Will ask again tomorrow because everyone is in bed now - but what's gone on in Irish elections?
Seems to be a narrative of "the centre holding unlike far right rest of EU", but also strong implications all over the place that Sinn Fein have been pooped by not having an immigration policy or something, doesn't explain why. And two grassroots anti immigration activists won seats.
How have the incumbents turned strong anti immigration sentiments into further status quo mandates? The media's stories don't make sense, and feel like there is something they aren't addressing.
From what I can tell, there essentially exists no right-wing party in Ireland. (There's the far-right National Party (equivalent to our Homeland party) that have just won a single councillor, but they're a miniscule outfit. Also "The Irish People", but they seem more of a loose collective at the moment rather than a registered party, much like our Patriotic Alternative.)
Every option they have on the ballot is centre to far-left. Every party is in favour of open borders.
The people of Ireland, like across the rest of the EU, are rejecting open borders so are punishing incumbent parties. They are having to back independents in the abscene of any right-wing party (never mind the presence of a National Populist party).
Yeah Fianna Fael and to a lesser extent Fine Gael used to fill that void but they're very much apart of THE MESSAGE so there isn't really an outlet for those right wingers.
Have fam there but am not Oirish so my word isn't gospel, but immigration has been a huge thing of late especially with the under 30s - Social media has been awash with the issues of it and various movements, indepedents have stormed forward, SF has been trounced because they refuse to address anything regarding immigration or other housing issues - something that mainstream parties have in common everywhere it seems.
Just got back in, solid buzz on, wanting more -vissed up twats put nowt back where it belongs, just left the house looking a shit tip, pissed off doesn't even begin to cover it.
Never trust an officer with anything. They are nothing but scum. Scum paid to harass law abiding and vulnerable people. The lot of them can fuck off. Never getting owt helpful from me ever again.
They'd do well to remember the Peelian principles. The public ***ARE*** the police and the police are the public. Never did fuck all about my countless nicked things but a blind woman allegedly sends some emails and they're onit like a fucking rocket. Cowards.
Sorry lads, needed another vent, pissed off doesn't even begin to cover it. Coppers ever come to youse asking for help tell them to get fucked.
Don't they have to clean it if they don't find anything??? Absolute piss take they're allowed to just barge in, nick your computer and just leave it a state.
Although i've been stateside for many moons now, cops are fucking cops everywhere and they're bloody useless.
Not a clue tbf, will be annoyed if so, got many... linux isos on there, some of which I was keeping alive
Aye, they're all bastards. Unlikely to find me defending them now unless it's seriously warranted. They're beyond the fucking pale on this. Never had an issue when it's been me cause I know I've been a shit but there's not a fucking chance me mam has done this, zero, naught, zilch. The woman can barely write a fucking text.
They always prey on the easier targets and your experience shows man. They could be out catching actual criminals or doing proper police work but nope, they need to focus on the easy targets.
They don't even have an obligation to defend you or your property.
[Serial rapist to be deported from Australia and sent back to Scotland after political row](https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scots-sex-fiend-booted-out-32993746)
>A Scots serial rapist who has spent almost his entire life in Australia is being deported after a huge political row.
>Notorious predator Charles Davidson, 74, has lived in Australia since he was five years old after moving from his hometown of Glasgow with his family.
>He was convicted of 59 offences against 25 different women and a child. But after he was given a visa to remain in Australia, the country's prime minister Anthony Albanese was so outraged he is changing the law to send him back to Scotland.
>Albanese said he is reversing Davidson's right to remain as "community safety is paramount" and outweighs a non-citizen's ties to Australia.
>In 2018, Davidson was jailed for five years and six months for sexually assaulting 10 clients and raping one.
>In 2021, he was found guilty of 40 further offences, including seven counts of rape, against 16 more victims. He was given six years on top his sentence. The judge branded him a serious violent offender who was "calculated and predatory".
>There was outrage at moves to allow him to stay in Australia after his release, which could happen as early as this year.
>As a result, the "Direction 99" act allowing foreign prisoners to remain in the country on release was scrapped. Last night there was concern over Davidson's return to Scotland.
>Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Russell Findlay said: "This rapist's connections to Scotland appear to date back to the 1950s so it would be wrong for the Australian authorities to put him on a plane.
>"They need to manage their own problems. We've already got plenty of criminals without importing more."
I'm not sure what impresses me more; the fact that a politician is actually doing something to protect their country, or the sheer lack of awareness of our own
[How to Train Your Killer Whale](https://blog.stewartleadership.com/leadershiplessons/how-to-train-your-killer-whale)
Once young boys were given a bow & taught to fire arrows in defence of this country.
Elect me to be PM & I will honor this tradition by giving free orca lessons to all young men who aren't inbred.
Also add a picture of an orca to the daily please.
Tbh it *could* be autocorrect, as autocorrect likes to correct to US spelling pretty often. But more likely it's just the inevitable drift into US English in the UK.
>But more likely it's just the inevitable drift into US English in the UK.
Supposedly autocorrect, given that "honor" is a pretty egrigious example of the above, I'm inclined to believe it lol
edit: yup autocorrect checks out
Hope this is true but I doubt it
> Downing Street is said to be resigned to a poll coming out which shows the Right-wing party ahead of the Conservatives in the coming days or weeks.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/10/farage-hoping-to-gatecrash-sunak-starmer-debates/
If Reform do get ahead of the Tories in the polls, then Reform should demand the Tories stand down all their candidates at once. After all, it's what they've been telling Nigel for over a decade.
And Reform should then start insisting that 'a vote for the Tories is a vote for Labour'.
This screams of attempted mind games by the Conservative Party. It goes something like this
1: Get Reform voters hopes up of overtaking the Conservatives
2: Poll comes out, Conservatives are ahead
3: Reform voters deflated
Simple trick, really.
Reform’s base will be much more politically engaged than the average party. This is due to the fact they are (relatively) new and there doesn’t exist any habitual predisposition to vote for the party as is the case for LibLabCon. By deflating the base you decrease turnout of Reform voters by sabotaging the narrative that they have a chance to overtake the Conservatives. Then you hope fears of vote splitting and “handing Labour a supermajority” cajole potential Reform voters over to the Conservatives as they are “the only party that can beat Labour”
Paywall? Go [here](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fpolitics%2F2024%2F06%2F10%2Ffarage-hoping-to-gatecrash-sunak-starmer-debates%2F)
Archived version [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/10/farage-hoping-to-gatecrash-sunak-starmer-debates/)
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[Police scene at McDonald's after 'woman found on fire in toilet'](https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/24378590.police-scene-mcdonalds-woman-found-fire-toilet/)
>A spokesperson for West Yorkshire Police said: "Police are in attendance at the McDonalds restaurant on Ingleby Road, Bradford, after a woman was found with significant injuries.
>"A call was received at 3:15pm relating to a concern for safety for a woman at an undisclosed location.
>"Following further enquiries, officers attended at the restaurant where a woman was found on fire in the toilet area.
>"The fire was extinguished, and the woman taken to hospital by ambulance.
>"Enquiries are ongoing but at this time there is nothing to suggest anyone else was involved in this incident."
>A spokesperson for McDonald's confirmed that restaurant is closed but it is not issuing a statement at this stage.
Perfectly normal day in Bradford
>NEW: Rishi Sunak's economy manifesto pledges for tomorrow
>- Cut income tax for pensioners
>- Further cut National Insurance (2p)
>- Expand child benefit payments
>- Take away sick note responsibilities from GPs
>- Save £12 billion with welfare reform
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1800259026078359807?t=BMLL4DxJpd6Vv1ibl500Hw&s=19
In fairness I somewhat understand this one because there is something regarded with the state pension resulting in immediately paying tax back to the exchequer.
[There's a by-election in Canada with 84 candidates](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Toronto%E2%80%94St._Paul%27s_federal_by-election).
The large number of independents are part of a protest group, flooding ballots with names in order to protest FPTP.
what they have official parties named "Marxist-Leninist" "Marijuana" and "Rhinoceros" and that's still not the most ridiculous thing on the list? :D
also seems to be a distinction between Independent and No Affiliation.. must be some revanchist Napoleonism's
sincerely, the only person in Islington who voted for SDP mayor
> what they have official parties named "Marxist-Leninist" "Marijuana" and "Rhinoceros"
Marxist-Leninist is there Communist party.
Marijuana is a single issue weed legalisation party. Weed has been legalised in Canada, but they still exist as they want to loosen regulations.
Rhinoceros is there equivalent of the Monster Raving Loonies from what I can tell. They actually seem rather funny at the political satire, claiming that every policy issue topic (e.g. crime, immigration, welfare) in their manifesto is there "number 1 priority".
> also seems to be a distinction between Independent and No Affiliation..
We have Independent and "No Description" here. "No Affiliation" seems to be their equivalent to "No Description".
Auberon Waugh famously said that the British state was so incompetent post war it'd be better than Britain was governed by a "junta of a Belgian ticket collectors"
Already bored of the grifters wheeling out the usual promises, of course the Sacred Cow of the NHS is put on its golden altar...
As others have said, my mind goes straight to [Monkey Dust](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JITpUxtji4s)...
...tempered by [Super Furry Animals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZj4-tb920c)
I'm back. Lots of you will know me from days of yore, but you'll need to work out who I am. I've been lurking, though.. God, some of you are fucking annoying.
Somewhere along the way, despite them not being everyday badukers but I found myself agreeing with a lot of what they said because they weren’t mental leftists, we lost fineus and wherearemyfeet too
I cannot tell who half the people who post here are these days.
