Particularly pertinent given how Labour in the UK got smashed (though unfortunately not wiped out), to weeping, wailing and the gnashing of teeth, inability to understand statistics in the form of polling, claims of media bias, accusations of election rigging and predictions that the UK is going to be ruined and the NHS sold off:
Dominic Sandbrook On Britain In The Early 80s | History Extra Podcast - HistoryExtra
"‘Lots of people doing well, and that was one of the ironies wasn't it? The late 70s, they come out of what you described as one of the gloomiest decades in modern British history. But yet for a lot of people life was more comfortable than ever. They had central heating. They had more things’
‘Yes, absolutely. They had, I mean, that's the great paradox, isn't it? And you get that when you talk to people about 70s and the 80s, that you can tell a story about it, which is all doom and gloom, particularly the 70s. You know, the strikes, having to get a humiliating bailout from the International Monetary Fund. The Heath government broken by the miners, the Callaghan government broken by the unions in 1979. A sort of story of ungovernability and failure.
And that's the story that a lot of British people told about their country. They would sort of say, yes, I'm personally better off than ever, and I'm going on holiday, and I've got my new telly, and all the rest of it. However, the country as a kind of corporate entity is going to the dogs, and that we are falling behind our competitors, we haven’t got Empire anymore.
And I think psychologically, that it had become quite embedded by the end of the 70s. And it's, it's not just among people who are kind of, you know, civil servants and business leaders and so on, but actually you see it so much in popular culture. I mean, the classic example that I give at the beginning of the book is Fawlty Towers. The hotel is a sort of metaphor for Britain itself. You know, the famous episode when the American Waldorf salad, the American tourists arrive, and nothing works, they can't get a hot meal. You know, Mr. Hamilton, the American guy has pitched up says, you know, this is the crummiest shoddiest hotel in all of Western Europe. And he's not really just talking about Fawlty Towers, he's talking about Britain…
Margaret Thatcher's genius as a politician is that she's able to tap both those things. So she appeals to people's anxieties about what's happening to their country and about national decline. But she's also able to tap their aspiration, the new kind of materialism, the consumerism, and there, I think it really helps that she's a woman. Because she says, oh I understand about the family budget, I'm a housewife and mother just like you and all this kind of thing. And that appeal to domesticity is, I think, a really important part of her appeal. I can't think of any other politician in British history, who's been so successful at both sort of playing the Imperial warrior, but also playing the I'm an ordinary person like you, who, you know, just wants to spend an evening cooking and and she probably couldn't have done what, she certainly couldn't have done it if she hadn't been a woman...
[When Thatcher wasn’t PM] Life at Downing Street was actually pretty calm measured, you know, everyone knew what they were doing. They didn't have huge shouting matches. This is sort of, you know, we're all good chaps and we can get on with this sort of ethos. But with Mrs. Thatcher life was incredibly histrionic. You know, if you disagreed with that, she took it very personally. She held grudges. You know, there were endless kind of shouting matches, sort of this sort of apocalyptic mood in the early 80s. Everything's going wrong. And she's not the politic, you know, she's, it's not really in her makeup to come into the room and say, calm down everyone, this will be fine. It's actually much more in her makeup to work herself into this incredible lather and to get really overwrought about things in a way that was often hidden from the public...
There's a book I talk a little bit about called authors take sides on the Falklands, and it was modeled on a book from the 1930s called authors take sides on the Spanish Civil War, and basically the organizers got all these intellectuals and writers and stuff and said, ‘What do you make of the Falklands?’. And most of them thought it was absolutely awful.
And what they objected to, you know you, you don't even need to read between the lines. They say it quite bluntly. What they hate about it is that it has reawakened this patriotism in the British people that they think, thought was dead since the 1960s. You know, Salman Rushdie says at one point, he doesn't even want to talk about it, it just makes him feel so ashamed. And, you know, that's the interesting thing that this, that I think is what distinguishes her from other prime ministers. And actually, what distinguishes this period, really from the 70s, or the 60s, is the revival of this populism.
And it's populism taking center stage, you know, the patriotism of the common man and woman that the elites have supposedly sneered at for the last 20 years or so. And it was, you know, I'm sure, one reason why this theme struck me so strongly is obviously because I was writing the book, just before, during and after the 2016 referendum...
Make America or Britain or wherever great again, is a standard political device. So Trump's not the first president to use that phrase. Bill Clinton used that phrase, Ronald Reagan used that phrase, and making Britain great again, is what, all opposition leaders pretty much say. The country was great in this golden age before the current government took over. We will recapture that lost greatment . I mean, that's a pretty standard political device...
I talked in the book about her use of the phrase ordinary people. So she uses it something like 250 times during her time in office. She doesn't talk about you know, I'm for the middle classes, or I'm for that, she says I'm for ordinary people. And the implication is that people who oppose her are not ordinary. They are of course in this sort of Tory demonology, they are trade union barons, rent a mob, student protesters, strikers, stuck up steering snobs, you know, all that sort of stuff.'...
People look for somebody to blame. And it really matters that the person who's presiding over all this is a Tory woman. And that I think, explains a lot of the personal bitterness towards Margaret Thatcher. And there's no doubt that her policies made things worse.
But the one thing that always struck me is, France, since the 19, well, since the 1990s, has had this cripplingly high youth unemployment rate, which we don't have. So one in four French kids is basically out of work. But no French person ever says, Jacques Chirac, what an evil man. Francois Hollande cackles while young people are thrown on the scrap heap. Nobody says that kind of stuff. But people still say that about Margaret Thatcher, they still say she's, you know, that woman blah de blah de blah.
Again, I think the fact that she's a woman matters enormously, of course, she invited some of this. She's so strident and confrontational... the fact that she's a woman, I think, makes it very easy for people to personalize it and to blame what is the result often of huge kind of global economic forces on one person. And you know if she hadn't, she'd fallen under a bus in 1978, Michael Foot had been Prime Minister, would there have been a recession in the early 80s? Yes. Probably not as bad, but yes. And would Britain be full of, you know, gigantic car factories and coal mines full of people and all that kind of thing today? Obviously not...
Some of the biggest Thatcherites were dead against [the Falklands War]... Why would you do this, you know, spend so much money retaking islands with 1800 people. It doesn't make any strategic sense, it’s so risky, could ruin everything we've worked for. It's just mad. That's their take on it. Alan Walters used to send around these papers saying it might be much cheaper to bribe the Falkland Islands to come and live in Devon or something or send them to New Zealand where they can sort of talk to sheep to their heart's content.
But Mrs Thatcher's immediate instinct was: we’ve got to get them back. The public want us to get them back. And she was right… Two out of 10 people wanted to attack Argentina itself, basically to invade Argentina. The public were very bellicose, that's what horrified kind of intellectuals and kind of, you know, academically kind of people who were just sort of where did all of these people come from? It’s like they climbed out of their rocks, all these patriots…
Everything about the war is perfectly you know, no script writer could have invented a better scenario. The Falkland Islanders are these kind of harmless, old fashioned sheep farmers. They look like people from the 1950s. They've never hurt anybody. They were just, you know, prodding along having their sheep dog trials and stuff when the archies pitched up. The Argentines are a fascist dictatorship with a track record of kind of attaching electrodes to their poets and throwing them out of aeroplanes over the Atlantic, you know, they’re baddies basically. You know that that there's no way of sort of selling this another way. The UN backs Britain, the United States eventually backs Britain, France backs Britain, even Argentine’s neighbor, Chile, they hate Argentina. They help Britain...
There's the spectacle of the task force leaving, the ships plowing across the ocean. The landings under enemy fire, the little figures, little green figures with their big packs kind of trudging across the landscape through the rain. It all feels like a little rerun of the Second World War basically. And it's, it's perfectly calculated to stir the hearts of people who've grown up watching the Dambusters and Dad's Army. And you know, you look at the press reaction, the sort of almost hysterical outpourings of excitement and then of enthusiasm when victory is won.
And I do think it changes the story. It drives unemployment off the front pages, it banishes the idea of Britain being ungovernable. It, for the first time in Mrs. Thatcher’s Premiership, it shows people actually she is capable of doing what she says. You know, it's not all going to kind of fall apart as soon as she touches it... the image that sums it up is the image, the very famous of the troops marching across the moorlands, and there's one of them with the Union Jack sticking out of his backpack, the photo that's always used for the Falklands War.
And it's the flag that makes it. Because when people, many people had not associated the flag with success for 30 years, you know, 40 years. When people had seen the flag on the news it’d been in the context of it coming down. You know, Prince Philip is in the Gold Coast for their independence kind of thing. The flag comes down, the new flag comes up. It's the kind of, falling flag basically. And when people have seen the British Army on the news, it'll be in the context of Northern Ireland. They've just killed somebody. Or they've been blown up in a horrific kind of roadside bomb. So it's like that. Yes, it's, the record has been changed. And it gives people a taste for things that that had been lost..
There was a huge furore about the BBC. The BBC didn't want to call the British forces, our forces, which a lot of Tory MPs thought was basically tantamount to treason. And the Brit, the BBC also saw its role as to basically report the news, objectively, sort of arbitrating between the Argentine and British versions. Again, a lot of people complained about, they said that British Broadcasting Corporation should be on Britain's side. You know, as you were in the Second World War...
Columnists and writers at the time often said, you know, basically you go to a council estate, you go to a sort of industrial town and when you, Labour, people go canvassing, they report that on the doorstep time and again, people say I really admire Maggie for the Falklands. Of course, we should be fighting them, of course, all this kind of thing.
And yet they would say themselves, Guardian writers like Peter Jenkins, the Guardian’s kind of star political writer of the day would sort of say, I don't know anybody who supports the war. You know, that's a little bit, I don't know anybody who voted leave, kind of stuff...
I did think to myself, how accurately some of this prefigures, the debates we have right now. That there is a kind of, even in the 80s there is a sort of real sense of a gulf between the kind of people who kind of write and read literary novels, shall we say, who are just appalled by the whole enterprise and embarrassed by what they see as the jingoism and the glory and slaughter and so on. And then, you know, the sort of the voices of the football grounds, who just cannot see why there's anything wrong with, why you wouldn't fight to recapture your territory when it's been invaded. And yeah, there is a class dimension there I think. I think there's a sort of, you know, there's a working class patriotism, that the Falklands specifically stirs...
There’s a definitely a class element to all this… For a lot of the 20% who don't support the war, there's a sense of, just a sense of shock, I think that what they see as their country has been taken away from them, and that is a very kind of remainy sentiment I can remember reading after the Brexit referendum.
Paddy Ashdown says that he said to his wife: I don't recognize this country anymore. You know, what's happened to this country? You hear people say all the time, what's happened to this country? Well, people were saying that in 1982. Alan Bennett the playwright wrote in his diary after victory in the Falklands, he wrote, you know, I don't feel English now. They're singing Rule Britannia in Downing Street. How can this be happening?
You know, I think there's a whole generation who had come of age in the 1960s. And they've gone through the 70s, feminism, gay rights, the Labour Party moving to the left. And they sort of felt that history was on their side. They were young, you know, you do feel that when you're young. And you’re in University, you're the kind of master of your own little universe. And you sort of think, you know, those fuddy duddies, those tweedy, Tory reactions of the 50s have been kicked into the dustbin. And we will remake society and we will, we will bring in a kinder, gentler, more equal Britain.
And then this ghastly woman becomes Prime Minister in 1979 and goes around telling people that it's, you know, it's good to be ambitious and to make money and, you know, you shouldn't feel guilty about that. And then, you know, she clearly loves the Falklands War and says how thrilling is her word, thrilling it is to be fighting for freedom.
Instead of arguing about kind of welfare policies or whatever, and all these people respond to this and think this is great, and you, the sort of 60s product, you know, with your cherished copy of EP Thompson's the Making of the English Working Class and your copy of John Lennon's Imagine and stuff. You think, Christ, what's happened. This isn't the country I thought I was in. We were in control of the future. And now the future has been taken away from us by these vulgar Tory materialistic jingoists. And there is a class dimension to that, I think. And I think that that actually runs right through modern politics to this day"
Women and "stereotypes"!
Is it still unfair to say that liberals hate their countries, if patriotism is seen as shameful? It's interesting that patriotism is associated with populism
Of course in Labour demonology, “for the many, not the few” implies that if you oppose Labour…
Ironically, feminists hate Margaret Thatcher so much. But they're just being sexist
Apparently singing "Rule Britannia" is un-English. Who knew? Is it English to hate your country?
L'origine de Bert
Friday, December 13, 2019
Links - 13th December 2019 (1)
Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "Hotel opens with strict 'no men allowed' policy and it's already getting rave reviews"
"Women ban men from an entire hotel -> Stunning and brave!
Men ban women from their personal lives (MGTOW) -> Loser misogynist!"
Thanks, I Hate Australia : TIHI - *Snake and spider entangled in web*
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "Snopes fact checks the story that Colonel Sanders stoke his chicken recipe from a black woman. They find that the photo is false, a woman by that name doesn’t exist, and that no evidence exists of the theft.
So they mark the story ‘unproven’ instead of false."
Little Kid Gorgeous on Twitter - "Hey everyone!
I’m available immediately for full time remote work (from US) focusing on:
- tech & ethics, policy, public impact
- high level diversity, inclusion, and equity
- advocacy for marginalized people within the organization
Email ashedryden@gmail.com
Please RT 🥰"
"I'm a bourgeois white girl excelling in telling other bourgeois white people why they're racist! Hire me."
SJWCentral - Posts - "Reverse sexism is not a thing because sexism is related to power structures. If you can understand that there is a difference between an adult hitting a child and a child hitting an adult, then you get why reverse sexism (or racism) is not a thing #feminism"
Clementine Ford: "This is such a straightforward and clear analogy."
"Today i learned that people of color and women are like children according to some leftist online"
Did natural selection make the Dutch the tallest people on the planet? - "tall Dutch men on average have more children than their shorter counterparts, and that more of their children survive. That suggests genes that help make people tall are becoming more frequent among the Dutch... Genetics has an important effect on body height: Scientists have found at least 180 genes that influence how tall you become. Each one has only a small effect, but together, they may explain up to 80% of the variation in height within a population. Yet environmental factors play a huge role as well. The children of Japanese immigrants to Hawaii, for instance, grew much taller than their parents. Scientists assume that a diet rich in milk and meat played a major role. The Dutch have become so much taller in such a short period that scientists chalk most of it up to their changing environment. As the Netherlands developed, it became one of the world's largest producers and consumers of cheese and milk. An increasingly egalitarian distribution of wealth and universal access to health care may also have helped. Still, scientists wonder whether natural selection has played a role as well. For men, being tall is associated with better health, attractiveness to the opposite sex, a better education, and higher income—all of which could lead to more reproductive success, Stulp says.Yet studies in the United States don't show this. Stulp's own research among Wisconsinites born between 1937 and 1940, for instance, showed that average-sized men had more children than shorter and taller men, and shorter women had more children than those of average height. Taken together, Stulp says, this suggests natural selection in the United States pulls in the opposite direction of environmental factors like diet, making people shorter instead of taller. That may explain why the growth in average American height has leveled off."
Our Chinese-born population is set to overtake the English-born population - "There will soon be more Chinese-born people than English-born people in Australia.The Chinese population grew by 50 per cent from 2013 to 2018 to reach 650,000.Meanwhile, the English-born population declined from more than one million to 992,000. If this trajectory continues, the Chinese will outnumber the English by 2023... Australia's Indian-born population is also increasing and hit 592,000 last year, overtaking the number of New Zealanders of which there are 568,000... the number of immigrants from England, Ireland, Germany, Greece Italy and Scandinavia, as well as Singapore, South Korea and Japan is declining"
Japan's jump in foreign tourists pleasing housewives seeking affairs - ""What’s attractive about physical relationships with foreign men is just how different the whole process is depending on the country.”... Standing over 170 centimeters, Kurosu has a strikingly attractive appearance — just not, as she says, to the typical Japanese man.“Your average guy would get cold feet if they saw me,” Kurosu laughed. “My husband is all about height, so he proposed to me saying he loved tall women. But you know, if you look at Japanese men, you’ll see how they like small, cute girls who are thin and young. So I’d always end up on the sidelines. But foreigners aren’t like that. There are Germans and Australians who like big and strong women. Then there are French and Spanish ones who won’t turn down whoever comes their way. This is just my view, but I think you can pick to your heart’s content when it comes to your plaything.”Kurosu says she was involved with men from over 18 countries so far... Kurosu said that foreign men usually take the initiative and put on condoms for her, a sentiment shared by another woman who identified herself as Noriko Nakamura, 45... “Foreigners will admire the body of even a 45-year-old woman, and they put on condoms, too,” Nakamura said. “How do I find people? Well, I use a dating app called Happn, which has a location service. It’s a pretty recent app made in France, and it shows you the details of anyone you cross paths with on your timeline.”... Both women said interactions in bed prompted them to start learning English, which even came in handy for them at work."
British teenager jailed for trolling herself on social media to frame ex - "A British teenager who trolled herself on social media in a bid to frame her ex-boyfriend in a revenge plot has been jailed.Clarice Crothers, 18, reported her former partner to police claiming he was harassing her and her family with threatening messages... she was jailed for eight months"
Malaysia's top supermarket chain bans 'palm-oil-free' products, government urges others to follow - "Malaysia's biggest supermarket chain Mydin has removed products labelled palm-oil-free from its stores, its top executive said on Thursday (Sep 5), as part of a campaign by the world's second-largest producer of the oil to protect the commodity's image at home and abroad.The US$60 billion world palm oil trade has been the target of environmentalists because of the vast areas of tropical rainforest they say have been cleared to grow the commodity... Malaysia, which together with neighbour Indonesia produce about 85 per cent of the world's palm, is considering a law banning all products flaunting non-use of the oil... Teresa Kok, Malaysia's minister of primary industries, welcomed Mydin's move and told reporters she hoped other supermarkets and shops in the country would follow suit. In July, the Malaysian government promised action against an international school for spreading "anti-palm oil propaganda""
When False Claims Are Repeated, We Start To Believe They Are True — Here’s How Behaving Like A Fact-Checker Can Help
What's the biggest turn-off in a Singapore man's dating profile? - "members of the public were asked, via a social media poll, to describe their impression of Singaporean men in one or two words.
