sadoldgit

What a mess. Neither being given enough time to answer. Talking over each other. Starmer is spending too much time being empathic and not enough answering questions. Trying to cram too much in. Perhaps they should have covered fewer subjects in more depth.

He could have been a Buddhist Monk, it doesn’t alter what he became.

I didn’t say it was ok, I put it into some context. Do I think it is ok to throw things at MPs? No. Did I think this was funny? Absolutely. Do I think it could be a publicity stunt! Possibly. What on earth are you talking about?

It was just a milkshake for Christ sake. Far worse happened to Jo Cox. Farage will lap up the attention like the attention seeking narcissist he is and will put the dry cleaning bill in as expenses. Cheap publicity.

If Alanis Morrissette needs a decent example of irony, she needs to be pointed in this direction. For those of you who don’t know their history, in October 1936 Oswald Mosley led a small army of some 3000 fascists (right wing thugs) into the East End where there was a large population of Jewish people. They were “supported” by some 6000 police from the Met, most mounted. I say supported because they seem to direct their aggression and arrests at the defenders rather than Mosley’s Blackshirts. They were confronted by approx. 10,000 people made up of Socialists (Lefties and Pinkos), Trade Unionists, Communists and British Jews. Mosley and his thugs were turned back in what became known as The Battle of Cable Street. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Battle-Of-Cable-Street/ We now have a large group of right wing thugs supporting Israel and using the current situation in Gaza to whip up hatred against Muslims. Are we to believe that they are now accepting of Israel/Jewish people, or are they just using the situation in Gaza to pour fuel on Islamophobia? Isn’t it ironic that a group of people with such a deep, inbred hatred of Jewish people are now putting that to one side and directing their hatred towards Irsrael’s enemies instead? Footnote: The Daily Mail supported Mosley. Nothing changes.

No I don’t but thanks for proving my point (yet again). When will the penny finally drop? It is not mutually exclusive to call a regime out for their actions and not hate the population of that regime or their religious beliefs, although I wonder if you manage that with the Palestinians. I know that you struggle to express yourself without swearing, but live in hope that you will understand one day that you can play the antisemitic card all day long but it just means that you are using deflection because you have no other argument and no discernible shred of humanity. Tell me, if the ICJ rule that Netanyahu is guilty of genocide and war crimes, will you accuse them of antisemitism? Are the UN antisemetic because they rule against the land grabs by Israelis on the West Bank? You are myopic and no better than the likes of Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir, but keep playing that antisemitic card because that is all they and you have in defence of the indefensible.

Millions of people wanted him to stand and he felt he was letting them down! I expect Duckie is looking at the property pages in Clacton this very minute. With luck this will split the right vote enough to let the LibDems in as the second biggest party. Hopefully he will now spend more time canvassing in Clacton and less time polluting our tv screens fear mongering about immigrant invasions.

So he wants to take over the Tory Party and “reshape the centre right.” We know what that means. https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/farage-tory-takeover/ I mention Starmer, Sunak and Farage more but you don’t accuse me of projection there. If you are going to have a dig you are going to have to do better chaps. It just sounds a bit desparate.

Anyone spot any of the Usual Suspects in this picture? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tommy-robinsonparliament-protest-b2554975.html Meanwhile… https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/02/tory-candidate-robert-largan-social-media-ads-labour-reform-uk Also Farage is to make an “emergency announcement” at 4pm this afternoon. Has he decided to stand?