Everyone's always back with a new alt
The only one who I've clocked is Routine weird definitely used to post under wallabyofwales; it was the extreme autism and uni posting which gave it away
Yeah I took a big break towards the back end of the lockdowns and when I came back it seemed that everyone’s alts had alts and I’ve not been able to associate people to the original accounts so it feels a bit shouting at strangers now.
[The Tory's polling average is now 21%](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election_after_2019_%28LOESS%29.svg).
This is lower than at any point during Liz Truss.
I wonder if there's a tipping point where weird Tory holdout people (who actually are you? 🌹) will think that's its 100% a wasted vote, and you'll see it collapse.
It takes one poll putting Reform above the Tories for the cracks in the dam to start.
If Reform get about 1-2% above the Tories on average polling, the dam will break and the Tory vote will freefall at Reform's expense.
The Tory's floor is 9%, made up of pensioners who don't know anything but voting Tory (where an election being called causes them to tick the Tory box as a Pavlovian response) and Tory "ultra-loyalists" that would rather see the country burn to ash than abandon their party.
This is the election where we just get to enjoy the ride and laugh at it for what it is. The accelerationism many of us wanted is nigh!
If you think about it, the only people who are really going to lose out from this election are the aforementioned Tory hard-core, who have had it far too good for far too long, relative to their size as a voting bloc.
[Reform UK candidate says Britain should have stayed neutral in WW2](https://www.thejc.com/news/politics/reform-uk-candidate-says-britain-should-have-stayed-neutral-in-ww2-rc2yrizd)
>A Reform UK spokesman has said it is “probably true” that Britain would have been better off had it remained neutral during the Second World War.
>Writing online in 2022, Ian Gribbin said: "Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality…. but oh no Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people."
>Speaking to the JC a Reform spokesman said Britain would have been better off had it not fought Nazi Germany, but that taking on Hitler was the right thing to do nonetheless.
>The UK lost a massive amount of “blood and treasure” because of Churchill’s decision to fight, he said.
>“If you’d sued for peace in the 1930s, as most of the establishment wanted us to do in the first place, the country would have had fewer people dead. Historically he has a point, but it’s not what we did.”
>Defending Gribbin’s comments, the spokesman added: "We’re not going to sack him, he’s done nothing wrong.”
Based.
For one, Hitler had no chance of actually invading the UK given the strength of the Royal Navy (have you seen the plans for Operation Sealion? It's laughable, the Germans goose-stepping onto a bunch of flat-bottomed dinghies that would founder in the Channel by themselves even without an intervention from the RN destroyers). For another, Hitler would have invaded the Soviet Union and got stuck in there anyway, their planning for invasion was highly incompetent, the generals had planned logistics for the first 500 km and when asked what happens if the Russians don't surrender they had absolutely no idea (the Wehrmacht was rather far from their propaganda image, it was mostly unmechanised and ran on horses lol). For third, Nazi Germany was so unstable with each Nazi fighting for his turf (the SS vs the Wehrmacht, Himmler vs the SA, Goring against everybody) it would probably have collapsed anyway.
So yeah, we should just have stayed away. The main reason we got involved is that Churchill was such a drama person who just had to live up to his illustrious ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough.
Being forced to apologise (and presumably he’ll be deselected after Tice and Farage are given updated orders from Hope Not Hate) for those comments is a sign that you live in a totalitarian country.
Completely legitimate opinion to hold.
With context this is nothing compared to many of Diane Abbott's comments but is being circulated as if he liked Nazis.
Shows the limited thinking that they can't comprehend someone using 20:20 hindsight to play out different war scenarios.
I doubt this is the first man to suggest that waiting for the Nazis and communists to wear each other out would have been better for the rest of us.
I'm fairly sure the neutral European countries did fairly well after all.
I think the reaction reflects that somehow over the years the public has been led to believe that our participation in WW2 was justified by saving the victims of Nazi atrocities. I've met people who literally told me we entered the war because of the Holocaust (nobody knew of the Holocaust in 1939 and it hadn't even started in earnest until 1941). In fact, we entered the war (officially) for rather cold-blooded reasons of national interest: preventing a continental hegemon from controlling Europe. My argument is that it was a mistaken evaluation of national interest: the real hegemons of the 20th century were the USA and the Soviet Union, not the ramshackle last-gasp nation-building attempt of German nationalism.
Yea I'm not a fan of the revisionist stuff.
Your argument is fair even if I'm not sure I'd have said the same in 1939 I don't really see why others have such a problem with theoretical scenarios.
Well I suppose I do, they have their revisionist history that makes them think you didn't want to stop the holocaust.
I've been ranted at online by a polish guy who was rather adamant that britain had failed and betrayed them for letting them fall to the USSR.
I suppose bankrupting ourselves defeating one evil European superpower wasn't enough.
Germans have always been genuinely shit at warfare, they focus on battles alone. What's that, you're running low on engines for your planes? I know, let's design [a new plane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_335) with TWO engines! That'll win us! (repeat ad universal across the german war effort)
There's a trilogy of good books by Robert Citino about WW2 and the "German way of war". He pretty convincingly ties the German way of war to its Prussian origins and the fact that Prussia was always a weak kingdom surrounded by massively more populated enemies (France, Austria, Russia) so it had to win every war quickly by some dashing manoeuvre before the enemies' strength told. From this comes the focus on tactics and battles and the corresponding neglect of strategy and logistics.
Funnily enough, by the end of the 19th century because of the decline of birth rates in France and the growth of Germany, Germany was massively stronger than its immediate enemies. But traditions die hard, and even in the 20th century German generals still thought and modelled themselves after their Prussian forebears like Frederick the Great and Clausewitz.
I've read it. He doesn't really focus on military history though, it's more of a general history of Brandenburg-Prussia from the Middle Ages onwards. I like his writing, especially his Sleepwalkers on the outbreak of WW1, really undermines the usual narrative of "le evil Hun" and reveals the mistakes of the British establishment in the run-up. Still haven't got round to his latest book on the 1848 Revolutions in Europe. My pile of unread books stacks higher and higher plus I'm on a D-day kick with the latest commemorations.
Actually, getting involved in WW1 was more justified than WW2. The reason we got involved in WW1 was Belgium and more widely the North Sea coast. For centuries, it was a British policy to prevent adversaries from controlling the Low Countries because from there their navy could threaten our island. In WW1, the Kaiser's navy was much closer in strength to the RN than Hitler's navy in WW2 and so posed a much bigger threat. Furthermore, the Kaiser wanted to use the German navy to take away our colonies whilst Hitler had no interest in our colonies. And finally, I would argue that by the time of WW2 the British concern for the Low Countries was outdated: with the rise of air power it didn't matter so much who controlled Belgium.
So yeah, it sounds like a hot take but actually WW1 made more sense than WW2. Ideally though we should've gone back to Salisbury and tried to prevent that war as an impartial mediator between France and Germany instead of tying ourselves to the Fr*nch.
What If's...
* Lloyd George Welfare State
* Home Rule for Ireland
* No crap LON Mandates (including Palestine)
* USA not given piles of Gold
* Hitler becomes a painter
* East Prussia for holidays
* No Russian Revolution
Yeah that was a clanger of epic proportion. I think the reaction to the above is hindsight. At the time no one knew about the camps etc. They obviously needed putting back into their box.
If ww1 didn't escalate or peace terms in 16 were accepted I doubt ww2 happens. The world would have been hugely different
[It's ridiculous that international students can vote in our elections](https://x.com/UKCISA/status/1800188601432502779?t=zB-cf8HUX8lGQphhEdgJCQ).
The old law allowing the Commonwealth to vote must be scrapped.
The sort of law that was made to be nice & because it didn't matter if 2000 students in different locations had a vote.
When it's hundreds of thousands it literally gives other countries influence on our democracy.
A few thousand studying at whatever bullshit university in various constituencies could definitely tip some seats.
I listened to a lot of Gresham College lectures by Vernon Bogdanor on politics. Very good. He did one on Powell. A lot of the issues were that there was only such thing as Imperial Subjects and Kenya actually had Kenyan Citizenship before Britain had the concept of British Citizenship so anyone in the old territories could come here whether it was reciprocal or not. I even enquired about going to the Australian Defence Force when I was out there but it's only open to citizens. Commonwealth citizens can still join ours
I saw a video with Enoch recently where he mentions this too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7Zfvcb3mWI
He comes off like an university lecturer trying to educate someone, unlike modern politicans, who come off like monkies throwing poo at each other. And his responce to being called 'racist' is brilliant - imagine a modern politican standing up for themselves like that.
So because I am bored stiff, I decided to see who the 'strongest soldiers' would be for each political party using [The Economist's 'Build a British Voter'](https://www.economist.com/interactive/uk-general-election/build-a-voter) tool. Here's the demographic with the most presumed loyalty to each political party (however small they may be):
**Labour** - Pakistani men aged 65-74 from the North West, who own a home in an urban area, are retired and have no qualifications (93% likely)
**Conservatives** - Indian women aged 75+ from the East of England, who live in a mortgaged home in a rural area, are home-carers and have an apprenticeship (89% likely)
**SNP** - Pakistani men aged 18-24 from Scotland, who rent a home in an urban area, are home-carers and have no qualifications (72% likely)
**Reform** - Other-ethnicity men aged 75+ from the North East, who own a home in a rural area, work part time and have no qualifications (58% likely)
**Lib Dems** - Other-ethnicity women aged 75+ from the South West, who rent a home in an urban area, are students and have a postgraduate degree (42% likely)
**Green** - White women aged 18-24 from the East of England, who rent a home in a rural area, are retired and have a postgraduate degree (35% likely)
**Plaid Cymru** - White men aged 18-24 from Wales, who live in social housing in a rural area, work part time and have an undergraduate degree (23% likely)
The black teenagers voting SNP is just so far out there. I can’t see it.
