sadoldgit

Whilst the right wing media ignored The Haunted Pencil’s admission of Gerrymandering because they were too busy slagging off Starmer for future Gerrymandering by looking at lowering the voting age and giving the vote to settled foreign nationals. Meanwhile we have a small bunch of right wing nut jobs (NatCons) looking to undermine Sunak and the odious Suella Braverman making her pitch for the leadership of the Tory Party. Fair play to Starmer (so far) for rapidly dealing with any sniff of Momentum disruption within his party. Sunak on the other hand does nothing whilst the nasty faction of his party get the same news coverage as Sunak does with Zelensky. If he had any balls he would sack Braverman but he won’t so she will continue to embarrass him and continue to lose more floating votes. Starmer knows what Blair knew. For Labour to win elections now days they have to appeal to the centrists. What Sunak needs to understand is that is where the votes are and the more media attention the far right of his party get, the more he is on course to get destroyed in next year’s election.

It seems that I made a cock of myself by arguing that my vote in a true Blue constituency is wasted in the first past the post system (if I vote for any party apart from Tory) whereas it will not be wasted in a PR system as it will be included in the way that the seats are proportionality allocated according to votes polled. If I remember correctly I think the usual suspects argued that the vote could still be wasted if the party I vote for don’t poll enough to win a seat. Nonsense of course because the vote has been positive and in play during the whole electoral process. I have lived in dyed in the wool Tory constituencies all my voting life and it is a cast iron certainty that the Tory MP will win no matter which box I tick. That is a wasted vote. If I cast a vote for a smaller party and they don’t poll enough to win one seat, to me that is not a wasted vote as it has been included in the electoral process right up to the final distribution of the seats in the House. The fact that I don’t consider that as a wasted vote is apparently, making a cock of myself. https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/

You make a right cock of yourself every time you post. Perhaps you should take your own advice? Starmer has said this morning that it is not a priority for Labour (whilst looking at voting rights for EU citizens and lowering the voting age in England???) so it will down to the LinDems to get it on the table if there is a hung Parliament.

Ideally they will both ignore this thread (you don’t need a button Duckie, you just make a choice not to click on it) and leave it to the grown ups. Whilst PR is not the most pressing item on most people’s agenda at the moment, it does needs to be addressed if we are ever going to have something approaching a proper democracy in this country. It makes no sense when one party can poll significantly fewer votes per seat than another and it is high time that each party is given a number of seats in the House commensurate with their share of the poll. It could well lead to more coalition Governments in future but to my mind that is no bad thing if it prevents the abuse of power that we have seen from various Tory administrations in the last few years. I stopped voting for the LibDems when Nick Clegg foolishly gave power to Cameron and have seen very little from them since to entice me to vote for them again. They are not going to win a majority next year, but they could well hold the balance of power and Ed Davey has a golden opportunity to put right what Clegg cocked up. Given what happened in many of the local election results there is every chance that there will be more tactical voting next year. It is possible that Labour will get a working majority, but Starmer would be wise to keep the other opposition parties onside just to make extra sure that we get the change of government this country needs. We shouldn’t have to vote for a different candidate/party in order to get a desired outcome, but until the voting system in this country is overhauled so that the seats in Parliament actually represents the number of votes cast, we need to vote tactically (unless you want more of the same of course).

If you read my post my Eurovision tip came second 👍

Strange that the Tories get a kicking in the local elections yet right wing members of their party criticise the party for not being right wing enough! Here’s a tip, people don’t care about your far right ideologies and crusades against the small boats, trans people and other so called enemies of the state. They care about the cost of living crisis and the economy. Starmer is no fool. He can see the way to get the Tories out is to encourage tactical voting. There are plenty of constituencies that will never vote Labour but might go with the LibDems. We have even had a true blue constituency turn Green in the local election in Folkestone & Hythe. I’d be more than happy with a Labour/LibDem coalition and it will help Starmer keep the far Left at bay. It is going to take more than one term to undo the mess that we are currently in but at least we are on course to make a start. Perhaps we can also get Proportional Representation back on the table too!

