Jesus.

Sandle-wearing socialist. Needs to stop appealing to impressionable young men if he’s to get anywhere.

Ransos,

Who the cap fit…let them wear it.

Convincing riposte.

Ok. We can agree to differ, As you’ve confessed to being an intolerant Marxist, I’ll confess to being a tolerant centrist.

I confessed to being intolerant, not a Marxist. I do not know enough about Marxism. What I have read of Marx’s writing I agree with though.

We could leave it there but what the **** do you mean with the line:

“Well done on campaigning against racism, but none of that is new; some of us have been ‘woke’ for a long time now”

I can handle intolerant Marxists (this is STW after all) but you’ve crossed a line there.

Crossed a line, is that bad? Is it some centrist laid line? My point was, that whilst we may agree about some issues regarding racism and that your championing of the cause to tackle this are admirable. There is little if anything new in what you were saying iirc. And I doubt very much that any system that you would be comfortable with (too Left) would get to the route of the problem.

Well, there you go, now some areas have gone into Tier3 agreeing to insufficient support, the government is saying that it can’t give more support to other regions as they go in. Proof enough to me that Burnham and the other local leaders of Greater Manchester were right to not cave in and take the peanuts thrown at the people they represent.

My biggest political wish is that we return to the old system where elected MP’s get to decide on their party leaders, not sure how that can be achieved but it is essential if we are going to find some sort of political centre and take the advantage away from the extremists.

Really? Gosh, the vision.
Not something to do with reducing huge social inequality? Not affordable housing for all? Nothing to do with the environment? But some way to keep leaders like Blair, Major and May.

Blair, Major and May

I’d take any of them over the empty leader the Conservative members gave us this time.

Hell, I’d take Burnham or Hunt, to name two recently rejected by polls of members, rather than Johnson. Never thought I’d be singing the praises of either of them, but they’ve both talked sense all the way through this pandemic, while Johnson did little more than make farting noises with his face.

Or more pertinently you could compare him to the current relevant hopeless Labour leadership?

Burnham struggled on the National stage, his flip-floping was brutally exposed on R4 PM during his run at the leadership.

On the GM stage he has some good initiatives and is pushing at issues people care about. However the local government Labour machine essentially ignores him or actively trolls his policies.

He’s not the saviour of Labour or the North, but he is a good advocate and Covid is probably a blessed relief for him compared to the GM Spatial Plan fiasco.

at least the thatcher and major governments had some ideological premise to their actions, this bunch of clowns couldn’t even spell trickle-down

There is a plan here. Brexit, the internal market bill etc, are all there to strip power and centralise it, this spat with GM, and also with Khan and TFL(leaked emails), are going to be used to their advantage, all that ‘the North remembers’ stuff, this lot couldn’t give a toss. There really is only one man who is responsible for this, and it doesn’t look like he’s planning anymore trips to Barnard castle anytime soon.

When they trotted out the slogan ‘taking back control’ the idiots that voted brexit and in the 2019 GE failed to ask who the control was going to be placed in the hands of.

There is a plan here. Brexit, the internal market bill etc, are all there to strip power and centralise it, this spat with GM, and also with Khan and TFL(leaked emails), are going to be used to their advantage, all that ‘the North remembers’ stuff, this lot couldn’t give a toss. There really is only one man who is responsible for this, and it doesn’t look like he’s planning anymore trips to Barnard castle anytime soon.

If he destroys the conservative party from the inside Labour could have 20 years in power if Starmer can get a grip of the party

Gauss1777,

Edited before I get a ban.

Edit again.

You may think there was nothing ‘new’ in what I said regarding racism but the point is I said it because I’ve been on here for a decade and it was an issue that never got much light shed upon it. I think I made points and cited personal examples that many engaged with.

I was not alone, there were others on here who spoke on things and shared experiences that they hadn’t felt free to talk about before, that might be a reflection of what we thought of the STW forum in general, reluctant to speak in case we would be seen as carrying on about waycism’, or seen as taking things too seriously.

Not you of course, as you say, you’ve been ‘woke’ for ages, there was nothing you could learn from other people’s perspectives or experiences.

But you’re right in that I don’t have any political solutions that will resolve the problem, the only thing I can do is look at my own actions and speak up when I see racism or unconscious bias. You are suggesting that my input and efforts are worthless, that I needn’t of bothered.