The top words submitted were revealing, to say the least:
Boring
Unromantic
Reliable
Practical
Cynical
Kiasu
Lost
Egoistic
Passive
Stubborn
Privileged
I found myself gaping open-mouthed at the screen as these words were flashed across it. Wait – even the positive adjectives were backhanded compliments? Not a single unequivocally flattering adjective for Singaporean men?... I decided to get some answers from the dating experts: Specifically, the folks at dating app Coffee Meets Bagel, which has made more than 200 million introductions in Singapore since it launched here in 2015. “What’s the top turn-off for people scrolling through the profiles of men here in Singapore?” I wanted to know.The answer, I’m afraid to say, is that if you’re a gaming nerd, you might be condemned to an eternity of forever-alone-ness. Singaporeans looking for a mate are not impressed by you: The most-liked men here are 57 per cent less likely to include the word “anime” in their profiles, and 45 per cent less likely to include the word “gaming”, a Coffee Meets Bagel spokesperson shared. This is not great news, seeing as a survey released earlier this year found that Singaporeans came in a noteworthy third globally when it comes to amount of time spent playing video games...
the top 25 per cent of most-liked male Coffee Meets Bagel users in Singapore have rather a lot in common. For one thing, they are 124 per cent more likely to include the word “spontaneity” in their profile, making that the No 1 turn-on for Singaporeans looking for their ideal man. And they are also 88 per cent more likely to describe themselves as “fun-loving”. But how do you prove that you’re “spontaneous”, “fun-loving” and definitely not “boring”?Well, you make yourself out to be fit, athletic and adventurous... popular users were 207 per cent more likely to have the word “skiing” in their profile, and 151 per cent more likely to include “snowboarding”.Seeing as you can’t really develop a skiing hobby even if you visit Snow City every weekend, is "skiing" code for "I am able to afford regular vacations in mountainous countries"? After all, it can't just be about being athletic. Sepak takraw, silat and wushu are also sports – how come they’re not as sexy? Or are skiing and snowboarding seen as desirable because they signal un-Singaporean-ness in the most obvious of ways, screaming, “I’m about as far away from your typical Singaporean man as a snowstorm is from Yishun!”?...
What about Singaporean women? Are we all paragons of virtue, spontaneity and fertility? Are we really awesome skiers?I can’t be the arbiter here, but I am pretty sure that if there is a Problem With Singaporean Men, then there’s bound to be a Problem With Singaporean Women, too. To start with, my male friends commonly tell me that the women they meet in romantic contexts can often be difficult to approach, on the sensitive side and possessive and/or controlling (yikes)."
Shower, sleep or study? Singaporeans would rather game - "Singaporeans spend the most time playing video games compared with other gamers in Asia.At the global level, they also spend a huge amount of time gaming, coming behind only the Americans and Germans"
Android phones already have all of the new iPhone 11 features, but do Apple fans care? - "Some features available on Android phones that have existed for a while now are still not found in Apple’s latest device.For example, the current iPhone 11 can be charged with an 18w charger, but Samsung has already made available a 45w charger.Reverse wireless charging — where a phone can charge another phone or device, is also not available in the new iPhone as yet."
Upon return to Twitter, Permaisuri Agong says to ‘chill’, asks cops to stop arresting people | Malaysia | Malay Mail - "Raja Permaisuri Agong Tunku Azizah Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah has reactivated her Twitter account in an attempt to dissuade the police from acting against those accused of insulting her.Tunku Azizah had deleted her @cheminahsayang account on Wednesday and triggered the #AmpunTuanku movement to convince her to return to the social media platform she had left due to suspected online harrassment.The Raja Permaisuri reiterated today that she did not leave the platform because she was angered by comments about her but added that her return was motivated by her displeasure with police action against those accused of insulting her. "As I said, I deactivated not because I was upset by comments made but for personal reasons... but today I am truly upset that police have detained those people... through the years my husband and I have never made any police report on the bad things said about us... it’s a free country”... “Although the whole time I and my husband have been demeaned, accused, mocked, and insulted in cari.com, we both have not lodged any police reports... and I have never been sad when I read this — in fact, I laugh — because Allah knows who I am!”Yesterday, Tunku Azizah’s daughter, Tengku Puteri Afzan Aminah Hafizatullah Al-Sultan Abdullah, shared a social media post in which she said the Raja Permaisuri had not deleted her Twitter account due to alleged online harassment.Instead, she said Tunku Azizah told her that she had done it for “personal reasons” and appealed for the public not to lodge police reports against those that other online users have identified as responsible for her departure.The appeal came too late, however, as the police have already opened several sedition investigations in response to reports lodged about remarks against the Raja Permaisuri, including Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) activist Khalid Mohd Ismath who was arrested yesterday."
"Women ban men from an entire hotel -> Stunning and brave!
Men ban women from their personal lives (MGTOW) -> Loser misogynist!"
Thanks, I Hate Australia : TIHI - *Snake and spider entangled in web*
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "Snopes fact checks the story that Colonel Sanders stoke his chicken recipe from a black woman. They find that the photo is false, a woman by that name doesn’t exist, and that no evidence exists of the theft.
So they mark the story ‘unproven’ instead of false."
Little Kid Gorgeous on Twitter - "Hey everyone!
I’m available immediately for full time remote work (from US) focusing on:
- tech & ethics, policy, public impact
- high level diversity, inclusion, and equity
- advocacy for marginalized people within the organization
Email ashedryden@gmail.com
Please RT 🥰"
"I'm a bourgeois white girl excelling in telling other bourgeois white people why they're racist! Hire me."
SJWCentral - Posts - "Reverse sexism is not a thing because sexism is related to power structures. If you can understand that there is a difference between an adult hitting a child and a child hitting an adult, then you get why reverse sexism (or racism) is not a thing #feminism"
Clementine Ford: "This is such a straightforward and clear analogy."
"Today i learned that people of color and women are like children according to some leftist online"
Did natural selection make the Dutch the tallest people on the planet? - "tall Dutch men on average have more children than their shorter counterparts, and that more of their children survive. That suggests genes that help make people tall are becoming more frequent among the Dutch... Genetics has an important effect on body height: Scientists have found at least 180 genes that influence how tall you become. Each one has only a small effect, but together, they may explain up to 80% of the variation in height within a population. Yet environmental factors play a huge role as well. The children of Japanese immigrants to Hawaii, for instance, grew much taller than their parents. Scientists assume that a diet rich in milk and meat played a major role. The Dutch have become so much taller in such a short period that scientists chalk most of it up to their changing environment. As the Netherlands developed, it became one of the world's largest producers and consumers of cheese and milk. An increasingly egalitarian distribution of wealth and universal access to health care may also have helped. Still, scientists wonder whether natural selection has played a role as well. For men, being tall is associated with better health, attractiveness to the opposite sex, a better education, and higher income—all of which could lead to more reproductive success, Stulp says.Yet studies in the United States don't show this. Stulp's own research among Wisconsinites born between 1937 and 1940, for instance, showed that average-sized men had more children than shorter and taller men, and shorter women had more children than those of average height. Taken together, Stulp says, this suggests natural selection in the United States pulls in the opposite direction of environmental factors like diet, making people shorter instead of taller. That may explain why the growth in average American height has leveled off."
Our Chinese-born population is set to overtake the English-born population - "There will soon be more Chinese-born people than English-born people in Australia.The Chinese population grew by 50 per cent from 2013 to 2018 to reach 650,000.Meanwhile, the English-born population declined from more than one million to 992,000. If this trajectory continues, the Chinese will outnumber the English by 2023... Australia's Indian-born population is also increasing and hit 592,000 last year, overtaking the number of New Zealanders of which there are 568,000... the number of immigrants from England, Ireland, Germany, Greece Italy and Scandinavia, as well as Singapore, South Korea and Japan is declining"
Japan's jump in foreign tourists pleasing housewives seeking affairs - ""What’s attractive about physical relationships with foreign men is just how different the whole process is depending on the country.”... Standing over 170 centimeters, Kurosu has a strikingly attractive appearance — just not, as she says, to the typical Japanese man.“Your average guy would get cold feet if they saw me,” Kurosu laughed. “My husband is all about height, so he proposed to me saying he loved tall women. But you know, if you look at Japanese men, you’ll see how they like small, cute girls who are thin and young. So I’d always end up on the sidelines. But foreigners aren’t like that. There are Germans and Australians who like big and strong women. Then there are French and Spanish ones who won’t turn down whoever comes their way. This is just my view, but I think you can pick to your heart’s content when it comes to your plaything.”Kurosu says she was involved with men from over 18 countries so far... Kurosu said that foreign men usually take the initiative and put on condoms for her, a sentiment shared by another woman who identified herself as Noriko Nakamura, 45... “Foreigners will admire the body of even a 45-year-old woman, and they put on condoms, too,” Nakamura said. “How do I find people? Well, I use a dating app called Happn, which has a location service. It’s a pretty recent app made in France, and it shows you the details of anyone you cross paths with on your timeline.”... Both women said interactions in bed prompted them to start learning English, which even came in handy for them at work."
British teenager jailed for trolling herself on social media to frame ex - "A British teenager who trolled herself on social media in a bid to frame her ex-boyfriend in a revenge plot has been jailed.Clarice Crothers, 18, reported her former partner to police claiming he was harassing her and her family with threatening messages... she was jailed for eight months"
Malaysia's top supermarket chain bans 'palm-oil-free' products, government urges others to follow - "Malaysia's biggest supermarket chain Mydin has removed products labelled palm-oil-free from its stores, its top executive said on Thursday (Sep 5), as part of a campaign by the world's second-largest producer of the oil to protect the commodity's image at home and abroad.The US$60 billion world palm oil trade has been the target of environmentalists because of the vast areas of tropical rainforest they say have been cleared to grow the commodity... Malaysia, which together with neighbour Indonesia produce about 85 per cent of the world's palm, is considering a law banning all products flaunting non-use of the oil... Teresa Kok, Malaysia's minister of primary industries, welcomed Mydin's move and told reporters she hoped other supermarkets and shops in the country would follow suit. In July, the Malaysian government promised action against an international school for spreading "anti-palm oil propaganda""
When False Claims Are Repeated, We Start To Believe They Are True — Here’s How Behaving Like A Fact-Checker Can Help
What's the biggest turn-off in a Singapore man's dating profile? - "members of the public were asked, via a social media poll, to describe their impression of Singaporean men in one or two words.
The top words submitted were revealing, to say the least:
Boring
Unromantic
Reliable
Practical
Cynical
Kiasu
Lost
Egoistic
Passive
Stubborn
Privileged
I found myself gaping open-mouthed at the screen as these words were flashed across it. Wait – even the positive adjectives were backhanded compliments? Not a single unequivocally flattering adjective for Singaporean men?... I decided to get some answers from the dating experts: Specifically, the folks at dating app Coffee Meets Bagel, which has made more than 200 million introductions in Singapore since it launched here in 2015. “What’s the top turn-off for people scrolling through the profiles of men here in Singapore?” I wanted to know.The answer, I’m afraid to say, is that if you’re a gaming nerd, you might be condemned to an eternity of forever-alone-ness. Singaporeans looking for a mate are not impressed by you: The most-liked men here are 57 per cent less likely to include the word “anime” in their profiles, and 45 per cent less likely to include the word “gaming”, a Coffee Meets Bagel spokesperson shared. This is not great news, seeing as a survey released earlier this year found that Singaporeans came in a noteworthy third globally when it comes to amount of time spent playing video games...
the top 25 per cent of most-liked male Coffee Meets Bagel users in Singapore have rather a lot in common. For one thing, they are 124 per cent more likely to include the word “spontaneity” in their profile, making that the No 1 turn-on for Singaporeans looking for their ideal man. And they are also 88 per cent more likely to describe themselves as “fun-loving”. But how do you prove that you’re “spontaneous”, “fun-loving” and definitely not “boring”?Well, you make yourself out to be fit, athletic and adventurous... popular users were 207 per cent more likely to have the word “skiing” in their profile, and 151 per cent more likely to include “snowboarding”.Seeing as you can’t really develop a skiing hobby even if you visit Snow City every weekend, is "skiing" code for "I am able to afford regular vacations in mountainous countries"? After all, it can't just be about being athletic. Sepak takraw, silat and wushu are also sports – how come they’re not as sexy? Or are skiing and snowboarding seen as desirable because they signal un-Singaporean-ness in the most obvious of ways, screaming, “I’m about as far away from your typical Singaporean man as a snowstorm is from Yishun!”?...
What about Singaporean women? Are we all paragons of virtue, spontaneity and fertility? Are we really awesome skiers?I can’t be the arbiter here, but I am pretty sure that if there is a Problem With Singaporean Men, then there’s bound to be a Problem With Singaporean Women, too. To start with, my male friends commonly tell me that the women they meet in romantic contexts can often be difficult to approach, on the sensitive side and possessive and/or controlling (yikes)."
Shower, sleep or study? Singaporeans would rather game - "Singaporeans spend the most time playing video games compared with other gamers in Asia.At the global level, they also spend a huge amount of time gaming, coming behind only the Americans and Germans"
Android phones already have all of the new iPhone 11 features, but do Apple fans care? - "Some features available on Android phones that have existed for a while now are still not found in Apple’s latest device.For example, the current iPhone 11 can be charged with an 18w charger, but Samsung has already made available a 45w charger.Reverse wireless charging — where a phone can charge another phone or device, is also not available in the new iPhone as yet."
Upon return to Twitter, Permaisuri Agong says to ‘chill’, asks cops to stop arresting people | Malaysia | Malay Mail - "Raja Permaisuri Agong Tunku Azizah Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah has reactivated her Twitter account in an attempt to dissuade the police from acting against those accused of insulting her.Tunku Azizah had deleted her @cheminahsayang account on Wednesday and triggered the #AmpunTuanku movement to convince her to return to the social media platform she had left due to suspected online harrassment.The Raja Permaisuri reiterated today that she did not leave the platform because she was angered by comments about her but added that her return was motivated by her displeasure with police action against those accused of insulting her. "As I said, I deactivated not because I was upset by comments made but for personal reasons... but today I am truly upset that police have detained those people... through the years my husband and I have never made any police report on the bad things said about us... it’s a free country”... “Although the whole time I and my husband have been demeaned, accused, mocked, and insulted in cari.com, we both have not lodged any police reports... and I have never been sad when I read this — in fact, I laugh — because Allah knows who I am!”Yesterday, Tunku Azizah’s daughter, Tengku Puteri Afzan Aminah Hafizatullah Al-Sultan Abdullah, shared a social media post in which she said the Raja Permaisuri had not deleted her Twitter account due to alleged online harassment.Instead, she said Tunku Azizah told her that she had done it for “personal reasons” and appealed for the public not to lodge police reports against those that other online users have identified as responsible for her departure.The appeal came too late, however, as the police have already opened several sedition investigations in response to reports lodged about remarks against the Raja Permaisuri, including Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) activist Khalid Mohd Ismath who was arrested yesterday."
Post ID: 5374312502464176340
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Links - 12th December 2019 (2) (#MeToo / Male Feminists)
Robert De Niro sued for gender discrimination, wage violations - "Robert De Niro is the Raging Bull — and a chauvinist pig who subjected an employee to unwanted touching, sexist behavior and lewd jokes about his Viagra prescription, the woman charges in a new lawsuit.Graham Chase Robinson claims she was routinely demeaned and abused by the actor — including in vicious voicemails where he railed that her job was “f–king history!” and called her a “spoiled brat.”The $12 million lawsuit cites the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and old-school sexist behavior — charging that De Niro, 76, still operates with that mindset. “Robert De Niro is someone who has clung to old mores. He does not accept the idea that men should treat women as equals,” says Robinson’s complaint filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court. "
The Trump curse strikes again!
The Myth of the Male Feminist - "As we close out 2017, let’s take some time to reflect on lessons learned over the past 12 months. In an act of no holds barred brutal honesty, this year completely obliterated the myth of the male feminist. Though these men claim to be champions of women’s rights, we’ve seen time and time again how they are nothing but wolves in sheep’s clothing.In the last several months, Harvey Weinstein, Joss Whedon, Louis C.K., Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose have all fallen into this camp. In the case of writer Michael Hafford, who has been accused of physically assaulting four women, he went as far as authoring a column for Vice’s women-focused site, Broadly, in 2015 titled “Male Feminist Here,” parodying the deceitfulness of this very group of men... From an evolutionary perspective, the approach has been described by the late evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith as the “sneaky fuckers” strategy, referring to the way in which subordinate males manage to accomplish mating with females—which they otherwise might not get to do—by taking advantage of instances in which dominant (and more appealing) males are preoccupied, fighting off intruders.This has been observed across multiple species in the animal kingdom and in humans, it takes the form of feminist men. These men know by rote all of the right things to say in order to gain a woman’s trust. They pride themselves on being sensitive, socially conscious “allies,” calling out “male privilege” and “problematic behavior” by the “patriarchy.” They will subvert any hint of their masculinity. This brilliant comic, which compares male feminists with predators in the wild that successfully camouflage themselves from their prey, accurately sums up their duplicitous nature... Women deserve equality and to be treated no differently from men, and there are plenty of decent men out there who agree with me. The difference is these men don’t feel the need to run around waving a giant banner notifying everyone of this (or wearing a pink pussy hat, the national emblem of the Woman’s March on Washington in January). To have healthy and successful relationships, the solution isn’t mindlessly telling women what they want to hear, nor setting impossible expectations on men based on a biased worldview. For those who have bought into the unfortunate narrative that women are an oppressed class in need of special treatment in order to level the playing field, I will say that helping and supporting women because they are women is patronizing. These is nothing a male feminist loves more than educating women on how oppressed we really are."
Reclaiming my fear: I will no longer stay silent about Michael Kimmel - "What follows is a detailed and intimate account of my six or so years working for and in the presence of Michael Kimmel — noted Sociologist and famous “male feminist” — who was recently named as a sexual harasser. While all accounts of sexual harassment, sexual assault, violence, and exploitation are horrific, what makes this case particularly toxic is that Michael has spent the better part of the last three decades becoming famous for telling other men how to be better, including contributing to field-specific knowledge on intimate partner violence and community-wide conversations on #MeToo outside of and even in the workplace."
A cleansing fire: Moral outrage alleviates guilt and buffers threats to one’s moral identity - "Why do people express moral outrage? While this sentiment often stems from a perceived violation of some moral principle, we test the counter-intuitive possibility that moral outrage at third-party transgressions is sometimes a means of reducing guilt over one’s own moral failings and restoring a moral identity. We tested this guilt-driven account of outrage in five studies examining outrage at corporate labor exploitation and environmental destruction. Study 1 showed that personal guilt uniquely predicted moral outrage at corporate harm-doing and support for retributive punishment. Ingroup (vs. outgroup) wrongdoing elicited outrage at corporations through increased guilt, while the opportunity to express outrage reduced guilt (Study 2) and restored perceived personal morality (Study 3). Study 4 tested whether effects were due merely to downward social comparison and Study 5 showed that guilt-driven outrage was attenuated by an affirmation of moral identity in an unrelated context."
In other words, virtue signalling is a reflection of your own immorality. Or, the lady doth protest too much, methinks
William Shatner says MeToo has become hysterical and like the French Revolution - "The Captain Kirk actor also hit back at his critics who slammed him for defending the Christmas song 'Baby It's Cold Outside' on Twitter last week, after a radio station in his native Canada took it off the air.In an exclusive interview with DailyMailTV, Shatner – who is promoting his own Christmas album Shatner Claus - doubled down, saying the man in the song is 'just offering an invitation and presenting an argument for not leaving.''You're not saying I'm closing the door and you can't leave. It's not force, it's verbal persuasion, which works in the act,' Shatner said... The sci-fi actor also said he has had to rethink his compliments to women after recently taking a three-hour training course on sexual harassment in the workplace as part of his role in the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF).'It's all about sensitizing you to what is harassment. You might say, as I have on numerous occasions, ''looking good'', ''wow, what a great dress'', ''great legs'', ''I love your hair''. Nothing grabby, touchy-feely, nothing sexual,' he said.'Just innocuous compliments that one might say to anybody, with no intent of lasciviousness.'Shatner said he has even become wary when posing for pictures with Star Trek fans.'People say ''can I put my arm around you?'' I say ''Yes of course.'''But I don't. I've changed my behavior to quite a degree… because it's a revolution.'"
