snowychap Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 28 minutes ago, Davkaus said: Diane Abbot has come out and said that Mao did more good than harm. Seriously. On something like a 70:30 ratio, perhaps? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyh29 Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 31 minutes ago, blandy said: It's not madness, Dem. It's fine to disagree with it, but here are his reasons. Are they "madness"? They are ones I completely agree with 100% I was down in the loading bay helping them out on a project of mine and the radio had some phone in show ..someone in our print room asked me if I thought we should bomb Syria , which isn't the usual level of debate I get from the Printroom guys I have to say !! hard to give an answer really ... I mean we got involved in the 30's against Hitler against a threat to mainland Europe / the world .. the question is are ISIS the same level of threat , and if so should we declare war and take them out ... which isn't the same thing as bombing the bejebus out of Syria if you ask me .... that seems to be more akin to Saudi's blew up our towers lets go Invade Iraq Corbyn is probably right , however we (the west ) are hard wired for revenge right about now 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wainy316 Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 Is Mao a mass murderer or a mass manslaughterer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villaglint Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 It was 7 years ago so "come out and said" isnt quite accurate. And she was playing devils advocate about why Mao is less hated than Hitler which is now being spun to suit the media narrative. However it doesnt stop the fact that the point she was making was completely batpoop crazy and she is a massive liability to what they are trying to do. Unfortunatley not the only one ! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyh29 Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 8 minutes ago, Wainy316 said: Is Mao a mass murderer or a mass manslaughterer? Chilcot are holding an enquiry to find out , we should know in around 2247 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post mjmooney Posted November 27, 2015 VT Supporter Popular Post Share Posted November 27, 2015 10 hours ago, Demitri_C said: So looks like turmoil with labour now Corbyn refuses to support airstrikes against IS. Absolute madness and this wa smy far with him, he is way to soft. Are we going to wait until they do attack on us before we move? Completely unelectable in my opinion and I think the public will soon turn on him unless she grows some Quote In defence of Jeremy Corbyn Naive he may be, but he’s consistent – and at least he’s thinking about the future Freddy Gray What strange people we Brits are. We spend years moaning that our politicians are cynical opportunists who don’t stand for anything. Then along comes an opposition leader who has principles — and appears to stick by them even when it makes him unpopular — and he is dismissed as a joke. Jeremy Corbyn has been ridiculed in recent days for the feebleness of his foreign policy. It is widely agreed that his positions on terrorism and Isis show how unelectable and useless he is. At the same time, we say he is a grave threat to national security. But what has Corbyn said that is so stupid or dangerous? In the wake of the attacks in Paris, he declared that Britain ‘must not be drawn into responses that feed the cycle of violence and hate’. He has urged his country not to ‘keep making the same mistakes’ in the Middle East, something he has been saying for decades. ‘Enthusiasm for interventions has only multiplied the threats to us,’ he says, not unreasonably. He has said he will not support airstrikes in Syria unless it is clear that military action will help us achieve our strategic objective of defeating Isis. If you look at Corbyn’s actual words — rather than the Twitter feeds of the organisations he is affiliated with or the outbursts of his crazy fans — his response to the difficult and frightening problem of terrorism has been sensible, cautious and moral. Like a good Christian, he thinks violence should be a last resort, as he showed with his reluctance to embrace a ‘shoot to kill’ policy for security services in Britain, and his statement that it would have been ‘far better’ for the serial beheader Mohammed Emwazi (‘Jihadi John’) to have been tried in court rather than taken out by drones. Ah, say Corbyn’s critics, but he is equivocating. As Nick Cohen and Charles Moore argued in the magazine last week, Corbyn and the radical left are not anti-violence but anti-West. They have to stop themselves from saying what they really think, which is that we privileged Europeans deserve to be terrorised, because to do so would be political suicide. They therefore adapt their language or speak in code. It is true that the Corbynistas’ view of the world is as Manichean as George W. Bush’s — only where Bush saw bad they see good, and vice-versa. It is also true, probably, that Corbyn and his closest allies change their language in public to sound less