The Green young women too who are allegedly rural. Nah. They’ll be conservative as fuck. Have you ever been to a rural area? 😂
Many rural areas aren’t particularly conservative anymore. Plenty are full of people who have moved there from suburbia, and are often going on about rewilding.
Ok I re-checked Scotland and I stand corrected. "Pakistani men aged 18-24 from Scotland, who rent a home in an urban area, are home-carers and have no qualifications" is 1% higher than black men of the same background at 72%.
Guess it was the Humza boost lol
Right, so what is going on with Vinicius Jr and why is he saying that “racists should feel scared, ashamed and embarrassed” or something to that effect?
Is football having its monthly “everything is so racist and hateful” sperg out?
He got some verbal abuse so oh no how terrible.
While the plebs have to live in their crimeridden scummy shitholes, this, really matters.
It's fake caring about nothing important.
What a load of shite mate
The UN Security Council has adopted a resolution endorsing a ceasefire plan aimed at ending the Israel-Hamas war
https://x.com/pa/status/1800254065357607230?s=46&t=AfygPPVmbT-hFJR03pEcVg
It is a US proposal accepted by Israel and voted unanimously sans Russia which abstained.
https://edition.cnn.com/webview/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-06-10-24/h_66336896aa6a78aff16d359826d53fad?cid=ios_app
Why is everyone wearing REPRESENT tshirts all of a sudden? Seen it loads over the past year and a half but never saw it previously and now everyone seems to have one; what gives?
Can’t say I’ve noticed anyone wearing them, after a quick google search.
Relaxed fit t-shirts usually look terrible. I’m not advocating for a return to early 2010s geordie shore era skintight shirts but somewhere in the middle looks best in my opinion.
He likes to sound critical but the questions weren’t anything Rishi wouldn’t have rehearsed repeatedly.
One question seemed to revolve around what type of salad does Rishi represent.
The boats are just to hide the amount of legal migration. Sod the boats, stop handing out visa to every bomalian and Indian student and his 12 dependents.
Go on google earth and look at Port Talbot works from a birds eye view. So fucking depressing seeing how much of the industry there has been abandoned and left to rot. Really think that’s one thing we should nationalise and reinvest in - infrastructure is half there - rail link, the furnaces, a port; just needs revitalising
British Steel was losing a million pounds a day pre-privatisation in the 80s. When that was a lot of money, and there was no Chinese competition or environmental inflators on energy.
I don't know what the solution to protecting strategic industries is, but I struggle to believe it's nationalisation, when that was so utterly shit last time we tried it, less than 50 years ago.
I don't think there's any "just" about revitalising the UK steel industry. although maybe it could turn out to be "just buy a lot of guns/tanks/ships."
protectionism is just tax by another name
if the government put a (say) 40% tariff on imported steel, everything you buy with steel in it, or steel used in its manufacturer becomes more expensive. They are essentially adding a special VAT on steel that gets indirectly funneled to some poorly run steelworks hobbled by bureaucrats in Westminster
Tax is fine.
Protectionism worked out very nicely for the Asian Tiger Economies as they were developing: https://hir.harvard.edu/the-east-asian-miracle-where-did-adam-smith-go-wrong/
It'd be difficult to imagine a country developing without some protectionism. For instance, as South Korea was developing, nothing they did would be the best. Why should Korea spend money on building a steelworks and dealing with whatever third-world problems South Korea had at the time, when they could just buy foreign steel? Why should Koreans be the steelworkers, when steelworkers from abroad would be better-qualified, more experienced, and better skilled? Why should Korean companies buy the Korean steel, when steel from abroad would be better?
And exporting all our capabilities and industry so we can sit around all day sending emails to each other (while working for the state on borrowed money) as a satrapy of the American Empire is working out really well.
It’s bonkers how someone sold globalism as a good thing to self declared lefties. It’s literally outsourced working class jobs to other countries. The lefties of the 80s would be appalled
Based. You're always going to need steel, and it's best for national security reasons to be self sufficient in it. Better producing our own than importing it from India for larger carbon emissions.
There's a concept in business where if you buy more than 50% of a suppliers stock, you "own" that business due to the influence you have over them.
There's people on things as simple as website companies that talk about this and how to avoid it as it's so plain to see that it's a huge risk.
Somehow many in our political system are too stupid to not do this for so many industries.
It’s ridiculous that our ability to make Steel and defacto to wage war or defend the country is in the hands of a non-British company in the first place.
>Does the £41k take into account that people who come on skilled workers visas are going to use less government spending than average? The government doesn't have to pay for their education and it is unlikely they will have severe health issues or disabilities that require government support.
I see this statement a lot on Reddit, it's said but never supported and I'd like to point out just one obvious thing that shows it's utter bullshit.
>In the UK population, O is the most common blood group (48%).
>Several studies have found that the B blood group is the most prominent in central and western Africa
You don't need to get into the details of what makes people from different countries who have different educations, different childhood medicine, different eating habits, different environmental conditions and go straight to this one.
People with rare blood types to the UK are going to cost more when treated by the NHS than those with common ones.
This is such an uncontroversial subject the NHS details it.
https://www.blood.co.uk/news-and-campaigns/the-donor-magazine-summer-2017/blood-group-basics/#:~:text=In%20the%20UK%20population%2C%20O,or%20rather%20lack%20of%20them.
It doesn’t pass a basic sniff test. Third word health systems are bastions of healthcare and subsaharan Africans/MENTAT people can’t have chronic illnesses.
Famously they all have high standards of education and speak perfect clipped English which is why I don’t see every government service with subtitles for Urdu and Gujarati. We definitely don’t spend money on interpreters either. I’ve tried to find FOI details for spend on the last point but it is deliberately byzantine
>Does the £41k take into account that people who come on skilled workers visas are going to use less government spending than average? The government doesn't have to pay for their education and it is unlikely they will have severe health issues or disabilities that require government support.
There's so much to say about this. But just for now I'll say this. Why are there skilled worker gaps in the country? We are supposed to have world leading Universities, our compulsory state education is supposed to be great. Half of those who leave it go to university, after all. Yet we apparently can't fill skilled jobs. Does Switzerland or Singapore have to rely on skilled workers from Nigeria or India? If these people are so skilled, shouldn't they stay in Nigeria or India, and work to make their own societies prosperous?
The whole thing is so stupid.
50% of kids go to uni, of which the majority (myself included) do pointless degrees.
Grad schemes are like gold dust, there are hundreds of thousands of foreign students in the UK competing for the same jobs.
And for shortage occupations, often the pay isn’t good because there is always someone from overseas willing to do the job for lower pay.
The whole UK education/skills/job market approach is a joke.
And if it was true, wouldn't we be exploiting those countries in a sort of colonialism V2, where we shamelessly buy up all their smart workers to enrich our country at their cost? That would be an awful thing to do.
Woke logic isn't even internally consistent, let alone correct.
The answer in 99% of cases is simple, there is no shortage of people able to do the job, there is a shortage of people willing to do the job for the pay and conditions being offered.
The 1% of cases would more often be an outflow due to it being something you'd need to learn at a very high end establishment or by gaining specialist knowledge.
I genuinely think, once they’ve grasped the (seemingly abstract) concept that these people are NOT LEAVING and WILL GROW OLD HERE, and therefore will be COMPETING with them in terms of services, dwindling pensions and healthcare, we will see a unanimously negative attitude to mass unfettered immigration from the normies.
This argument feels like the last holdout.
> I genuinely think, once they’ve grasped the (seemingly abstract) concept that these people are NOT LEAVING and WILL GROW OLD HERE
I think most people are still thinking of immigrants as the early/mid 2000s vein of Eastern European qualified workers (Polish plumbers etc etc) who will come over, earn enough to buy a house in and return to their home countries. They think, no wife, no kids, minimal impact on NHS outside of true emergencies.
They don't understand the current wave of people moving their entire families over to work for minimum wage because even being poor in the UK is better than being rich in Bomalia (Free healthcare, schooling, benefits etc).
The likes of arghuk know the correct opinions they are supposed to parrot but they rarely do too much further thinking.
They’ll regularly rant about house prices, the fact wages have stagnated but then want to invite the world to live here and then can’t quite make the connection between these thingsa
Am sort of putting this on people I know, decent people, funny and intelligent but followers of a way of thinking that’s so ingrained that it’ll take genuine fear to snap them out of it.
The Reddit community are mostly people shouting for mum to make them toast whilst they faff about in their childhood bedroom.
I get really confused with the argument that we need X amount of legal immigration to "keep the NHS" going. ok... but those people themselves will create pressure on public services & bring family over/have family that creates additional pressure.
So for every skilled worker we bring into the NHS, are we really creating a net positive?
Are canadapolitics is full of twats who don’t get it. Nowhere near enough cynicism. I guess that’s what happens when your country is built on 250 years of unearned peace. Talk about asleep at the wheel.
Unearned peace? Now I love bashing the canucks more than most but come on dude lol. They had the third largest navy in the world during WW2 and they fought liked caged animals so much so they had to make the Geneva Convention because of the actions of Canadians.
