Question Time & This Week

Portillo was insistent pre-referendum that the only vote that made sense was a vote to Leave because the EU would definitely renegotiate to get us to stay, and we'd accept. A few years ago, Greece were definitely abandoning the Euro and it would break apart within years. Bit rich calling others delusional on the EU (even if Campbell definitely is being).
 
Jippy said:
Oh god, that Tory MP debates like a sixth former. Brexit exit fee should be a windfall not a fee. CONTROL!!!
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Gove supporter as well.

You're not voting for this mob in 2020...are you?
 
Cheesy said:
Gove supporter as well.

You're not voting for this mob in 2020...are you?
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I told you, I'm voting Andy Slaughter (Lab) on Heathrow airport expansion and Charing X hospital (It's in Hammersmith, despite its name, oddly) closure issues.
I don't believe in parties now so am backing a local guy, who is a lifer here and seems decent. Not comfortable it will help Corbyn, but what else can I do. I can't be a moaning abstainer.
 
Jippy said:
I told you, I'm voting Andy Slaughter (Lab) on Heathrow airport expansion and Charing X hospital (It's in Hammersmith, despite its name, oddly) closure issues.
I don't believe in parties now so am backing a local guy, who is a lifer here and seems decent. Not comfortable it will help Corbyn, but what else can I do. I can't be a moaning abstainer.
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I don't remember you saying actually. And yeah fair enough, probably the best thing to do if you don't have a particular party preference.
 
Oi oi, Diane getting involved the Unite election.
 
This Tory woman is genuinely awful.
 
Cheesy said:
I don't remember you saying actually. And yeah fair enough, probably the best thing to do if you don't have a particular party preference.
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I don't want to get on my high horse about abstaining, but I don't want to do it. Voting local I can do in good conscience(albeit for possibly nimby, selfish reasons)
 
Feck off with this "access to" bullshit, it's meaningless.
 
Livingstone got it factually correct. This outrage is nonsense gallery baiting.
 
Some comments on the Livingstone situation and why his condemnation in the press, as well as by some ignorant members of the public, is ridiculous.

Finkelstein said:
Livingstone maybe wasn’t precise enough, and lacked nuance. But he does know something about that dark chapter in history. It has been speculated that Hitler’s thinking on how to solve the ‘Jewish Question’ (as it was called back then) evolved, as circumstances changed and new possibilities opened up. Hitler wasn’t wholly hostile to the Zionist project at the outset. That’s why so many German Jews managed to survive after Hitler came to power by emigrating to Palestine. But, then, Hitler came to fear that a Jewish state might strengthen the hand of ‘international Jewry’, so he suspended contact with the Zionists. Later, Hitler perhaps contemplated a ‘territorial solution’ for the Jews. The Nazis considered many ‘resettlement’ schemes – the Jews wouldn’t have physically survived most of them in the long run – before they embarked on an outright exterminatory process. Livingstone is more or less accurate about this – or, as accurate as might be expected from a politician speaking off the cuff.

He’s also accurate that a degree of ideological affinity existed between the Nazis and Zionists. On one critical question, which raged in the U.K. during the period when the Balfour Declaration (1917) was being cobbled together, antisemites and Zionists agreed: could a Jew be an Englishman? Ironically, in light of the current hysteria in the UK, the most vociferous and vehement opponents of the Balfour Declaration were not the Arabs, about whom almost nobody gave a darn, but the upper reaches of British Jewry.

Eminent British Jews published open letters to newspapers like the Times opposing British backing for a Jewish home in Palestine. They understood such a declaration – and Zionism – as implying that a Jew belonged to a distinct nation, and that the Jewish nation should have its own separate state, which they feared would effectively disqualify Jews from bona fide membership in the British nation. What distinguished the Zionists from the liberal Jewish aristocracy was their point of departure: as Theodor Herzl put it at the beginning of The Jewish State, ‘the Jewish question is no more a social than a religious one . . . It is a national question’. Whereas the Anglo-Jewish aristocracy insisted Judaism was merely a religion, the Zionists were emphatic that the Jews constituted a nation. And on this – back then, salient – point, the Zionists and Nazis agreed.

John Mann, when he accosted Livingstone in front of the cameras, asked rhetorically whether Livingstone had read Mein Kampf. If you do read Mein Kampf, which I suspect none of the interlocutors in this debate has done (I used to teach it, before the ‘Zionists’ drove me out of academia – joke!), you see that Hitler is emphatic that Jews are not a religion, but a nation. He says that the big Jewish lie is that they claim to be a religion; whereas in fact, he says, they’re a race (at that time, ‘race’ was used interchangeably with ‘nation’). And on page 56 of the standard English edition of Mein Kampf, he says that the only Jews honest enough to acknowledge this reality are the Zionists. Now, to be clear, Hitler didn’t just think that Jews were a distinct race. He also thought that they were a Satanic race, and ultimately, that they were a Satanic race that had to be exterminated. Still, on the first, not trivial, premise, he and the Zionists were in agreement.

