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Comments will upset a few but won't change much
Culture war trumps all atm, his popularity ratings are sinking , but tory vote is holding, expect another 2/3 years of shambles, gaffes & scandals, all ignored by his base, because he's protecting their values from scourge of woke or something
Probably a deliberate deflection tactic: visits Scotland; refuses to meet NS; rest of visit is completely naff; make an asinine comment to cover it up.
I think the ERG want shot... blame him for covid, brexit and Northern Ireland
Question is what is the replacement likely to be? I think Rishi might have blown it.
My money is on Patel... Thatcher with the empathy removed.
How will his comments go down with the new northern tories?
Its history Zippy, it was 40 odd years ago its been lost from the collective memory of many of these communities.
Unionised labour is long gone there has been no one to keep this alive, the people left who witnessed this are fast disappearing, and few people below the age of 60 can remember highly paid, skilled employment in these communities.
Thank you Kelvin thats a delight... i would pay very good money to actually see that happen
Thank Cold War Steve.
@kelvin - that’s genius. Are there any credits to who did that?
I did my dissertation on photomontage and it’s use as a political weapon. John Heartfield himself would be proud of that one. It’s entirely in the spirit on photomontage.
EDIT: Cold War Steve, should have known. Brilliantly done
Thank Cold War Steve
It is brilliant but I can’t help thinking it will have been based on a far less brilliant reality
Well there you go. Still a masterpiece from Cold War Steve though
Jesus H Corbet! A step too far even for the nicotine-stained man-frog
https://twitter.com/nigel_farage/status/1423378408634003458?s=21
Imagine being accused of crass insensitivity by Nigel ****ing Farage?
The Scots Tories will not be impressed!
Boris also mentioned that the next independence referendum is at the bottom of his to-do list as he's focused on the country all coming together to recover from the pandemic, however he refused to meet the First Minister to discuss covid recovery?
Its history Zippy, it was 40 odd years ago its been lost from the collective memory of many of these communities.
Not sure it is. I'm in Newcastle. When she died I remember a fair number of people going out to celebrate.
How will his comments go down with the new northern tories?
I live in the former red wall.
It'll be brushed off with "It's just a bit of banter...", or "but Corbyn was a terrorist...", etc.
The shift is real.
Boris also mentioned that the next independence referendum is at the bottom of his to-do list as he’s focused on the country all coming together to recover from the pandemic
Perfectly aligned with the current SNP leadership in that regard.
Jonba i agree and as a Northumbrian i ****ing cheered for the first time for someones death.
There was no redemption for North East and other mining, heavy industry, shipbuilding communities, nothing was offered in its place except unemployment, decay, drugs, alcohol and a culture that is at best unpleasant.
Having family in Bedlington and Ashganistan (Ashington) and South Shields i understand this but as Butcher states the shift is real in the redwalls and Maggie is at worst a sort of fairytale " get to bed or maggie will come and get you...
Unionised labour is long gone there has been no one to keep this alive, the people left who witnessed this are fast disappearing, and few people below the age of 60 can remember highly paid, skilled employment in these communities.
Sadly true, at 18 I worked at Bolsover colliery up until Sept 83, luckiky realised it wasn't for me & got out before the strike, I'll be 57 this Yr. Bolsover went from 65% labour vote in 2005 to losing to conservatives in 2019 😳
Anyone with strong feelings about Thatcher and the miners is unlikely to be a recent Conservative convert and all the new Tory voters are already all over twitter saying the miners downfall was all Scargill's doing.
A lot of the former pit areas around me are quite quickly becoming housing developments, each with a silver German car on the drive. They are very different to how they used to be.
A lot has happened since the early 80s in every area of society, this crass comment will have very little impact on anything.
mining, heavy industry, shipbuilding
and it wasn't just these industries- think of all the companies that supplied them, shops supported by the local community. Unless the decimation of these areas was planned, it was a massive miscalculation. "Oh, these failing companies are costing us £5m a week to support. If they close down it will only cost £1m in dole for the workers laid off" ignoring the wider impact.
Bit like proposing in advance to withdraw Endurance from the Falklands cos it was costing too much. What has the spend on the war & subsequent ramped up military presence in comparison?
Strange how the nastiness Thatcher created seems to have gone from the collective memory in some of the areas worse affected. My Nan witnessed the soldiers Churchill sent into the Tonypandy riots- it was still talked about 70 years later when there was the 80s strikes & home county coppers were bussed into the Rhondda. It was seen as yet another Tory attack, how the red wall areas can now vote for the same beggars belief.
Bolsover went from 65% labour vote in 2005 to losing to conservatives in 2019 😳
Labour was still getting over 50% of the vote in Bolsover in 2017, the fact that they lost Bolsover to the Tories just two years later has nothing to do with a change of attitude towards Thatcher, she wasn't an election issue.