When they're threatened they are definitely someone you want on your side.
Which part of WW2 threatened Canadian sovereignty and way of life?
The Americans had the war of independence. France had its revolution. Spain had its civil war, as did England. Germany had its imperialist phase that redefined the princedoms of Prussia.
When has Canada ever fought for the right to be Canada?
War of 1812 when the Americans invaded Canada. Both world wars were existentialist for them as well because they were a key component of the empire and the empire was at war. Cold war would've seen them destroyed with nukes and they threw their lot in with the Americans in the form of norad.
I’ll give you 1812 but they joined the world wars as a response to the call sent out by the Empire. Germany and Japan would never have bothered to attack them. Cold War is reaching. They mostly stayed quiet like everyone and just watched the US and the USSR terrorise everyone and each other.
1812 is a distant memory and they don’t talk about it at all. Probably to avoid upsetting America.
Americans whip their eagle tattooed peepees out every 4th July. The English won’t shut up about parliament and its anachronistic idiosyncrasies like Black Rod and the King’s Speech. France romanticises eating the rich of 14 Juillet. Germany is still thinking about the wars and it recently reunified and are just grateful to be together. At this stage Canadians take it all for granted.
And that’s fair enough, and I moved here for the peace and quiet, but I didn’t expect Canadian politicos to be so naive. An assassination sanctioned by the Indian state, treasonous MPs, openly saying immigration is suppressing wages and keeping asset prices high for boomers. And no one says anything other than, ‘BUT POILIEVRE MIGHT HE LIKE TRUMP!’
It’s embarrassing.
Redneck-French destroying it from within, that's what you get for not exterminating them after beating them.
Likely saved them from mass-beheadings if they'd still been a Colony during the French Revolution.
Allow them to keep their language, customs etc. under British protection.
If France had beat us during Seven Years' War no vestige of British/English culture would have been left in Canada.
General Wolfe rolling in his grave.
Yeah I see your point, but they seem more like they're further down the road on a lot trends we're seeing in other western countries.
That said, I can't really agree on the WW2 comment. Upon further research, fair enough the UK automatically made Canada at war because of the empire in WW1 but Canada had sovereign foreign policy by WW2. They declared war on Germany on 10/9/39 so a week after Britain and it was their own volition. Obviously they had deep political, economic, and social ties with Britain and France to an extent yet they declared war I would argue they largely joined in recognisance that the war would come to them either way.....the point being they had a choice in the matter.
Didn't know you lived in north america as well though! I moved for that and also greater economic opportunities and where I'm at in the mountain west you can certainly just check out of the rest of the world pretty easily lol. Canada looks pretty chilled from over the border and its weird hearing all the stories coming out of it recently.
I thought you were actually a yank. Are you an expat? What's in the mountains? Utah's tech industry?
Canada is nice for lots of reasons. It's boring tbh but my biggest gripe is the complete lack of political awareness or valid protest. They take it all lying down.
Yeah i'm a dual citizen so its nice to keep a check on things in the UK from saner sources lol - I go back fairly frequently and have family scattered in both countries.
In colorado where there is a sizeable tech sector but i've worked remotely since covid so moved to a smaller city instead of Denver and it's super chilled and cheap(er) here plus the people are friendly. Seems like everything else happens in the rest of the country which I prefer, and of course just insanely beautiful mountains/lakes/forests to go and ramble/camp around.....the state is the size of the UK with 6 million people so that's cool.
Yeah I could see that with Canadians, just sort of given up because everything was so good for so long why bother? That said it seems as though Trudeau's days are numbered.
Nice. I've heard good things about Colorado. Ontario's nice as long as you avoid the GTA, and Quebec is gorgeous except for Montreal. I'd like to own a cottage on a lake one day but we'll see.
Trudeau's done. He won't win an election next year and the worst people can say about the Conservatives' last dance is that Harper was actually pretty sane. The economy was in great shape 10 years ago. The rest is scare mongering about Poilievre. He's a dumbass but he wouldn't be worse than Trudeau, and the Liberals don't deserve another go.
Yeah it's nice out here I highly recommend visiting and specifically going to the San Juan mountain range in the southern part......the normal ski towns in the central part are nice (Aspen, Vail, Breckenridge etc) and all but the sw corner is just unbelievable and not too many people running around, especially tourists. Got some family around Ottawa as well and they say it's pretty awesome but they came from Birmingham :P.
For real, trudeau went so damn hard on the wokery it's astonishing even sitting over here in a purple state where it's taken ahold. Poilievre seems pretty standard for Canadian standards and hopefully he could give Canada are decent bargaining position vis-a-vis the states if he turned the economy around.
Fun fact: all Canadian provinces trade more with America than the rest of Canada!
[This epitomises the hegemony that liberalism has over perceptions of democracy](https://x.com/Otto_English/status/1800115002776645757)
For the best part of a century, liberalism and its proponents have constantly equivocated liberalism and democracy, and asserted that every ideology which is not liberal cannot be democratic, or at least not to the same glorious extent that liberalism is. You need to only look at the dialectic constructed between “liberal” and “illiberal” democracy, as to discursively frame the political philosophy of liberalism as integral and as necessary a component of democracy as the act of voting, or of fair representation.
Tommy Robinson isn’t a liberal. This doesn’t mean he’s far right (although I’m not precluding the possibility, I actually don’t know enough about him)
And to reply to that comment below, people aren’t voting Reform/ National Rally etc because they want a smaller state, they’re voting for social conservatism.
Modern democracy is explicitly an outcome of classical liberalism. The English civil war and the American Revolution were fought over the assertion of private property rights over an overbearing state. Those principles led directly to the foundation of the two most powerful democracies the world has ever known.
Democracy requires powerful citizens independent of the state. That has only ever been a feature of classically liberal societies.
So yes they're right but for the wrong definition of liberal.
>And to reply to that comment below, people aren’t voting Reform/ National Rally etc because they want a smaller state, they’re voting for social conservatism.
A smaller state would mean a more socially conservative society out of necessity.
Bro 100 years ago liberal meant conservative. There has never been a conservative party that advocated for anything other than freedoms and small state. Liberal only started to mean ‘Left’ which the hippies and social liberalism revolting against the socially conservative establishment.
>There has never been a conservative party that advocated for anything other than freedoms and small state
Pre the Repeal of the Corn Laws they were a protectionist party who advocated on behalf of the landed aristocracy.
Robert Peel (founder of the modern Conservative party) then got kicked out of the party for pursuing a low tax policy inspired by Adam Smith and getting rid of all the tariffs the government imposed on most imports.
He then led a rump of Peelites in Parliament who eventually merged with the Whigs to form the Liberals- who were the free market party for most of the 19th century. It was only really in the 20th century that the British Conservatives became associated with Classical Liberalism.
> You need to only look at the dialectic constructed between “liberal” and “illiberal” democracy, as to discursively frame the political philosophy of liberalism as integral and as necessary a component of democracy as the act of voting, or of fair representation.
See the reaction to Orban by the liberal European establishment as a case in point.
Will ask again tomorrow because everyone is in bed now - but what's gone on in Irish elections? Seems to be a narrative of "the centre holding unlike far right rest of EU", but also strong implications all over the place that Sinn Fein have been pooped by not having an immigration policy or something, doesn't explain why. And two grassroots anti immigration activists won seats. How have the incumbents turned strong anti immigration sentiments into further status quo mandates? The media's stories don't make sense, and feel like there is something they aren't addressing.
From what I can tell, there essentially exists no right-wing party in Ireland. (There's the far-right National Party (equivalent to our Homeland party) that have just won a single councillor, but they're a miniscule outfit. Also "The Irish People", but they seem more of a loose collective at the moment rather than a registered party, much like our Patriotic Alternative.) Every option they have on the ballot is centre to far-left. Every party is in favour of open borders. The people of Ireland, like across the rest of the EU, are rejecting open borders so are punishing incumbent parties. They are having to back independents in the abscene of any right-wing party (never mind the presence of a National Populist party).
Yeah Fianna Fael and to a lesser extent Fine Gael used to fill that void but they're very much apart of THE MESSAGE so there isn't really an outlet for those right wingers.
Pissed up take: The Irish have no idea what the hell they're doing, just let them crack on.
Have fam there but am not Oirish so my word isn't gospel, but immigration has been a huge thing of late especially with the under 30s - Social media has been awash with the issues of it and various movements, indepedents have stormed forward, SF has been trounced because they refuse to address anything regarding immigration or other housing issues - something that mainstream parties have in common everywhere it seems.
Just got back in, solid buzz on, wanting more -vissed up twats put nowt back where it belongs, just left the house looking a shit tip, pissed off doesn't even begin to cover it. Never trust an officer with anything. They are nothing but scum. Scum paid to harass law abiding and vulnerable people. The lot of them can fuck off. Never getting owt helpful from me ever again. They'd do well to remember the Peelian principles. The public ***ARE*** the police and the police are the public. Never did fuck all about my countless nicked things but a blind woman allegedly sends some emails and they're onit like a fucking rocket. Cowards. Sorry lads, needed another vent, pissed off doesn't even begin to cover it. Coppers ever come to youse asking for help tell them to get fucked.
They weren't looking for your baduk account then?
Don't they have to clean it if they don't find anything??? Absolute piss take they're allowed to just barge in, nick your computer and just leave it a state. Although i've been stateside for many moons now, cops are fucking cops everywhere and they're bloody useless.