It doesn’t take much does it? Given all the crap going on in the world (and our football club) at the moment anything that distracts is welcome. A pleasant change to see the news dominated by a bit of fun and frivolity before it is all back to doom and gloom next week. If Sunak wanted to improve his ratings in the polls he should think about dressing himself and the rest of his dire front bench as drag queens. He might take people’s minds off of the mess he and his party have made of the country over the last 13 years and provide a bit of a distraction in the interminable wait until the next General Election. If the likes of Suella Braverman are going to act like pantomime villains, they may as well look like them too. I’m voting for Finland. Anyone who bases their choreography on Popeye deserves to win although Ukraine will probably get the lions share of the votes again.

Thought for the Day…🤔 Why do our brave small group of Protectors of all things Non Woke, Turkish, Weston SS, Lord Duckhunter and hypochondriac, never, ever, go after the daft posts and retweets from Delldays/Batman/Alexei? One of their own I guess, given their penchant for sixth form level “ironic” choices of avatars. One of them even tried to make an issue out of Cloggy’s avatar whilst completely ignoring the more “laddish” avatar of choice from Master Bates. Second Thought for the Day…🤔 Why, when I used to listen to TalkSport and occasionally post about what I had heard, it was not an issue, yet now I listen to LBC and occasionally post about what I have heard, it is (to the group above)?

No I don’t know that. I do know that Harry had said that neither of them wanted him to marry her. William may be adopting a pragmatic stance nowadays but Harry, according to his book, still has issues. I also think that it would feel a bit strange for them to attend the coronation of their father with his former mistress in the very place where they attended the funeral service for their mother, both on the World stage.Or maybe they were absolutely fine with it and I am just projecting? As for my “snidey misogynistic description” of Camilla. She is factually an old woman and the coronation was all about the crowning of King Charles 111. She was just technically a plus one. Before you get yourself into a lather, on Have I Got News For You, Ian Hislop referred to her as the “Slapper Consort”. Probably worse than anything I have called her. Yes, of course time moves. Of course things move on. But there are plenty of historical occasions that are not forgotten. I think there are still plenty of people who feel unhappy about Camilla’s part in the break up of his marriage to Diana.

I am not sure that 20 years makes any difference to the way that William and Harry feel about it.

Further evidence, if any were needed, that the further right you are on the political spectrum, the less intelligent you are. These people seem incapable of reading plain English without finding a way to twist it and use it in the furtherance of their own warped political agenda. We have the most right wing and authoritarian Government in many decades yet this particular poster will still have us believe they are a bunch of pinkos. Tell that to the peaceful protesters who were arrested at the coronation. They make be a bit pink when it comes to the economy (which they have completely f****d up) but when it comes to the rest, Lineker was spot on. Not only are they using similar language, they are using similar tactics. Crack down on freedom of expression and pitch elements of society against each other whilst lining their own pockets and sorting themselves and their mates out and running the country for their own benefit. The only surprise from the local election results is that there are still people (like Duckie) out there who are shameless enough to put a cross by a Tory candidate. Mugs and puppets, the lot of them.

I sat opposite someone at our village Coronation brunch yesterday who used to know Andrew Parker-Bowles and said that he was a deeply unpleasant man who “shagged anything that moved”. He wasn’t very complimentary about his ex-wife either.

Not me personally but there is no way she would have been accepted as Queen 20 years ago so why is it ok now? She had been making Charles very happy for years, even when he was married to someone else.

We might be rubbish at most thing but still lead the world when it comes to this pageantry malarkey. The only thing that spoiled the day was that old women following the King around all day and even managed to blag a crown of her own. The 3 cheers from the servicemen was very moving. I could imagine Batman standing to attention and pledging his allegiance to the King whilst wearing his one medal, the Distinguish Frying Cross (awarded for cooking fry ups for the men using very hot fat). 🥓🍳🎖️

If anyone was ever in doubt that this person is Delldays/Batman, just read this post.

I have missed the reasoning behind this, but how come the old trout has been crowned Queen when she is Queen Consort? Why had “Consort” been dropped and why was Philip not a King and just a Prince?

It happens to be true and not an excuse, but knock yourself out.