Your argument is that we all know what racism is about so there’s no point in talking about it.

Come on guys, I and others don’t want this thread closed.

Poopscop.

No need to close the thread, I realise that it might have gone a bit off topic but these days if the issue of racism is touched upon and I think about commenting I am not going to censor myself in the way I might do with regards other topics. That’s what we’ve been doing for far too long and if I see a comment trying to dismiss my contributions to the topic than I am most definitely going to respond.

Id edit my post now of I could inkster.

It wasn’t aimed at anyone standing their ground over what they believe, I’d sure as hell would do the same, just at the direction the thread was heading in.

It’s all good matey.

Can we get back to admiring Burnham’s eyebrows now?

Racism and woke-ism are over there >>> somewhere.
Back on topic – this feels like a very significant moment in national, local and devolved politics.
johnson’s boss, cummings, has drawn the battle-lines; interesting that he has no skin in the game – it’s ideology for him; no principles, no scruples, no concerns.
The union will end; brexit will be an economic disaster; CV19 is, through johnson’s, weak leadership and indecisiveness killing people and destroying businesses.
Even johnson’s education in the classics leaves him woefully unprepared and incapable; true leaders draw on their internal resources – johnson doesn’t have any; he’s an empty shell for others to use.
A useful idiot in cummings lab rat experiments; gove owes his continued political
existence to cummings.
That makes cummings the modern equivalent to Rasputin.
Here’s hoping he has a comparable end – and really soon.
If their arses were on fire I wouldn’t piss on them to put out the flames.

All good poops,

Back on topic:

Frank, On a seasonal note, that list reads like an advent calendar full of shit and I wouldn’t disagree with a word of it. Never mind our projections for the next election, I think we’re all more worried for the immediate future. If mental health is an issue now, after a fuloighed, sun soaked lockdown I dread to think what its going to be like in January.

It could well be a significant moment in national and regional politics. It’s ironic that it was George Osborne’s idea to extend mayorships and at the moment it’s the regional mayors who seem to be holding the govt to account more than the opposition benches. I’m sure this isn’t the Northern powerhouse that Gideon was dreaming about but I bet he’s got a smirk on his face tonight.

When they trotted out the slogan ‘taking back control’ the idiots that voted brexit and in the 2019 GE failed to ask who the control was going to be placed in the hands of.

Nail on head.

When they trotted out the slogan ‘taking back control’ the idiots that voted brexit and in the 2019 GE failed to ask who the control was going to be placed in the hands of.

Nail on head.

I’m not a natural EU supporter, but it became abundantly clear in the referendum campaign that the EU was the lesser of the two evils.

Well, the airwaves are awash with no-mark ministers saying it would be “unfair” to help any region more than another as they go into Tier3… “levelling down” “fairness”. Your region will be screwed when it goes in. Burnham and the other GManchester leaders were right to try and fight against this. Kiss your local pub goodbye. Look after the self employed in your street. The closures are coming, and the support is not. Tier3 will last all winter, Hotel California style.

Labour will today force a vote demanding that the Govt delivers “a fair deal” for areas facing Tier 3 restrictions.
 
The Govt should guarantee people faced with hardship who are subject to the Job Retention Scheme extension will receive at least 80% of their previous incomes. pic.twitter.com/eW66LkNV67

— Labour Whips (@labourwhips) October 21, 2020

I’m in favour of anything that damages Johnson. The lying, corrupt, contemptuous, bluff, crass turd that he is.

However, I’m not sure Burnham’s actions do damage Johnson. Red Wall Racists (RWRs from now on) weren’t really motivated by making their local areas better for all and I strongly suspect they would be willing to have their areas poorer if they became less ‘foreigny’ as a result. Burnham may well be playing into the hands of the narrative where he is ‘on the scrounge’ to help his multicultural mates out at the expense of ‘long-suffering true locals’.

I guess time will tell, but I think many RWRs like the idea of a strongman so long as their interests are looked after. Of course, under Johnson, no one’s interests come before his own, so there will be a lot of anger in the end. But I wouldn’t bet against that anger being directed towards a more nationalistic politics.

Starmer finally growing a pair because Burnham made him look bad?

Not sure your ‘RWR’ will be happy to see the “business for sale” signs going up outside their local pub, and there’s a good chance their mates will be on the hard end of the closedown on the cheap.