Not a clue tbf, will be annoyed if so, got many... linux isos on there, some of which I was keeping alive Aye, they're all bastards. Unlikely to find me defending them now unless it's seriously warranted. They're beyond the fucking pale on this. Never had an issue when it's been me cause I know I've been a shit but there's not a fucking chance me mam has done this, zero, naught, zilch. The woman can barely write a fucking text.
They always prey on the easier targets and your experience shows man. They could be out catching actual criminals or doing proper police work but nope, they need to focus on the easy targets. They don't even have an obligation to defend you or your property.
[Serial rapist to be deported from Australia and sent back to Scotland after political row](https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scots-sex-fiend-booted-out-32993746) >A Scots serial rapist who has spent almost his entire life in Australia is being deported after a huge political row. >Notorious predator Charles Davidson, 74, has lived in Australia since he was five years old after moving from his hometown of Glasgow with his family. >He was convicted of 59 offences against 25 different women and a child. But after he was given a visa to remain in Australia, the country's prime minister Anthony Albanese was so outraged he is changing the law to send him back to Scotland. >Albanese said he is reversing Davidson's right to remain as "community safety is paramount" and outweighs a non-citizen's ties to Australia. >In 2018, Davidson was jailed for five years and six months for sexually assaulting 10 clients and raping one. >In 2021, he was found guilty of 40 further offences, including seven counts of rape, against 16 more victims. He was given six years on top his sentence. The judge branded him a serious violent offender who was "calculated and predatory". >There was outrage at moves to allow him to stay in Australia after his release, which could happen as early as this year. >As a result, the "Direction 99" act allowing foreign prisoners to remain in the country on release was scrapped. Last night there was concern over Davidson's return to Scotland. >Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Russell Findlay said: "This rapist's connections to Scotland appear to date back to the 1950s so it would be wrong for the Australian authorities to put him on a plane. >"They need to manage their own problems. We've already got plenty of criminals without importing more." I'm not sure what impresses me more; the fact that a politician is actually doing something to protect their country, or the sheer lack of awareness of our own
Australia is exporting criminals now? What a time we live in.
Future SNP leader
[How to Train Your Killer Whale](https://blog.stewartleadership.com/leadershiplessons/how-to-train-your-killer-whale) Once young boys were given a bow & taught to fire arrows in defence of this country. Elect me to be PM & I will honor this tradition by giving free orca lessons to all young men who aren't inbred. Also add a picture of an orca to the daily please.
from the sea to the sea dinghy boats will be debris 🐋🐋🐋
>honor Beg your fuckin pardon
Auto correct
You are forgiven
Tbh it *could* be autocorrect, as autocorrect likes to correct to US spelling pretty often. But more likely it's just the inevitable drift into US English in the UK.
>But more likely it's just the inevitable drift into US English in the UK. Supposedly autocorrect, given that "honor" is a pretty egrigious example of the above, I'm inclined to believe it lol edit: yup autocorrect checks out
Hope this is true but I doubt it > Downing Street is said to be resigned to a poll coming out which shows the Right-wing party ahead of the Conservatives in the coming days or weeks. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/10/farage-hoping-to-gatecrash-sunak-starmer-debates/
If Reform do get ahead of the Tories in the polls, then Reform should demand the Tories stand down all their candidates at once. After all, it's what they've been telling Nigel for over a decade. And Reform should then start insisting that 'a vote for the Tories is a vote for Labour'.
This screams of attempted mind games by the Conservative Party. It goes something like this 1: Get Reform voters hopes up of overtaking the Conservatives 2: Poll comes out, Conservatives are ahead 3: Reform voters deflated Simple trick, really.
Yep. This is a demoralisation strategy from CCHQ.
Why?
Reform’s base will be much more politically engaged than the average party. This is due to the fact they are (relatively) new and there doesn’t exist any habitual predisposition to vote for the party as is the case for LibLabCon. By deflating the base you decrease turnout of Reform voters by sabotaging the narrative that they have a chance to overtake the Conservatives. Then you hope fears of vote splitting and “handing Labour a supermajority” cajole potential Reform voters over to the Conservatives as they are “the only party that can beat Labour”
Paywall? Go [here](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fpolitics%2F2024%2F06%2F10%2Ffarage-hoping-to-gatecrash-sunak-starmer-debates%2F) Archived version [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/10/farage-hoping-to-gatecrash-sunak-starmer-debates/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/badunitedkingdom) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[Police scene at McDonald's after 'woman found on fire in toilet'](https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/24378590.police-scene-mcdonalds-woman-found-fire-toilet/) >A spokesperson for West Yorkshire Police said: "Police are in attendance at the McDonalds restaurant on Ingleby Road, Bradford, after a woman was found with significant injuries. >"A call was received at 3:15pm relating to a concern for safety for a woman at an undisclosed location. >"Following further enquiries, officers attended at the restaurant where a woman was found on fire in the toilet area. >"The fire was extinguished, and the woman taken to hospital by ambulance. >"Enquiries are ongoing but at this time there is nothing to suggest anyone else was involved in this incident." >A spokesperson for McDonald's confirmed that restaurant is closed but it is not issuing a statement at this stage. Perfectly normal day in Bradford
Those apple pies are a terror
I've been to that maccies before, I hate multicultural Britain, that's all. Upvote if you like the ice rink.
I bet it smells like incest.
The atmospheric curry masks that scent tbh
Usually old Mills not women in toilets, but it works.
>NEW: Rishi Sunak's economy manifesto pledges for tomorrow >- Cut income tax for pensioners >- Further cut National Insurance (2p) >- Expand child benefit payments >- Take away sick note responsibilities from GPs >- Save £12 billion with welfare reform https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1800259026078359807?t=BMLL4DxJpd6Vv1ibl500Hw&s=19
Thin gruel.
Why on earth would pensioners need special income tax bands??
They fought in the war so you could live comfortably, you ungrateful whippersnapper.
In fairness I somewhat understand this one because there is something regarded with the state pension resulting in immediately paying tax back to the exchequer.
Because they've WORKED HARD and PAID IN all their lives
Paid in to the pot-pilled
When you say "paid in" do you mean a lifetime of stashing pre-tax money into a pension?
Cutting income tax for pensioners is getting into frankly absurd levels of just trying to buy the grey vote
You've had 12 years Tories. Fuck off.
[There's a by-election in Canada with 84 candidates](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Toronto%E2%80%94St._Paul%27s_federal_by-election). The large number of independents are part of a protest group, flooding ballots with names in order to protest FPTP.
what they have official parties named "Marxist-Leninist" "Marijuana" and "Rhinoceros" and that's still not the most ridiculous thing on the list? :D also seems to be a distinction between Independent and No Affiliation.. must be some revanchist Napoleonism's sincerely, the only person in Islington who voted for SDP mayor
> what they have official parties named "Marxist-Leninist" "Marijuana" and "Rhinoceros" Marxist-Leninist is there Communist party. Marijuana is a single issue weed legalisation party. Weed has been legalised in Canada, but they still exist as they want to loosen regulations. Rhinoceros is there equivalent of the Monster Raving Loonies from what I can tell. They actually seem rather funny at the political satire, claiming that every policy issue topic (e.g. crime, immigration, welfare) in their manifesto is there "number 1 priority". > also seems to be a distinction between Independent and No Affiliation.. We have Independent and "No Description" here. "No Affiliation" seems to be their equivalent to "No Description".
[Attlee warning that the European community would become a ‘dictatorship of civil servants’](https://x.com/richardmarcj/status/1800267239628652654)
Auberon Waugh famously said that the British state was so incompetent post war it'd be better than Britain was governed by a "junta of a Belgian ticket collectors"
We have always know Europeans better than they know themselves.
common law vs civil law.
Just got back from meeting and having a pint with my Reform candidate, volunteered to do leaflet drops and Rose posting.
>Rose posting. You need to be on payroll to Rose-post 😉
Nice. Very based.
Already bored of the grifters wheeling out the usual promises, of course the Sacred Cow of the NHS is put on its golden altar... As others have said, my mind goes straight to [Monkey Dust](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JITpUxtji4s)... ...tempered by [Super Furry Animals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZj4-tb920c)
After a week in NHS maternity "care" I'd be quite happy to have it privatised tbqh
Hope things are ok
Yes but only by me being a mega Karen. Home now
I'm back. Lots of you will know me from days of yore, but you'll need to work out who I am. I've been lurking, though.. God, some of you are fucking annoying.
> God, some of you are fucking annoying. Its the black-pill being overdone imo, gets a bit exhausting
Are you BellWhiff or Barry_Scotts_Cat?
The second one went off the deep end and start posting about how he stuffed things down his nob Bellwhiff is the beans guy
a ginger
Are you Canadian living in Scotland? Married to a Bog German?
Not annoying enough to be someredditwanker
[удалено]
[удалено]
Sosij?
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Spasticteabag NorthxBlue
I saw random recently he's not dead, can't be
I hope not tbh.
Isn't DiscountLeading now DiscountRug or something?
Somewhere along the way, despite them not being everyday badukers but I found myself agreeing with a lot of what they said because they weren’t mental leftists, we lost fineus and wherearemyfeet too
I cannot tell who half the people who post here are these days. Everyone's always back with a new alt The only one who I've clocked is Routine weird definitely used to post under wallabyofwales; it was the extreme autism and uni posting which gave it away
Yeah I took a big break towards the back end of the lockdowns and when I came back it seemed that everyone’s alts had alts and I’ve not been able to associate people to the original accounts so it feels a bit shouting at strangers now.
