-Hamas who are also mainly ethnic Semites.
I find it hard to believe that anyone in this thread could be having a hard time understanding what is meant by the stereotype of Jews and money. Greedy, usurious, swindling kikes? Ever read Merchant of Venice? Come on now.Quote:
Viewing Jews as wanting to accrue money isn't always negative. Sikhs also as a cohort do so and like displaying wealth. Hell, I also like accruing money and am more focused than my siblings. I haven't had a day off work in over 4 years (I'm self employed). We are different, not right / wrong.
I won't to spend too much time looking into this right now - maybe @Idaho knows more - but here's McDonnell on nationalization: https://truthout.org/articles/democr...-21st-century/Quote:
Nationalisation often leads to centralisation, not localisation. After all, before the railways were nationalised they were integrated companies and run in geographic areas which made sense - compared to the current split of the trains, the lines and the stations which makes no sense. Surely if decentralisation was the purpose, letting local government have control of different taxes would be the way to go rather than central government annexing companies.
Riffing off the above, it's as good a time as any to remind the reader that the private firm is indeed administered like a Communist dictatorship.Quote:
Crucially though, for McDonnell, the task is bigger than just creating a few more worker cooperatives; the project for Labour in the 21st century is to articulate “how we can change our economy to suit our society, rather than changing society to suit our economy … We need to go much further than simply offering a defence of what we already have.” And such a vision should not just fall back on old models of centralized, technocratic state ownership, with all their well-documented flaws:
Quote:
Nor can we simply demand top-down nationalisation as a panacea. The old, Morrisonian model of nationalisation centralised too much power in a few hands in Whitehall. It had much in common with the new model of multinational corporations, in which power is centralised in a few hands in Silicon Valley, or the City of London. It won’t work in a world in which technological change is providing opportunities to decentralise power.
This guy thinks the murderous, all-encompassing apartheid of the white majority in mid-century America was "banal" and "lazy," but Corbyn pronouncing a name exactly how I would expect a British person to pronounce it is genocidal intent.
*spits*
*spits again*
Do you believe writing a forward to a collection of Voltaire's works would make one an anti-Semite? Should we throw out the corpus of Gottlieb Frege, David Hume? Or should we contextualize it? Even a glance reveals that the book is not about Zionist conspiracies at all, but is a classic work of political science. In fact it contains more material on the inferiority of Africans and Asians, which you don't see fit to mention for some reason.
What gives away the game, PVC, is that instead of choosing to develop potentially-persuasive examples you breathlessly emphasize trivialities as compromising while turning to dismiss egregious real-world harms. How can this be interpreted as anything other than pretext?
The book was published well before the Great War, and is about imperialism, capitalism, and mercantilism. You're not doing anything to restore confidence in your integrity here. :whip:Quote:
That book blames World War I on the Rothschilds and other Jewish bankers - it asserts that they engineered the war so as to profit from the sale of armaments etc.
Sorry, no.
Ep-steen, also, Ross-child or perhaps Roth's-child. Anglicisation is the name of the game here, as it has been from the 19th Century onwards. To the extent that I hadn't even linked the name Epstein to Jewishness or Yiddish before Corbyn miss-pronounced it.
In any case, I didn't say it was "genocidal intent", I said it was a form of "othering" which recalls the Blood Libel. I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth.
We are not discussing Hobson's status as a generally terrible human being, which he was, we are discussing Corbyn's support for his work and the link to the Rothschild Conspiracy..Quote:
Do you believe writing a forward to a collection of Voltaire's works would make one an anti-Semite? Should we throw out the corpus of Gottlieb Frege, David Hume? Or should we contextualize it? Even a glance reveals that the book is not about Zionist conspiracies at all, but is a classic work of political science. In fact it contains more material on the inferiority of Africans and Asians, which you don't see fit to mention for some reason.
The Book, the mural, Ken Livingstone, Naz Shah, othering Jews as Zionists with no concept or "English irony" or history, being in need of education, attending a commemoration for those who planned the Munich hostage-taking...Quote:
What gives away the game, PVC, is that instead of choosing to develop potentially-persuasive examples you breathlessly emphasize trivialities as compromising while turning to dismiss egregious real-world harms. How can this be interpreted as anything other than pretext?
It's not one thing Monty, it's a litany of sins - were it only one, two, even three examples I might be persuaded it was bad judgement but there's always another one.
My mistake, he's referring to the Boer War. I confused the original work with later commentary. The point that it fed into the intellectual environment that precipitated the Holocaust remains valid. Further, a new edition was printed, with new introduction, in 1938.Quote:
The book was published well before the Great War, and is about imperialism, capitalism, and mercantilism. You're not doing anything to restore confidence in your integrity here. :whip:
Prima facia it seems significant (hardly surprising that folks closer to the reactionary end are somewhat more likely to be nativists etc.), but that stuff is really ordinal level data, not even interval Likert-style scaling. I don't think the Z-score really works there, as there really is no "mean" per se. I wish they'd put in 5-point Likert questions, then you could get a better significance approximation using interval level stats.