Some questions - If a poster supports a people who are systematically being killed, maimed, starved and displaced, oppressed and intimidated by one of the mightiest nations on the planet who are being investigated for genocide, why the assumption that there might be an ulterior motive and what exactly would that motive be. Why is it an issue to post opinions on a thread about the Israeli/Palestinian situation on a thread about the Israeli/Palestinian situation? Sure, there is plenty of crap going on in the world but the only other thread about international troubles is the Ukraine one so it seems like no one in this forum wants to raise other issues. That does mean that no one cares or is interested in them though does it? This has been headline news in our media since last October and given our role in why we are where we are it would be more of an issue if nobody wanted to talk about it wouldn’t it? It is not mutually exclusive to care about an issue and post on a forum about another. Given the amount of fuss made over protesters singing “From The River To The Sea” there hasn’t been a peep from the same people about Tommy Robinson and his thugs marching through London yesterday chanting “Allah is a c*nt.” Ulterior motives maybe? The large banner they carried saying This Is London Not Londonistan was dismissed as just a bit of bantz no doubt. This desperation to discredit genuine concern for a people and their homes which are being obliterated by inferring some kind of hatred for a certain religion is very poor. If I was a cynic I might say that it is being driven by an ulterior motive. Footnote - I don’t know if this has been mention before but the name Semite was originally given to a group of people who spoke the same language. This group included both Arabs and Jews. This means that Arabs are also Semites and when you label someone as an anti Semite you are inferring that they hate Arabs too. Perhaps it would be more helpful if you used a more appropriate label, anti Jewish? You won’t though because you know that weakens your argument. So much easier to label someone as antisemitic than someone who has issues against a religious sect eh? Especially as Judaism, Islam and Christianity all flow from the same beginnings.

Will it be accepted by Netanhyau’s government? Probably not. Will the IDF stop the indescribably killing of Palestinian civilians and the intimidation of Palestinians in the West Bank? Probably not. Will it last? It probably won’t happened for some time. Good to see Biden finally stepping up and trying to impose some authority, it is about time. But given that Netanyahu has recently said that he sees it lasting another 7 months and probably feels that he needs to kill more civilians and flatten more of Gaza to keep his government and the extremists in Israel happy, I think Biden is going to have to apply much more pressure to get Israel to the negotiating table. The is a film coming out next week called Where Oliver Trees Weep and documents the experiences of several Palestinians living in the West Bank under Israeli occupation. There are a few on here who should watch it but probably won’t.

Because they are two different jobs and in certain circumstances some political commentators are supposed to be unbiased. There are also broadcasting rules that dictate what people can and cannot do depending on their position, although Ofcom don’t really bother about enforcing them when it comes to GB News. There is already an issue about Farage having his own show on GB News and also going into bat for Reform.

My issue with Farage in particular is that he wants, and gets, the best of both worlds. He wants to be a political commentator and the mouthpiece of a political party. Be one or be the other. He also gets a disproportionate amount of media exposure compared to the representatives of the other minority political parties. He plays the media like a (very poorly tuned) violin and they let him do it. He is box office, like Trump. Talking of whom, when Farage has finished pulling the Tory Party apart and turning them into a bigger vehicle for the far right, he will be off to take the Trump shilling and do his best to ruin further the US. Gotta love democracy 🫡.

Good question. There was a time when it was unacceptable for politicians to tell outright lies. Yes, they would evade questions, answer questions that hadn’t been asked or be “economical with the truth” (which just fell short of an outright lie). You certainly wouldn’t expect the President of the US or the UK Prime Minister to stand on a platform and tell outright lies. How times have changed. In answer to your question, the former is most culpable but we know enough now not to accept everything as gospel and to fact check everything as far as we are able. There are a number of people now that it is pretty safe to assume that most of what they say is BS. We have heard a very long, incoherent ramble from one this afternoon.

I don’t think anyone would have a problem with Richard Tice or Lee Anderson being on QT. Every week there are people who express contrary opinions on QT or all over the media for that matter. We might not like some opinions we hear but we do live in a society where they can be expressed. Most of the electorate do not vote Tory but most of our newspapers support the Tory Party and I don’t think there are any left leading “news” programmes on TV like GB News. We are free to challenge things we do not like to hear and we do. The problem with free speech is that blatant lies have been left unchallenged and have passed as truth. People like Trump, Johnson and, yes, Nigel Farage have used free speech to twist and distort facts to suit their own agendas. If you feel that you have a strong argument, put it out there as it is and let it stand or fall on its own merits. What is happening more and more now is that we are being misled by people well versed in playing on people’s fears and selling us an alternative reality. Who coined the term “alternative facts”? Trump? I don’t have a problem with people like Farage having a say. I have a problem with them portraying themselves and their views as something they are not. There still people who believe Johnson’s lies about the EU edict about straight bananas. I don’t think any of us will forget the lie printed across the campaign bus about giving the EU money to the NHS. To me it’s not so much a question of not liking what I am hearing, it is about misinformation being deliberately fed to us as fact.