The election issue was Brexit. In 2016 70% of Bolsover voters voted to leave the EU. A year later, in the 2017 general election, Labour promised to respect the referendum result and consequently they received over 50% of the vote.
Labour then spent the next two years doing whatever it could to frustrate Brexit, Corbyn even appointed one of Labour's most committed Remainers to the post of shadow Brexit minister, accumulating to, in the 2019 general election, standing on a policy of "constructive ambiguity" and calling for a second referendum.
Consequently Labour went from receiving more than 50% of the vote in 2017 to losing to the Tories 2 years later.
Thatcher wasn't an issue but Corbyn was. People whose families had consistently voted Labour for the last 100 years voted Conservative for the first time ever.
Whether they will ever return back to Labour after having done the unthinkable and voted Tory remains to be seen, quite possibly, but even if they do from now on they will undoubtedly represent a soft Labour vote, not the once rock solid support.
That I fear will be the lasting legacy of Corbyn's leadership.
It's weird I made a series of lessons on things we extract from the earth. One was on iron, there was a cool we match head blast furnace. But I was told to delete the slide with Ravenscraig on it. Now we're in the borders and even the kids parents must be almost too young to know about it but still. Mind you a big Tory presence in the borders but that's just my paranoia.
The election issue was Brexit. In 2016 70% of Bolsover voters voted to leave the EU.
Yeah, because after the mines closed all they got instead was a sports direct warehouse in Shirebrook staffed by Eastern Europeans on minimum wage.
Lots of “opinions” in that article… but or course “my best friend is Polish”…
Can we talk about Johnson now?
Can we talk about Johnson now?
What exactly is stopping you from talking about Johnson Kelvin?
Can you not see the connection between Johnson, brexit, and how people vote?
Basically I brought up some uncomfortable truths, eg that people who vote Tory are not necessarily homophobic racists, so you want to change the subject back to that.
Btw the current MP for Bolsover is openly gay and married to a man. So much for so-called red wall social conservatives.
Edit : Go ahead and talk about Johnson. What have you got to say?
Go ahead and talk about Johnson. What have you got to say?
He's a ****.
A very good point. However it's been already covered several times.
And it turns out that he's still a ****.
that people who vote Tory are not necessarily homophobic racists
Of course. But those who say, “my best friend is Polish”... but then go on to say the problem was all these Poles "coming over here" is exactly what was firmly behind the vote for Brexit and Johnson. I have plenty of friends and family who are in that camp, it's all to common... "there's too many of them... no not you, or anyone I know, they're all good people contributing to society, I mean all those other ones I don't know... they're the ones ruining everything... we need to stop them coming here, whatever the cost". There were other reason for voting Brexit (Greece can't devalue something something), and for Johnson (keep Corbyn out something something), but for most people it stops there.
I'm pretty much in agreement, kelvin, at least for a significant number of people who voted to leave.
So what's the sensible response?
It just feels intuitively wrong to me, but I don't kkow what the rebuttal is, for the proposition that "more immigrants = fewer jobs for us..."
What's the response? At a political level? You give them what they want, and then listen to them moan about the consequences. At a personal level? Just say you disagree and suggest talking about something else. Like how much of a self serving lying waste of space our so called PM is. Much quicker to find agreement there. More likely to move voting patterns as well.
The normalisation of lying coming from Trump and the Tories mean that for some political preferences are based on wild inaccuracies and fragile emotions. Evidence and policy goes out of the window for 'whatevers' and discussion is replace by ad hominems. There's a prime opportunity for the LP to provide an alternative narrative but it ain't going to happen.
Good point about Heartfield, where are the Neue Sachlichkeiters of today? Cold War Steve seems to be a one-man show.
That guardian article is a brilliant example of how the EU was blamed for successive UK governments failures to support places like Bolsover.
Facts don't matter when you can harness the kind of xenophobia Johnson does so effortlessly
The tragedy is that Johnsons levelling up promises will change nothing for rhem
Did you actually bother reading the article properly Kelvin? I thought the fact that it's in the Guardian might have encouraged you to do so. Or are you deliberately misrepresenting it because it doesn't suit your agenda and preconceived ideas?
The guy was a trade union shop steward, his girlfriend was Polish, there is no evidence that he was some kind of ranting right-wing racist.
The MP for Bolsover at the time the article was written, Dennis Skinner, was a lifelong opponent of the EU, was he also a right-wing racist?
The fact that Dennis Skinner was arguably the most left-wing MP in parliament at the time, and known for decades for his very left-wing veiws, exposes as nonsense the claim that Corbyn was too left-wing for Bolsover voters.