I don't think that Jews are functionally like a race. Ethiopian Jews are black for example. To make all Jews the same is again easier to homogenise them and treat a group as all the same.
I know that Semite has become a lazy term for being a Jew. I view it as extremely unhelpful - and assists those who wish to have anything anti-Israel as somehow anti-Jew. I think that the two should be clearly separated. Perhaps in 19th century Germany it make sense, but things have changed.
Wanting to have / accrue money is quite a way from being greedy, usurious swindling kikes. Again, this enables confirmation bias to link questions that could be taken as neutral to be a negative since more is being read into the interpretation.
I personally am anti-Zionist but I've nothing really against Jews or Semites as cohorts.
~:smoking:
Jewishness can function as an ethnic or religious identity. In the US it's much more strongly an ethnic identity - something reflected in the portrayal of Jews in American entertainment and also in Bernie Sanders' retort to one interviewer "Are you suggesting I'm white?" In the UK the situation is much more ambiguous because whilst Jews are seen as somewhat distinct (and are still portrayed this way sometimes) it's much more in the way that any other white British group, like Londoners or people from the West Country. Again, referring to political statements consider Ed Milliband's claim that he would be quote "The first Jewish Prime Minister" if he won the election - most people tend not to think of Benjamin Disraeli as Jewish because he was a practising Christian despite his being very openly Jewish, ethnically speaking.
None of which explains why Monty believes British people would pronounces Jewish names as though they were speaking Yiddish - especially given we anglicise everything, just ask my valet.*
*Yes Monty, I realise it was an early importation from French when the t was still sounded but we've deliberately not updated it in 500 years.
Johnson appears for as few PMQs as possible, refuses to appear for Commons committee, refuses to be interviewed by Neil after the others have done theirs, refuses to appear for multi-party debate, then the Tories complain that Channel 4 have deprived them of representation after they'd refused to expose Johnson to exposure.
Will PM Johnson be held accountable for anything? Will Tory voters care that the PM does not have to be held accountable?
The [whole] electorate are free to hold him accountable for his (in)actions.
I know what the parties stand for.
I feel this is something of a non sequiter, to be honest.
As I noted previously, this is very much a "negative election" where the winner will be the one people are willing to hold their noses for, not the one they like.
In fact, Johnson has been interviewed, he has debated Corbyn, if he refuses to be exposed to the extent the other candidates are it will hurt him. Johnson may not feel shame 9oh, to be that posh) but he's aware of the concept and when others expect him to be "shamed". I don't think he has a good excuse not to do the Andrew Neil interview, which is why he'll do it... last.
At the last minute.
Let's be clear, though, nobody's really supporting Johnson here - the best that can probably said is that some of us would be able to hold a civil conversation with him.
See Furunculus above. He says the electorate can be held accountable for his (in)action. This clashes with your assertion that you should not be held personally accountable for what the people you vote for do. Which is correct? Or is the truth merely what the elected government can get away with?
You misunderstand - i said that the electorate can choose to hold [him] to account, not that we should hold the electorate to account.
So if the electorate does not do so, then the PM is allowed to do anything they want, up to and including minimising questioning? Are we transitioning to a presidential system where the executive is freed from scrutiny except for re-affirmation at the end of each electoral cycle? Are we going to put in place the other parts of a presidential system, or are we just going to stick with the informal checks and balances of the Parliamentary system that can be ignored by a presidential executive?
I would say I would probably get along with him well, but thats the pittrap of politicians; personability doesnt translate into trustworthiness, see bush, clinton, obama etc.
I would support him if I believed most of his election time views were genuine, but I cant; he's still of the eton boys generation and being least shit of the generation doesnt make me worry any less that, once secure, he will morph into another cameron.
You lot have existing checks and balances for a presidential system though, such as a constitution and functions split off into different bodies. We have a Parliamentary system where a lot of these checks and balances are based on custom and accepted practice, but a Commons majority and a government with no shame can ignore all that, to an extent that would be impossible in the US.
Welcome to post modernism, we deconstructed everything and had nothing to replace the good parts.
LIES!
https://twitter.com/EuanPhilipps/sta...30231065788417
SO MANY LIES!!!
which is my gently made point that getting all worked up about scrutiny miss the point if there is plenty of scrutiny but people choose not to pay attention to what is revealed.
In any election, the incumbent always has an advantage and the most to loose from an interview / debate gaffe. All the others have the most to gain to be seen as an equal and perhaps saying something memorable.
So for quite a number of years the former tries to limit things as far as possible with the challengers yapping to get as many debates as possible.
I'm sure Boris knows he's at best tolerated. So he's limiting the damage he can do - leaving Corbyn to damage himself.