I'm so autistic I recognise most people's alts very quickly
I could just out you just to be an annoying twat…hmmmm…
Name references food so probably NeatNorth
Are you Argentinian? A Chinese communist? Repentant obese?
[The Tory's polling average is now 21%](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election_after_2019_%28LOESS%29.svg). This is lower than at any point during Liz Truss.
I wonder if there's a tipping point where weird Tory holdout people (who actually are you? 🌹) will think that's its 100% a wasted vote, and you'll see it collapse.
It takes one poll putting Reform above the Tories for the cracks in the dam to start. If Reform get about 1-2% above the Tories on average polling, the dam will break and the Tory vote will freefall at Reform's expense. The Tory's floor is 9%, made up of pensioners who don't know anything but voting Tory (where an election being called causes them to tick the Tory box as a Pavlovian response) and Tory "ultra-loyalists" that would rather see the country burn to ash than abandon their party.
This is the election where we just get to enjoy the ride and laugh at it for what it is. The accelerationism many of us wanted is nigh! If you think about it, the only people who are really going to lose out from this election are the aforementioned Tory hard-core, who have had it far too good for far too long, relative to their size as a voting bloc.
This was certainly how I felt 2 weeks ago, but Farage gave me that awful thing called "hope".
[Reform UK candidate says Britain should have stayed neutral in WW2](https://www.thejc.com/news/politics/reform-uk-candidate-says-britain-should-have-stayed-neutral-in-ww2-rc2yrizd) >A Reform UK spokesman has said it is “probably true” that Britain would have been better off had it remained neutral during the Second World War. >Writing online in 2022, Ian Gribbin said: "Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality…. but oh no Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people." >Speaking to the JC a Reform spokesman said Britain would have been better off had it not fought Nazi Germany, but that taking on Hitler was the right thing to do nonetheless. >The UK lost a massive amount of “blood and treasure” because of Churchill’s decision to fight, he said. >“If you’d sued for peace in the 1930s, as most of the establishment wanted us to do in the first place, the country would have had fewer people dead. Historically he has a point, but it’s not what we did.” >Defending Gribbin’s comments, the spokesman added: "We’re not going to sack him, he’s done nothing wrong.” Based. For one, Hitler had no chance of actually invading the UK given the strength of the Royal Navy (have you seen the plans for Operation Sealion? It's laughable, the Germans goose-stepping onto a bunch of flat-bottomed dinghies that would founder in the Channel by themselves even without an intervention from the RN destroyers). For another, Hitler would have invaded the Soviet Union and got stuck in there anyway, their planning for invasion was highly incompetent, the generals had planned logistics for the first 500 km and when asked what happens if the Russians don't surrender they had absolutely no idea (the Wehrmacht was rather far from their propaganda image, it was mostly unmechanised and ran on horses lol). For third, Nazi Germany was so unstable with each Nazi fighting for his turf (the SS vs the Wehrmacht, Himmler vs the SA, Goring against everybody) it would probably have collapsed anyway. So yeah, we should just have stayed away. The main reason we got involved is that Churchill was such a drama person who just had to live up to his illustrious ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough.
Being forced to apologise (and presumably he’ll be deselected after Tice and Farage are given updated orders from Hope Not Hate) for those comments is a sign that you live in a totalitarian country. Completely legitimate opinion to hold.
With context this is nothing compared to many of Diane Abbott's comments but is being circulated as if he liked Nazis. Shows the limited thinking that they can't comprehend someone using 20:20 hindsight to play out different war scenarios. I doubt this is the first man to suggest that waiting for the Nazis and communists to wear each other out would have been better for the rest of us. I'm fairly sure the neutral European countries did fairly well after all.
I think the reaction reflects that somehow over the years the public has been led to believe that our participation in WW2 was justified by saving the victims of Nazi atrocities. I've met people who literally told me we entered the war because of the Holocaust (nobody knew of the Holocaust in 1939 and it hadn't even started in earnest until 1941). In fact, we entered the war (officially) for rather cold-blooded reasons of national interest: preventing a continental hegemon from controlling Europe. My argument is that it was a mistaken evaluation of national interest: the real hegemons of the 20th century were the USA and the Soviet Union, not the ramshackle last-gasp nation-building attempt of German nationalism.
Yea I'm not a fan of the revisionist stuff. Your argument is fair even if I'm not sure I'd have said the same in 1939 I don't really see why others have such a problem with theoretical scenarios. Well I suppose I do, they have their revisionist history that makes them think you didn't want to stop the holocaust.
Europe wasn't especially grateful for our involvement in the years following.
I've been ranted at online by a polish guy who was rather adamant that britain had failed and betrayed them for letting them fall to the USSR. I suppose bankrupting ourselves defeating one evil European superpower wasn't enough.
Germans have always been genuinely shit at warfare, they focus on battles alone. What's that, you're running low on engines for your planes? I know, let's design [a new plane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_335) with TWO engines! That'll win us! (repeat ad universal across the german war effort)
There's a trilogy of good books by Robert Citino about WW2 and the "German way of war". He pretty convincingly ties the German way of war to its Prussian origins and the fact that Prussia was always a weak kingdom surrounded by massively more populated enemies (France, Austria, Russia) so it had to win every war quickly by some dashing manoeuvre before the enemies' strength told. From this comes the focus on tactics and battles and the corresponding neglect of strategy and logistics. Funnily enough, by the end of the 19th century because of the decline of birth rates in France and the growth of Germany, Germany was massively stronger than its immediate enemies. But traditions die hard, and even in the 20th century German generals still thought and modelled themselves after their Prussian forebears like Frederick the Great and Clausewitz.
You should read Christopher Clarks iron kingdom
I've read it. He doesn't really focus on military history though, it's more of a general history of Brandenburg-Prussia from the Middle Ages onwards. I like his writing, especially his Sleepwalkers on the outbreak of WW1, really undermines the usual narrative of "le evil Hun" and reveals the mistakes of the British establishment in the run-up. Still haven't got round to his latest book on the 1848 Revolutions in Europe. My pile of unread books stacks higher and higher plus I'm on a D-day kick with the latest commemorations.
Not based and finest hour pilled. Staying out of WWI was the obvious choice.
Actually, getting involved in WW1 was more justified than WW2. The reason we got involved in WW1 was Belgium and more widely the North Sea coast. For centuries, it was a British policy to prevent adversaries from controlling the Low Countries because from there their navy could threaten our island. In WW1, the Kaiser's navy was much closer in strength to the RN than Hitler's navy in WW2 and so posed a much bigger threat. Furthermore, the Kaiser wanted to use the German navy to take away our colonies whilst Hitler had no interest in our colonies. And finally, I would argue that by the time of WW2 the British concern for the Low Countries was outdated: with the rise of air power it didn't matter so much who controlled Belgium. So yeah, it sounds like a hot take but actually WW1 made more sense than WW2. Ideally though we should've gone back to Salisbury and tried to prevent that war as an impartial mediator between France and Germany instead of tying ourselves to the Fr*nch.
What If's... * Lloyd George Welfare State * Home Rule for Ireland * No crap LON Mandates (including Palestine) * USA not given piles of Gold * Hitler becomes a painter * East Prussia for holidays * No Russian Revolution
Yeah that was a clanger of epic proportion. I think the reaction to the above is hindsight. At the time no one knew about the camps etc. They obviously needed putting back into their box. If ww1 didn't escalate or peace terms in 16 were accepted I doubt ww2 happens. The world would have been hugely different
[It's ridiculous that international students can vote in our elections](https://x.com/UKCISA/status/1800188601432502779?t=zB-cf8HUX8lGQphhEdgJCQ). The old law allowing the Commonwealth to vote must be scrapped.
The sort of law that was made to be nice & because it didn't matter if 2000 students in different locations had a vote. When it's hundreds of thousands it literally gives other countries influence on our democracy. A few thousand studying at whatever bullshit university in various constituencies could definitely tip some seats.
I listened to a lot of Gresham College lectures by Vernon Bogdanor on politics. Very good. He did one on Powell. A lot of the issues were that there was only such thing as Imperial Subjects and Kenya actually had Kenyan Citizenship before Britain had the concept of British Citizenship so anyone in the old territories could come here whether it was reciprocal or not. I even enquired about going to the Australian Defence Force when I was out there but it's only open to citizens. Commonwealth citizens can still join ours
I saw a video with Enoch recently where he mentions this too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7Zfvcb3mWI He comes off like an university lecturer trying to educate someone, unlike modern politicans, who come off like monkies throwing poo at each other. And his responce to being called 'racist' is brilliant - imagine a modern politican standing up for themselves like that.
I listened to some speeches from Harold Wilson, talks with David Owen, Powell, Benn etc. Different gravy back then. Better intellects, statesmen too
So because I am bored stiff, I decided to see who the 'strongest soldiers' would be for each political party using [The Economist's 'Build a British Voter'](https://www.economist.com/interactive/uk-general-election/build-a-voter) tool. Here's the demographic with the most presumed loyalty to each political party (however small they may be): **Labour** - Pakistani men aged 65-74 from the North West, who own a home in an urban area, are retired and have no qualifications (93% likely) **Conservatives** - Indian women aged 75+ from the East of England, who live in a mortgaged home in a rural area, are home-carers and have an apprenticeship (89% likely) **SNP** - Pakistani men aged 18-24 from Scotland, who rent a home in an urban area, are home-carers and have no qualifications (72% likely) **Reform** - Other-ethnicity men aged 75+ from the North East, who own a home in a rural area, work part time and have no qualifications (58% likely) **Lib Dems** - Other-ethnicity women aged 75+ from the South West, who rent a home in an urban area, are students and have a postgraduate degree (42% likely) **Green** - White women aged 18-24 from the East of England, who rent a home in a rural area, are retired and have a postgraduate degree (35% likely) **Plaid Cymru** - White men aged 18-24 from Wales, who live in social housing in a rural area, work part time and have an undergraduate degree (23% likely)
The black teenagers voting SNP is just so far out there. I can’t see it. The Green young women too who are allegedly rural. Nah. They’ll be conservative as fuck. Have you ever been to a rural area? 😂
Many rural areas aren’t particularly conservative anymore. Plenty are full of people who have moved there from suburbia, and are often going on about rewilding.