The silence surrounding grooming gangs | Coffee House - "Who is allowed to be part of the #MeToo movement? I ask because on Friday five men were found guilty of horrific sexual crimes against eight girls and yet the case hasn’t trended on Twitter. There have been no hashtags. The girls’ suffering hasn’t been widely talked about. There have been very few declarations of solidarity from feminists. There’s pretty much been silence.It isn’t hard to see why. The problem for the mostly middle-class, well-connected feminists who make up the #MeToo movement is that this case involved both the wrong kind of victim and the wrong kind of perpetrator. The victims were working-class girls, under the age of 16, some of them quite troubled — a far cry from the actresses, businesswomen and lobby journalists whose experiences of harassment have dominated the #MeToo narrative so far.And the perpetrators were Muslim men. They were Muslim men who the judge described as ‘cunning and determined’ sexual predators. And surely no one wants to risk stirring up Islamophobic sentiment by drawing attention to a Muslim gang engaged in incredibly abusive behaviour?... Strikingly, the judge didn’t only condemn the men – he also criticised the authorities in Rotherham. He said they had at best been ‘totally ineffectual’ and at worst ‘wholly indifferent’ to the abuse of girls by Muslim gangs. He said he was ‘quite satisfied’ that the ‘relevant authorities’ in Rotherham knew girls were being targeted for sexual exploitation. And their failure to do anything about it is a ‘lamentable state of affairs’... Look what happened to the Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, when she wrote about the problem of largely Pakistani gangs abusing white girls. She was demonised by Corbynistas. She was forced out of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. The message was clear: talk about this issue and you will be punished... What strange times we live in. A politician placing his hand on a middle-class journalist’s knee can dominate the news for weeks, while a gang of predatory men abducting and raping working-class girls gets a tiny write-up on page ten of your newspaper. This says something so disturbing to the victims in Rotherham and elsewhere: ‘You don’t matter. Preventing difficult discussion about cultural tensions in 21st-century Britain is far more important than your experiences of abuse.’"
The Return to Archaic Forms of Power—An Interview with Marianne Stidsen - "when I call #MeToo a ”revolution,” I mean it in all seriousness. I explore three instances in my book, where men have been judged by the media before having their cases tried by the legal system. The burden of proof has been reversed. And a violation of civil rights – such as the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial – is an attack on democracy itself, and ultimately undermines the legacy of the Enlightenment. We’re throwing two hundred years of struggle for human rights overboard... some fifty anonymous female students published an open letter to the country’s university rectors, claiming that sexual harassment and violence was ubiquitous at Danish campuses. Of course the letter didn’t mention any specific instances of such harassment or violence.The principal of The University of Copenhagen responded by setting up a committee to devise new guidelines to address sexual misconduct. Based on these guidelines, a senior lecturer in the humanities was reprimanded and stripped of his responsibilities – even though he had been formally acquitted of all accusations directed against him... The school principal was immediately fired.It turned out that this decision was in part prompted by an open letter, signed by 55 Danish authors, calling on the board to investigate rumors that had flourished about the school for several years. This might sound like a noble cause, but as I show in my book, some of the signatories had wanted to have the principal removed for years for reasons that didn’t have anything to do with misconduct: The same people had opposed his appointment three years earlier, based simply on his gender. This is something I knew because I was a member of the board that hired him, and therefore closely followed the reactions. Shortly after he was employed we were criticized by a number of women – some of whom had been candidates for the same job – who saw the appointment of a man as proof of patriarchal structures in the literary world. But it wasn’t until #MeToo swept through Denmark that these women were able to have him fired... When the lawyers went through the case, it turned out that many of the claims of misconduct came from people who had not been victims themselves but who had heard about others who had been mistreated. Some accusations really concerned minor issues: For example, one employee at the school had supposedly called a female student ”an old hag” – 20 years ago. Another former student reported that he, also many years ago, had written a piece that was severely criticized – which is something that one should expect at a writers’ school.In the end, not a single case led to a police report. But by the time the law firm filed its investigation it was too late. The principal had already been fired... even as a woman, I can fully understand if anyone prefers not to work closely with women as long as this #MeToo madness is going on. If I risked being judged on the basis of loose rumors, I’d be equally cautious. It’s a return to archaic forms of power: moralistic, opaque, unpredictable. And incredibly easy to abuse."
In the era of #MeToo, let us revisit Ted Kennedy's legacy - "one of the most grievous miscarriages of justice, one of the grossest abuses of wealth and political power, and one of the most ill-deserved second acts in modern American history: July 18, 1969, the night a probably-drunk Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick and left a young, adoring campaign aide named Mary Jo Kopechne to die in about three feet of water, her horrific death a slow agony — one that took hours — as she doubtless waited for her hero, the young and virile Ted, to run for help.Instead, he stumbled back to his hotel room, called down to the front desk to complain about noisy guests, and went to sleep. Chappaquiddick: Never forget."
This brand of 'hipster feminism' helps no one - least of all the abused - "For someone who is frequently touted as the voice of modern womanhood, Lena Dunham certainly does talk a lot of rubbish. In case you don’t already know her oeuvre, Dunham is the creator, writer and star of Girls, the edgy HBO sitcom that was rapidly dubbed the voice of a new generation when it was first aired in 2012.Over the last five years, she has done her best to eclipse that notable achievement by making a number of astoundingly muddle-headed public pronouncements. In the past, Dunham has compared Bill Cosby’s sexual assault allegations to the Holocaust and blithely stated that she hasn’t had an abortion “but I wish I had”... We’ve all seen what happens when investigations are rushed. When the Jimmy Savile scandal erupted, there was a tsunami of allegations concerning historic child sex abuse. In our well-meaning attempts to address past trauma, we jumped headlong into trying to fix it - with mixed results.The singer Cliff Richard was recently given a payout from South Yorkshire Police after suing them for disclosing private information to the BBC naming him as a suspected child abuser in August 2014. No charges were ever brought.The widow of the former home secretary Leon Brittan and a former army chief have received compensation from Scotland Yard over the heavily criticised Operation Midland, a doomed investigation into salacious allegations of child sexual abuse and murder made by a single accuser."
So much for it being a myth that there're people who are pro-abortion
#Metoo has become a vicious hate mob - this will not end well for women - "“Common courtesy”, “decency” and “natural justice”. According to his family, this was all Carl Sargeant expected. He got none of those things. Instead, when allegations of “unwanted attention” and “inappropriate touching or groping” surfaced, the 48 year-old Welsh Labour minister was immediately sacked.Despite pushing for more details on the nature of the claims and warning the party that his mental health was at stake, Sargeant still hadn’t been told exactly what he was accused of four days later, when the father-of-two took his own life. “Why would you kill yourself if you hadn’t done anything?” raged the Twitter mob within hours of his death. “#metoo”... it was the court of #metoo – a court where the judge and jury are one and the same, and increasingly hysterical – that tried and convicted Sargeant without even hearing the charges. And today they are doing the same with the latest men accused of everything from knee-skimming to rape, whether they’re Hollywood actors like Jeremy Piven and Ed Westwick, whose new Agatha Christie drama was removed from the BBC’s Christmas schedule yesterday, MPs like Kelvin Hopkins (suspended) or hoteliers like Chateau Marmont’s André Balazs.... “A witch hunt” is how veteran Tory MP Sir Roger Gale described the current state of the Westminster sex pest scandal yesterday. And in the “wilting flowers” side-swipe he took at the female journalists he holds partly responsible for the mess (“nobody makes a journalist go and have lunch with an MP and drink”), one can hear a bitterness that we women should get used to – because it’s seeping through into every aspect of our lives and relationships now. “I’m never sharing a taxi with a woman again,” “Why would you employ women in this climate?” and “I’ve stopped making jokes with the women at work” are just three of the comments men have made to me in the past week.But all of these are dwarfed by the words of a teenager who said to me simply and only semi-apologetically: “I’m beginning to really dislike women.”"
Men are playing with fire by having drunken sex - "what has changed? Why are so many more young women making so many more complaints against young men, from backgrounds and at universities where arrest was unheard of a few years ago? Is there more rape and sexual assault, or just a greater willingness to report those crimes? Or is there something subtler at play? Are young women redefining for themselves where the boundaries of consent lie and what they are prepared to accept?... The law is clear — even if both parties are equally and very drunk, and got that way together without coercion, and then have sex, the man is a rapist and the woman is his victim. The woman’s drunkenness obliterates any question of consent and the man cannot rely upon his own state to support his defence; the more drunk he is, the worse the law makes it for him... I have seen families torn apart, university careers ended and enduring psychological harm on both sides... But what should we say to our sons and daughters as they head off to university exuding hope, nervous excitement and a desperate desire for the new? Drink less? Good luck there. Don’t have sex after you have had a drink? Again, that advice will be ignored by many, as it always was. And yet, the moment two young people, attracted to each other, drunk on life and cider, walk into a bedroom alone together, they may be seconds away from catastrophe. She may be an hour away from a trip to the Rape Crisis Centre and he may be enjoying his last night free of the label ‘Rapist’."
British law has institutional sexism since if a drunk man and a drunk woman have sex, the man is guilty. Feminists are right... just not in the way that they think
Feminists will call this "victim blaming". But the victim may not be who they claim it is
TSKS on Twitter - "Making a girl believe that you like her just so you can have sex with her should be classified as sexual assault. But no one is ready to have that conversation yet"
"Women that use men for money should get done for fraud then...... but no ones ready for that conversation"
"Yeah we get it every bad thing that happens to a woman is rape"
"Pretending you like a guy for a free meal should be classified as theft but nobody is ready for that conversation yet."
The Trump curse strikes again!
The Myth of the Male Feminist - "As we close out 2017, let’s take some time to reflect on lessons learned over the past 12 months. In an act of no holds barred brutal honesty, this year completely obliterated the myth of the male feminist. Though these men claim to be champions of women’s rights, we’ve seen time and time again how they are nothing but wolves in sheep’s clothing.In the last several months, Harvey Weinstein, Joss Whedon, Louis C.K., Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose have all fallen into this camp. In the case of writer Michael Hafford, who has been accused of physically assaulting four women, he went as far as authoring a column for Vice’s women-focused site, Broadly, in 2015 titled “Male Feminist Here,” parodying the deceitfulness of this very group of men... From an evolutionary perspective, the approach has been described by the late evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith as the “sneaky fuckers” strategy, referring to the way in which subordinate males manage to accomplish mating with females—which they otherwise might not get to do—by taking advantage of instances in which dominant (and more appealing) males are preoccupied, fighting off intruders.This has been observed across multiple species in the animal kingdom and in humans, it takes the form of feminist men. These men know by rote all of the right things to say in order to gain a woman’s trust. They pride themselves on being sensitive, socially conscious “allies,” calling out “male privilege” and “problematic behavior” by the “patriarchy.” They will subvert any hint of their masculinity. This brilliant comic, which compares male feminists with predators in the wild that successfully camouflage themselves from their prey, accurately sums up their duplicitous nature... Women deserve equality and to be treated no differently from men, and there are plenty of decent men out there who agree with me. The difference is these men don’t feel the need to run around waving a giant banner notifying everyone of this (or wearing a pink pussy hat, the national emblem of the Woman’s March on Washington in January). To have healthy and successful relationships, the solution isn’t mindlessly telling women what they want to hear, nor setting impossible expectations on men based on a biased worldview. For those who have bought into the unfortunate narrative that women are an oppressed class in need of special treatment in order to level the playing field, I will say that helping and supporting women because they are women is patronizing. These is nothing a male feminist loves more than educating women on how oppressed we really are."
Reclaiming my fear: I will no longer stay silent about Michael Kimmel - "What follows is a detailed and intimate account of my six or so years working for and in the presence of Michael Kimmel — noted Sociologist and famous “male feminist” — who was recently named as a sexual harasser. While all accounts of sexual harassment, sexual assault, violence, and exploitation are horrific, what makes this case particularly toxic is that Michael has spent the better part of the last three decades becoming famous for telling other men how to be better, including contributing to field-specific knowledge on intimate partner violence and community-wide conversations on #MeToo outside of and even in the workplace."
A cleansing fire: Moral outrage alleviates guilt and buffers threats to one’s moral identity - "Why do people express moral outrage? While this sentiment often stems from a perceived violation of some moral principle, we test the counter-intuitive possibility that moral outrage at third-party transgressions is sometimes a means of reducing guilt over one’s own moral failings and restoring a moral identity. We tested this guilt-driven account of outrage in five studies examining outrage at corporate labor exploitation and environmental destruction. Study 1 showed that personal guilt uniquely predicted moral outrage at corporate harm-doing and support for retributive punishment. Ingroup (vs. outgroup) wrongdoing elicited outrage at corporations through increased guilt, while the opportunity to express outrage reduced guilt (Study 2) and restored perceived personal morality (Study 3). Study 4 tested whether effects were due merely to downward social comparison and Study 5 showed that guilt-driven outrage was attenuated by an affirmation of moral identity in an unrelated context."
In other words, virtue signalling is a reflection of your own immorality. Or, the lady doth protest too much, methinks
William Shatner says MeToo has become hysterical and like the French Revolution - "The Captain Kirk actor also hit back at his critics who slammed him for defending the Christmas song 'Baby It's Cold Outside' on Twitter last week, after a radio station in his native Canada took it off the air.In an exclusive interview with DailyMailTV, Shatner – who is promoting his own Christmas album Shatner Claus - doubled down, saying the man in the song is 'just offering an invitation and presenting an argument for not leaving.''You're not saying I'm closing the door and you can't leave. It's not force, it's verbal persuasion, which works in the act,' Shatner said... The sci-fi actor also said he has had to rethink his compliments to women after recently taking a three-hour training course on sexual harassment in the workplace as part of his role in the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF).'It's all about sensitizing you to what is harassment. You might say, as I have on numerous occasions, ''looking good'', ''wow, what a great dress'', ''great legs'', ''I love your hair''. Nothing grabby, touchy-feely, nothing sexual,' he said.'Just innocuous compliments that one might say to anybody, with no intent of lasciviousness.'Shatner said he has even become wary when posing for pictures with Star Trek fans.'People say ''can I put my arm around you?'' I say ''Yes of course.'''But I don't. I've changed my behavior to quite a degree… because it's a revolution.'"
The silence surrounding grooming gangs | Coffee House - "Who is allowed to be part of the #MeToo movement? I ask because on Friday five men were found guilty of horrific sexual crimes against eight girls and yet the case hasn’t trended on Twitter. There have been no hashtags. The girls’ suffering hasn’t been widely talked about. There have been very few declarations of solidarity from feminists. There’s pretty much been silence.It isn’t hard to see why. The problem for the mostly middle-class, well-connected feminists who make up the #MeToo movement is that this case involved both the wrong kind of victim and the wrong kind of perpetrator. The victims were working-class girls, under the age of 16, some of them quite troubled — a far cry from the actresses, businesswomen and lobby journalists whose experiences of harassment have dominated the #MeToo narrative so far.And the perpetrators were Muslim men. They were Muslim men who the judge described as ‘cunning and determined’ sexual predators. And surely no one wants to risk stirring up Islamophobic sentiment by drawing attention to a Muslim gang engaged in incredibly abusive behaviour?... Strikingly, the judge didn’t only condemn the men – he also criticised the authorities in Rotherham. He said they had at best been ‘totally ineffectual’ and at worst ‘wholly indifferent’ to the abuse of girls by Muslim gangs. He said he was ‘quite satisfied’ that the ‘relevant authorities’ in Rotherham knew girls were being targeted for sexual exploitation. And their failure to do anything about it is a ‘lamentable state of affairs’... Look what happened to the Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, when she wrote about the problem of largely Pakistani gangs abusing white girls. She was demonised by Corbynistas. She was forced out of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. The message was clear: talk about this issue and you will be punished... What strange times we live in. A politician placing his hand on a middle-class journalist’s knee can dominate the news for weeks, while a gang of predatory men abducting and raping working-class girls gets a tiny write-up on page ten of your newspaper. This says something so disturbing to the victims in Rotherham and elsewhere: ‘You don’t matter. Preventing difficult discussion about cultural tensions in 21st-century Britain is far more important than your experiences of abuse.’"
The Return to Archaic Forms of Power—An Interview with Marianne Stidsen - "when I call #MeToo a ”revolution,” I mean it in all seriousness. I explore three instances in my book, where men have been judged by the media before having their cases tried by the legal system. The burden of proof has been reversed. And a violation of civil rights – such as the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial – is an attack on democracy itself, and ultimately undermines the legacy of the Enlightenment. We’re throwing two hundred years of struggle for human rights overboard... some fifty anonymous female students published an open letter to the country’s university rectors, claiming that sexual harassment and violence was ubiquitous at Danish campuses. Of course the letter didn’t mention any specific instances of such harassment or violence.The principal of The University of Copenhagen responded by setting up a committee to devise new guidelines to address sexual misconduct. Based on these guidelines, a senior lecturer in the humanities was reprimanded and stripped of his responsibilities – even though he had been formally acquitted of all accusations directed against him... The school principal was immediately fired.It turned out that this decision was in part prompted by an open letter, signed by 55 Danish authors, calling on the board to investigate rumors that had flourished about the school for several years. This might sound like a noble cause, but as I show in my book, some of the signatories had wanted to have the principal removed for years for reasons that didn’t have anything to do with misconduct: The same people had opposed his appointment three years earlier, based simply on his gender. This is something I knew because I was a member of the board that hired him, and therefore closely followed the reactions. Shortly after he was employed we were criticized by a number of women – some of whom had been candidates for the same job – who saw the appointment of a man as proof of patriarchal structures in the literary world. But it wasn’t until #MeToo swept through Denmark that these women were able to have him fired... When the lawyers went through the case, it turned out that many of the claims of misconduct came from people who had not been victims themselves but who had heard about others who had been mistreated. Some accusations really concerned minor issues: For example, one employee at the school had supposedly called a female student ”an old hag” – 20 years ago. Another former student reported that he, also many years ago, had written a piece that was severely criticized – which is something that one should expect at a writers’ school.In the end, not a single case led to a police report. But by the time the law firm filed its investigation it was too late. The principal had already been fired... even as a woman, I can fully understand if anyone prefers not to work closely with women as long as this #MeToo madness is going on. If I risked being judged on the basis of loose rumors, I’d be equally cautious. It’s a return to archaic forms of power: moralistic, opaque, unpredictable. And incredibly easy to abuse."