"I’ve stayed the same for over 40 years. Being against the EU has been in every one of the General Election addresses I’ve sent out to my constituents in Bolsover for the last twelve elections – I’ve been around a long time now and I think I’m the only one who’s voted against every treaty – Common Market, Maastricht, every single one."
Dennis Skinner
I have no idea what your point is? If it's that some left wingers can be just as boring and blinded when it comes to blaming immigration and/or the EU, then you'll hear no argument from me.
Anyone in an area where there's a sudden influx of cheap labour is going to experience social and environmental consequences. The blame should go on the employers using migration to drive down wages and on rip-off landlords necessitating multiple occupancy, not the migrants themselves.
The blame should go on the employers using migration to drive down wages and on rip-off landlords necessitating multiple occupancy, not the migrants themselves
Agree completely, but what is seen and experienced is that immigrants come, and wages go down, accommodation become more scarce/expensive and jobs are harder to find.
I suppose that's exactly the response, actually; to try to get people to see that it's not the migrants fault, it the employers/landlords/political response to that migration...
Not the migrants fault but if they didn't come and do all the low paid jobs, put up with crap conditions etc,. then it wouldn't happen. Or that is how a lot of people would see it especially when led along by the like of Farage, Daily Mail etc,.
As a miner's son, still living in an ex-coal field and right next door to Bolsover I'm finding the centrists love-in (James O'Brien et al) and attack of Johnson's comments completely disengenous as usual.
It's almost become a badge of honor to stand with the miners. A pointless exercise currently. If you want to have a sentiment that rings true these days then you need to be part of the movement towards the left - which means not supporting the Labour party in its current form, and in future not taking part in the tear down of leaders like Corbyn that can offer real change, and move away from the market ideology.
Also Thatcher loved the idea of cheap imported coal so Johnson can go spin on any climate issue.
Tories being Tories is not that shocking.
I have no idea what your point is?
And yet Kelvin you appear to feel an irresistible urge to respond to whatever it is that I post.
If you have no idea what my point is how about simply ignoring it?
You addressed a post to me and didn’t want me to respond to it? Perfectly normal behaviour…
Yep Kerley, problem is is this all leads to a race to the bottom and then workers have to start again trying to resist zero hours and sweated labour. People need to realise that the xenophobes and racists also oppose unions and workers' rights. This is where the LP should be making the case but Starmzy wants a little RW business-friendly coterie of a party a million miles from workers' concerns.
NB I've seen LP nonsense going on about their failures resulting from 'changes in the class structure'. Blimey, class is determined by your relation to the m of p, not on whether you wear a brilliantined short-back-and-sides and a shiny suit.
..and didn’t want me to respond to it?
No not really. It would obviously be different if you actually engaged in some sort of half sensible debate instead of mindless retorts such as "can we talk about Johnson now?".
Ignore my posts if you can't understand my point and focus instead on talking about Johnson, which despite your suggestion no one is stopping you from doing.
I look forward to reading your deep and carefully thought out critique of Johnson 🧐
... Should probably be isolating.
One of his team has tested positive, apparently.
His trips isn't going well
Hope he cockles an ankle with each step.
How long before a picture emerges of him & this aide his wasnt close to, side by side
Hes off to chequers just in case obvs
https://twitter.com/MarxMedia/status/1423762842377916429?s=19
Hiw Big do we reckon the indy poll bounce will be off the back of his visit?
… Should probably be isolating.
One of his team has tested positive, apparently.
Covids Over…….till it pushes back.
If he did go on meeting people I think that’s bad.
If the only people he’s been meeting are more Scottish Tories, a lot of who I imagine are of the ‘it’s all an infringement of my civil liberties’ brigade, just let them get on with their own little super-spreader event
Can you imagine how muche mileage the SNP would get out of contact tracing Johnsons suerspreader tour of scotland!
A useful contribution.
Hes off to chequers just in case obvs
Prime minister goes to prime ministers regular weekend retreat?
Sky News: Boris Johnson accuses charity of trying to 'airbrush' Winston Churchill's 'giant achievements'.
https://news.sky.com/story/winston-churchill-charity-accused-of-woke-attack-on-wartime-leader-after-rebrand-12402869
"It beggars belief that the man who saved this nation in our darkest hour finds himself cancelled in this way,"
I know that Johnson himself didn't say it but that's quite an achievement, just one man saving a whole nation.
"Never was so much owed by so many to just one person"
Churchill hasn't even been cancelled.
Cheap way for Johnson to generate some headlines to appeal to his acolytes.
Timing feels slightly odd though - this is kind of shit he pulls for Sunday headlines and it might draw attention away from Patel's plan to drown a few migrants.