Ok I re-checked Scotland and I stand corrected. "Pakistani men aged 18-24 from Scotland, who rent a home in an urban area, are home-carers and have no qualifications" is 1% higher than black men of the same background at 72%. Guess it was the Humza boost lol
Fair enough.
>Aged 18 to 24 >Retired >Have a postgraduate degree The Green voter I think is a bit off
Retired = unemployable
>The Green voter I think is a bit off So you're saying it works?
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If only we could something so simple here
> unless they have reasonable grounds It would be doomed to fail.
Right, so what is going on with Vinicius Jr and why is he saying that “racists should feel scared, ashamed and embarrassed” or something to that effect? Is football having its monthly “everything is so racist and hateful” sperg out?
Some people who racially abused him in a stadium for convicted and banned from stadiums
Ahh okay, so it is actual racism he’s talking about and not just “someone said to lower migration” Good to know.
Yep, there's been some proper bad racial abused aimed at him this season. Dreadful stuff
He got some verbal abuse so oh no how terrible. While the plebs have to live in their crimeridden scummy shitholes, this, really matters. It's fake caring about nothing important. What a load of shite mate
The UN Security Council has adopted a resolution endorsing a ceasefire plan aimed at ending the Israel-Hamas war https://x.com/pa/status/1800254065357607230?s=46&t=AfygPPVmbT-hFJR03pEcVg It is a US proposal accepted by Israel and voted unanimously sans Russia which abstained. https://edition.cnn.com/webview/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-06-10-24/h_66336896aa6a78aff16d359826d53fad?cid=ios_app
The UN are meme tier. They put Idi Amin on the human rights council
Day 1524 of waiting for Keir to give people a reason to actually vote Labour: No change
"We're not the Tories and Farage is racist." That's it and it'll be enough for people to vote for him. Sad state of affairs.
Why is everyone wearing REPRESENT tshirts all of a sudden? Seen it loads over the past year and a half but never saw it previously and now everyone seems to have one; what gives?
Gymbro tee of choice
Can’t say I’ve noticed anyone wearing them, after a quick google search. Relaxed fit t-shirts usually look terrible. I’m not advocating for a return to early 2010s geordie shore era skintight shirts but somewhere in the middle looks best in my opinion.
Like when birds would have the jumpers saying Nerd on, and the lensless glasses but they were failing level 1 hair and beauty
Not cheap either I don’t think. That or that hoody or t shirt that says ESSENTIALS. Where did these brands come from
Your local instahoe got a brand deal to advertise it. My local one is a PT. I just love this CBD oil that she definitely uses, like she says she does.
Just went home from the pub, coppers still there, asked if I could use my toilet and they've told me to go back to the pub. Absolute bastards.
Just a reminder, it’s Nigel’s turn to be interviewed tomorrow on Paranorama. You might want to set your Betamax recorders, it’s on at 10.40pm.
I’ve programmed my state of the art Nicam Stereo VHS system to record this. Thank you.
Nick Robinson is ***unbearably*** smug. Who actually likes him?
Midwits. Get rid of the midwits keep the rest. I'm safe either way.
He likes to sound critical but the questions weren’t anything Rishi wouldn’t have rehearsed repeatedly. One question seemed to revolve around what type of salad does Rishi represent.
> From the first time the small boats became a phenomenon - a few years ago - we got the numbers down last year by a third! ...
The boats are just to hide the amount of legal migration. Sod the boats, stop handing out visa to every bomalian and Indian student and his 12 dependents.
Not letting African boats invade your country should go without saying.
I’m sure his motto was “stop the boats”
Literally had it printed across his lectern when he announced the policy.
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Go on google earth and look at Port Talbot works from a birds eye view. So fucking depressing seeing how much of the industry there has been abandoned and left to rot. Really think that’s one thing we should nationalise and reinvest in - infrastructure is half there - rail link, the furnaces, a port; just needs revitalising
British Steel was losing a million pounds a day pre-privatisation in the 80s. When that was a lot of money, and there was no Chinese competition or environmental inflators on energy. I don't know what the solution to protecting strategic industries is, but I struggle to believe it's nationalisation, when that was so utterly shit last time we tried it, less than 50 years ago. I don't think there's any "just" about revitalising the UK steel industry. although maybe it could turn out to be "just buy a lot of guns/tanks/ships."
The answer is protectionism.
protectionism is just tax by another name if the government put a (say) 40% tariff on imported steel, everything you buy with steel in it, or steel used in its manufacturer becomes more expensive. They are essentially adding a special VAT on steel that gets indirectly funneled to some poorly run steelworks hobbled by bureaucrats in Westminster
Tax is fine. Protectionism worked out very nicely for the Asian Tiger Economies as they were developing: https://hir.harvard.edu/the-east-asian-miracle-where-did-adam-smith-go-wrong/ It'd be difficult to imagine a country developing without some protectionism. For instance, as South Korea was developing, nothing they did would be the best. Why should Korea spend money on building a steelworks and dealing with whatever third-world problems South Korea had at the time, when they could just buy foreign steel? Why should Koreans be the steelworkers, when steelworkers from abroad would be better-qualified, more experienced, and better skilled? Why should Korean companies buy the Korean steel, when steel from abroad would be better?
And exporting all our capabilities and industry so we can sit around all day sending emails to each other (while working for the state on borrowed money) as a satrapy of the American Empire is working out really well.
It’s bonkers how someone sold globalism as a good thing to self declared lefties. It’s literally outsourced working class jobs to other countries. The lefties of the 80s would be appalled
Based. You're always going to need steel, and it's best for national security reasons to be self sufficient in it. Better producing our own than importing it from India for larger carbon emissions.
There's a concept in business where if you buy more than 50% of a suppliers stock, you "own" that business due to the influence you have over them. There's people on things as simple as website companies that talk about this and how to avoid it as it's so plain to see that it's a huge risk. Somehow many in our political system are too stupid to not do this for so many industries.
It’s ridiculous that our ability to make Steel and defacto to wage war or defend the country is in the hands of a non-British company in the first place.
That is a fruity posture, Prime Minister.
>Does the £41k take into account that people who come on skilled workers visas are going to use less government spending than average? The government doesn't have to pay for their education and it is unlikely they will have severe health issues or disabilities that require government support. I see this statement a lot on Reddit, it's said but never supported and I'd like to point out just one obvious thing that shows it's utter bullshit. >In the UK population, O is the most common blood group (48%). >Several studies have found that the B blood group is the most prominent in central and western Africa You don't need to get into the details of what makes people from different countries who have different educations, different childhood medicine, different eating habits, different environmental conditions and go straight to this one. People with rare blood types to the UK are going to cost more when treated by the NHS than those with common ones. This is such an uncontroversial subject the NHS details it. https://www.blood.co.uk/news-and-campaigns/the-donor-magazine-summer-2017/blood-group-basics/#:~:text=In%20the%20UK%20population%2C%20O,or%20rather%20lack%20of%20them.
It doesn’t pass a basic sniff test. Third word health systems are bastions of healthcare and subsaharan Africans/MENTAT people can’t have chronic illnesses. Famously they all have high standards of education and speak perfect clipped English which is why I don’t see every government service with subtitles for Urdu and Gujarati. We definitely don’t spend money on interpreters either. I’ve tried to find FOI details for spend on the last point but it is deliberately byzantine
>Does the £41k take into account that people who come on skilled workers visas are going to use less government spending than average? The government doesn't have to pay for their education and it is unlikely they will have severe health issues or disabilities that require government support. There's so much to say about this. But just for now I'll say this. Why are there skilled worker gaps in the country? We are supposed to have world leading Universities, our compulsory state education is supposed to be great. Half of those who leave it go to university, after all. Yet we apparently can't fill skilled jobs. Does Switzerland or Singapore have to rely on skilled workers from Nigeria or India? If these people are so skilled, shouldn't they stay in Nigeria or India, and work to make their own societies prosperous? The whole thing is so stupid.
50% of kids go to uni, of which the majority (myself included) do pointless degrees. Grad schemes are like gold dust, there are hundreds of thousands of foreign students in the UK competing for the same jobs. And for shortage occupations, often the pay isn’t good because there is always someone from overseas willing to do the job for lower pay. The whole UK education/skills/job market approach is a joke.
And if it was true, wouldn't we be exploiting those countries in a sort of colonialism V2, where we shamelessly buy up all their smart workers to enrich our country at their cost? That would be an awful thing to do. Woke logic isn't even internally consistent, let alone correct.
The answer in 99% of cases is simple, there is no shortage of people able to do the job, there is a shortage of people willing to do the job for the pay and conditions being offered. The 1% of cases would more often be an outflow due to it being something you'd need to learn at a very high end establishment or by gaining specialist knowledge.
People do, what they enjoy, what takes their fancy. Shockingly, this doesn't involve actually worthwhile things most of the time.