In the era of #MeToo, let us revisit Ted Kennedy's legacy - "one of the most grievous miscarriages of justice, one of the grossest abuses of wealth and political power, and one of the most ill-deserved second acts in modern American history: July 18, 1969, the night a probably-drunk Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick and left a young, adoring campaign aide named Mary Jo Kopechne to die in about three feet of water, her horrific death a slow agony — one that took hours — as she doubtless waited for her hero, the young and virile Ted, to run for help.Instead, he stumbled back to his hotel room, called down to the front desk to complain about noisy guests, and went to sleep. Chappaquiddick: Never forget."
This brand of 'hipster feminism' helps no one - least of all the abused - "For someone who is frequently touted as the voice of modern womanhood, Lena Dunham certainly does talk a lot of rubbish. In case you don’t already know her oeuvre, Dunham is the creator, writer and star of Girls, the edgy HBO sitcom that was rapidly dubbed the voice of a new generation when it was first aired in 2012.Over the last five years, she has done her best to eclipse that notable achievement by making a number of astoundingly muddle-headed public pronouncements. In the past, Dunham has compared Bill Cosby’s sexual assault allegations to the Holocaust and blithely stated that she hasn’t had an abortion “but I wish I had”... We’ve all seen what happens when investigations are rushed. When the Jimmy Savile scandal erupted, there was a tsunami of allegations concerning historic child sex abuse. In our well-meaning attempts to address past trauma, we jumped headlong into trying to fix it - with mixed results.The singer Cliff Richard was recently given a payout from South Yorkshire Police after suing them for disclosing private information to the BBC naming him as a suspected child abuser in August 2014. No charges were ever brought.The widow of the former home secretary Leon Brittan and a former army chief have received compensation from Scotland Yard over the heavily criticised Operation Midland, a doomed investigation into salacious allegations of child sexual abuse and murder made by a single accuser."
So much for it being a myth that there're people who are pro-abortion
#Metoo has become a vicious hate mob - this will not end well for women - "“Common courtesy”, “decency” and “natural justice”. According to his family, this was all Carl Sargeant expected. He got none of those things. Instead, when allegations of “unwanted attention” and “inappropriate touching or groping” surfaced, the 48 year-old Welsh Labour minister was immediately sacked.Despite pushing for more details on the nature of the claims and warning the party that his mental health was at stake, Sargeant still hadn’t been told exactly what he was accused of four days later, when the father-of-two took his own life. “Why would you kill yourself if you hadn’t done anything?” raged the Twitter mob within hours of his death. “#metoo”... it was the court of #metoo – a court where the judge and jury are one and the same, and increasingly hysterical – that tried and convicted Sargeant without even hearing the charges. And today they are doing the same with the latest men accused of everything from knee-skimming to rape, whether they’re Hollywood actors like Jeremy Piven and Ed Westwick, whose new Agatha Christie drama was removed from the BBC’s Christmas schedule yesterday, MPs like Kelvin Hopkins (suspended) or hoteliers like Chateau Marmont’s André Balazs.... “A witch hunt” is how veteran Tory MP Sir Roger Gale described the current state of the Westminster sex pest scandal yesterday. And in the “wilting flowers” side-swipe he took at the female journalists he holds partly responsible for the mess (“nobody makes a journalist go and have lunch with an MP and drink”), one can hear a bitterness that we women should get used to – because it’s seeping through into every aspect of our lives and relationships now. “I’m never sharing a taxi with a woman again,” “Why would you employ women in this climate?” and “I’ve stopped making jokes with the women at work” are just three of the comments men have made to me in the past week.But all of these are dwarfed by the words of a teenager who said to me simply and only semi-apologetically: “I’m beginning to really dislike women.”"
Men are playing with fire by having drunken sex - "what has changed? Why are so many more young women making so many more complaints against young men, from backgrounds and at universities where arrest was unheard of a few years ago? Is there more rape and sexual assault, or just a greater willingness to report those crimes? Or is there something subtler at play? Are young women redefining for themselves where the boundaries of consent lie and what they are prepared to accept?... The law is clear — even if both parties are equally and very drunk, and got that way together without coercion, and then have sex, the man is a rapist and the woman is his victim. The woman’s drunkenness obliterates any question of consent and the man cannot rely upon his own state to support his defence; the more drunk he is, the worse the law makes it for him... I have seen families torn apart, university careers ended and enduring psychological harm on both sides... But what should we say to our sons and daughters as they head off to university exuding hope, nervous excitement and a desperate desire for the new? Drink less? Good luck there. Don’t have sex after you have had a drink? Again, that advice will be ignored by many, as it always was. And yet, the moment two young people, attracted to each other, drunk on life and cider, walk into a bedroom alone together, they may be seconds away from catastrophe. She may be an hour away from a trip to the Rape Crisis Centre and he may be enjoying his last night free of the label ‘Rapist’."
British law has institutional sexism since if a drunk man and a drunk woman have sex, the man is guilty. Feminists are right... just not in the way that they think
Feminists will call this "victim blaming". But the victim may not be who they claim it is
TSKS on Twitter - "Making a girl believe that you like her just so you can have sex with her should be classified as sexual assault. But no one is ready to have that conversation yet"
"Women that use men for money should get done for fraud then...... but no ones ready for that conversation"
"Yeah we get it every bad thing that happens to a woman is rape"
"Pretending you like a guy for a free meal should be classified as theft but nobody is ready for that conversation yet."
Post ID: 7545194826148730112
The Downside of Diversity
The Downside of Diversity - WSJ
"“Diversity” is the most powerful word in higher education today. No other has so much authority. Older words, like “excellence” and “originality,” remain in circulation, but even they have been redefined in terms of diversity.
At Yale, where I have taught for 40 years, a large bureaucracy exists to ensure that the university’s commitment to diversity is rigorously enforced—in student admissions, faculty hiring and curricular design. Yale has an Office of Diversity and Inclusion, a Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development, an Office of Gender and Campus Culture and a dizzying array of similar positions and programs. At present, more than 150 full-time staff and student representatives serve in some pro-diversity role.
Yale’s situation is far from exceptional. “Diversity and inclusion” is a dogma repeated with uniform piety in the official pronouncements of nearly every college and university...
That diversity should be a value seems beyond dispute. The existence on campus of a range of beliefs, values and experiences is essential to the spirit of inquiry and debate that lies at the heart of academic life. Who wants to go to a school where everyone thinks alike?
But diversity, as it is understood today, means something different. It means diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. Diversity in this sense is not an academic value. Its origin and aspiration are political. The demand for ever-greater diversity in higher education is a political campaign masquerading as an educational ideal...
It encourages minority students, and eventually all students, to think that a departure from the beliefs and sentiments associated with their group is a violation of the terms on which they were admitted to the university. If students contribute to the good of diversity by expressing the racially, ethnically or sexually defined views that members of their group are expected to share, then a repudiation or even critical scrutiny of these views threatens to upset the school’s entire educational program. It takes special nerve for an African-American student to defend inner-city policing or a gay student to support the baker who refuses to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
For this program to work, it is essential that students remain in the corners to which they have been assigned. Indeed, it is not enough merely to recognize that the members of each group contribute some distinctive dimension to their school’s diversity. To reassure those whose groups have been the victims of social prejudice and discrimination, extra deference must be given to their life experience. The members of more privileged groups must be taught to “check their privilege,” and the identity of minority students must be treated as a possession that no one else may “appropriate,” in however well-meaning a way.
The upshot is that students are lauded for the beliefs and feelings they bring to their school on account of their separate identities, rather than being reminded of what they all stand to gain by being there—the inestimable privilege of joining in a rational inquiry that subjects every one of their sentiments and beliefs to the same rigorous demand for explanation and justification.
In politics, group solidarity is a condition of success. But in college, it is an obstacle to the pursuit of what Walt Whitman colorfully called the “idiocracy” of individual temperament and expression that sets each of us apart from every other...
Grievance is the stuff of political life. In politics, it is normal for one group to highlight its suffering and to demand reparations from another group or a greater share of its power. This is especially true where questions of racial justice are concerned. Here, the temperature is sometimes high enough to melt decorum and goodwill.
Academic disagreements are different. Important ones are often inflamed by passion too. But the goal of those involved is to persuade their adversaries with better facts and arguments—not to bludgeon them into submission with complaints of abuse, injustice and disrespect to increase their share of power. Today, the spirit of grievance has been imported into the academy, where it undermines the common search for truth by permeating it with a sense of hurt and wrong on the part of minority students, and guilt on the part of those who are blamed for their suffering.
The life of the classroom is transformed as a result. It is common to hear complaints that an assigned text is disrespectful of women, blacks, the gender-fluid or some other oppressed or marginalized group. White, male, heterosexual students are often attacked on the grounds that their comments reflect a smug and privileged view of the world. Such complaints are hardly new. I have heard versions of them at Yale for the past 40 years.
What is new and discouraging about today’s academic culture is the unprecedented weight that these grievances are given by teachers, students and administrators alike... Raising it amounts to a demand. It brings the conversation to a halt. It converts the classroom from an open space for the free exchange of ideas into a political battleground.
Yet even this does not fully capture the harm that the contemporary understanding of diversity has done to our colleges and universities. The greatest casualty is the idea of truth itself, on which the whole of academic life depends.
Whatever else it may be, the truth is not democratic... the demand for diversity has steadily weakened the norms of objectivity and truth and substituted for them a culture of grievance and group loyalty. Rather than bringing faculty and students together on the common ground of reason, it has pushed them farther apart into separate silos of guilt and complaint.
The damage to the academy is obvious. But even greater is the damage to our democratic way of life...
Tocqueville was an enthusiastic admirer of America’s democracy. He thought it the most just system of government the world had ever known. But he was also sensitive to its pathologies. Among these he identified the instinct to believe what others do in order to avoid the labor and risk of thinking for oneself. He worried that such conformism would itself become a breeding ground for despots.
As a partial antidote, Tocqueville stressed the importance of preserving, within the larger democratic order, islands of culture devoted to the undemocratic values of excellence and truth. These could be, he thought, enclaves for protecting the independence of mind that a democracy like ours especially needs.
Today our colleges and universities are doing a poor job of meeting this need, and the idea of diversity is at least partly to blame. It has become the basis of an illiberal and antirational academic cult—one that undermines the spirit of self-reliance and the commitment to truth on which not only higher education, but the whole of our democracy, depends."
"“Diversity” is the most powerful word in higher education today. No other has so much authority. Older words, like “excellence” and “originality,” remain in circulation, but even they have been redefined in terms of diversity.
At Yale, where I have taught for 40 years, a large bureaucracy exists to ensure that the university’s commitment to diversity is rigorously enforced—in student admissions, faculty hiring and curricular design. Yale has an Office of Diversity and Inclusion, a Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development, an Office of Gender and Campus Culture and a dizzying array of similar positions and programs. At present, more than 150 full-time staff and student representatives serve in some pro-diversity role.
Yale’s situation is far from exceptional. “Diversity and inclusion” is a dogma repeated with uniform piety in the official pronouncements of nearly every college and university...
That diversity should be a value seems beyond dispute. The existence on campus of a range of beliefs, values and experiences is essential to the spirit of inquiry and debate that lies at the heart of academic life. Who wants to go to a school where everyone thinks alike?
But diversity, as it is understood today, means something different. It means diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. Diversity in this sense is not an academic value. Its origin and aspiration are political. The demand for ever-greater diversity in higher education is a political campaign masquerading as an educational ideal...
It encourages minority students, and eventually all students, to think that a departure from the beliefs and sentiments associated with their group is a violation of the terms on which they were admitted to the university. If students contribute to the good of diversity by expressing the racially, ethnically or sexually defined views that members of their group are expected to share, then a repudiation or even critical scrutiny of these views threatens to upset the school’s entire educational program. It takes special nerve for an African-American student to defend inner-city policing or a gay student to support the baker who refuses to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
For this program to work, it is essential that students remain in the corners to which they have been assigned. Indeed, it is not enough merely to recognize that the members of each group contribute some distinctive dimension to their school’s diversity. To reassure those whose groups have been the victims of social prejudice and discrimination, extra deference must be given to their life experience. The members of more privileged groups must be taught to “check their privilege,” and the identity of minority students must be treated as a possession that no one else may “appropriate,” in however well-meaning a way.
The upshot is that students are lauded for the beliefs and feelings they bring to their school on account of their separate identities, rather than being reminded of what they all stand to gain by being there—the inestimable privilege of joining in a rational inquiry that subjects every one of their sentiments and beliefs to the same rigorous demand for explanation and justification.
In politics, group solidarity is a condition of success. But in college, it is an obstacle to the pursuit of what Walt Whitman colorfully called the “idiocracy” of individual temperament and expression that sets each of us apart from every other...
Grievance is the stuff of political life. In politics, it is normal for one group to highlight its suffering and to demand reparations from another group or a greater share of its power. This is especially true where questions of racial justice are concerned. Here, the temperature is sometimes high enough to melt decorum and goodwill.
Academic disagreements are different. Important ones are often inflamed by passion too. But the goal of those involved is to persuade their adversaries with better facts and arguments—not to bludgeon them into submission with complaints of abuse, injustice and disrespect to increase their share of power. Today, the spirit of grievance has been imported into the academy, where it undermines the common search for truth by permeating it with a sense of hurt and wrong on the part of minority students, and guilt on the part of those who are blamed for their suffering.
The life of the classroom is transformed as a result. It is common to hear complaints that an assigned text is disrespectful of women, blacks, the gender-fluid or some other oppressed or marginalized group. White, male, heterosexual students are often attacked on the grounds that their comments reflect a smug and privileged view of the world. Such complaints are hardly new. I have heard versions of them at Yale for the past 40 years.
What is new and discouraging about today’s academic culture is the unprecedented weight that these grievances are given by teachers, students and administrators alike... Raising it amounts to a demand. It brings the conversation to a halt. It converts the classroom from an open space for the free exchange of ideas into a political battleground.
Yet even this does not fully capture the harm that the contemporary understanding of diversity has done to our colleges and universities. The greatest casualty is the idea of truth itself, on which the whole of academic life depends.
Whatever else it may be, the truth is not democratic... the demand for diversity has steadily weakened the norms of objectivity and truth and substituted for them a culture of grievance and group loyalty. Rather than bringing faculty and students together on the common ground of reason, it has pushed them farther apart into separate silos of guilt and complaint.
The damage to the academy is obvious. But even greater is the damage to our democratic way of life...
Tocqueville was an enthusiastic admirer of America’s democracy. He thought it the most just system of government the world had ever known. But he was also sensitive to its pathologies. Among these he identified the instinct to believe what others do in order to avoid the labor and risk of thinking for oneself. He worried that such conformism would itself become a breeding ground for despots.
As a partial antidote, Tocqueville stressed the importance of preserving, within the larger democratic order, islands of culture devoted to the undemocratic values of excellence and truth. These could be, he thought, enclaves for protecting the independence of mind that a democracy like ours especially needs.
Today our colleges and universities are doing a poor job of meeting this need, and the idea of diversity is at least partly to blame. It has become the basis of an illiberal and antirational academic cult—one that undermines the spirit of self-reliance and the commitment to truth on which not only higher education, but the whole of our democracy, depends."
Post ID: 7503662022558303193
Links - 12th December 2019 (Labour UK)
Diane Abbott Fumes After Being Branded A Racist on TV by This Week Host Andrew Neill - "Labour leadership contender Diane Abbott was seething after being branded a ‘racist’ and an expenses cheat by political pundit Andrew Neil.Left-winger Ms Abbott was savaged by Mr Neil on his late-night BBC show This Week over her decision to send her son James to the £12,700-a-year City of London School. Ms Abbott, who earned £36,000 a year as a regular guest on the show alongside Michael Portillo until stepping down to fight for the Labour leadership, had defended her stance, saying: ‘West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.’... ‘Supposing Michael said white mums will go to the wall for their children. Why did you say that? Isn’t it a racist remark? ‘If West Indian mums are as wonderful as you say, why are there so many dysfunctional West Indian families in this country? And why do so many young West Indian men end up in a life of crime and gangs? ‘You didn’t want your son to go to a school full of kids who have been brought up by West Indian mums.’ As Ms Abbott repeatedly refused to reply, Mr Neil asked: ‘Would you like to make it clear that West Indian mums are no better than white mums or Asian mums?’ When Ms Abbott, squirming in her seat, replied, ‘I have nothing to say,’ Mr Neil taunted her: ‘You don’t want to do that–you still think West Indian mums are the best?’ The clash came after Ms Abbott said last week: ‘I knew what could happen if my son went to the wrong school and got in with the wrong crowd. They are subjected to peer pressure and when that happens it’s very hard for a mother to save her son. Once a black boy is lost to the world of gangs it’s very hard to get them back.’ Mr Neil also confronted her over the £142,000 she claimed last year in Commons expenses. He said: ‘We _discovered you claimed £1,100 on taxis, including an individual claim for £192. Is that acceptable for an inner London MP?’ Ms Abbott stumbled: ‘The £192 _figure is, I think, a dozen taxi bills.’ Mr Neil replied: ‘You put in one claim, you didn’t designate each one.’"
Diane Abbott's son charged for alleged attack on police officers - "James Abbott-Thompson, 28, was arrested on Friday afternoon last week after police were called to the Foreign Office in Westminster, where he used to work. He was later charged with two counts of assault by beating an emergency services worker and a public order offence... He was at the centre of a political row in 2003 when his left-wing mother was accused of hypocrisy for sending him to the £10,000-a-year City of London School"
Guess the private school didn't work
Trump: US doesn't want Britain's National Health Service - "President Trump on Tuesday said the US has no interest in Britain’s National Health Service — and wouldn’t want it “even if you handed it to us on a silver platter.”... Labour, led by Jeremy Corbyn, says Johnson wants to sell parts of the publicly funded system to US companies... In the past, Trump has also denied he’s interested in getting involved in the NHS"
Tim Dawson on Twitter - "Trump: We want nothing to do with the NHS.
The Left: Yes, you do - you do.
Trump: We don't, we have no interest in it.
The Left: You do.
Trump: No.
The Left: Here, take it.
Trump: Whut?
The Left: Go on, take it, here have it. Go on it, it's yours! Take our NHS, go on. PLEASE."
I saw someone quoting The Art of the Deal: "The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it". So I guess since Trump fawns over Putin, this proves he's not trying to make a deal with him
Corbyn adviser calls Dawn Butler 'homophobic' over gay giraffe row - "A “gay giraffe row” has reportedly split senior Labour figures, after Dawn Butler MP defended LGBT+ inclusive education in schools by using the example of gay giraffes.Butler, Labour’s shadow women and equalities secretary, said that people think children can be “taught to be gay” but that “giraffes are gay… you cannot teach it”.“If you can teach gayness, who speaks giraffe?” she said at the PinkNews Awards on October 16.Lachlan Stuart, a senior adviser on domestic policy to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, said that this was a “homophobic claim” and that male giraffes have sex with each other to assert dominance, which is “not gay behaviour”.A Natural History Museum researcher disputed this, telling PinkNews: “Like humans, animals use sex for multiple purposes, which can include dominance.”"