~:smoking:
He's already faced the fewest PMQs in living memory for the time that he's been in office. And he's now avoiding being questioned whilst campaigning for office. If he's not open to questioning whilst in office, and he's not open to being questioned when seeking office, yet this is seen as acceptable, then is the office of Prime Minister open to questioning at all? Especially when you combine that with your argument that voters elect MPs rather than PMs, and Furunculus's argument on this page that he doesn't need to see Johnson questioned because he knows what the parties stand for.
Who exactly said it was acceptable?
It is not an "argument" that we elect MPs not the PM, it is a pretty solid fact.
If there was only some way that Members of Parliament could Vote to express their No Confidence... So Boris is mainly shielded by Corbyn - you topple the former and the risk of the latter is increased (or the Tories choose another leader of course).
Frankly I have finite time in my life. And between my job and my family I have no time to try to overturn the functioning of the country to obtain reform - and equally enough to loose to not dare break any laws. I mainly grumble - and even that with sotto voche since we're getting close to Though Crimes.
In case my many posts stating the UK system of democracy requires an overhaul have been missed, I again would like to state I am in favour of Proportional Representation at the very least, and ideally a system where Politicians of the same party stand against each other for the same seat (e.g. group areas where there are 4 MP seats being voted for). Will politicians do anything to overturn their jobs for life (or at least decades)? I doubt it - even Clegg screwed up his PR campaign for PR as the risk is whilst the Party might gain, individual MPs might loose their stability.
~:smoking:
Johnson goes on LBC with a sympathetic host (Nick Ferrari), but encounters a tricky caller, so he rambles a bit whilst gesturing to change the subject. Do you want him as PM?
Oh hang on, James O'Brien has debunked that. Here's another one: Eddie Mair taking Boris Johnson to task over his deceitfulness and his willingness to see journalists assaulted.
**looks at the list of things i do and don't want done by the next government**
**looks at the tories led by boz and labour led by magic grandpa, to see which things they will and won't do if they form the next government**
**conclude that i have no earthly use for labour, and am reasonably happy voting for the tories**
it really is this simple.
you're making stuff up:
1. i've told you twice now: the public are welcome to judge him on his (in)actions.
they are allegedly adults of legally sound mind - and thus people we trust to use good judgement in the exercise of the franchise.
2. i don't loath anyone: we've been over the subject already of my emotional detachment.
they simply fail to advance my interests - and as such are irrelevant as a vehicle for my ambitions.
Yes i do, and i don't have any evidence that corbyn is racist.
Q: Do i have an awful lot of fun in hoisting the left on the petard of its nebulous and expanionist definition of racism?
A: Yeah, sure. Loads! It's great fun.
Q: Does he evidence what I consider to be a bigoted attitude to israel? Evidenced by him falling on the wrong side of every ME argument?
A: I believe so, yes.
My natural sympathy lies on the side of the representative democracy that is in relative terms a beacon of hope in the region, and takes time and trouble to include its arabs citizens in its society.
His natural sympathy appears to lie with the grievance mongers who prefer to run oppressive societies while tolerating the indoctrination of children into hateful ideology as a deliberate gateway into terrorist aggression.
Yes, there are plenty of examples in opposite on both sides - where opprobrium and applause should be given respectively - but we stand on fundamentally different sides of the argument.
So, not "racist", no.
But unpleasantly and wrongly bigoted (in my opinion), yes.
Wow. Just wow.Quote:
My natural sympathy lies on the side of the representative democracy that is in relative terms a beacon of hope in the region, and takes time and trouble to include its arabs citizens in its society.
There is so much wrong with this that's it's essentially utter fantasy. I suppose if you're going to be wrong, then it's easier to be fanatically wrong.
I suppose it might be too much to expect an explanation for this breathless outrage?
It's cathartic to read this, but I could never. Bonus for PVC: it's the same guy who wrote the churl post. :sneaky:
Admittedly, it's taking the Labour score as normal. I would have done more typical to compare to the aggregate total. But given the stability of responses between the survey and its previous iteration it's fair to say that there is a difference on that survey item between Labour (and LibDem) and Conservative as variables. This is not analytically tantamount to saying there is a difference between Labour voters and Conservative voters in "anti-Semitism."
The study I keep referring to Likert-scaled self-reported political orientation against responses to similar questions on attitudes toward Jews and Israel (plus religious dimensions of respondents). Seriously, check it out already!Quote:
I wish they'd put in 5-point Likert questions, then you could get a better significance approximation using interval level stats.
You wish that everyone would see things in the same light you do. That's your prerogative, but you have to engage with immemorial social reality too (especially if you want to change it). Some people think "nigga" and "ghey" are not insults and should be tolerated as general appellations - most disagree, and would react accordingly. BTW, Ethiopian Jews experience overwhelming discrimination from 'mainline' Jews, and often violent persecution by the Israeli state.