The highlight of the evening was when Farage said that he was only there because he was asked and Fiona Bruce replied that they had asked Lee Anderson first but he couldn’t make it. Burst poor old Nigel’s bubble! As you say, the audience is made up according to the percentage of votes cast at the last election and Fiona Bruce makes that clear every week so the idea that the audience was rigged against Farage is nonsense. Is Starmer carrying out a purge of the left? It is plausible but looks more likely that he is continuing his campaign of zero tolerance of anyone showing any sign of anti-semitism. As the far left of the party are more likely to be pro Palestinian it is no surprise that these people are finding themselves with a selection problem. Hardly any mention in the media about Sunak parachuting his pals into safe Tory seats. I don’t recall a lot of critical attention being paid to the Tories when most of the moderate centrists vanished. Given the general media’s hatred of the far left you would think that they would be delighted that Labour’s profile was becoming closer to the centre. Ironic that people who have spent their careers trashing Diane Abbott are now outraged over the treatment of her in this matter. Having said that it is bizarre that it took the NEC so long to deal with her case. Starmer can’t win though. Damned if he supports her, damned if he gets rid of her. It all boils down to the party leadership, fed by focus groups. Any party will want its membership to sing from the same hymn sheet. This is why we currently have a very right leading Tory Party (with Sunak being to weak to move it towards the centre) and why Starmer is doing his best to position Labour as a more moderate party. Of course the media understands this bit just plays on the public prejudices. Starmer knows this very well which is why he has distanced himself from the likes of Corbyn and Abbott. * Richard Tice is the leader of the Reform Party. Nigel Farage is the honorary President.

My odd behaviour? Given that he was banned from The Ugly Inside for his odd behaviour I guess he would know all about that. I am with you. Let him go off to his attention seeking, childish I know something you don’t know thread and hopefully we can get on and discuss the election while he feeds his ego. Just listening to the financial forecasts and it seems that no matter who gets elected, we face a further financial squeeze for a number of years to come with more public spending cuts. Oh joy.

It is very bizarre isn’t it? Tellingly though it is always the same people, they all share the same basic ideology and never, ever, criticise each other. They are an odd bunch but then you will always find these types of people on social media forums. Anyway, back to the subject of the thread. Farage has been all over the media again and, surprise, surprise, has a seat on Question Time tonight. Why do we continue to put up with this odious character. He is a snake oil salesman who would have been run out of town in the good old days when grifters were given short shrift. The media bend over backwards to give him air time. He is not an MP. He is not the leader of a political party. He gets plenty of airtime on the right wing propaganda platform GB News so why give him more exposure? God knows he has done enough damage to this country without doing more. It seems he is now intent on manoeuvring the Tory Party further right, as if this country needs an opposition party where the likes of Braverman, Patel and Badenoch pull the strings. We also have the batshit crazy Truss running amok with Sunak doing nothing to distance himself and his party from her playing to the gallery with her deeply obnoxious friends. Meanwhile the right friendly media are trying to distract us by telling us that the selection/deselection of a certain longstanding MP is a crisis for Starmer. Is it really? I think most people are more concerned with what is going to happen to the NHS in future. It is also amusing to see the same people who have hated on her for years now pretending that what is happening to her is an outrage. Watch the Telegraph, Mail and Express enthusiastically campaign for her reinstatement if she is deselected.

Zero surprise that hypo doesn’t have an issue with Ben Shapiro’s comments as he clearly shares his opinions.

You are wasting your time. He clearly is happier wallowing in his preconceived prejudices and firing off silly laughing emojis on a thread about a conflict in which tens of thousands of people have already died, even more maimed and even more displaced and starved. Why anyone would be proud of saying that they aren’t prepared to educate themselves about a complex issue and keep repeating the same mantra that people are supporting the Hamas attack when no one here has and that anyone criticising the Israeli actions is anti-Semitic, God only knows. If I am an awful person, what does that make him? There is a reason hundreds of thousands of people all around the world are protesting about what is happening in Gaza. You would think that at least would make him understand that there is more going on than he currently comprehends. Anyway, I am happy being in the company of all of these “awful” people. He can carry on wallowing in his ignorance.