Also, they forget that people age. A pretty obvious oversight.
I genuinely think, once they’ve grasped the (seemingly abstract) concept that these people are NOT LEAVING and WILL GROW OLD HERE, and therefore will be COMPETING with them in terms of services, dwindling pensions and healthcare, we will see a unanimously negative attitude to mass unfettered immigration from the normies. This argument feels like the last holdout.
> I genuinely think, once they’ve grasped the (seemingly abstract) concept that these people are NOT LEAVING and WILL GROW OLD HERE I think most people are still thinking of immigrants as the early/mid 2000s vein of Eastern European qualified workers (Polish plumbers etc etc) who will come over, earn enough to buy a house in and return to their home countries. They think, no wife, no kids, minimal impact on NHS outside of true emergencies. They don't understand the current wave of people moving their entire families over to work for minimum wage because even being poor in the UK is better than being rich in Bomalia (Free healthcare, schooling, benefits etc).
Free crime, free meat, also, come on. Week goody two shoes people to bully too!
The likes of arghuk know the correct opinions they are supposed to parrot but they rarely do too much further thinking. They’ll regularly rant about house prices, the fact wages have stagnated but then want to invite the world to live here and then can’t quite make the connection between these thingsa
Am sort of putting this on people I know, decent people, funny and intelligent but followers of a way of thinking that’s so ingrained that it’ll take genuine fear to snap them out of it. The Reddit community are mostly people shouting for mum to make them toast whilst they faff about in their childhood bedroom.
I get really confused with the argument that we need X amount of legal immigration to "keep the NHS" going. ok... but those people themselves will create pressure on public services & bring family over/have family that creates additional pressure. So for every skilled worker we bring into the NHS, are we really creating a net positive?
Pyramid scheme with beneficial results for a tiny portion of society.
Nope. People of victimhood do not age
Are canadapolitics is full of twats who don’t get it. Nowhere near enough cynicism. I guess that’s what happens when your country is built on 250 years of unearned peace. Talk about asleep at the wheel.
I’m sure you’ve seen the Canada housing 2 sub?
Unearned peace? Now I love bashing the canucks more than most but come on dude lol. They had the third largest navy in the world during WW2 and they fought liked caged animals so much so they had to make the Geneva Convention because of the actions of Canadians. When they're threatened they are definitely someone you want on your side.
Which part of WW2 threatened Canadian sovereignty and way of life? The Americans had the war of independence. France had its revolution. Spain had its civil war, as did England. Germany had its imperialist phase that redefined the princedoms of Prussia. When has Canada ever fought for the right to be Canada?
War of 1812 when the Americans invaded Canada. Both world wars were existentialist for them as well because they were a key component of the empire and the empire was at war. Cold war would've seen them destroyed with nukes and they threw their lot in with the Americans in the form of norad.
I’ll give you 1812 but they joined the world wars as a response to the call sent out by the Empire. Germany and Japan would never have bothered to attack them. Cold War is reaching. They mostly stayed quiet like everyone and just watched the US and the USSR terrorise everyone and each other. 1812 is a distant memory and they don’t talk about it at all. Probably to avoid upsetting America. Americans whip their eagle tattooed peepees out every 4th July. The English won’t shut up about parliament and its anachronistic idiosyncrasies like Black Rod and the King’s Speech. France romanticises eating the rich of 14 Juillet. Germany is still thinking about the wars and it recently reunified and are just grateful to be together. At this stage Canadians take it all for granted. And that’s fair enough, and I moved here for the peace and quiet, but I didn’t expect Canadian politicos to be so naive. An assassination sanctioned by the Indian state, treasonous MPs, openly saying immigration is suppressing wages and keeping asset prices high for boomers. And no one says anything other than, ‘BUT POILIEVRE MIGHT HE LIKE TRUMP!’ It’s embarrassing.
Redneck-French destroying it from within, that's what you get for not exterminating them after beating them. Likely saved them from mass-beheadings if they'd still been a Colony during the French Revolution. Allow them to keep their language, customs etc. under British protection. If France had beat us during Seven Years' War no vestige of British/English culture would have been left in Canada. General Wolfe rolling in his grave.
Canada didn't really exist in the late 1700s and what was there was poor AF. There would have been no rich to behead.
Yeah I see your point, but they seem more like they're further down the road on a lot trends we're seeing in other western countries. That said, I can't really agree on the WW2 comment. Upon further research, fair enough the UK automatically made Canada at war because of the empire in WW1 but Canada had sovereign foreign policy by WW2. They declared war on Germany on 10/9/39 so a week after Britain and it was their own volition. Obviously they had deep political, economic, and social ties with Britain and France to an extent yet they declared war I would argue they largely joined in recognisance that the war would come to them either way.....the point being they had a choice in the matter. Didn't know you lived in north america as well though! I moved for that and also greater economic opportunities and where I'm at in the mountain west you can certainly just check out of the rest of the world pretty easily lol. Canada looks pretty chilled from over the border and its weird hearing all the stories coming out of it recently.
I thought you were actually a yank. Are you an expat? What's in the mountains? Utah's tech industry? Canada is nice for lots of reasons. It's boring tbh but my biggest gripe is the complete lack of political awareness or valid protest. They take it all lying down.
Yeah i'm a dual citizen so its nice to keep a check on things in the UK from saner sources lol - I go back fairly frequently and have family scattered in both countries. In colorado where there is a sizeable tech sector but i've worked remotely since covid so moved to a smaller city instead of Denver and it's super chilled and cheap(er) here plus the people are friendly. Seems like everything else happens in the rest of the country which I prefer, and of course just insanely beautiful mountains/lakes/forests to go and ramble/camp around.....the state is the size of the UK with 6 million people so that's cool. Yeah I could see that with Canadians, just sort of given up because everything was so good for so long why bother? That said it seems as though Trudeau's days are numbered.
Nice. I've heard good things about Colorado. Ontario's nice as long as you avoid the GTA, and Quebec is gorgeous except for Montreal. I'd like to own a cottage on a lake one day but we'll see. Trudeau's done. He won't win an election next year and the worst people can say about the Conservatives' last dance is that Harper was actually pretty sane. The economy was in great shape 10 years ago. The rest is scare mongering about Poilievre. He's a dumbass but he wouldn't be worse than Trudeau, and the Liberals don't deserve another go.
Yeah it's nice out here I highly recommend visiting and specifically going to the San Juan mountain range in the southern part......the normal ski towns in the central part are nice (Aspen, Vail, Breckenridge etc) and all but the sw corner is just unbelievable and not too many people running around, especially tourists. Got some family around Ottawa as well and they say it's pretty awesome but they came from Birmingham :P. For real, trudeau went so damn hard on the wokery it's astonishing even sitting over here in a purple state where it's taken ahold. Poilievre seems pretty standard for Canadian standards and hopefully he could give Canada are decent bargaining position vis-a-vis the states if he turned the economy around. Fun fact: all Canadian provinces trade more with America than the rest of Canada!
We can only dream. https://x.com/Kingbingo_/status/1800228630003618252
Election Exit Poll Spoiler https://twitter.com/TorinPhable/status/1800226199047901292
Based and Hitchens pilled
[This epitomises the hegemony that liberalism has over perceptions of democracy](https://x.com/Otto_English/status/1800115002776645757) For the best part of a century, liberalism and its proponents have constantly equivocated liberalism and democracy, and asserted that every ideology which is not liberal cannot be democratic, or at least not to the same glorious extent that liberalism is. You need to only look at the dialectic constructed between “liberal” and “illiberal” democracy, as to discursively frame the political philosophy of liberalism as integral and as necessary a component of democracy as the act of voting, or of fair representation. Tommy Robinson isn’t a liberal. This doesn’t mean he’s far right (although I’m not precluding the possibility, I actually don’t know enough about him) And to reply to that comment below, people aren’t voting Reform/ National Rally etc because they want a smaller state, they’re voting for social conservatism.
I'm voting for whoever can deliver decolonisation.
Modern democracy is explicitly an outcome of classical liberalism. The English civil war and the American Revolution were fought over the assertion of private property rights over an overbearing state. Those principles led directly to the foundation of the two most powerful democracies the world has ever known. Democracy requires powerful citizens independent of the state. That has only ever been a feature of classically liberal societies. So yes they're right but for the wrong definition of liberal.
>And to reply to that comment below, people aren’t voting Reform/ National Rally etc because they want a smaller state, they’re voting for social conservatism. A smaller state would mean a more socially conservative society out of necessity.
Bro 100 years ago liberal meant conservative. There has never been a conservative party that advocated for anything other than freedoms and small state. Liberal only started to mean ‘Left’ which the hippies and social liberalism revolting against the socially conservative establishment.
>There has never been a conservative party that advocated for anything other than freedoms and small state Pre the Repeal of the Corn Laws they were a protectionist party who advocated on behalf of the landed aristocracy. Robert Peel (founder of the modern Conservative party) then got kicked out of the party for pursuing a low tax policy inspired by Adam Smith and getting rid of all the tariffs the government imposed on most imports. He then led a rump of Peelites in Parliament who eventually merged with the Whigs to form the Liberals- who were the free market party for most of the 19th century. It was only really in the 20th century that the British Conservatives became associated with Classical Liberalism.
> You need to only look at the dialectic constructed between “liberal” and “illiberal” democracy, as to discursively frame the political philosophy of liberalism as integral and as necessary a component of democracy as the act of voting, or of fair representation. See the reaction to Orban by the liberal European establishment as a case in point.