I would say at this point "Zionist" is a descriptively-unhelpful word. They're there. The Jews are in the Levant. If you have a problem with Jewish supremacists, Jewish fascists, Jewish theocrats, etc. name them directly. Unless used with more precision than most muster, "Zionist" easily bleeds over to encompass pretty much anyone either living in Israel or outside who believes that Jews should not be expelled from that territory. Hopefully people who want to peacefully continue living in Israel are not your opponents. So, best to retire the term from colloquial discourse to avert confusion.Quote:
I personally am anti-Zionist but I've nothing really against Jews or Semites as cohorts.
And PVC, most American Jews categorize themselves as "white" if you ask them to, whereas Israeli Jews - not living in a White society - have not needed to assimilate themselves to this frame (i.e. the question is invalid). But it is a complicated subject and you should take care with your assumptions.
Pan, the fitness of Boris Johnson is not a relevant question to people who want the Tories in power because, obviously, in a parliamentary system it is a package deal. Boris Johnson could be a cognitive vegetable, and since the aim is to seat 300-odd Conservatives and not to seat Boris Johnson, that would be tolerable. This is separate from leadership as part of electoral strategy, as in how good or bad a leader is either in gaining power or wielding it. This is also separate from whether one should support a party in the first place; naturally I think Conservative backers make a bad, and badly-motivated, decision and that a Conservative government would be objectively bad for the UK. In summary:
1. Which party or platform to support?
2. Once I support them, how to maximize their fitness?
If your argument is that Johnson's personal unfitness should drive them away from the Conservative Party entirely, I think it is a bad argument. In political reality we cannot afford to be purity ponies. Voting as a political expression is fundamentally results-oriented in a world of constraint, and should not be conceived of as a personal expression of primarily symbolic importance.
So don't argue against Johnson, Pan. Argue against 300-odd Conservative MPs. One shouldn't like the Conservatives even if Johnson were a Great Man!
I'm residually biased against Palestinians, but I can see this is a distinctly prejudiced view on the conflict. "Beacon of hope," inclusive of Arabs vs. oppressive, hateful, terrorist. For whom are the petards? Hmmm.
And yet the name was pronounced exactly as I would expect a British person to pronounce i: [ain], with normal prosody. Maybe my expectation is spurious, but I would demand some data on the incidence of pronunciations of this name in the UK (and other '-ein' names, which do in fact vary in English pronunciation). Now, this particular individual's name and pronunciation was commonly represented on the news, so everyone should have been on the same page with Jeffrey. But you denounced Corbyn with such self-assurance I expected him to bray [epʃtein], the Russian pronunciation. This is what riffing on an "ethnic" name looks like, from someone who indulges regularly. There's no similar marked intonation or contrived pronunciation with Corbyn. I'll tell you what would make a stronger case: history. Footage or testimony of Corbyn pronouncing the name differently for a different person/context. If Corbyn had a history of saying the same name an Anglicized way (wrt people who also used that pronunciation) but diverted himself when calling out a notorious predator, then it would be plausible as a provocation.Quote:
Originally Posted by PVC
It's a pretty well-known Jewish name and he was referring to a guy everyone knew was Jewish.Quote:
To the extent that I hadn't even linked the name Epstein to Jewishness or Yiddish before Corbyn miss-pronounced it.
You wrote: "No, it's the racism of old men in back rooms talking about how to "solve" the "problem", how to "free" themselves from the pernicious "influence"." That's an unmistakable reference to the historical "Jewish problem." Comparing Corbyn to someone deliberating on the dissolution of a "problem" pertaining to Jewish influence is an accusation of genocidal intent against him. Stop protesting when I accurately describe what you say. Or choose your words more carefully, Persian.Quote:
In any case, I didn't say it was "genocidal intent", I said it was a form of "othering" which recalls the Blood Libel. I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth.
Though I wonder - what sort of facial hair do the old men in the back room have? Is it like Corbyn's, or coarser?
It is a book on imperialism written by a racist who made a passing reference to financiers being predominantly Jewish. It is not a book about Jewish conspiracies. This is the whole extent of anti-Semitism in the book, marring an otherwise-worthwhile section.Quote:
We are not discussing Hobson's status as a generally terrible human being, which he was, we are discussing Corbyn's support for his work and the link to the Rothschild Conspiracy..
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
It is therefore not, as you would have it, "Imperialism: A Study on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (which was published a year after Hobson's book, by the way). If it were a book like Mein Kampf, whose sole purpose is racial polemic, a warmer foreword would be questionable. It is not Mein Kampf. It is a serious work by an anti-Semite, not a narrative of blood libel. If someone writes a favorable foreword to works of Voltaire, Frege, Hume, and indeed most of all those dead white people, what is the significance? Not even a foreword to a biography or intellectual history, but to the original work. It is good to discuss how the racial ideologies of influential thinkers sprout through their output and its historical and philosophical significance. But it would take a hardcore radical to oblige that every mention of these names be placed against a full-throated examination of their sins. Notes on the State of Virginia, by "the lying rapist and genocidal moron Thomas Jefferson." ~:confused:
Several weak examples does not transmute into strong examples.Quote:
It's not one thing Monty, it's a litany of sins - were it only one, two, even three examples I might be persuaded it was bad judgement
Isn't it just those recycled ones in perpetuity? It would be helpful to identify a way in which a Corbyn government would act against Jews. Surely there must be some policy to undermine them? A restriction of their religious spaces? Bureaucratic targeting of their neighborhoods? Increased weight of police scrutiny?Quote:
there's always another one
You remain confused. As Wiki points out, it was Hobson's earlier work that explicitly set out to name a "Jewish factor" about the 2nd Boer War. This book does not.Quote:
My mistake, he's referring to the Boer War. I confused the original work with later commentary.