Labour for Free Movement on Twitter - "THIS IS REAL. Labour just voted to:
Defend & extend free movement
Close all detention centres
End "no recourse to public funds"
Give migrants free access to the NHS
Give migrants equal voting rights
Amazing! Now let's elect Labour government and make this reality ️"
"This effectively abolishes borders and the concept of citizenship."
Looks like there is a new longest suicide note in history
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Labour battle over Brexit stance - "[On Labour planning to destroy private schools, including those for special needs children] I'd like to hope that it was a starting position from the far left, that they're hoping there might be a negotiation later down the line because, for me, it seems quite incredulous that in 2019, I’m coming on to a radio program, to discuss whether or not my private land will be seized and then redistributed, it seems, it doesn't feel like I'm living in the UK anymore. I think you know… Let's look at this as an individual. I was a state educated young man who worked hard, saw an opportunity to get into education and business by becoming a school proprietor. So my life's work to create a family-run, loving, successful prep school, where the children, the parents and staff are particularly happy will then be seized and redistributed for what positive purpose when our motto is that we teach young children about character and kindness... [On withdrawing charitable status] over half of the Independent Schools Association schools are not charitable trusts. So actually, we’re already paying our business rates...
‘It seemed unthinkable in the 1920s, 30s and early 40s, that private hospitals would be taken into the National Health Service, almost no one would suggest reversing that now. So why isn't it perfectly possible to do it with private schools?’
‘Well, I think actually, I would flip that around and say that there's an equally viable NHS and… private health care system’"
Why are some on left and right still seduced by the ‘noble savage’ myth? - "You learn much about people by the company they keep. The regressive left justified its name last week when Jeremy Corbyn sat down with one Shraga Stern in Westminster. In that convivial moment, he showed that the insults Labour hisses at its opponents – “homophobia”, “misogyny”, “exploitation” – were as nothing when set against the opportunity for its leader to counter the testimonies of the 30 whistleblowers who have gone to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to detail Labour’s racism. What did they matter when he could pose with an actual Jew?... The Labour leadership’s embrace of reactionary elements provides cover for the racism of the white right. It ignores Jews and Muslims who want to live ordinary lives without experiencing prejudice. For what thrills do such “normies” offer? Better to latch on to the exotic “other” and treat them as modern versions of Rousseau’s noble savage. Hence Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, who will slaughter for their beliefs, are preferred to Arab liberals and socialists, the Muslim Brotherhood to tolerant British Muslims, and reactionary Jews to the mass of British Jewry whose main struggle with the post-Enlightenment world is with the racists who harry them."
How Labour party's own report lays bare its members' vile anti-Semetic slurs - "Activist Mariatu Conteh was accused of telling a councillor at a party meeting that he was 'licking the bum of Jews for money'.The nurse, from Peckham, south London, also shared a post with a fabricated quote from Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu which read: 'Our Jewish agenda is to employ the tools of chaos magic – to use deception, lies, craft and magic – to obtain the conquest of the gentile world and establish our Jewish new world order.'Labour took four months to process her case and in the end merely issued her with a formal warning – a sanction that has no ramifications... Posts which appeared to incite racial hatred – a criminal offence – were on the Facebook page of a former sea captain. David Cooper, 71, from Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, was suspended and finally expelled ten months later. Posts on his account are alleged to have read: 'I call for the complete annihilation and extermination of every Jew on the planet. The Jew is worse than Black Death, worse than ebola virus. The Jew represents pure evil. We need to eliminate this infection.' A Labour committee noted that his words 'would not be out of place in the Third Reich'. Mr Cooper told the Sunday Times he had not written the posts and blamed Israeli intelligence... A Labour member from Birmingham was subject to a complaint after posting on Facebook that the Red Sea was the 'ideal destination' to get rid of the Jews 'who are a cancer on us all' before adding, 'no need for gas chambers anyway – gas is so expensive and we need it in England'"
Nothing to see here. Just "anti-Zionism" and legitimate criticism of Israel
Seventy Labour staffers give statements to antisemitism inquiry - "The final submissions on behalf of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) to the inquiry, which were leaked to the media on Thursday, include 70 sworn testimonies from current and former staffers, and concludes that “the Labour party is no longer a safe space for Jewish people”... One respondent who listed 22 examples of antisemitic abuse at party meetings where he was called “child killer”, “Zio scum”, and “Tory Jew” as well as being told “Hitler was right” and that he was “good with money”.
Another who witnessed a comment at a ward meeting that “the only reason we have prostitutes in Seven Sisters is because of the Jews”...
The submission also alleges political interference in the disciplinary process by Jeremy Corbyn’s office, despite Labour’s insistence that the leadership has not got involved... a narrative had taken hold among staffers that complaints about antisemitism were part of a “Jewish conspiracy” against the leadership... James Libson, a lawyer representing the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) and a partner at the law firm Mishcon de Reya, said interference in cases had become institutional."
Jeremy Corbyn's Labour would crush civil society - "The war on civil society is the essence of the communist project. Appointed as home minister after the communist takeover of Hungary in 1948, Janos Kádar abolished 5,000 associations in the space of a year, from brass bands to knitting clubs, from scout troupes to shooting parties, from church charities to private schools. He made it a criminal offence to gather money for charitable purposes, and made all schools and youth organisations into the property of the state. Similar policies were undertaken in Czechoslovakia. All free associations were seen by the communists as places of danger, where hierarchies, distinctions, privileges and deals could challenge the role of the Vanguard Party in its fight for equality and “social justice”. Reflecting on this, I came to see why freedom of association belongs with freedom of speech in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Those two freedoms are the foundation of civil society, and the necessary shield against the abuse of political power.Take them away and all power ends up in the hands of the state. The result is what we know as “totalitarianism”. Communism vanished from Europe 30 years ago — but the totalitarian impulse remains. Freedom of association has no sacrosanct status on the Left; in our country we see this in the matter of country sports which are, and will always be, the targets of leftist disapproval.The Labour Party does not see certain laws forbidding free association as an assault on legitimate freedoms but as a moral duty of the state. After the ban on fox hunting, the Party has likewise set its sights on grouse shooting, not from any concern for the grouse, which are well cared for only because we shoot them, but out of hostility to the kind of people who congregate with guns on grouse moors. But the associations that most need protecting, now in Britain as then in Central Europe, are not those devoted to the leisure of country people but those in which people associate for the sake of knowledge.At the recent Labour Party conference Left-wing activists called for private education to be criminalised, as it was by the communists, and the funds of private schools to be confiscated and used for the “common good”. Meanwhile leftists in universities are mounting effective campaigns to prevent free discussion and to expel those professors whose views they dislike. Politicised subjects like Gender Studies, which forbid ideological disagreement and have doctrine and dogma as their goal, are driving free discussion from the curriculum. It is not clear, yet, how far this will go. But the arguments given and the tactics adopted are exactly those of the communists in 1948. The state is seen as the guardian of public morality; it must therefore forbid the misuse of our freedoms."
John McDonnell apologises for Labour anti-semitism | News | The Sunday Times - "John McDonnell has apologised to the Jewish community “for the suffering we have inflicted on them” after Labour’s failure to stamp out rampant anti-semitism in the party was exposed in a massive leak of documents from its own disciplinary department.The secret files, seen by The Sunday Times, reveal the party is still overwhelmed with complaints about anti-Jewish racism that have been left unresolved for months or years. Most have resulted in lenient punishments or no sanctions, according to the documents, despite Jeremy Corbyn’s election campaign claims of zero tolerance.McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, also admitted for the first time that the party’s handling of the issue has damaged its prospects in Thursday’s general election... a Labour official complains that more than 130 cases remain outstanding even though the “vast majority” were reported to the party 18 months ago. One unresolved case had been on Labour’s books for more than three years... Some of the cases in the files are disturbing, with Labour members likening Jewish people to killer viruses, labelling them “bent nose manipulative liars” and calling for the “extermination of every Jew on the planet”.One Labour member from Nottingham wrote that “Jews represent a viral infection that need to be completely eliminated” and said he wanted the “complete extinction of all Jews”. It took more than 10 months for the party to expel him after his case was first reported in 2018. Lord Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, said the member in question had clearly committed a racial hate crime. Labour refused to say whether it had referred him to police... McDonnell said there were only “a small number” of anti-semites in Labour. “It wasn’t so many people, it was a small number, but I don’t care how many people, one anti-semite in our party is too many, and what we’re doing is we’ve started kicking them out in numbers.” The secret files show half of 100 anti-semitism cases between last summer and this May involved a warning or no action at all. Some members were told to attend “diversity training” although Labour has not set up such a scheme despite promising to do so. Other members were let off without punishment this year despite posting comments about Holocaust denial and distortion, sharing articles about “a Jewish agenda to obtain the conquest of the gentile world” and saying it was justified to “have a dim view of the Jews”. The disclosures blow apart claims made during the election campaign by Corbyn that anyone responsible for anti-semitism was “suspended or expelled” from the party. The leaks paint a picture of the party’s disciplinary process in disarray... Dyer said the lack of communication from the party leadership about the changes was “surreal”.The evidence in the files shows the severity of some of the anti-semitism in the party.A Labour member from Birmingham was subject to a complaint after posting on Facebook that the Red Sea was the “ideal destination” to get rid of the Jews “who are a cancer on us all” before adding, “no need for gas chambers anyway gas is so expensive and we need it in England”. It took eight months for him to be expelled from the party after he was suspended by Labour last year... Dame Louise Ellman, the former Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, described the evidence as “disturbing” and said: “This reduces to rubble my party’s claim that anti-semitism in the party is being dealt with."
If even the Shadow Chancellor admits it, can Corbynistas still pretend this is not an issue?
So much for "a decent, honest man"
Jeremy Corbyn is the most smeared politician in history - "Corbyn hasn’t even been safe from the ‘bastion of independent journalism’ the BBC. The London Economic reported news that one of Britain’s leading barristers has evidence of BBC bias against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Jolyon Maugham QC, director of the Good Law Project alleged that the BBC has indulged in showing “coded negative imagery” of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn since his election in 2015. Even this week, BBC Panorama produced what is widely regarded as a hatchet job on Jeremy Corbyn and anti-Semitism within the Labour party... The problem for the newspapers is that Corbyn is actually pretty boring (in news terms). There really isn’t much dirt to dig up... Most people, even those who don’t like Corbyn are baffled, if not bored by the continual headlines."
Hahahaha
I guess impugning the media, even the BBC, is only wrong when it hurts leftists
Maybe Corbyn is the worst polling ever opposition leader because people are "bored" about the "smears"
The question for Labour: why are you sticking with Jeremy Corbyn? - "The Labour leader has the lowest poll numbers of any leader of the opposition since records began. His net satisfaction rating is minus 60, outstripping the previous negative record held since 1982 by Michael Foot. He is less popular than Boris Johnson among both men and women, in every socioeconomic category, whether richer or poorer, in London and Scotland as well as the Midlands and Wales and, remarkably, in every age group. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the over-65s prefer Johnson to Corbyn by 62% to 8%, but it’s arresting that even among the youngest voters, aged 18 to 24, those once seen as the Labour leader’s base, Corbyn is less popular than the prime minister, albeit by three points... They believe that the lightning of 2017 will strike twice, that once “Jeremy” has equal time on TV and is back on the campaign trail, the magic will happen all over again. Never mind that Theresa May was a truly awful candidate tied to a voter-repellent manifesto, and that Johnson will be a much wilier opponent. Or that whatever novelty and freshness Corbyn represented in 2017 will have faded this time round. Or that Corbyn is far more unpopular now than he was back then, when even at his lowest ebb his net satisfaction rating was a mere minus 41. Or that Labour benefited in 2017 from remainers lending their votes to the party to stop Brexit, a move not all of them will be willing to repeat. Never mind all that, the faith of the true believers is intact"
Jeremy Corbyn is neither nice nor decent – he is a nasty bully and an embarrassment to the country - "Enter Comrade Corbyn who, as leader, couldn’t even bring himself to mention the word “Israel” when he attended the [Labour for Israel] reception at annual conference... an event intended to draw a line under Labour’s “Jewish problem”, ends up allowing a bully to publicly smear a Jewish MP for some sort of media conspiracy (mercifully, he didn’t mention “Rothschilds” but it was hanging in the air) and has the Labour leader suggesting that Israel’s actions to defend itself and Isil’s mass torture, rape and murder can be compared."
Jeremy Corbyn Is Like Donald Trump, Not Boris Johnson - The Atlantic - "Take away Brexit, and Johnson is a run-of-the-mill conservative whose policy agenda, instincts, and world view, as opposed to his personality, verge on the dull; a member and defender of the establishment whose wish is to climb atop it, not rip it down. Corbyn is the opposite: a populist who believes in the inherent corruption of the established order, at home and abroad; a man who sees conspiracy and injustice everywhere. Only one of these descriptions comes close to the U.S. president... One incident stands out as the clearest example of Corbyn’s instinctive Trumpism. When The New York Times published an anonymous op-ed from a White House official who revealed how “the resistance” inside was working to keep Trump from making decisions that members felt were dangerous or against the national interest, the reaction among those close to Corbyn was horror—not at the decisions Trump wanted to make, but at the system that was trying to stop him. To Corbyn’s people the report only confirmed the inherently conservative power of the state and the challenges they too would face should they win power... Corbyn’s open sympathies with Hamas, Hezbollah, the IRA, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, and with Russia’s hostility toward NATO, are already proving concerning for Britain’s Five Eyes security partners, just as some have claimed that Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin has concerned Western intelligence agencies... Corbyn would, by a distance, be the most anti-American prime minister since World War II... Like Trump, Corbyn has also cast doubt or sought to shift the blame for Russian acts of aggression, whether the attempted assassination of the former double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury last year or the invasion of east Ukraine, which the Labour leader said was “not unprovoked.” In the same article, for the Communist daily newspaper The Morning Star, he described the EU and NATO as “tools of US policy in Europe.” Corbyn, like Trump, is also partial to a conspiracy theory. In 2004, he signed a parliamentary motion claiming NATO 1999 intervention in Kosovo to stop the Serbian slaughter of ethnic Albanians was based on “fraudulent justifications for intervening in a ‘genocide’ that never really existed in Kosovo.”... Corbyn is prickly and reacts badly to criticism, utterly convinced of his own righteousness—unwilling to bend or bow (a trait that earns him the admiration of his supporters who have grown to loathe “weather vane” politicians). Johnson in contrast, according to those who know him and whom I’ve spoken with, is much more affected by criticism, unsure of his own convictions, even aware that he might not really have many."
Jeremy Corbyn Reminds Us Why Israel Exists - "This insinuation — that Corbynite animosity towards British Jewry is predicated on the existence of a “right-wing Israeli government” — is a myth.For one thing, despite public perception, the right-center coalition run by Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t altered Israeli policy governing the West Bank and Gaza in any significant way from its predecessors (other than, perhaps, by offering Palestinians more autonomy)... The link the Post draws is nonsensical. Are we to believe that the Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition referred to anti-Semitic terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah as his “friends” in a speech in front of Parliament because he was worried about final status negotiations? Did Corbyn appear multiple times on the Holocaust-denying Hamas-backing Iranian regime’s propaganda channel because he misses Yitzhak Rabin? The man who participates in a 2014 wreath-laying ceremony for the terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics and prevaricates when asked whether it is “anti-Semitic to say that Rothschild Zionists run world governments” is no friend of the Jews... Muslims in Western Europe are anti-Semitic at almost three times the rate of the general population. Thus far, Corbyn has appeased, rather than tried to extinguish, this hatred."
Labour candidate called Prince William a ‘horse-faced t**t’ in yet another blow for Jeremy Corbyn - "Ian Byrne called the Prince a “horse faced t***" and sent misogynistic messages about Baroness Michelle Mone calling to “hit the c*** where it hurts”... In another vile attack the candidate for Liverpool West Derby, a Labour safe seat, slammed Tory housing minister Esther McVey calling her a “b******”.Mr Byrne, a Liverpool Councillor, was forced to apologise for making sick comments about Boris Johnson's mum being "raped" in 2012... His abusive Prince William post is also not the first time a Corbynite has taken aim at the Royal family.In 2017 Labour MP Emma Dent Coad wrongly told an anti-monarchy event at the party’s conference that Prince Harry could not fly an Apache helicopter, adding: “He just sits there going, ‘Vroom vroom’.”The leftie politician, who has previously compared Wills and Kate to the Kardashians, was MP for Kensington at the time. Mr Byrne is now clinging onto his chances of running in the December 12 election - while three other Labour candidates were exposed for spouting slurs.Gideon Bull in Clapton and Kate Ramsden in Edinburgh have both dropped out of the race – a day after two other Labour MP hopefuls were facing calls to pull out over anti-Semitic comments. While just the day before, Jane Aitcheson was blasted after she defended fellow candidate Zarah Sultana who said she would celebrate the death of Tony Blair... Mr Bull has stepped aside after he was accused of using the term “shylock” when speaking to a Jewish colleague on Hackney Council."... Mr Bull claimed he did not know it was an anti-Semitic slur and denied abusing Zena Brabazon, the deputy leader of the council.He told the Braintree and Witham Times: “I used an analogy when referring to a housing decision being called in by backbenchers.“I was not referring to the councillor, who was not part of the call in.“When she politely informed me that this saying was offensive, I immediately apologised and explained that I did not know that Shylock was Jewish and I would never have mentioned Shylock if I had known this.“I grew up in a working class area in Ilford where this was a common saying, but I didn't know it was offensive.”... former Labour MPs John Woodcock and Ian Austin on Thursday urged the public not to vote for the party. Mr Austin, who quit the party over its anti-semitism scandal, branded Mr Corbyn “unfit” to be PM and backed Boris Johnson to win the election.He told The Times: “Jeremy Corbyn is an extremist. He’s allowed the Labour Party to be poisoned by extremism and racism, he supported terrorism, he can’t be trusted with our defence and he always picks the wrong side.” Mr Austin's comments came hours after deputy leader Tom Watson resigned from Labour... He made the shock move after finding himself in a vulnerable position after repeated clashes with hard-left supporters of Mr Corbyn.It culminated with the cabal trying to remove him in an attempted coup - which he described as a "drive-by shooting"."
Alexander Kruel - "Who is Jeremy Corbyn?