When the Guardian cartoon thing first kicked off the graphic I saw was cropped and just showed the Richard Sharp caricature. Anyone cognisant of Rowson’s work will know how brutal his depictions of his targets are and I thought his cartoon of Sharp was quite tame in comparison to those of the likes of Johnson, Sunak, Braverman, Raab etc. However, there is a lot more going on in the complete cartoon though and as Rowson has said himself, his actual intention and target has been sidelined by the anti-Semitism row. Anyway to get to the main point, I knew nothing about the origin of the pink squid reference in the Goldman Sachs box carried by Sharp nor the whole vampire squid thing that was aimed at that bank until enlightened by The Spectator piece. For those who are curious this is where it comes from, Rolling Stone magazine in 2010. An interesting (but very long) read. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-195229/amp/

I have managed to get a screen shot but can’t PM it to you as I am not a subscriber nor can I upload it for the same reason. I think I found a work around though although it is only shows the first screen. However it shows my current and previous stalkers so here you go… https://imgur.com/a/u0fPsCL Justifying racism? Please do me the courtesy of telling me how you come to that conclusion. Before you do though please read the article by Fraser Nelson published in The Spectator that I posted earlier. He has a far greater insight into this issue than either you or I. Then perhaps give your own head a wobble.

Yes it was an octopus. If you read the article from The Spectator above it explains the imagery and might help a few from going down a particular rabbit hole.