And what were the changes to this edition, if any? Innuendo is for humor, not clear communication.Quote:
Further, a new edition was printed, with new introduction, in 1938.
It remains that the modern commentator on a book (still regularly taught in universities, like so many other archaic works) that contains a few pages of anti-Semitism cannot so easily be tainted by association. If you believed that you would have to believe that Corbyn is also anti-black, for there is much more material in the book racist toward blacks than toward Jews. What explains your silence on Corbyn's putative anti-blackness or anti-Asianness? If you believe this foreword is evidence for Corbyn's antisemitism, then you must believe that almost any author is racist or anti-Semitic who writes a foreword, preface, or introduction to any book by a white racist without explicitly condemning their racism. There is no coherent case to be made for one and not the other, unless it is a motivated case. I wouldn't criticize you the way you do Corbyn for writing a foreword to Churchill's autobiography where you decline to rage against him as a self-serving aristocrat supremacist. Oh hey, look at that, Boris Johnson did write a whole book about Winston Churchill. Serious question - did he take the (ample) opportunity of a whole book to criticize his role model's racism and other sins?
The Labour Party has done a bad job with internal governance and in its persistent dismissiveness toward criticism. Clearly this is a source of distress to many people. I think there is a case to be made that the Momentum/Corbyn siege mentality leads to toleration of anti-Semitism from perceived comrades (e.g. Palestinians via Hamas) in the name of solidarity, even if overall internal anti-Semitism may not exceed the British baseline. You can't make it the way you've gone about, and so it's hard to believe you care any more about anti-Semitism than you evidently do about any other form of racism.
If it's any consolation:
Naturally I don't think Labour backers are bad, or badly-motivated, just that they are deeply misguided and the damage they would inflict means a Labour/Magic-Grandpa/Momentum government would be objectively bad for the UK.
One shouldn't support Labour as long as Momentum are calling the shots!
I can't imagine changing your mind, so how would an explanation help? Go and read something about the occupation and the lives of Israeli Arabs that wasn't written by eager Zionists. Take the time to actually investigate.
Beacon of light?! The country that has thousands in prison without trial? The country that routinely arrests, imprisons and beats children. The country that was so alarmed by democratic forces in neighbouring states that it has actively moved to destabilise democratic movements. Israel repeatedly targeted Palestinian political leadership - assasinations, splitting any unity between the West Bank and Gaza... Oh Jesus Christ the list goes on and on and on.
But it doesn't matter to you because to you these Arabs aren't full humans. They are at best and undesirable inconvenience, at worst they need to be cleansed from holy Zion.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/uknews...ju-jewish-mps/
Look at this beauty. Someone hacks an account and leaves a random short anti-Semitic post, and the sun has it down as Corbyn attacking Israel.
It's Putin style propaganda. It doesn't need to be subtle. It can be completely crude, baseless and clearly manipulation - but the converted will rally round it. It's just noise.
You're making assumptions about what I believe that simply cannot be evidenced or substantiated.
And making your case with religious zeal and symbolism that suggests that is isn't me that is irrationally invested in the success/failure of one side or the other.
Either way, we have evidenced the rebuttal of the question of whether I hold Coryn to the same standard as Boris when it comes to claims of 'racism' - as asked by Pannonian.
Here's the clip, he says it twice, the first time it's partially covered by the applause:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-C_pI3PIA8
Not how I would have said it, and my spoken English is so close to RP a linguist once described me as having the "most boring" accent she had ever heard.
Also - you - arguing with Englishman about how English people pronounce things.
It's not the final syllable - which should be "een" in English but might sometimes be "ine", it's the guttural way he pronounces the "st".Quote:
Maybe my expectation is spurious, but I would demand some data on the incidence of pronunciations of this name in the UK (and other '-ein' names, which do in fact vary in English pronunciation).
Watch the clip again.Quote:
Now, this particular individual's name and pronunciation was commonly represented on the news, so everyone should have been on the same page with Jeffrey. But you denounced Corbyn with such self-assurance I expected him to bray [epʃtein], the Russian pronunciation. This is what riffing on an "ethnic" name looks like, from someone who indulges regularly. There's no similar marked intonation or contrived pronunciation with Corbyn. I'll tell you what would make a stronger case: history. Footage or testimony of Corbyn pronouncing the name differently for a different person/context. If Corbyn had a history of saying the same name an Anglicized way (wrt people who also used that pronunciation) but diverted himself when calling out a notorious predator, then it would be plausible as a provocation.