1. A person who has been present at a wreath-laying ceremony honoring the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympics terror attack.[1] Someone who shared a platform with a senior official from a terrorist group that murdered a British rabbi in a Synagogue attack.[2] Someone who stood in honor of dead IRA terrorists.[3][4] Someone who spent more than a decade campaigning for two convicted terrorists who were jailed for their part in the car bombing of the Israeli embassy in London and a Jewish charity building.[5] Someone who called Hamas and Hezbollah his friends.[6] Someone who is making the Muslim Brotherhood salute.[7] Someone who gave a speech at the wedding of a Holocaust 'denying' PLO man.[8] Someone enjoying pizza with a controversial pro-Assad campaigner who denied the genocide in Srebrenica.[9] Someone who attends terror conferences.[10][11]
2. A person who literally took money from and worked for an enemy propaganda channel.[12] Someone who advertises the Russian propaganda channel RT.[13] Someone who went on Iran's Press TV when jihadi terrorists murdered 16 Egyptian policemen in 2012 and without any evidence whatsoever suggested the attack was actually carried out by Israel.[14]
3. A person who praised communist China for "collectivising its economy, its efforts and its energy" which led to "immeasurably better" conditions under communist control and attacks "the appalling social conditions in Hong Kong" which he blamed on "capitalism".[15] Someone who claimed that NATO was founded in order to promote a Cold War with the Soviet Union.[16] Someone who called for European Union to be 'defeated' in explosive rally speech.[17] Someone who praised Hugo Chavez.[18] Someone who wrote a foreword to John Atkinson Hobson's 'Imperialism', a book which blamed imperialism on financial houses controlled by a "single and peculiar race." In this foreword, Corbyn also claims that NATO represents a US military occupation of Europe.[19]
4. A person who has been deeply involved in antisemitism scandals.[20] [21][22] Someone who called for Holocaust Memorial Day to be renamed to remove the word 'holocaust'.[23] Someone who is saying that it's biased to say "Israel has a right to exist".[24] Someone who has been part of at least 3 antisemitic Facebook groups.[25][26][27][28] Someone who signed a document accusing Israel of genocide.[29]
Note: The above is a small selection of what Corbyn stands for. For example, he also believes in homeopathy.[30] But given the above, that doesn't make much of a difference, does it?"
Corbyn in The Times on Twitter - "Can we trust Corbyn to keep us safe when he has a voting record on terrorism like this (2005-09)?Corbyn (& Abbott & McDonnell) was one of 16 Labour MP's which voted against Labour's Terrorism Bill (2nd Reading). 1/17"
Corbyn in The Times on Twitter - ""We have got to be realistic that NATO is a major problem, and a major difficulty and we have to campaign against NATO's power and influence and its global reach because it is a a danger to world peace and a danger to world security"We are not safe under Labour."
Labour’s ‘chilling’ video about supporting minority groups leaves out Jewish community - "The Labour Party has been criticised for producing a video about minority groups being valued by the party that leaves out any mention of the Jewish community.The promotional video which claims “diversity is our greatest strength” is over a minute long and features a speech made by Dawn Butler, the shadow equalities secretary, in which she says Labour will support people who wear “a hijab, turban,” or a “cross.”Jonathan Goldstein, who is chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council, described the notable lack of mention of the Jewish community as “extraordinary and chilling.”... "If this is what they are like in opposition imagine what they would be like in government.""
BBC World Service - The World This Week, The rich countries where people are dying younger - "[On accusations of Labour’s anti-Semtism] For a man suffering the worst ratings for any opposition leader since this kind of polling began in the 1970s, this was hardly going to help. And neither were Mr. Corbyn’s struggles to explain how Labour would fund the vast increase in the size of the state it's promising in the face of hostile questioning from the BBC’s toughest Inquisitor Andrew Neil. An ordeal, by the way, Mr. Johnson has so far avoided. So if, as the polls are suggesting, Mr. Johnson is on his way to victory, it'll be thanks to a sometimes overlapping coalition of Leave voters and those who simply think Mr. Corbin is too dangerously left wing to be let anywhere near power. Just how fragile however that coalition might prove if Boris Johnson does win, and Brexit has to become more than a slogan, is another question."
BBC World Service - The World This Week, Why the prince left public life - "There’s no doubting the most telling moment or should I say moments of the campaign this last week. It was when a studio audience repeatedly laughed at both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn during the first TV debate of the election. Not, you should understand, the laughter of amusement but of derision and disbelief. If you want to know what provoked such hilarity, it was the moment Mr. Johnson answered, yes, when asked whether he thought the truth was important, and when Mr Corbyn insisted Labour's policy on Brexit was clear. The studio audience’s reaction was a reminder of a grim underlying truth about this election, born out repeatedly in national opinion polls, namely that this is a contest not to select the most popular person and party as prime minister and governments, but rather the least unpopular... the main opposition Labour Party led by the avowedly and proudly socialist Jeremy Corbyn, also, not surprisingly, promised the most radical left wing agenda since 1945, of greater state involvement in every aspect of British life"
Tories more popular among working class than rich, new general election poll shows - "The Conservative Party now has more support among working-class voters than the upper classes, according to a new poll which predicts that Boris Johnson will win a 110-seat majority at the general election... The findings come after research by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) last week found that support for Jeremy Corbyn had plummeted by 10 per cent since April among those with a household income of below £17,000... only a third of voters (34 per cent) understand Labour’s Brexit policy compared to 53 per cent who know where the Conservatives stand on the EU and 49 per cent who know what the Liberal Democrats are proposing. Asked if Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to tackle anti-Semitism within his own party shows he is unfit to be Prime Minister, 55 per cent agreed and 21 per cent disagreed."
It is interesting that no matter how much elites hate Boris Johnson, Conservative support has surged since he was elected
UK’s Labour would seize £300bn of company shares | Financial Times - "A Labour government would confiscate about £300bn of shares in 7,000 large companies and hand them to workers in one of the biggest state raids on the private sector to take place in a western democracy, according to analysis by the Financial Times and Clifford Chance.The UK’s 2.6m landlords would also face a moment of reckoning if Labour won the next general election after shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he wanted a “right to buy” scheme for private tenants as well as higher taxes on landlords... [it] would be the most leftwing in modern history... The £300bn share seizure would be the consequence of Mr McDonnell’s plans for “inclusive ownership funds”, where every company with more than 250 staff would have to gradually transfer 10 per cent of their shares to workers... Shares would be held and managed by workers, who would receive dividends up to £500 each per year. Any income beyond that level would be redistributed to the Exchequer, representing a stealth tax by the state... “There is no historic precedent for this,” said Dan Neidle, a partner at Clifford Chance. “We are in completely uncharted territory.” Mr Neidle predicted litigation from aggrieved companies and shareholders, challenges from other countries, including the US and China, potential WTO complaints and perhaps “retaliation in kind”. Matt Kilcoyne, of the Adam Smith Institute, called the share move “expropriation”. He added: “Our largest investors are pension funds and they’ll see billions of pounds wiped off their books. So we’ll all see the value of our pensions fall. It’s the biggest raid of all our nest eggs in living memory.”"
Jeremy Corbyn refuses to apologise to Jews over racism …but praises anti-Semitic poet - "Jeremy Corbyn was condemned last night after he used his conference speech to praise an anti-Semitic poet and an activist who compared a top Israeli politician to Hitler.After a week dominated by rows over anti-Semitism in the party, the Labour leader declined to use the opportunity to apologise for the hurt it had caused the Jewish community.Instead he hit out at ‘Tory hypocrisy’ and spoke about his plans to recognise unilaterally a Palestinian state if he enters No 10. He also quoted the 19th century poet and Chartist protest leader Ernest Jones, whose biographer describes him as anti-Semitic... The row came a day after Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said a failure to tackle the anti-Semitism crisis risks ‘eternal shame’ for the party... The Labour leader mentioned the anti-Semitism crisis in his speech but declined to apologise. He told supporters: ‘Being anti-racist means we must listen to those communities suffering discrimination and abuse. I believe we are all stronger from listening and learning from each other... Euan Philipps, of Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said: ‘This year the anti-Semitism is no longer on the fringes but at the core of the conference itself.’"
Jeremy Corbyn refuses to apologise four times for anti-Semitism allegations - "Jeremy Corbyn declined to apologise four times to the Jewish community under questioning from veteran journalist Andrew Neil... The Labour leader was grilled in a BBC interview about allegations of anti-Semitism within his party following concerns raised by the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis... Mr Corbyn also denied that the blight increased after he took over the party... Rabbi Mirvis wrote in The Times that Labour’s handling of the issue that has dogged the party under Mr Corbyn’s leadership was “incompatible” with British values. He said the overwhelming majority of Britain’s Jews were “gripped with anxiety” ahead of the General Election on December 12, warning “the very soul of our nation is at stake”... He also refused to say if he would take out the leader of ISIS, just days after he argued Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi should have been arrested."
So much for listening to those communities suffering discrimination and abuse
Jeremy Corbyn refuses to apologise over Labour anti-Semitism - "Mr Corbyn was also pressed over his plan to broker a ‘credible’ Leave deal with the EU and then be neutral in a referendum between it and remaining in the EU within six months of taking power.He explained: ‘I will be the honest broker that will make sure the referendum is fair and make sure that the Leave deal is a credible one.‘That seems to me actually an adult and sensible way to go forward.’But Mr Corbyn was again unable to say who would campaign for his Brexit deal, with much of his shadow cabinet eager to campaign for Remain."
The lesser racism - "Mirvis said Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was ‘unfit for high office’ due to his past associations with anti-Semites and his party’s inability to get a handle on cases of Jew-hatred among its membership. The piece offers a grim reminder of the growing charge sheet against Corbyn’s Labour. Mirvis references the reported 130 outstanding cases cases of anti-Semitism being investigated by the party, as well as the Jewish MPs who have effectively been driven out by vile racist abuse... The Equality and Human Rights Commission is currently investigating Labour over anti-Semitism. (The only other party to be investigated by the EHRC was the fascist BNP.)... As Mirvis reminds us in his piece, this isn’t just a case of poor party processes: Corbyn himself is a big part of the problem. He has associated with groups, like Hamas and Hezbollah, who have ‘endorse[d] the murder of Jews’. ‘How complicit in prejudice would a leader of Her Majesty’s opposition have to be to be considered unfit for office?’, he asks. The piece is damning, but also full of regret. Rarely does a faith leader enter the political fray so explicitly. Worse still, Mirvis seems to know full well that his concerns, shared widely across Britain’s Jewish community, will fall on deaf ears among those who need to hear them most. ‘We have learned the hard way that speaking out means that we will be demonised by faceless social-media trolls and accused of being partisan or acting in bad faith by those who still think of this as an orchestrated political smear’, he writes. As it turns out, he was only half-right: Corbynistas have dismissed him, but many haven’t bothered hiding behind an avatar. In a since-deleted tweet, Labour activist Holly Rigby dismissed Mirvis as a ‘Boris Johnson supporter’ and ‘uncritical supporter of Netanyahu’. ‘His comments must be taken in this context’... The proof for this seems to be that Mirvis congratulated Johnson when he became PM in July, and that he has met Netanyahu, as you’d imagine he would have. (Incidentally, in 2015, the Israeli PM rebuffed Mirvis’s concerns about settlements.)... Johnson once wrote a column mocking misogynistic religious dress while defending women’s right to wear it. Corbyn once invited Raed Salah – a man convicted in Israel for repeating the blood libel – to tea in the House of Commons. Spot the difference... Countdown star Rachel Riley caught flak from Corbynistas for putting out a photoshopped image of Corbyn, replacing the words on an anti-Apartheid placard with the words ‘Jeremy Corbyn is a racist endeavour’. For this, she was accused of being a racist, because she was ‘erasing’ the anti-Apartheid struggle. Whatever you think about Riley’s tactics, she was clearly making a point about what she sees as the hypocrisy of Corbyn: that this ‘lifelong anti-racist’ has a seemingly different attitude when it comes to Jews. It should be obvious to anyone. But in response to the photo, Corbynistas demanded she be sacked. A few days ago, actress Maureen Lipman was hit with a similar backlash, when she made a video attacking Labour over anti-Semitism. The mere fact that she decided to talk about the video with the Sun was used to tar her as a bigot... Then there’s Ian Austin. He is the adopted son of Holocaust survivors and he left Labour over anti-Semitism in February. Earlier this month, he urged voters to back Boris Johnson rather than risk putting Corbyn in No10. In response, shadow chancellor John McDonnell (wrongly) accused him of being employed by the Tories, and Owen Jones accused him of being a xenophobe. It’s disgusting. Imagine Labourites acting like this towards any other minority group. They are PC to a fault in almost every other respect. This is a party whose equalities spokesperson denounced Jamie Oliver’s ‘jerk rice’ as cultural appropriation. And yet so many Labourites are completely dismissive of – almost irritated by – British Jews’ completely legitimate fears."
It's amazing to see all the Corbyn supporters online trying to deny and deflect
The chief rabbi’s Labour warning reveals major shifts in UK politics - "“During the past few years, on my travels through the UK and further afield, one concern has been expressed to me more than any other,” Mirvis wrote. “Of course the threats of the far right and violent jihadism never go away, but the question I am now most frequently asked is: What will become of Jews and Judaism in Britain if the Labour Party forms the next government?”... The word “unprecedented” was used to describe the intervention itself, but it is also an apt descriptor of this political moment in the history of Britain’s Jewish community. In the past, chief rabbis have called on people to serve their country, in the First and Second World Wars for instance, and even in the politically controversial Boer war, says Professor David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism. What seems unprecedented, however, is such overt criticism of a particular party, and indeed a particular party leader. Mirvis, who took office in 2013 as spiritual leader of the UK’s orthodox Jews, does not tend to political intervention. He is not a very well-known figure outside the Jewish community. The fact that he took this step at such a fraught time, during a particularly tense election, points to major shifts in the UK’s political landscape.The first is the fact that Jews are now so often in the headlines. It is hard to remember what it was like before the words “Labour” and “anti-Semitism” appeared so regularly on our front pages, but this state of affairs has only been normal since the crisis started nearly four years ago. The Jewish community “has always had a reputation...of keeping its head down and not wanting to make a fuss, and certainly not wanting to rock the boat politically,” says Dave Rich, author of The Left’s Jewish Problem... 87 per cent of Jews believe Corbyn is anti-Semitic... The broader response to Mirvis’ intervention has also been telling. In some quarters it has been seen as a move to sabotage Labour’s chances at winning the election, with Mirvis painted as right wing. The understanding that Mirvis leans to the right seems based on rather tenuous premises, including the fact that, as chief rabbi, he congratulated Boris Johnson on becoming prime minister. This was very much a formality, and something that Jewish leaders on the left did, too. But this assumption has also been based on his being an Orthodox rabbi, and therefore not liberal. Keith Kahn-Harris, author of Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Limits of Diversity, notes that Mirvis has done some relatively liberal things for a chief rabbi. He also points out that this does not tend to happen when other minority leaders of strict religious backgrounds draw attention to racism against them."
An open letter to Sir Richard Evans: Labour’s anti-Semitism cannot be disregarded - "on the subject of the Jews, the party has become cruel, malicious, stupid and dishonest. The cruelty has been persistent and extreme – death threats, shouted abuse at branch meetings, online trolling. The malice has been patent, incontinent and pervasive. As with Trump, we are inured to party (and Corbyn) outrages, because they are so frequent. But recall Corbyn\u0027s disparagement of “Zionists who, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony”. My friend David Hirsh got it right: Corbyn was enjoying the old, sneery English view of Jews, and he was doing it to humiliate the Jews he was talking about. They live among us but they’re not really one of us. This wasn’t Corbyn’s usual political anti-Semitism, it was a spillover into ordinary old-fashioned English anti-Semitism... This, from the “lifelong campaigner against anti-Semitism”, as a Labour spokesperson described him... Anti-Semitism is stupid. It makes people stupid. It is not a coincidence that the least accomplished leader of the Labour Party is also its only anti-Semitic one. If you live in a world of conspiracies, if you think the world is divided into the blamelessly good, the victims, and the unqualifiedly evil, the oppressors, then anti-Semitism is for you... As for the dishonesty, look at party equivocations on the number of disciplinary cases against members. The unapologetic Corbyn says that there are none left to resolve (“we’ve investigated every single case”); by contrast, a spokesperson is only able to quibble over the precise number outstanding. Corbyn\u0027s ignominious career in relation to Jews has been recast by a party spokesperson as the career of a “lifelong campaign against anti-Semitism”. Is anybody really fooled by this? Is there anything more threadbare – indeed, Trumpian – in the insouciance of the party\u0027s response to its own anti-Semitism? This is not a party that cares about the concerns of the Jewish community, save insofar as those concerns might have a damaging impact on its electoral fortunes. In response to your second tweet, about individual candidates: Anti-Semitism, long a fugitive, has acquired institutional authority in today\u0027s Labour Party. Within the party itself, compelling evidence exists of extensive spoken and online abuse of Jewish party members; exclusion of Jewish members from participating in party activity; signalling by the party leader that anti-Semitic views are acceptable; the failure to implement processes to protect Jewish members from anti-Semitism; hostile responses to those calling out anti-Semitism; and appointment of anti-Semites to positions of power (indeed, as the Panorama investigation exposed, interfering in disciplinary processes “to let off their mates”, reported a whistle-blower). This anti-Semitism taints the passive enablers in the party – to start with, the whole front bench. This is how the Corbyn period will be remembered. This is his legacy to the party. This anti-Semitism concerns us all, Jews and non-Jews. A party that cannot be trusted in relation to Jews cannot be trusted at all. No party of reform and justice can be trusted if it makes exceptions of a minority community... There is even an implication that it is a little parochial – perhaps even, selfish – of Jews to insist on their own special suffering, their own local fears, in these times of national crisis. So what if the party is contaminated by Jew hatred if it is also the party that will save the country? Of course, formulating the question in this way does more than justice to the capabilities of the Labour Party... injustices towards Jews are precedent-establishing – people who start with the Jews, do not end with the Jews... The driving out of leading Jewish (and non-Jewish) politicians from the party, who cited its anti-Semitism, did not have a substantial impact on party morale, still less commit its officials and elected members to decisive action. We cannot leave the work to the party itself. Supporters have to lend a hand. Depriving the party of a vote is a start."
Addendum:
Toby Young on Twitter - "Labour has held Wrexham since 1935. Our poll now finds the Tories 15 points ahead"
"If Boris wins, this will be the story — areas that have been Labour for 75+ years turning blue. Happening across the Anglosphere, not just the UK. For working class voters, faith, flag and family trumps gender neutral toilets and decolonising the curriculum. Go woke, go broke."
Diane Abbott's son charged for alleged attack on police officers - "James Abbott-Thompson, 28, was arrested on Friday afternoon last week after police were called to the Foreign Office in Westminster, where he used to work. He was later charged with two counts of assault by beating an emergency services worker and a public order offence... He was at the centre of a political row in 2003 when his left-wing mother was accused of hypocrisy for sending him to the £10,000-a-year City of London School"
Guess the private school didn't work
Trump: US doesn't want Britain's National Health Service - "President Trump on Tuesday said the US has no interest in Britain’s National Health Service — and wouldn’t want it “even if you handed it to us on a silver platter.”... Labour, led by Jeremy Corbyn, says Johnson wants to sell parts of the publicly funded system to US companies... In the past, Trump has also denied he’s interested in getting involved in the NHS"
Tim Dawson on Twitter - "Trump: We want nothing to do with the NHS.
The Left: Yes, you do - you do.
Trump: We don't, we have no interest in it.