Defence of Martin Rowson in, of all places, The Spectator. Well worth reading for those with more than a couple of brain cells. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-defence-of-martin-rowson/ Being a cartoonist is a high-risk job nowadays. Your job is to satirise and caricature, to exaggerate bodily features. Every week, we do this at The Spectator in our cover art drawn by the peerless Morten Morland. Kim Jong Un is rather short: Morten makes him minuscule. Donald Trump has small hands and feet; Morten shrinks them even further. If someone has a prominent feature, then you exaggerate the feature. It’s the way cartooning works. If the subject has slightly big ears, you make them massive – as we have for the King in our coming coronation cover. It’s comic, teasing and, yes, sometimes brutal. But if you do this to a religious figure or an ethnic minority, you can be easily accused of bigotry. As the Guardian has just found out. I had no idea that Richard Sharp, who last week quit as BBC chairman, is Jewish. I do know him a bit: we’re both on the board of the Centre for Policy Studies but I didn’t and would not expect to know if he is Jewish any more than he’d know what I get up to on Sunday mornings. Martin Rowson did know, having been to school with Sharp, but fatally gave this no thought when drawing the cartoon that has landed the Guardian in such trouble. To lampoon a Jewish man with an squid, Goldman Sachs box etc is obviously beyond what anyone (I suspect Rowson himself) would regard as acceptable. But this did not occur to Rowson or, I suspect, to anyone else at the Guardian who saw that cartoon. The idea that anyone at this newspaper was cackling at an anti-Semitic joke is plainly absurd: they will be as horrified as Rowson now is at this simple, explainable and tragic mistake. So why was it drawn that way? Sharp used to be Rishi Sunak’s boss at Goldman Sachs – which is why Rowson added a Goldman Sachs-branded box in the illustration, with a miniature Sunak inside it. The bank was famously derided as an omnipresent ‘vampire squid sucking the face of humanity’ (a famous reference Guardian readers know and love) which is why Rowson depicted a squid in a box Sharp is carrying. Sharp is stonkingly rich and helped to arrange an £800,000 loan for Boris Johnson but failed to properly disclose that when Johnson made him BBC chairman. Should Sharp have disclosed this to the parliamentary committee? Of course. His failure to do so led to his resignation. All this is rich material for any satirist, especially one on the left. So Rowson depicted all of this in a cartoon (above) in which Sharp’s face is a tiny part. It’s not a sympathetic portrayal: he looks like a venal millionaire, which is consistent with the Guardian’s line and Rowson’s oeuvre. So Rowson’s explanation, which he has given at length, makes sense: As an editor of a magazine that runs humour and satire, I’ve been through similar storms over the years. Cartoons can now cause more controversy than any story. Post-Charlie Hebdo the police even came to visit me to explain that I am now deemed a terrorist target due to the fact that we publish satire. But cartoonists lampoon everyone and everything and have done for centuries: if you self-censor through fear of a mob, then satire bows to the mob. To run satire means you are likely to be the target of outrage squads who deploy various misrepresentation techniques. A zoomed-in clip of Sharp was passed around Twitter, for example, out of context from the overall image. A Twitter storm then started, as they often do in holiday weekends. Twitter storms tend to have five stages. 1) General, often confected outrage 2) Someone in public office joins in, making it a reportable news story 3) The target can make the mistake of responding, either with a statement or by removing the offending joke/cartoon, thinking it will relieve rather than add pressure 4) A resignation hunt then starts – especially if a publication’s staff join in the attack until 5) someone is fired, to assuage the mob, usually because the commercial people (who have less stomach for fights) say it’s damaging business. At The Spectator, we’re lucky. We’re family-owned, so don’t have woke shareholders worrying about their Twitter feeds. When advertisers were persuaded by Twitter trolls to boycott us due to a Matthew Parris article on trans issues, Andrew Neil banned the advertiser. I often think of the protection that the model of family ownership offers against such forces: what publication, anywhere, has actually banned advertisers? The biggest, greatest publications in the world have ended up yielding to the trolls. Twitter storms led to Kevin Myers being fired as a Sunday Times columnist, Ian Buruma as editor of the New York Review of Books, Kelvin MacKenzie from the Sun, Iain Macwhirter from the Herald and many more. Even David Remnick, one of the most successful magazine editors ever, had to cancel his interview with Steve Bannon after a Cat-4 Twitter storm. But what’s odd, with the Rowson row, is seeing those who normally abhor cancel culture getting stuck in now that the victim is the Guardian. Yes, this fraction of this cartoon can be made to look very bad if cropped in a certain way – but does anyone seriously, genuinely believe that Rowson was motivated by anti-Semitism? That the squid he drew was not the ‘vampire squid’ of lore but in fact a dog-whistle reference to a notorious Nazi squid cartoon 1938? The cartoon certainly was dangerously open to misinterpretation. Like most editors, I like to think our checks would have spotted this. But systems sometimes fail: that’s an occupational hazard in publishing. And the penalties for these failures are higher in the digital age. To complain about it would be like a ship’s captain complaining about the sea. This risk has emerged since I have been editor – and adapting to that risk is now a major part of our editing furniture. In a digital age where jokes are twisted and fed into a confected-outrage machine, the editing process must now mean more checks, minimising scope for the misinterpretations of jokes while protecting the range and daring of publications. And protecting our contributors, who cannot be expected to see everything they draw or write through the perspective of their most twisted critic. We don’t want them to worry about the mad world out there, or the new tactics used by the outrage squad (using headline screengrabs, no links, making sure context is not given etc). We have a system of checking for this, of recognising when a topic (jihadi finance, climate change, trans, religion) is in a high-risk category. We then go through it from a prosecutorial point of view, trying to anticipate the inevitable IPSO complaint, malicious screen-grabbing or malicious misinterpretation. It’s important that this is done after the writing is submitted as we don’t want writers choking their art by trying to think of what trolls might say. Anyone who crafts every sentence worried about being ratioed on Twitter ceases to become a writer. Our red-team process is intended to protect our writers and readers, so the new era of online madness makes no impact on the boldness, humour or cartoons of The Spectator. Such systems are needed, now, to protect anyone who publishes satire or against-the-grain comment. This involves lots of borderline decisions. If you’re too censorious, you rob your publication of its edge and identity. If you’re too lax, you risk stumbling into battles that you cannot win. Cartoonists are very aware of this risk, and most would acknowledge a caricature of anyone of an ethnic minority background is high risk. This process is not watertight. Such slips are inevitable, But when they happen, there’s a difference between a cartoon slip made in good faith and catching the Guardian staff in a secret screening of Triumph of the Will. The Spectator’s cartoon editor, Michael Heath, has been drawing cartoons since the 1950s and speaks eloquently about how dangerous it has now become. The more censorious society becomes, the greater flak comics, satirists and cartoonists come under. Twitter has put rocket boosters on this trend as it allows the selective editing of jokes or cartoons to fuel its outrage machine. So people in Pakistan can now see cartoons published in Denmark and protest accordingly. Charlie Hebdo changed the debate once again. We can see, here, attempts to install a secular sharia: to put certain religious figures and themes beyond depiction or satire. And we can see paler reflections of this in the hounding of other satirists. Mark Knight, an acclaimed Australian cartoonist, had to go into hiding after a Level-3 Twitter storm over his Serena Williams cartoon. It took an adjudication by the Australian Press Council to show that he was not referencing Jim Crow cartoons in his cartoon of her. His Serena was uncontroversial to those who know his style (he’s famous in Australia) but was seen as racist by those in the UK and US. Knight ended up having to move house for his own safety. When satirists and cartoonists end up being targeted in this way, anyone who values free speech ought to be concerned – regardless of what political side you are on. An offer fit for a King Get the next 10 weeks for the price of one – plus a free commemorative coronation mug CLAIM OFFER And yes, the Guardian would have joined the pile-on if this were any other newspaper in any other country. No other publication gives such energetic coverage to cartoon Twitter storms: in the Times, New York Post, Boston Herald etc. The Guardian was covering a Twitter storm over a Der Spiegelcartoonist only last week, but those who deplore all this should not join the pile-on now just because the Guardian itself lies at the centre. Back to Rowson: He made a terrible but honest mistake. Rowson is no anti-Semite and no one is seriously pretending otherwise. If the Guardian didn’t spot this, that’s in part because we’re moving towards a liberal era where people are less obsessed by faith, sexuality and other such identity markers that the people themselves never mention. When I first came to London 25 years ago, I was shocked to find out people did make mental lists of who in public life is Jewish and who was not. Happily, now, almost no one gives it a second thought. Which was Rowson’s undoing, in this case. He’ll feel awful about this. Any cartoonist would. He has become the latest victim of a trend in digital life where cartoonists are flayed, apologies are not accepted and forgiveness is not offered. No one who cares about satire and its role in our public debate should draw any satisfaction from the storm he now finds himself in. ————————————— As regards a screen shot Whelk, I am afraid that the list is rather long now and could probably do with some pruning. I would prefer not to publish it on here as, apart from the right wing anti woke brigade, I prefer to keep the other names to myself. Suffice to say that if I did regularly read their posts I would be tempted to reply. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss!