As a practical matter, the Zionists and Nazis could therefore find a degree of common ground around the emigration/expulsion of Jews to Palestine. It was a paradox that, against the emphatic protestations of liberal Jews, including sections of the Anglo-Jewish establishment, antisemites and Zionists back then effectively shared the same slogan: Jews to Palestine. It was why, for example, the Nazis forbade German Jews to raise the swastika flag, but expressly permitted them to hoist the Zionist flag. It was as if to say, the Zionists are right: Jews can’t be Germans, they belong in Palestine. Hannah Arendt wrote scathingly about this in Eichmann in Jerusalem, which is one of the reasons she caught hell from the Jewish/Zionist establishment.
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Jippy said:
The Tories were canny with the overseas aid budget tbf. Tough for Labour to criticise.
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A Cameron thing, I think. Puzzled me at the time and still does. I don't know if it was a genuine Humanity thing, like his view on gay marriage, a calculated preparation for dealing with the likes of the refugee issue, or his mates somewhere are making a shedload out of it. I honestly don't know.
 
Cheesy said:
Interesting read, thanks.
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It just goes to show the level of ideological indoctrination propagated by, in this case, the state broadcaster. It's too politically damaging for Labour to acknowledge the fact that Livingstone has said nothing incorrect, and so questions as to the veracity of his statement are not allowed to punctuate the party's discourse. They're too weak to sustain that sort of media backlash. Instead, it's more politically expedient for both sides to condemn him. Labour do so with dampened criticism about his character, the Conservatives with outright accusations of antisemitism. When the truth isn't politically valuable, you spin the best version of the lie. Labour are in an extraordinarily weak position on antisemitism, and have relegated Livingstone to the margins; in a sort of exile. They didn't expel him because he'd have challenged the decision in court, and he would have won. This is unwanted publicity for Labour, and, I suspect, Livingstone.

The characterizations of Livingstone are deplorable. It hints at a spineless national broadcaster, a weak opposition, an uninformed public, as well as a ruthless government.
 
berbatrick said:
Same principle?

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Pretty much! But it's become a convenient out for politicians (including Labour, unfortunately) to obfuscate with.

On another note, I loved the format of that debate, like a political comedy double act called Bernie and Ted (the punchline always being that Ted Cruz is fundamentally evil).
 
Jippy said:
Just switched over from the darts, so missed the beginning.
The Green bloke is smarmy and sanctimonious.
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How many teachers are only ever employed by private schools? Bartley appeared to infer that most if not all teachers never leave the sector following graduation (which doesn't stack up with teachers i know).

Should the food be crap, it is doubtful whether habits will be altered in a lasting way. Nor will this £1.5bn do anything for nutrition/cooking education. I don't see that there was anything wrong with an expanded voluntary system.


Jippy said:
Agreed.
That audience bloke- 7pc of the world population is EU!!! Overlooking it's more than half of our trade though...
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I though it was nearer to 40%, and that the influence of non-EU sources is rising? As regards workers and the movement of people, lower barriers (albeit with some controls remaining) for a broader range of countries is preferable to a solely European FoM arrangement.


712 said:
A Cameron thing, I think. Puzzled me at the time and still does. I don't know if it was a genuine Humanity thing, like his view on gay marriage, a calculated preparation for dealing with the likes of the refugee issue, or his mates somewhere are making a shedload out of it. I honestly don't know.
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As i recall, DfID and its work was a personal cause for Andrew Mitchell (who was Secretary of State before plebgate ended his ministerial career). He was also a vocal advocate for foreign aid whilst shadowing the position prior to 2010, with a further focus on on transparency and value for money. It likely helped Cameron that he had someone who so identified their political image with the job.


Ubik said:
Feck off with this "access to" bullshit, it's meaningless.
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A good deal more meaningful than a Tim Farron's 'modest approach to the single market'.
 
Mciahel Goodman said:
The characterizations of Livingstone are deplorable. It hints at a spineless national broadcaster, a weak opposition, an uninformed public, as well as a ruthless government.
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I agree with most of what you say, but he is not helping himself by continuing though, there was a time to just shut your mouth and it was after the suspension, but he carried on which is playing into the hands of the labour right, the press and the government.

Meanwhile, a man who referred to picaninnies with watermelon smiles in a national newspaper, and who has, since the referendum, referred to Europeans as nazis, twice, gets nary a word of objection from the press. Which is odd, because Livingston holds no public office at all, and that bloke is the current foreign secretary.
 
Nick 0208 Ldn said:
As i recall, DfID and its work was a personal cause for Andrew Mitchell (who was Secretary of State before plebgate ended his ministerial career). He was also a vocal advocate for foreign aid whilst shadowing the position prior to 2010, with a further focus on on transparency and value for money. It likely helped Cameron that he had someone who so identified their political image with the job.
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Thanks, Mitchell must have been very well in with Cameron to get overseas aid ring-fenced in the initial budget cuts storm, Cameron must have known it would be unpopular with many, particularly Tories. Looking at his Wiki it appears he's not quite 100% tosser after all.
 
One thing with Corbyn that I genuinely don't know how will play out - whether people get into the voting booth and have a last minute change of mind, either for or against. I'm not voting Labour in my mind right now but I can't be sure I'll follow through on that with the ballot paper in front of me.
 
Clive Lewis just said Kim Il Jung three times.
 
fecking hell this Giles Fraser stuff is bad.
 
Dobba said:
Making up the numbers? Seat filling?

What rotten luck Dimbleby has when it comes to timing, by the way. It always seems to run out just as they were about to get onto election fraud.
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Can't remember now. Just had a shower. The SNP guy is a laugh on politics show tbf.
 
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