No idea what you’re on about Grum… Starmer switched to making it clear the government is taking the wrong approach a while back. And has pushed back on support for businesses and workers for months now.

@dannyh – why introduce race into this discussion?

Oh, the signs have gone up outside pubs here already by the way… the measures we have been under for months now have wrecked the pub industry. Keeping people out of pubs is as good as closing pubs. The hospitality sector needs support to get through this winter, or the damage to it will mount up. Burnham and the others were right to push for more support before ongoing restrictions in GM were ramped up even further.

why introduce race into this discussion?

Because it is the main motivation behind northern areas voting for Brexit and then Tory in the 2019 GE. It is this context that Johnson will operate in and appeal to.

It is relevant even if you personally don’t want to confront it.

Also, Burnham’s response to that crook Jenrick saying he never wanted to reach agreement should be:

“Well, that £45m that Robert Jenrick illegally helped his mate Dirty Desmond to personally trouser could have plugged the gap in compensation funding for my city, so he can **** right off with his opinion”.

If Burnham, Starmer et al have decided that this is the time, they need to get properly dirty now. Look Johnson in the eye and kick him in the balls repeatedly. If they are going to do this, now is also the time to say openly that Brexit is a massive fail and is a terrible idea and all the resulting damage can be squarely blamed on the Tories.

This could be ‘the moment’.

Looks like Sheffield are next…

Because it is the main motivation behind northern areas voting for Brexit and then Tory in the 2019 GE. It is this context that Johnson will operate in and appeal to.

It is relevant even if you personally don’t want to confront it.

That’s a grand claim that you will struggle to back up, there are plenty of Tory voters in the north (I even know some) who had very different motivations. A lot is to do with the demonisation of Corbyn by the press, admittedly not helped by Corbyn himself.

A lot of people try to ascribe very simplistic reasons why people vote the way they do, truth is that a) it is much more complex than that and b) there often isn’t a main motivation, but a multitude of factors

I’d agree that a combination of Brexit / Corbyn / lack of clear direction from Labour pretty much gifted many seats in the North to the Tories. What happens at the next election may well be very different…

If Burnham, Starmer et al have decided that this is the time, they need to get properly dirty now. Look Johnson in the eye and kick him in the balls repeatedly. If they are going to do this, now is also the time to say openly that Brexit is a massive fail and is a terrible idea and all the resulting damage can be squarely blamed on the Tories.
This could be ‘the moment’.

I think ‘the moment’ passed some time ago TBH.

Using Covid to overtly leverage another Brexit debate will easily get twisted in the press and by Gove in interviews to create a negative narrative about “bitter remoaner Labour not caring about the NHS”, or words to that effect.
They’ve just tried that on Andy Burnham and it has stuck in some people’s minds already. It’s not worth the blowback now TBH…

The topic of the day really seems to have come down to something as simple as negotiating a price per-capita for any region that is put into “Tier 3”.

And it seems from the outset the government didn’t want to just set a “fair” number across the country, instead they’ve managed to turn this into a divisive process by separately agreeing a number with Liverpool and other areas and then going on to lowball GM. They then found the ensuing negotiations difficult for some reason… TBH I’d be appalled at my own local representatives if they didn’t push back when told the local economy would be shut down and the support package will be proportionately less than a nearby city with a smaller GDP…

I honestly don’t now know if the alluded to “gap” between the two parties was as narrow as the reported £5m by the end, to my mind that is now relative pocket change in the context of wider CV19 support and contract spending. I find the coverage in various press to be either horrifically partisan and/or just confused. Leaks, midnight briefings and contradictory statements don’t help. I believe AB has been pretty straight forwards with his statements, while I struggle to keep track of the government account, but that could easily be my own lefty bias…

The other thing is timescales and where the bar is set for release from Tier 3?
Anyone got any clues yet? What is Bozza’s £60m actually paying for and for how long?

Anyway this seems to sum it all up best:

My other thought is that this situation is basically a small victory over Dom and Bozza. Their goal was (as I read things) to simultaneously downplay and ignore the scientific advice for a national lockdown on the basis of them being “Freedom loving” libertarians, while also trying to appear proactive and diligent in applying local measures under their clever little 3 tier system…

It’s backfired quite badly though as you can’t go imposing your will, and be seen to stamp on a region for the sake of 5 million quid, that you’d happily bung to your chums, while also saying you “love freedom”…

What this might do is erode support amongst the “Red wall” voters, assuming their memories last until the next election and they can’t be swayed with a free pint, a spitfire flyby and Boris putting on another clown in a digger show or something…

Look out Sheffield, you’re up next!