You really over-estimate the extent to which people in the UK are aware of "Jewishness" and how it's signified. When my cousin married a Jewish man most of the family didn't realise he was Jewish until the engagement (no church wedding), also some of his relatives arrived in kilts.Quote:
It's a pretty well-known Jewish name and he was referring to a guy everyone knew was Jewish.
Bit of a stretch from backroom mutterings to actual genocidal intent, but OK, fine, if you want to read me like that. I thought Corbyn was genocidal, though, I'd just say so.Quote:
You wrote: "No, it's the racism of old men in back rooms talking about how to "solve" the "problem", how to "free" themselves from the pernicious "influence"." That's an unmistakable reference to the historical "Jewish problem." Comparing Corbyn to someone deliberating on the dissolution of a "problem" pertaining to Jewish influence is an accusation of genocidal intent against him. Stop protesting when I accurately describe what you say. Or choose your words more carefully, Persian.
Though I wonder - what sort of facial hair do the old men in the back room have? Is it like Corbyn's, or coarser?
Silly me - I thought you were going to link to the text. Oh well: https://archive.org/details/imperial...goog/page/n274Quote:
It is a book on imperialism written by a racist who made a passing reference to financiers being predominantly Jewish. It is not a book about Jewish conspiracies. This is the whole extent of anti-Semitism in the book, marring an otherwise-worthwhile section.
Now - Hobson's views on Jews, whom he does not name, take up most of the latter half of a chapter titled "The Parasites of Imperialism" and whilst he does not say "Jew" he refers to a "peculiar race" (p. 64) and also to the Boer War - where he attacked Jews specifically at length in another work. Later in the same chapter he refers to the same "financiers" control of the press (p. 67), and asserts that their influence is felt also in "Berlin, Vienna and Paris" (ibid).
The entire argument is built on these "financiers" being a close inter-connected group, the entire argument is antisemitic.
Hobson has an entire section devoted to parasitic Jewish financiers - which Corbyn (by implication) thinks is "basically right".Quote:
It is therefore not, as you would have it, "Imperialism: A Study on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (which was published a year after Hobson's book, by the way). If it were a book like Mein Kampf, whose sole purpose is racial polemic, a warmer foreword would be questionable. It is not Mein Kampf. It is a serious work by an anti-Semite, not a narrative of blood libel. If someone writes a favorable foreword to works of Voltaire, Frege, Hume, and indeed most of all those dead white people, what is the significance? Not even a foreword to a biography or intellectual history, but to the original work. It is good to discuss how the racial ideologies of influential thinkers sprout through their output and its historical and philosophical significance. But it would take a hardcore radical to oblige that every mention of these names be placed against a full-throated examination of their sins. Notes on the State of Virginia, by "the lying rapist and genocidal moron Thomas Jefferson." ~:confused:
Even assuming you believe the tents of the book - and that's a big if because the argument is that the primary impetus of Imperialism is economic - you still need to confront the fact that Hobson believed the financial system was controlled by a small number of banking houses, specifically Jewish ones, who benefited even when their own country suffered. I invite those interested to read the work, from page 50 onward. It's decidedly dense and boring, but soldier on and see what I mean.
The examples are not all that weak.Quote:
Several weak examples does not transmute into strong examples.
The book only surfaced this year.Quote:
Isn't it just those recycled ones in perpetuity? It would be helpful to identify a way in which a Corbyn government would act against Jews. Surely there must be some policy to undermine them? A restriction of their religious spaces? Bureaucratic targeting of their neighborhoods? Increased weight of police scrutiny?
Here's him on "Zionists: https://archive.org/details/imperial...goog/page/n274
The nastiest one so far.
I refer you to page 65, Hobson takes up the issues of the Transvaal (Boer War) and says just before that, "There is not a war, a revolution, an anarchist assassination, or any other public shock, which is not gainful to these men."Quote:
You remain confused. As Wiki points out, it was Hobson's earlier work that explicitly set out to name a "Jewish factor" about the 2nd Boer War. This book does not.
Now, we've already established that "these men" are of the "peculiar race" so this is basically Rothschild conspiracy 101 now.
Either you have not read the chapter or you assumed I had not.
None, so far as I am aware, it got a new introduction - yay.Quote:
And what were the changes to this edition, if any? Innuendo is for humor, not clear communication.