The Left: You do.
Trump: No.
The Left: Here, take it.
Trump: Whut?
The Left: Go on, take it, here have it. Go on it, it's yours! Take our NHS, go on. PLEASE."
I saw someone quoting The Art of the Deal: "The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it". So I guess since Trump fawns over Putin, this proves he's not trying to make a deal with him
Corbyn adviser calls Dawn Butler 'homophobic' over gay giraffe row - "A “gay giraffe row” has reportedly split senior Labour figures, after Dawn Butler MP defended LGBT+ inclusive education in schools by using the example of gay giraffes.Butler, Labour’s shadow women and equalities secretary, said that people think children can be “taught to be gay” but that “giraffes are gay… you cannot teach it”.“If you can teach gayness, who speaks giraffe?” she said at the PinkNews Awards on October 16.Lachlan Stuart, a senior adviser on domestic policy to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, said that this was a “homophobic claim” and that male giraffes have sex with each other to assert dominance, which is “not gay behaviour”.A Natural History Museum researcher disputed this, telling PinkNews: “Like humans, animals use sex for multiple purposes, which can include dominance.”"
Labour for Free Movement on Twitter - "THIS IS REAL. Labour just voted to:
Defend & extend free movement
Close all detention centres
End "no recourse to public funds"
Give migrants free access to the NHS
Give migrants equal voting rights
Amazing! Now let's elect Labour government and make this reality ️"
"This effectively abolishes borders and the concept of citizenship."
Looks like there is a new longest suicide note in history
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Labour battle over Brexit stance - "[On Labour planning to destroy private schools, including those for special needs children] I'd like to hope that it was a starting position from the far left, that they're hoping there might be a negotiation later down the line because, for me, it seems quite incredulous that in 2019, I’m coming on to a radio program, to discuss whether or not my private land will be seized and then redistributed, it seems, it doesn't feel like I'm living in the UK anymore. I think you know… Let's look at this as an individual. I was a state educated young man who worked hard, saw an opportunity to get into education and business by becoming a school proprietor. So my life's work to create a family-run, loving, successful prep school, where the children, the parents and staff are particularly happy will then be seized and redistributed for what positive purpose when our motto is that we teach young children about character and kindness... [On withdrawing charitable status] over half of the Independent Schools Association schools are not charitable trusts. So actually, we’re already paying our business rates...
‘It seemed unthinkable in the 1920s, 30s and early 40s, that private hospitals would be taken into the National Health Service, almost no one would suggest reversing that now. So why isn't it perfectly possible to do it with private schools?’
‘Well, I think actually, I would flip that around and say that there's an equally viable NHS and… private health care system’"
Why are some on left and right still seduced by the ‘noble savage’ myth? - "You learn much about people by the company they keep. The regressive left justified its name last week when Jeremy Corbyn sat down with one Shraga Stern in Westminster. In that convivial moment, he showed that the insults Labour hisses at its opponents – “homophobia”, “misogyny”, “exploitation” – were as nothing when set against the opportunity for its leader to counter the testimonies of the 30 whistleblowers who have gone to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to detail Labour’s racism. What did they matter when he could pose with an actual Jew?... The Labour leadership’s embrace of reactionary elements provides cover for the racism of the white right. It ignores Jews and Muslims who want to live ordinary lives without experiencing prejudice. For what thrills do such “normies” offer? Better to latch on to the exotic “other” and treat them as modern versions of Rousseau’s noble savage. Hence Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, who will slaughter for their beliefs, are preferred to Arab liberals and socialists, the Muslim Brotherhood to tolerant British Muslims, and reactionary Jews to the mass of British Jewry whose main struggle with the post-Enlightenment world is with the racists who harry them."
How Labour party's own report lays bare its members' vile anti-Semetic slurs - "Activist Mariatu Conteh was accused of telling a councillor at a party meeting that he was 'licking the bum of Jews for money'.The nurse, from Peckham, south London, also shared a post with a fabricated quote from Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu which read: 'Our Jewish agenda is to employ the tools of chaos magic – to use deception, lies, craft and magic – to obtain the conquest of the gentile world and establish our Jewish new world order.'Labour took four months to process her case and in the end merely issued her with a formal warning – a sanction that has no ramifications... Posts which appeared to incite racial hatred – a criminal offence – were on the Facebook page of a former sea captain. David Cooper, 71, from Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, was suspended and finally expelled ten months later. Posts on his account are alleged to have read: 'I call for the complete annihilation and extermination of every Jew on the planet. The Jew is worse than Black Death, worse than ebola virus. The Jew represents pure evil. We need to eliminate this infection.' A Labour committee noted that his words 'would not be out of place in the Third Reich'. Mr Cooper told the Sunday Times he had not written the posts and blamed Israeli intelligence... A Labour member from Birmingham was subject to a complaint after posting on Facebook that the Red Sea was the 'ideal destination' to get rid of the Jews 'who are a cancer on us all' before adding, 'no need for gas chambers anyway – gas is so expensive and we need it in England'"
Nothing to see here. Just "anti-Zionism" and legitimate criticism of Israel
Seventy Labour staffers give statements to antisemitism inquiry - "The final submissions on behalf of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) to the inquiry, which were leaked to the media on Thursday, include 70 sworn testimonies from current and former staffers, and concludes that “the Labour party is no longer a safe space for Jewish people”... One respondent who listed 22 examples of antisemitic abuse at party meetings where he was called “child killer”, “Zio scum”, and “Tory Jew” as well as being told “Hitler was right” and that he was “good with money”.
Another who witnessed a comment at a ward meeting that “the only reason we have prostitutes in Seven Sisters is because of the Jews”...
The submission also alleges political interference in the disciplinary process by Jeremy Corbyn’s office, despite Labour’s insistence that the leadership has not got involved... a narrative had taken hold among staffers that complaints about antisemitism were part of a “Jewish conspiracy” against the leadership... James Libson, a lawyer representing the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) and a partner at the law firm Mishcon de Reya, said interference in cases had become institutional."
Jeremy Corbyn's Labour would crush civil society - "The war on civil society is the essence of the communist project. Appointed as home minister after the communist takeover of Hungary in 1948, Janos Kádar abolished 5,000 associations in the space of a year, from brass bands to knitting clubs, from scout troupes to shooting parties, from church charities to private schools. He made it a criminal offence to gather money for charitable purposes, and made all schools and youth organisations into the property of the state. Similar policies were undertaken in Czechoslovakia. All free associations were seen by the communists as places of danger, where hierarchies, distinctions, privileges and deals could challenge the role of the Vanguard Party in its fight for equality and “social justice”. Reflecting on this, I came to see why freedom of association belongs with freedom of speech in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Those two freedoms are the foundation of civil society, and the necessary shield against the abuse of political power.Take them away and all power ends up in the hands of the state. The result is what we know as “totalitarianism”. Communism vanished from Europe 30 years ago — but the totalitarian impulse remains. Freedom of association has no sacrosanct status on the Left; in our country we see this in the matter of country sports which are, and will always be, the targets of leftist disapproval.The Labour Party does not see certain laws forbidding free association as an assault on legitimate freedoms but as a moral duty of the state. After the ban on fox hunting, the Party has likewise set its sights on grouse shooting, not from any concern for the grouse, which are well cared for only because we shoot them, but out of hostility to the kind of people who congregate with guns on grouse moors. But the associations that most need protecting, now in Britain as then in Central Europe, are not those devoted to the leisure of country people but those in which people associate for the sake of knowledge.At the recent Labour Party conference Left-wing activists called for private education to be criminalised, as it was by the communists, and the funds of private schools to be confiscated and used for the “common good”. Meanwhile leftists in universities are mounting effective campaigns to prevent free discussion and to expel those professors whose views they dislike. Politicised subjects like Gender Studies, which forbid ideological disagreement and have doctrine and dogma as their goal, are driving free discussion from the curriculum. It is not clear, yet, how far this will go. But the arguments given and the tactics adopted are exactly those of the communists in 1948. The state is seen as the guardian of public morality; it must therefore forbid the misuse of our freedoms."
John McDonnell apologises for Labour anti-semitism | News | The Sunday Times - "John McDonnell has apologised to the Jewish community “for the suffering we have inflicted on them” after Labour’s failure to stamp out rampant anti-semitism in the party was exposed in a massive leak of documents from its own disciplinary department.The secret files, seen by The Sunday Times, reveal the party is still overwhelmed with complaints about anti-Jewish racism that have been left unresolved for months or years. Most have resulted in lenient punishments or no sanctions, according to the documents, despite Jeremy Corbyn’s election campaign claims of zero tolerance.McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, also admitted for the first time that the party’s handling of the issue has damaged its prospects in Thursday’s general election... a Labour official complains that more than 130 cases remain outstanding even though the “vast majority” were reported to the party 18 months ago. One unresolved case had been on Labour’s books for more than three years... Some of the cases in the files are disturbing, with Labour members likening Jewish people to killer viruses, labelling them “bent nose manipulative liars” and calling for the “extermination of every Jew on the planet”.One Labour member from Nottingham wrote that “Jews represent a viral infection that need to be completely eliminated” and said he wanted the “complete extinction of all Jews”. It took more than 10 months for the party to expel him after his case was first reported in 2018. Lord Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, said the member in question had clearly committed a racial hate crime. Labour refused to say whether it had referred him to police... McDonnell said there were only “a small number” of anti-semites in Labour. “It wasn’t so many people, it was a small number, but I don’t care how many people, one anti-semite in our party is too many, and what we’re doing is we’ve started kicking them out in numbers.” The secret files show half of 100 anti-semitism cases between last summer and this May involved a warning or no action at all. Some members were told to attend “diversity training” although Labour has not set up such a scheme despite promising to do so. Other members were let off without punishment this year despite posting comments about Holocaust denial and distortion, sharing articles about “a Jewish agenda to obtain the conquest of the gentile world” and saying it was justified to “have a dim view of the Jews”. The disclosures blow apart claims made during the election campaign by Corbyn that anyone responsible for anti-semitism was “suspended or expelled” from the party. The leaks paint a picture of the party’s disciplinary process in disarray... Dyer said the lack of communication from the party leadership about the changes was “surreal”.The evidence in the files shows the severity of some of the anti-semitism in the party.A Labour member from Birmingham was subject to a complaint after posting on Facebook that the Red Sea was the “ideal destination” to get rid of the Jews “who are a cancer on us all” before adding, “no need for gas chambers anyway gas is so expensive and we need it in England”. It took eight months for him to be expelled from the party after he was suspended by Labour last year... Dame Louise Ellman, the former Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, described the evidence as “disturbing” and said: “This reduces to rubble my party’s claim that anti-semitism in the party is being dealt with."
If even the Shadow Chancellor admits it, can Corbynistas still pretend this is not an issue?
So much for "a decent, honest man"
Jeremy Corbyn is the most smeared politician in history - "Corbyn hasn’t even been safe from the ‘bastion of independent journalism’ the BBC. The London Economic reported news that one of Britain’s leading barristers has evidence of BBC bias against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Jolyon Maugham QC, director of the Good Law Project alleged that the BBC has indulged in showing “coded negative imagery” of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn since his election in 2015. Even this week, BBC Panorama produced what is widely regarded as a hatchet job on Jeremy Corbyn and anti-Semitism within the Labour party... The problem for the newspapers is that Corbyn is actually pretty boring (in news terms). There really isn’t much dirt to dig up... Most people, even those who don’t like Corbyn are baffled, if not bored by the continual headlines."
Hahahaha
I guess impugning the media, even the BBC, is only wrong when it hurts leftists
Maybe Corbyn is the worst polling ever opposition leader because people are "bored" about the "smears"
The question for Labour: why are you sticking with Jeremy Corbyn? - "The Labour leader has the lowest poll numbers of any leader of the opposition since records began. His net satisfaction rating is minus 60, outstripping the previous negative record held since 1982 by Michael Foot. He is less popular than Boris Johnson among both men and women, in every socioeconomic category, whether richer or poorer, in London and Scotland as well as the Midlands and Wales and, remarkably, in every age group. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the over-65s prefer Johnson to Corbyn by 62% to 8%, but it’s arresting that even among the youngest voters, aged 18 to 24, those once seen as the Labour leader’s base, Corbyn is less popular than the prime minister, albeit by three points... They believe that the lightning of 2017 will strike twice, that once “Jeremy” has equal time on TV and is back on the campaign trail, the magic will happen all over again. Never mind that Theresa May was a truly awful candidate tied to a voter-repellent manifesto, and that Johnson will be a much wilier opponent. Or that whatever novelty and freshness Corbyn represented in 2017 will have faded this time round. Or that Corbyn is far more unpopular now than he was back then, when even at his lowest ebb his net satisfaction rating was a mere minus 41. Or that Labour benefited in 2017 from remainers lending their votes to the party to stop Brexit, a move not all of them will be willing to repeat. Never mind all that, the faith of the true believers is intact"
Jeremy Corbyn is neither nice nor decent – he is a nasty bully and an embarrassment to the country - "Enter Comrade Corbyn who, as leader, couldn’t even bring himself to mention the word “Israel” when he attended the [Labour for Israel] reception at annual conference... an event intended to draw a line under Labour’s “Jewish problem”, ends up allowing a bully to publicly smear a Jewish MP for some sort of media conspiracy (mercifully, he didn’t mention “Rothschilds” but it was hanging in the air) and has the Labour leader suggesting that Israel’s actions to defend itself and Isil’s mass torture, rape and murder can be compared."
Jeremy Corbyn Is Like Donald Trump, Not Boris Johnson - The Atlantic - "Take away Brexit, and Johnson is a run-of-the-mill conservative whose policy agenda, instincts, and world view, as opposed to his personality, verge on the dull; a member and defender of the establishment whose wish is to climb atop it, not rip it down. Corbyn is the opposite: a populist who believes in the inherent corruption of the established order, at home and abroad; a man who sees conspiracy and injustice everywhere. Only one of these descriptions comes close to the U.S. president... One incident stands out as the clearest example of Corbyn’s instinctive Trumpism. When The New York Times published an anonymous op-ed from a White House official who revealed how “the resistance” inside was working to keep Trump from making decisions that members felt were dangerous or against the national interest, the reaction among those close to Corbyn was horror—not at the decisions Trump wanted to make, but at the system that was trying to stop him. To Corbyn’s people the report only confirmed the inherently conservative power of the state and the challenges they too would face should they win power... Corbyn’s open sympathies with Hamas, Hezbollah, the IRA, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, and with Russia’s hostility toward NATO, are already proving concerning for Britain’s Five Eyes security partners, just as some have claimed that Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin has concerned Western intelligence agencies... Corbyn would, by a distance, be the most anti-American prime minister since World War II... Like Trump, Corbyn has also cast doubt or sought to shift the blame for Russian acts of aggression, whether the attempted assassination of the former double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury last year or the invasion of east Ukraine, which the Labour leader said was “not unprovoked.” In the same article, for the Communist daily newspaper The Morning Star, he described the EU and NATO as “tools of US policy in Europe.” Corbyn, like Trump, is also partial to a conspiracy theory. In 2004, he signed a parliamentary motion claiming NATO 1999 intervention in Kosovo to stop the Serbian slaughter of ethnic Albanians was based on “fraudulent justifications for intervening in a ‘genocide’ that never really existed in Kosovo.”... Corbyn is prickly and reacts badly to criticism, utterly convinced of his own righteousness—unwilling to bend or bow (a trait that earns him the admiration of his supporters who have grown to loathe “weather vane” politicians). Johnson in contrast, according to those who know him and whom I’ve spoken with, is much more affected by criticism, unsure of his own convictions, even aware that he might not really have many."
Jeremy Corbyn Reminds Us Why Israel Exists - "This insinuation — that Corbynite animosity towards British Jewry is predicated on the existence of a “right-wing Israeli government” — is a myth.For one thing, despite public perception, the right-center coalition run by Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t altered Israeli policy governing the West Bank and Gaza in any significant way from its predecessors (other than, perhaps, by offering Palestinians more autonomy)... The link the Post draws is nonsensical. Are we to believe that the Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition referred to anti-Semitic terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah as his “friends” in a speech in front of Parliament because he was worried about final status negotiations? Did Corbyn appear multiple times on the Holocaust-denying Hamas-backing Iranian regime’s propaganda channel because he misses Yitzhak Rabin? The man who participates in a 2014 wreath-laying ceremony for the terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics and prevaricates when asked whether it is “anti-Semitic to say that Rothschild Zionists run world governments” is no friend of the Jews... Muslims in Western Europe are anti-Semitic at almost three times the rate of the general population. Thus far, Corbyn has appeased, rather than tried to extinguish, this hatred."
Labour candidate called Prince William a ‘horse-faced t**t’ in yet another blow for Jeremy Corbyn - "Ian Byrne called the Prince a “horse faced t***" and sent misogynistic messages about Baroness Michelle Mone calling to “hit the c*** where it hurts”... In another vile attack the candidate for Liverpool West Derby, a Labour safe seat, slammed Tory housing minister Esther McVey calling her a “b******”.Mr Byrne, a Liverpool Councillor, was forced to apologise for making sick comments about Boris Johnson's mum being "raped" in 2012... His abusive Prince William post is also not the first time a Corbynite has taken aim at the Royal family.In 2017 Labour MP Emma Dent Coad wrongly told an anti-monarchy event at the party’s conference that Prince Harry could not fly an Apache helicopter, adding: “He just sits there going, ‘Vroom vroom’.”The leftie politician, who has previously compared Wills and Kate to the Kardashians, was MP for Kensington at the time. Mr Byrne is now clinging onto his chances of running in the December 12 election - while three other Labour candidates were exposed for spouting slurs.Gideon Bull in Clapton and Kate Ramsden in Edinburgh have both dropped out of the race – a day after two other Labour MP hopefuls were facing calls to pull out over anti-Semitic comments. While just the day before, Jane Aitcheson was blasted after she defended fellow candidate Zarah Sultana who said she would celebrate the death of Tony Blair... Mr Bull has stepped aside after he was accused of using the term “shylock” when speaking to a Jewish colleague on Hackney Council."... Mr Bull claimed he did not know it was an anti-Semitic slur and denied abusing Zena Brabazon, the deputy leader of the council.He told the Braintree and Witham Times: “I used an analogy when referring to a housing decision being called in by backbenchers.“I was not referring to the councillor, who was not part of the call in.“When she politely informed me that this saying was offensive, I immediately apologised and explained that I did not know that Shylock was Jewish and I would never have mentioned Shylock if I had known this.“I grew up in a working class area in Ilford where this was a common saying, but I didn't know it was offensive.”... former Labour MPs John Woodcock and Ian Austin on Thursday urged the public not to vote for the party. Mr Austin, who quit the party over its anti-semitism scandal, branded Mr Corbyn “unfit” to be PM and backed Boris Johnson to win the election.He told The Times: “Jeremy Corbyn is an extremist. He’s allowed the Labour Party to be poisoned by extremism and racism, he supported terrorism, he can’t be trusted with our defence and he always picks the wrong side.” Mr Austin's comments came hours after deputy leader Tom Watson resigned from Labour... He made the shock move after finding himself in a vulnerable position after repeated clashes with hard-left supporters of Mr Corbyn.It culminated with the cabal trying to remove him in an attempted coup - which he described as a "drive-by shooting"."