A lot of people try to ascribe very simplistic reasons why people vote the way they do, truth is that a) it is much more complex than that and b) there often isn’t a main motivation, but a multitude of factors

There’s other threads to expand this issue on, but yes – most Brexit voters can tell me a reason why they voted that way and it wasn’t racism. It was generally because either they’d fallen for a pack of lies about what they EU did, or because they were so despondent about politics that the chance to vote for any change seemed a good idea at the time, which links to the first point.

dannyh is blinded by his own experiences growing up in the North unfortunately and that clouds/spoils every interesting contribution he makes to these threads.

Not everyone who voted for Brexit was a racist, but all the racists voted for Brexit.

If you are trying to kid yourselves that the main motivation behind ‘Leave’ wasn’t a gradually built and deliberately cultivated sense that the country ‘is not being run for us any more’ then you are wrong. To be clear, the ‘us’ referred to here is white and >3 generation british. This sense of being robbed to give to ‘less deserving’ people was what Leave was all about. The irony being that in global terms, the very people nursing this sense of grievance are in fact in the top 15% of wealth.

To bring this back to Manchester and other towns and cities, there was much mention of eid on social media in the early days of this. It will be back again soon, along with diwali.

Enforce a lockdown before eid/diwali/any other ‘foreign’ festive period and you get:

“We only had to go into lockdown now because it is nearly ‘x’ festival and they can’t be trusted”.

Enforce a lockdown just after and it is:

“They left lockdown until after ‘x’ festival because of ‘political correctness’ and now we all have to suffer because they can’t be trusted”.

Prejudice really is a wonderful reservoir to tap into politically. You can have the same people criticising other people from polar opposite standpoints in the space of two minutes. The issue at hand, of course, not being relevant when prejudices are in play.

dannyh is blinded by his own experiences growing up in the North unfortunately and that clouds/spoils every interesting contribution he makes to these threads.

I grew up in the Midlands but have lived a few years up north and a couple darn sarf. I am now back near where I started.

The prejudice you can get out in the open very quickly by having a haircut or getting a taxi or chatting at the bar in a pub in market towns the length a breadth of England is astounding. It was always there, but Leave gave it a new legitimacy. To pretend otherwise is to commit the same error that rightwingers use about political correctness – not seeing what we don’t want to see.

The creation and demonising of a ‘them’ isn’t restricted to race, though, there is also an easy win in demonising the ‘benefits cheats’ too. But the biggest and easiest prejudices to pander to are ones that exploit obvious differences in dress, culture and skin colour. That populists seek to exploit these really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

@dannyh – one of our near neighbours is, by his own admission, right wing. His comments have been along the lines of “OH, Eid is coming, there’ll be extra restrictions.”

If you are trying to kid yourselves that the main motivation behind ‘Leave’ wasn’t a gradually built and deliberately cultivated sense that the country ‘is not being run for us any more’ then you are wrong.

I’m not, but the root cause behind that… poverty, lack of social mobility, lack of opportunity, access to edcuation, poor health… you describe the end effect of that, and I don’t think labelling all those people as racist is constructive.

And all this has nothing to do with Andy Burnham.

Why the quibbling over £5million? There is no plan to get Tier3 regions back to Tier2, never mind down to Tier1. So, the funds agreed now won’t last very long, when regions are stuck with restrictions all winter… so more will be needed. They are trying to shut things down without suitable support… and hoping that if the Home Counties aren’t effected, the “country” will back their economically flawed penny pinching plan.

duplicate post.

And all this has nothing to do with Andy Burnham.

Not directly. But that is the art of insidious nudge-nudging.

If you seriously think that Johnson and Cummings won’t sink to the level of a bit of nudging and winking about eid etc to undermine Burnham with their RWR support then you haven’t been paying attention the last four and a bit years.

But even I am losing my original point now – which was that Burnham might well be playing into Johnson’s hands by being easy to portray as a ‘metropolitan liberal’ who will give the cash to the ‘less deserving’ against the ‘national interest’. Cummings will already be onto it.