We've covered Boris Johnson's prejudices - I've also covered Churchill's in the past - I once seriously compared him to Hitler, I further made the point that many pro-Zionists in the UK at that time were so because they wanted to see the Jews leave Britain and go somewhere else. That's Ken Livingstone's preference, by the sounds of it - and according to Ken it was Hitler's preference before he "went crazy."Quote:
It remains that the modern commentator on a book (still regularly taught in universities, like so many other archaic works) that contains a few pages of anti-Semitism cannot so easily be tainted by association. If you believed that you would have to believe that Corbyn is also anti-black, for there is much more material in the book racist toward blacks than toward Jews. What explains your silence on Corbyn's putative anti-blackness or anti-Asianness? If you believe this foreword is evidence for Corbyn's antisemitism, then you must believe that almost any author is racist or anti-Semitic who writes a foreword, preface, or introduction to any book by a white racist without explicitly condemning their racism. There is no coherent case to be made for one and not the other, unless it is a motivated case. I wouldn't criticize you the way you do Corbyn for writing a foreword to Churchill's autobiography where you decline to rage against him as a self-serving aristocrat supremacist. Oh hey, look at that, Boris Johnson did write a whole book about Winston Churchill. Serious question - did he take the (ample) opportunity of a whole book to criticize his role model's racism and other sins?
When I was doing my Undergrad and studying Cicero I was given some excellent advice by one of the professors, "You don't have to like the people you study."
Churchill was racist, he was more racist than average for people of his era - he was especially racist against Indians and quite happy top see them starve, he would have gassed the Kurds if he could have worked out how. However, he was a committed democrat which meant he guarded Britain and Europe against Fascism until more enlightened men than him could come to power peacefully.
That is, more or less, what I would write in the forward - although I'd be a little more polite.
Is Corbyn racist against non-whites? Difficult question - quite possibly given that he seems to insist on seeing them all as the perpetual victims of whites.
So you accept Corbyn tolerates antisemitism from "fellow travellers" today? How do you explain his penchant for the same prior to becoming leader?Quote:
The Labour Party has done a bad job with internal governance and in its persistent dismissiveness toward criticism. Clearly this is a source of distress to many people. I think there is a case to be made that the Momentum/Corbyn siege mentality leads to toleration of anti-Semitism from perceived comrades (e.g. Palestinians via Hamas) in the name of solidarity, even if overall internal anti-Semitism may not exceed the British baseline. You can't make it the way you've gone about, and so it's hard to believe you care any more about anti-Semitism than you evidently do about any other form of racism.
Rank stupidity?
That's a valid answer, to be fair, but it equally disqualifies him from high office.
You forgot helping to precipitate the Civil War in Lebanon and then destroying all it's infrastructure afterwards which, among other things, has helped to discredit the moderate Christian majority, making the country less Christian and therefore somewhere Europeans are less likely to identify with.
Israel is not a good neighbour.
Will Johnson be interviewed by Neil like the other leaders? If he does not, would it affect anyone's opinions here?
Yes, i do think it will reflect badly on him, and he should do it - not least because his opponents went on the show on the understanding that they would all face such a grilling.
Israel is a very predictable ally. And, based on the selflessness of their behavior, not all that far off from some of the "allies" I have made in Total War games.
And I think what you lot have done in drawing down the RN is crazy. What is left of the RN is neither strong enough to matter nor cheap enough to make sense.
The situation with the RN is the result of a number of complex circumstances. Firstly, you have the constant downward pressure on the armed forces what British politics has always exerted in peacetime - better to cut manpower than raise taxes. Secondly, you have the ongoing draw-down from the post-Cold war "peace dividend" which has continued even in the face of rising global tension. Thirdly, you have the "tonnage problem". From at least the 60's onwards RN ships have generally got bigger, heavier and generally more capable with a corresponding rise in cost that has meant a reduction in numbers.
Our new carriers are the largest in the world aside from American ships, but the Labour government cheaped out on then by trying to run harriers off them and hence they are not CATOBAR. Even so, the total tonnage of the two new ships is roughly double the tonnage of those they replace. Likewise, the Type 45 "Destroyer" is in reality a light cruiser given it's tonnage is roughly equivalent to the Leanders built in the 1930's and it is equipped to function as a taskforce flagship.
So, in really the UK has a "destroyer gap" in that we don't have any - the new Type 26 Frigate has the capabilities of a Destroyer but it may only reach 26 knots, too slow to be an escort ship, and in any case we are only building 8 to the Canuks 15. Even so, the RN has employed the policy of taking fewer, larger, ships in the hopes they can eventually build more smaller ones. This is the idea behind the Type 31 Frigate - Of which there were originally to be five but it looks like there will now be 8, which is three more frigates thean we have at present.
Overall, though, the UK remains in a state of post-Imperial decline, a rut we have been unable to get out of since 1946.
The royal navy's problem is the cold war - which forced a bankrupt Seapower culture that employed a Sea-Power strategy to move to a Land-Power strategy.
We never became a Landpower culture - as evidenced by our difficulties in joining in with the required self-absorption to be a successful EU member - but a combination european enthusiasm and osama bn laden in the New Labour years prevented us from abandoning the Land-Power strategy.
But that is changing, and you may well witness in the next 12 months a dramatic change at the next SDSR whereby:
1. The Army continues to shrink (115k SDR98 / 96k SDSR10 / 82K SDSR15 / 75k SDSR20).
2. And the Navy expands for the first time since the second world war.
The British Army is already pitifully small, it comprises only 2 combat divisions (1st and 3rd) with the 6th Division really just being a paper formation to group all the army's SIGINT units together.