Alexander Kruel - "Who is Jeremy Corbyn?
1. A person who has been present at a wreath-laying ceremony honoring the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympics terror attack.[1] Someone who shared a platform with a senior official from a terrorist group that murdered a British rabbi in a Synagogue attack.[2] Someone who stood in honor of dead IRA terrorists.[3][4] Someone who spent more than a decade campaigning for two convicted terrorists who were jailed for their part in the car bombing of the Israeli embassy in London and a Jewish charity building.[5] Someone who called Hamas and Hezbollah his friends.[6] Someone who is making the Muslim Brotherhood salute.[7] Someone who gave a speech at the wedding of a Holocaust 'denying' PLO man.[8] Someone enjoying pizza with a controversial pro-Assad campaigner who denied the genocide in Srebrenica.[9] Someone who attends terror conferences.[10][11]
2. A person who literally took money from and worked for an enemy propaganda channel.[12] Someone who advertises the Russian propaganda channel RT.[13] Someone who went on Iran's Press TV when jihadi terrorists murdered 16 Egyptian policemen in 2012 and without any evidence whatsoever suggested the attack was actually carried out by Israel.[14]
3. A person who praised communist China for "collectivising its economy, its efforts and its energy" which led to "immeasurably better" conditions under communist control and attacks "the appalling social conditions in Hong Kong" which he blamed on "capitalism".[15] Someone who claimed that NATO was founded in order to promote a Cold War with the Soviet Union.[16] Someone who called for European Union to be 'defeated' in explosive rally speech.[17] Someone who praised Hugo Chavez.[18] Someone who wrote a foreword to John Atkinson Hobson's 'Imperialism', a book which blamed imperialism on financial houses controlled by a "single and peculiar race." In this foreword, Corbyn also claims that NATO represents a US military occupation of Europe.[19]
4. A person who has been deeply involved in antisemitism scandals.[20] [21][22] Someone who called for Holocaust Memorial Day to be renamed to remove the word 'holocaust'.[23] Someone who is saying that it's biased to say "Israel has a right to exist".[24] Someone who has been part of at least 3 antisemitic Facebook groups.[25][26][27][28] Someone who signed a document accusing Israel of genocide.[29]
Note: The above is a small selection of what Corbyn stands for. For example, he also believes in homeopathy.[30] But given the above, that doesn't make much of a difference, does it?"
Corbyn in The Times on Twitter - "Can we trust Corbyn to keep us safe when he has a voting record on terrorism like this (2005-09)?Corbyn (& Abbott & McDonnell) was one of 16 Labour MP's which voted against Labour's Terrorism Bill (2nd Reading). 1/17"
Corbyn in The Times on Twitter - ""We have got to be realistic that NATO is a major problem, and a major difficulty and we have to campaign against NATO's power and influence and its global reach because it is a a danger to world peace and a danger to world security"We are not safe under Labour."
Labour’s ‘chilling’ video about supporting minority groups leaves out Jewish community - "The Labour Party has been criticised for producing a video about minority groups being valued by the party that leaves out any mention of the Jewish community.The promotional video which claims “diversity is our greatest strength” is over a minute long and features a speech made by Dawn Butler, the shadow equalities secretary, in which she says Labour will support people who wear “a hijab, turban,” or a “cross.”Jonathan Goldstein, who is chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council, described the notable lack of mention of the Jewish community as “extraordinary and chilling.”... "If this is what they are like in opposition imagine what they would be like in government.""
BBC World Service - The World This Week, The rich countries where people are dying younger - "[On accusations of Labour’s anti-Semtism] For a man suffering the worst ratings for any opposition leader since this kind of polling began in the 1970s, this was hardly going to help. And neither were Mr. Corbyn’s struggles to explain how Labour would fund the vast increase in the size of the state it's promising in the face of hostile questioning from the BBC’s toughest Inquisitor Andrew Neil. An ordeal, by the way, Mr. Johnson has so far avoided. So if, as the polls are suggesting, Mr. Johnson is on his way to victory, it'll be thanks to a sometimes overlapping coalition of Leave voters and those who simply think Mr. Corbin is too dangerously left wing to be let anywhere near power. Just how fragile however that coalition might prove if Boris Johnson does win, and Brexit has to become more than a slogan, is another question."
BBC World Service - The World This Week, Why the prince left public life - "There’s no doubting the most telling moment or should I say moments of the campaign this last week. It was when a studio audience repeatedly laughed at both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn during the first TV debate of the election. Not, you should understand, the laughter of amusement but of derision and disbelief. If you want to know what provoked such hilarity, it was the moment Mr. Johnson answered, yes, when asked whether he thought the truth was important, and when Mr Corbyn insisted Labour's policy on Brexit was clear. The studio audience’s reaction was a reminder of a grim underlying truth about this election, born out repeatedly in national opinion polls, namely that this is a contest not to select the most popular person and party as prime minister and governments, but rather the least unpopular... the main opposition Labour Party led by the avowedly and proudly socialist Jeremy Corbyn, also, not surprisingly, promised the most radical left wing agenda since 1945, of greater state involvement in every aspect of British life"
Tories more popular among working class than rich, new general election poll shows - "The Conservative Party now has more support among working-class voters than the upper classes, according to a new poll which predicts that Boris Johnson will win a 110-seat majority at the general election... The findings come after research by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) last week found that support for Jeremy Corbyn had plummeted by 10 per cent since April among those with a household income of below £17,000... only a third of voters (34 per cent) understand Labour’s Brexit policy compared to 53 per cent who know where the Conservatives stand on the EU and 49 per cent who know what the Liberal Democrats are proposing. Asked if Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to tackle anti-Semitism within his own party shows he is unfit to be Prime Minister, 55 per cent agreed and 21 per cent disagreed."
It is interesting that no matter how much elites hate Boris Johnson, Conservative support has surged since he was elected
UK’s Labour would seize £300bn of company shares | Financial Times - "A Labour government would confiscate about £300bn of shares in 7,000 large companies and hand them to workers in one of the biggest state raids on the private sector to take place in a western democracy, according to analysis by the Financial Times and Clifford Chance.The UK’s 2.6m landlords would also face a moment of reckoning if Labour won the next general election after shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he wanted a “right to buy” scheme for private tenants as well as higher taxes on landlords... [it] would be the most leftwing in modern history... The £300bn share seizure would be the consequence of Mr McDonnell’s plans for “inclusive ownership funds”, where every company with more than 250 staff would have to gradually transfer 10 per cent of their shares to workers... Shares would be held and managed by workers, who would receive dividends up to £500 each per year. Any income beyond that level would be redistributed to the Exchequer, representing a stealth tax by the state... “There is no historic precedent for this,” said Dan Neidle, a partner at Clifford Chance. “We are in completely uncharted territory.” Mr Neidle predicted litigation from aggrieved companies and shareholders, challenges from other countries, including the US and China, potential WTO complaints and perhaps “retaliation in kind”. Matt Kilcoyne, of the Adam Smith Institute, called the share move “expropriation”. He added: “Our largest investors are pension funds and they’ll see billions of pounds wiped off their books. So we’ll all see the value of our pensions fall. It’s the biggest raid of all our nest eggs in living memory.”"
Jeremy Corbyn refuses to apologise to Jews over racism …but praises anti-Semitic poet - "Jeremy Corbyn was condemned last night after he used his conference speech to praise an anti-Semitic poet and an activist who compared a top Israeli politician to Hitler.After a week dominated by rows over anti-Semitism in the party, the Labour leader declined to use the opportunity to apologise for the hurt it had caused the Jewish community.Instead he hit out at ‘Tory hypocrisy’ and spoke about his plans to recognise unilaterally a Palestinian state if he enters No 10. He also quoted the 19th century poet and Chartist protest leader Ernest Jones, whose biographer describes him as anti-Semitic... The row came a day after Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said a failure to tackle the anti-Semitism crisis risks ‘eternal shame’ for the party... The Labour leader mentioned the anti-Semitism crisis in his speech but declined to apologise. He told supporters: ‘Being anti-racist means we must listen to those communities suffering discrimination and abuse. I believe we are all stronger from listening and learning from each other... Euan Philipps, of Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said: ‘This year the anti-Semitism is no longer on the fringes but at the core of the conference itself.’"
Jeremy Corbyn refuses to apologise four times for anti-Semitism allegations - "Jeremy Corbyn declined to apologise four times to the Jewish community under questioning from veteran journalist Andrew Neil... The Labour leader was grilled in a BBC interview about allegations of anti-Semitism within his party following concerns raised by the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis... Mr Corbyn also denied that the blight increased after he took over the party... Rabbi Mirvis wrote in The Times that Labour’s handling of the issue that has dogged the party under Mr Corbyn’s leadership was “incompatible” with British values. He said the overwhelming majority of Britain’s Jews were “gripped with anxiety” ahead of the General Election on December 12, warning “the very soul of our nation is at stake”... He also refused to say if he would take out the leader of ISIS, just days after he argued Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi should have been arrested."
So much for listening to those communities suffering discrimination and abuse
Jeremy Corbyn refuses to apologise over Labour anti-Semitism - "Mr Corbyn was also pressed over his plan to broker a ‘credible’ Leave deal with the EU and then be neutral in a referendum between it and remaining in the EU within six months of taking power.He explained: ‘I will be the honest broker that will make sure the referendum is fair and make sure that the Leave deal is a credible one.‘That seems to me actually an adult and sensible way to go forward.’But Mr Corbyn was again unable to say who would campaign for his Brexit deal, with much of his shadow cabinet eager to campaign for Remain."
The lesser racism - "Mirvis said Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was ‘unfit for high office’ due to his past associations with anti-Semites and his party’s inability to get a handle on cases of Jew-hatred among its membership. The piece offers a grim reminder of the growing charge sheet against Corbyn’s Labour. Mirvis references the reported 130 outstanding cases cases of anti-Semitism being investigated by the party, as well as the Jewish MPs who have effectively been driven out by vile racist abuse... The Equality and Human Rights Commission is currently investigating Labour over anti-Semitism. (The only other party to be investigated by the EHRC was the fascist BNP.)... As Mirvis reminds us in his piece, this isn’t just a case of poor party processes: Corbyn himself is a big part of the problem. He has associated with groups, like Hamas and Hezbollah, who have ‘endorse[d] the murder of Jews’. ‘How complicit in prejudice would a leader of Her Majesty’s opposition have to be to be considered unfit for office?’, he asks. The piece is damning, but also full of regret. Rarely does a faith leader enter the political fray so explicitly. Worse still, Mirvis seems to know full well that his concerns, shared widely across Britain’s Jewish community, will fall on deaf ears among those who need to hear them most. ‘We have learned the hard way that speaking out means that we will be demonised by faceless social-media trolls and accused of being partisan or acting in bad faith by those who still think of this as an orchestrated political smear’, he writes. As it turns out, he was only half-right: Corbynistas have dismissed him, but many haven’t bothered hiding behind an avatar. In a since-deleted tweet, Labour activist Holly Rigby dismissed Mirvis as a ‘Boris Johnson supporter’ and ‘uncritical supporter of Netanyahu’. ‘His comments must be taken in this context’... The proof for this seems to be that Mirvis congratulated Johnson when he became PM in July, and that he has met Netanyahu, as you’d imagine he would have. (Incidentally, in 2015, the Israeli PM rebuffed Mirvis’s concerns about settlements.)... Johnson once wrote a column mocking misogynistic religious dress while defending women’s right to wear it. Corbyn once invited Raed Salah – a man convicted in Israel for repeating the blood libel – to tea in the House of Commons. Spot the difference... Countdown star Rachel Riley caught flak from Corbynistas for putting out a photoshopped image of Corbyn, replacing the words on an anti-Apartheid placard with the words ‘Jeremy Corbyn is a racist endeavour’. For this, she was accused of being a racist, because she was ‘erasing’ the anti-Apartheid struggle. Whatever you think about Riley’s tactics, she was clearly making a point about what she sees as the hypocrisy of Corbyn: that this ‘lifelong anti-racist’ has a seemingly different attitude when it comes to Jews. It should be obvious to anyone. But in response to the photo, Corbynistas demanded she be sacked. A few days ago, actress Maureen Lipman was hit with a similar backlash, when she made a video attacking Labour over anti-Semitism. The mere fact that she decided to talk about the video with the Sun was used to tar her as a bigot... Then there’s Ian Austin. He is the adopted son of Holocaust survivors and he left Labour over anti-Semitism in February. Earlier this month, he urged voters to back Boris Johnson rather than risk putting Corbyn in No10. In response, shadow chancellor John McDonnell (wrongly) accused him of being employed by the Tories, and Owen Jones accused him of being a xenophobe. It’s disgusting. Imagine Labourites acting like this towards any other minority group. They are PC to a fault in almost every other respect. This is a party whose equalities spokesperson denounced Jamie Oliver’s ‘jerk rice’ as cultural appropriation. And yet so many Labourites are completely dismissive of – almost irritated by – British Jews’ completely legitimate fears."
It's amazing to see all the Corbyn supporters online trying to deny and deflect
The chief rabbi’s Labour warning reveals major shifts in UK politics - "“During the past few years, on my travels through the UK and further afield, one concern has been expressed to me more than any other,” Mirvis wrote. “Of course the threats of the far right and violent jihadism never go away, but the question I am now most frequently asked is: What will become of Jews and Judaism in Britain if the Labour Party forms the next government?”... The word “unprecedented” was used to describe the intervention itself, but it is also an apt descriptor of this political moment in the history of Britain’s Jewish community. In the past, chief rabbis have called on people to serve their country, in the First and Second World Wars for instance, and even in the politically controversial Boer war, says Professor David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism. What seems unprecedented, however, is such overt criticism of a particular party, and indeed a particular party leader. Mirvis, who took office in 2013 as spiritual leader of the UK’s orthodox Jews, does not tend to political intervention. He is not a very well-known figure outside the Jewish community. The fact that he took this step at such a fraught time, during a particularly tense election, points to major shifts in the UK’s political landscape.The first is the fact that Jews are now so often in the headlines. It is hard to remember what it was like before the words “Labour” and “anti-Semitism” appeared so regularly on our front pages, but this state of affairs has only been normal since the crisis started nearly four years ago. The Jewish community “has always had a reputation...of keeping its head down and not wanting to make a fuss, and certainly not wanting to rock the boat politically,” says Dave Rich, author of The Left’s Jewish Problem... 87 per cent of Jews believe Corbyn is anti-Semitic... The broader response to Mirvis’ intervention has also been telling. In some quarters it has been seen as a move to sabotage Labour’s chances at winning the election, with Mirvis painted as right wing. The understanding that Mirvis leans to the right seems based on rather tenuous premises, including the fact that, as chief rabbi, he congratulated Boris Johnson on becoming prime minister. This was very much a formality, and something that Jewish leaders on the left did, too. But this assumption has also been based on his being an Orthodox rabbi, and therefore not liberal. Keith Kahn-Harris, author of Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Limits of Diversity, notes that Mirvis has done some relatively liberal things for a chief rabbi. He also points out that this does not tend to happen when other minority leaders of strict religious backgrounds draw attention to racism against them."
An open letter to Sir Richard Evans: Labour’s anti-Semitism cannot be disregarded - "on the subject of the Jews, the party has become cruel, malicious, stupid and dishonest. The cruelty has been persistent and extreme – death threats, shouted abuse at branch meetings, online trolling. The malice has been patent, incontinent and pervasive. As with Trump, we are inured to party (and Corbyn) outrages, because they are so frequent. But recall Corbyn\u0027s disparagement of “Zionists who, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony”. My friend David Hirsh got it right: Corbyn was enjoying the old, sneery English view of Jews, and he was doing it to humiliate the Jews he was talking about. They live among us but they’re not really one of us. This wasn’t Corbyn’s usual political anti-Semitism, it was a spillover into ordinary old-fashioned English anti-Semitism... This, from the “lifelong campaigner against anti-Semitism”, as a Labour spokesperson described him... Anti-Semitism is stupid. It makes people stupid. It is not a coincidence that the least accomplished leader of the Labour Party is also its only anti-Semitic one. If you live in a world of conspiracies, if you think the world is divided into the blamelessly good, the victims, and the unqualifiedly evil, the oppressors, then anti-Semitism is for you... As for the dishonesty, look at party equivocations on the number of disciplinary cases against members. The unapologetic Corbyn says that there are none left to resolve (“we’ve investigated every single case”); by contrast, a spokesperson is only able to quibble over the precise number outstanding. Corbyn\u0027s ignominious career in relation to Jews has been recast by a party spokesperson as the career of a “lifelong campaign against anti-Semitism”. Is anybody really fooled by this? Is there anything more threadbare – indeed, Trumpian – in the insouciance of the party\u0027s response to its own anti-Semitism? This is not a party that cares about the concerns of the Jewish community, save insofar as those concerns might have a damaging impact on its electoral fortunes. In response to your second tweet, about individual candidates: Anti-Semitism, long a fugitive, has acquired institutional authority in today\u0027s Labour Party. Within the party itself, compelling evidence exists of extensive spoken and online abuse of Jewish party members; exclusion of Jewish members from participating in party activity; signalling by the party leader that anti-Semitic views are acceptable; the failure to implement processes to protect Jewish members from anti-Semitism; hostile responses to those calling out anti-Semitism; and appointment of anti-Semites to positions of power (indeed, as the Panorama investigation exposed, interfering in disciplinary processes “to let off their mates”, reported a whistle-blower). This anti-Semitism taints the passive enablers in the party – to start with, the whole front bench. This is how the Corbyn period will be remembered. This is his legacy to the party. This anti-Semitism concerns us all, Jews and non-Jews. A party that cannot be trusted in relation to Jews cannot be trusted at all. No party of reform and justice can be trusted if it makes exceptions of a minority community... There is even an implication that it is a little parochial – perhaps even, selfish – of Jews to insist on their own special suffering, their own local fears, in these times of national crisis. So what if the party is contaminated by Jew hatred if it is also the party that will save the country? Of course, formulating the question in this way does more than justice to the capabilities of the Labour Party... injustices towards Jews are precedent-establishing – people who start with the Jews, do not end with the Jews... The driving out of leading Jewish (and non-Jewish) politicians from the party, who cited its anti-Semitism, did not have a substantial impact on party morale, still less commit its officials and elected members to decisive action. We cannot leave the work to the party itself. Supporters have to lend a hand. Depriving the party of a vote is a start."
Addendum:
Toby Young on Twitter - "Labour has held Wrexham since 1935. Our poll now finds the Tories 15 points ahead"
"If Boris wins, this will be the story — areas that have been Labour for 75+ years turning blue. Happening across the Anglosphere, not just the UK. For working class voters, faith, flag and family trumps gender neutral toilets and decolonising the curriculum. Go woke, go broke."
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