Of course they are trolling. They are trying to defend the indefensible, as are the Israeli government . They constantly play the antisemitism card when anyone criticises the actions of Netanyahu and the IDF. This constant use of the events of 7th October to justify destroying Gaza and many of its population shows a complete lack of desire to understand the conflict as a whole. The posts saying that it isn’t that bad because Israel haven’t killed everyone in Gaza are lower than 6th form logic. Again, if any of these people took the trouble to understand what is actually happening here they would know exactly what the Israeli tactics are. They aren’t really interested because they do nothing but repeat the 7th October/antisemitism mantra. Look up the Dahiya Doctrine. The Israeli tactics are to lay waste to the infra structure and target anyone in the way using disproportionate revenge attacks on the civilian population as a way of deterring further attacks on themselves. The trouble is, those tactics only inflame the situation and lead to further violence. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/28/attacks-rafah-no-accident-idf-losing-strategy The usual suspects are not interested in hearing the other side. Their dislike of Muslims is enough to carry on supporting the Israeli tactics no matter what they do or what the cost is. It is quite something to see the way they use the horrific attacks on one day to justify 8 months of destruction and siege on a mostly civilian population. If the situation was reversed and it was Hamas destroying a captive Israeli population in Tel Aviv would they have the same opinions? No, of course they wouldn’t. They would be calling it out every day, and rightly so. The IDF have raped and killed Palestinian women too, and before 7th October. You don’t hear any recognition about their actions from these posters. It’s all about 7th October for them and the Israeli government. Nothing they have done or do since matters in relation to what happened to them on that day. As said right at the beginning, nothing happens in a vacuum. What happened on 7th October was the result at what has gone on before. If you are going to point the finger at the Palestinian actions, you have to hold the Israelis to the same standards. The rape of Israeli women by Palestinians is no worse than the rape of Palestinian women by Israelis (unless you hold the view that Palestinians are subhuman as some Israelis do). Hypochondriac has a long standing dislike of Muslims as evidence by his posts going back years so I don’t expect him to bother to look into what has gone on and why in any depth. Duckhunter had a jolly holiday in Israel therefore is fully informed about all of the nuances of the conflict and understands the Palestinian side of the argument fully having talked to many Israelis. Weston is just in it for the wind up and Whelk, well Whelk is doing what Whelk does. Thankfully there are a number of posters on this thread who can see the situation for what it is. This has absolutely nothing to do with antisemitism and everything to do with understanding that extremist ideologies on both sides result in death and destruction to both sides with the Israelis having the military might to cause more proportionately. It is the innocent people on both sides who are having to deal with the consequences. The ICJ recognise exactly what is going on and that is why they are holding leaders on both sides to account. I think their understanding of the situation is worth far more than a few people trolling on an internet football forum. Netanyahu, his government and the IDF are just as complicit in this inhumane bloodbath as Hamas, the other Islamic extremist groups and their military.

Do you understand the difference between a democratically elected government that aligns itself to the Western values and a prescribed terrorist group? Also, if you read the article you will see that both the Israeli government and Hamas have officials being investigated for alleged war crimes. The difference is that one has its national intelligence agency threatening UN officials to drop the case and that one is the party who present themselves as being on the moral high ground. And for those easily confused, if you are innocent of charges brought against you, why wouldn’t you be confident of proving your case in court rather than going down the route of threatening people to drop the charges? Also for those who believe that the Israelis are the victims - https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/5/15/the-nakba-five-palestinian-towns-massacred-75-years-ago Or behave in a morally superior way - https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/claims-of-israeli-sexual-assault-of-palestinian-women-are-credible-un-panel-says Again for those who believe this started on 7th October, educate yourself about the Safsaf massacre and rape of Palestinians in 1948 - https://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=3cTfB8a110851623663a3cTfB8

This. 36 years old with a poor injury record. If the idea is to bring in a coach, fine, but bring in one with coaching experience. I don’t see how this works as a player or a player/coach. The money could be better spent elsewhere.

Yet another “tragic mishap” over the weekend in Gaza leaves more women and children dead. Meanwhile another example of how the current Israeli government feel that the rules don’t apply to them. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/28/israeli-spy-chief-icc-prosecutor-war-crimes-inquiry

Kraken took a dislike to me on Sotonians some time back so he is an old member of the antiSog society. At least it keeps them off the streets 😉.