If the Navy is in danger of becoming a joke the army is a Greek tragedy. It's not just the reduction in combat troops, it's complete lack of real invard investment, such as the failure to procure new tanks so that the old Vickers works has been shut down. Essentially, the UK would need to start from scratch if it wanted to build new armour.
There's no point in re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. At a bear minimum the RN needs to grow its escort fleet by 50%. Ideally we'd start building a run of new light carriers to supplement the hulking monstrosities Gordon Brown saddled us with - but that's not going to happen.
Ask yourself what any of the services might feasibly be required to do - then ask if they can do that job and continue to defend the British Isles - in every instance you'll see the answer is simply "no".
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics...-anti-semitic/
Over one third of Corbyn's supporters are antisemitic, as opposed to just over one fifth of Boris Johnson's.
conversely, i'd argue the army has more men than it can afford to equip.
it has way to much light infantry that is not part of any combined arms formation capable of maneuver warfare:
they have no organic armoured mobility in their own right.
they have no combat support and combat service support to provide recon, artillary, engineering, logistics, signals.
additionally, we have too many heavy formations, which:
we don't need - because they are no use in the places we want to fight (far away, over large areas, with poor support)
we can't afford - we're never going to build another tank production line for just 200 tanks, we'll buy american or german.
the answer to the army's problem is strike in providing affordable medium weight wheeled brigades, in that:
they solve the post fulda gap problem - 64k troops in 160sq/km where today we only have 8k troops to cover 8000sq/km.
they are designed to self deploy 1000km, operate dispersed ti avoid attrition, and aggregate to provide decisive effect.
if we had one armoured brigade (instead of two) and three strike (instead of two), plus an airmobile brigade, we be no worse off in fighting effect and could do it with ten thousand less troops.
we could spend that manpower budget to uplift the royal navy:
who have exactly the right carriers - as endless design studies demonstrated.
but need more escorts - in a hi/lo T26/T31 configuration suitable for a sea-power strategy with affordable forward deployed assets.
and we need to rethink our amphibious forces of commandos and their vessels - to destroy and flip the a2ad bubble preventing insertion of carrier/strike follow on forces into the theater of operation.
I've thought there are two things the UK needs to do with the Armed Forces:
1) Accept we are a Tier 2 Force. Get tried and tested material rather than a miniscule amount of so new it'll break stuff and we can't really use it since we can't afford to replace it. Be that going with the USA or with others - such as Germany - to increase the volume to reduce costs.
2) Reorganise the whole lot into an integrated "Marines force". Just accept there are a few number of things we can do and many others we can't - such as using the Army in any way where there is a hostile force and realistically no ability to fight anywhere more than 20 miles inland without assistance. Almost every facet of the logistic chain is missing. Perhaps this might force Politicians to accept that the UK has no place in getting involved in overseas adventures.
~:smoking:
The army needs another 10,000 men to fill the logistics gap - i.e. to support the troops we have. As things stand a lot of the logistics chain is provided by civilians - food, accommodation, medical etc. It's not sexy but it's what keeps frontline troops fit and capable. I'll never forget the eight hours I was stuck in a Guardhouse with a broken armoury alarm, and why? There was no REME detachment on base, that's why, because the MOD had sold the base to a private contractor based in Germany and was leasing it back.
As far as actually fighting goes - we can *maybe* deploy one division on a medium-term without American support, maybe. We certainly can't fight the Falklands War again.
The Armoured Corps has been drawn down to an unacceptable level and the Challenger II tank is undergoing yet another ultimately futile "life extension" program when it need to be replaced.
The Light Division is of no real value - it exists principally as a formation that lacks mechanisation (i.e. it's cheap). We should dispense with Light Infantry entirely, convert everyone to some form of mechanisation, whether that's Infantry fighting Vehicles or a lighter form of APC.
We will not be fighting another war like Afghanistan, unless we specifically go back to Afghanistan. We're much more likely to end up fighting something like a genuine mechanised war against, say, Iran, or we're going to fight China or Russia. We're already relatively close to neutralising intercontinental ballistic missiles and once that happens MAD will cease to apply.
At that point it's going to be rearm or die, and don't think there's no future where the US invades Canada or blockades Australia, because there might be.
Overall, we should be aiming to return military funding (which has been constantly falling) to what it was around 2005, and we should be looking to rearm to the sort of levels we were at at the start of the millennium. The idea we're a "second rate power" is just rhetoric used to cover the fact we're happier wasting money than spending it on something useful.
Same applies to not plugging the pension hole in the Royal Mail, or not rebuilding the railways.
i'm with you, brutha!
unfortunately, while i'd be delighted to see defence spending return to 2.5% of gdp, while excluding the costs of:
1. the nuclear deterrent
2. pensions
3. [any] operational costs including UOR's
... i don't see the public or political parties lining up to offer me that.
so the army is only going to get smaller, not larger.