It’s not difficult to laugh at them is it? Seriously though, a caricature of Richard Sharp looks like Richard Sharp and a caricature of Rishi Sunak looks like Rishi Sunak and people get in a lather about one but not the other. Silly really isn’t it, but if you make that point you get labelled a rabid racist apparently. I saw a caricature of Suella Braverman last week that was far worse (if you get upset by over exaggeration of certain features) and no one made a squeak about that. You also have to chuckle when you see the same people making digs at me for listening to a radio show then spend even more of their time waiting for me to post so that they can have their daily pile on. Oh the irony. By the way boys, I spent years listening to Hawksbee and Jacobs, do you have an issue with that too? PS I don’t usually read the posts from the Usual Subjects unless they appear in quotes from others, but I do find it amusing how quickly their names appear beneath my posts, especially as you would imagine that most of them have full time jobs 😉

Rag? It wasn’t an article it was a cartoon and the cartoon actually looked like Sharp. Cartoons exaggerate features and if you look at it Sunak actually had a bigger nose but that was ignored. If you have read any of my posts you will see that I have said that Abbott needs to be sanctioned if found by the inquiry to be at fault and have supported Starmer’s decision to withdraw the whip from her. Other than that, spot on. Not worried about the rise of National Conservatism? Perhaps you should be.

So the current Tory Party are a bunch of pinkos? Perhaps not… https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/30/national-conservatism-far-right-divisive-tories

Nothing better to do? I am not going to bore the readers of this thread any more by responding to your every point as you seem determine to misrepresent what I say, but I will respond to a few. I said I didn’t think that her words in that letter were anti-Semitic. It was my opinion and we are all entitled to that. I did accept that others thought otherwise but have yet to see why, Keir Starmer has not qualified his statement yet other than to say it is a “gut feeling”. As he will know, that does not stand up in court. It is down to the inquiry to decide and I await their comments with interest. I certainly did not spend all day try to prove that Jewish people are not a race. Looking for a definitive answer shows that I was open to a “definitive answer”. I still don’t know what the definitive answer is. Only a very stupid or deliberately obtuse person would misinterpret what I had said. What is clear is that there probably is no definitive answer and that the issue is more nuanced and not black and white (pun intended). Sadly you made the big mistake of quoting Turkish. Anyone reading this forum for any length of time will know that he is a WUM and is not worth bothering with. The best definition of being woke that I have found so far is “not being an a-hole”. Given that Turkish is the complete antithesis of being woke, that gives you a fair indication of what he is and from where his posts come from. Enjoy the rest of your day and hopefully this has given you pause for thought too.