Boris likes to think he models himself on Churchill but all he achieves is picking up some of Churchill's mannerisms, most of his failings (plus a lot of his own), but none of his qualities (I suppose by repute in parliament Churchill was supposed to be a pretty good knife in the back merchant so perhaps one).
his is kind of shit he pulls for Sunday headlines and it might draw attention away from Patel’s plan to drown a few migrants.
While breaking international law - again
(I suppose by repute in parliament Churchill was supposed to be a pretty good knife in the back merchant so perhaps one).
He was very quick-witted with wounding retorts, as this famous exchange typifies :
Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea.
Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it.
He was very quick-witted with wounding retorts
During the thirties he had a real reputation for scheming behind the scenes and making sure he wasn’t on hand when the knife was put in (I suppose that would count as briefing off the record and putting other people up to do your dirty work today).
Read elsewhere that Nicolas Soames is the Trust's Chair and approves - so Boris Johnson thinks he knows better than Churchill's family.
During the thirties he had a real reputation for scheming behind the scenes and making sure he wasn’t on hand when the knife was put in
Ah I see Richie, you mean his political manoeuvrings in parliament rather than his verbal assaults.
I don't know anything about the shenanigans which may have occurred within the Tory Party during the thirties.
Although Churchill was clearly a ruthless man, as his responsibility for decisions which led to the completely unnecessary Bengal Famine of 1943, in which over 3 million people died, testifies, so I can well believe his willingness to stab others in the back to achieve his goals.
If we're looking for one man who allowed Britain to hold out till the Russians and Americans got involved I'll nominate Alfred Cyril Lovesey who found a crucial few hundred more horsepower. The politicians and generals didn't do that well really but the engineers baled them out.
^^ Similar to the scientists/vaccines currently bailing our shower of a government out.
Read elsewhere that Nicolas Soames is the Trust’s Chair and approves
Fatty is head of Serco and making a lot from Boris and Dido.
Fatty is head of Serco and making a lot from Boris and Dido.
Yeah, but he doesn't really need to, so he can afford to remind them of their station every once in a while.
It's creepy doublespeak for him to claim the charity is airbrushing history for giving a realistic nuanced picture, especially after his 'Churchill: How One Man Made Up History' book.
Richie_B
Full MemberBoris likes to think he models himself on Churchill
Yep, but that's mostly because he doesn't really know anything about the real Churchill, just the imaginary version he wrote a fanfic about.
It's hard to believe, but the Scotland-Ireland tunnel is apparently not going to happen.....
Almost as though it was a bit of hastily dreamed up 'Boris is a bit of a card' fluff to distract from something else.
Reality is coming hurtling down the tracks, though. I'm predicting a fractious and thin Christmas.
Well, who’d have thunk it?
I suppose we’ll just have to wait for next week’s announcement of an elevator to a viewing platform on the moon
That kind of shock is hard to take. Could they still throw a few billion quid at a roundabout under the Isle of Man just for the sake of it anyway? Or at least a few million at a private company doing a feasibility study (into the obviously unfeasible)?
He models himself on the gluttony.
Or at least a few million at a private company doing a feasibility study (into the obviously unfeasible)?
They're all too busy being paid hundreds of millions doing something similar re running a country with a £85bn a year hole in its revenue whilst intentionally alienating its closest partners - and needing to give £350m a week more to the NHS.
There's lots to do before they can declare it unfeasible, obviously.
🇬🇧🍆💦🇬🇧
as his responsibility for decisions which led to the completely unnecessary Bengal Famine of 1943, in which over 3 million people died
He shares some of the responsibility alongside many Indian politicians who arguably did more to ensure that Bengal starved. Such as a caste driven "relief" system which more or less ensured that poor Bengalis would see little food coming their way. A system of tariffs to control to internal movement of rice and grain, (which essentially meant that internal relief efforts stopped) and insisting that exports still go ahead. Then there's the no small matter of the Japanese Invasion of Burma, and a Typhoon. Churchill's undoubted view was that India should remain in the Empire and had a patronising view of the ability of Indians to govern themselves, and could've done more more quickly to ease the famine, as could the Indian Govt. You could argue that he took his eye off the ball, he did have a war on after all, but he's certainly not "responsible [ ] for over 3 million deaths"
He shares some of the responsibility
Seems to be the current concensus, but it's not such an eye catching headline.
You can argue who and what circumstances were responsible for the Bengal Famine both ways. As it was in the middle of a world war it is a grey area. Sending troops in to ‘deal' with strikers in 1926 and sending the majority of the free Polish army ‘home’ to Stalin at the end of the WWII are more squarely Churchill’s responsibility.
Seems to be the current concensus, but it’s not such an eye catching headline.
Just wave a Union Jack and overlay a soundtrack of Spitfires and "we will fight them on the beaches" and all the not so good stuff disappears. 👍