offensive to the majority, while still dog-whistling to their radical fans. But all politicians do that. And while Corbyn’s language may at times be slippery, in his politics he has remained almost shockingly steadfast. How easy it would have been for him to have added his voice to the general whooping at the death of Emwazi. Or to have said that any wannabe terrorist can expect to be obliterated by our security services wherever they are found. But he hasn’t. Despite intense pressure to echo the majority view, Corbyn has more or less stuck to the non–violent positions that he has always held. Even the most belligerent Tory must admit that takes courage, even if it is politically naive. Compare Corbyn’s foreign policy with David Cameron’s and the Labour leader begins to look downright noble. Cameron, remember, used to present himself as an alternative to war-on-terror zealots. As leader of the opposition, he used to say that liberty ‘cannot be dropped from the air by an unmanned drone’. As Prime Minister, however, he has been banging away on the war drum, trying to persuade the public to sing along. It was Cameron who, along with Sarkozy, led the charge to attack Libya and remove Gaddafi. That intervention ended the rule of a nasty dictator, but it also created a failed state, another dangerous ‘ungoverned space’ through which migrants now pour in their millions en route to Europe. Libya has become both a handy training ground for jihadis and a springboard for them to launch into the West. But the Cameroons have never admitted to their failure. It becomes clearer with every crisis that Cameron makes up his foreign policy as he goes along. This week his aides have been pompously telling MPs to ‘be Churchill not Chamberlain’ in the face of the terror threat. Cameron hopes that the prevailing mood of fear and loathing about Isis will mean he can persuade Parliament to bomb Syria. Except we all know that two years ago, Cameron wanted to bomb Isis’s great enemy, President Assad, which would have been a tremendous boon to Islamist scumbags across the region. You might argue that such a dramatic volte-face is the sign of a true leader — someone willing to accept when he is wrong. Except that Cameron and his gang have never admitted they were wrong. George Osborne maintains that Parliament’s rejection of the move against Assad in 2013 was ‘one of the worst decisions the House of Commons has ever made’. We all wish Isis gone, but the new plan to bomb Syria is as little thought-through as the last one. There’s no evidence that more air strikes (without troops on the ground) will bring peace to Syria and Iraq. To succeed, objectives and a strategy are needed, both of which the Cameroons lack. Jeremy Corbyn is mocked for calling for a ‘negotiated settlement’ with Assad and other parties in the conflict — how wet! — but at least he is trying to think about the future. Cameron’s Syria plan is to get himself worked up, throw a few more bombs at the baddies, and hope for the best. We have to ask: which leader is the more deluded? Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator. The (Tory-supporting) Spectator 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 5 hours ago, villaglint said: It was 7 years ago so "come out and said" isnt quite accurate. And she was playing devils advocate about why Mao is less hated than Hitler which is now being spun to suit the media narrative. Fair point, I saw it misrepresented on another site, thanks for putting me straight! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted November 28, 2015 Share Posted November 28, 2015 19 hours ago, chrisp65 said: Diane Abbot. That's not a card you'd want to be dealt if you were playing MP Top Trumps. I don't know what categories you'd be expecting on the cards but I think she'd take some beating in the 'biggest gobshite' one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 On 28/11/2015 08:45:21, snowychap said: I don't know what categories you'd be expecting on the cards but I think she'd take some beating in the 'biggest gobshite' one. I guess she'd score quite strongly on the Length of Service category (coming up to 30 years soon!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mantis Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 From a Labour perspective, Hilary Benn is starting to look like a very good potential leader right about now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 7 hours ago, Mantis said: From a Labour perspective, Hilary Benn is starting to look like a very good potential leader right about now. Seeing as how the labour membership has recently voted overwhelmingly for a proper left wing socialist as leader, I very much doubt a right wing blairite hawk fits the bill. Maybe he could cross the floor and apply for the job over there? I hear there's an opening coming up soon. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Demitri_C Posted December 3, 2015 Author Share Posted December 3, 2015 1 hour ago, Jon said: Seeing as how the labour membership has recently voted overwhelmingly for a proper left wing socialist as leader, I very much doubt a right wing blairite hawk fits the bill. Maybe he could cross the floor and apply for the job over there? I hear there's an opening coming up soon. Don't agree with you. I think he would make a good labour leader. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 It's a sad indictment of the lack of oratory skill in parliament and politics in the UK that Hilary Benn's couple of minutes in the spotlight last night have had the reaction that they have. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awol Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 2 hours ago, Jon said: Seeing as how the labour membership has recently voted overwhelmingly for a proper left wing socialist as leader, I very much doubt a right wing blairite hawk fits the bill. Very true. Labour is now ideologically back where it was in the 70's so a moderate, sensible and intelligent bloke like Hilary Benn has no chance at all of becoming leader. Equally there is absolutely no prospect of a Labour Government being elected under its current leadership. Labour seems destined for the political wilderness for the foreseeable future, the question is whether it will take them another 20 years to re-run the 77-97 period, assuming no other party rises to supplant them on the moderate left - enter Tim Farron, maybe... By any measure Labour should hold Oldham today (current majority 15,000), but in the highly unlikely event they lose it then things will get very interesting on the left of British politics. Incidentally Benn's speech last night was the most statesman-like 15 minutes in the HoC for many a year. I've yet to see a cogent rebuttal of it online by those who opposed air strikes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyh29 Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 4 minutes ago, snowychap said: It's a sad indictment of the lack of oratory skill in parliament and politics in the UK that Hilary Benn's couple of minutes in the spotlight last night have had the reaction that they have. I think that's more an indictment on society today as much as a lack of decent skilled politicians i suspect the sun are already working on a dossier to bring him back down to earth again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 2 minutes ago, tonyh29 said: I think that's more an indictment on society today as much as a lack of decent skilled politicians I'm not sure why the lack of oratory skill of speakers is a fault of the audience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted December 3, 2015 Moderator Share Posted December 3, 2015 Benn spoke very well. He's completely in opposition to the people he's supposed to represent, and to the party whose principles he's ignored, but he does speak very well - he's a proper politician. And yes, I do mean proper politician as an insult - he's one of a number of Labour MP's that's put the chance to attack a leader he doesn't like above the lives of Syrian civilians - if anything he's worse than most, because he's used the whole episode as a chance to audition for the role of leader. He's everything that has been wrong with politics for the last 30 years - an excellent politician who belongs on the other side of the house idealogically but who would instead rather further the work of Mr Blair in making the two parties corporate clones. "Hey, while we're on the subject of war, get me! Pretty smooth huh?" 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 22 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said: He's completely in opposition to the people he's supposed to represent... Is he? You may be right but I wouldn't presume to know the minds of the people of Leeds Central. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awol Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 13 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said: Benn spoke very well. He's completely in opposition to the people he's supposed to represent, and to the party whose principles he's ignored... Assuming that he represents his constituents, is there any evidence he is completely in opposition to them? Also interested to know how he ignored the principles of his party - having made a very logical argument that taking action supported those principles? Your post is like many comments I've read in response to last night, attacking the man but seemingly unable to specifically dispute what he said. Interested to know what the anti position is on the logic of his arguments, i.e. Legality, responding to a UN resolution requesting action (the gold standard for most left wingers), the request of our closest allies for direct military support, the degrading of IS capability on Syria through military action... and so on. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 13 minutes ago, Awol said: Interested to know what the anti position is on the logic of his arguments... There was a 10 hour debate yesterday in parliament and as Hilary Benn said in his speech: Quote I accept that there are legitimate arguments, and we have heard them in the debate, for not taking this form of action now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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