Bad actors stoking hate again (Southport Stabbings)

Yeah, that’s what I meant. Lots of people seem to think they are hidden, as they are arranging all their meet-ups on Telegram. But anybody can join those groups, nobody checks who you are.

Ah okay, my mistake then.

 If anything, I’d say Twitter etc are in fact more open in terms of a spectrum of opinions and views.

Maybe at an absolute scale but in terms of what views you are served you could be forgiven you either live in an echo chamber or are the sole voice of reason. That’s the dangerous bit, you don’t get any feel for how in touch with the rest of the world you are and far too much stuff is designed just to rile you up.

So no, once again, forums are nothing like Twitter/Meta.

But Tony Blair outlawed such mushrooms back around 1996 on the pretext that kids might take them.

Was it not around 2006? Or was that just when they were made class A? Certainly wasn’t TB in 1996 anyway, he wasnt PM until 1997.

Robert Jenrick being made to squirm by the intellectual powerhouse that is Good Morning Britain over a poll that says a chunk of the population reckon the last Tory government bears some responsibility for the riots we’ve seen this last week.

Getting called out when he tries to use the “honest debate about migration” excuse.

He couldn’t talk his way out of a wet paper bag. Even if you held it open for him.

Preventing this has far more to do with tacking poverty and lack of opportunity in parts of the country than tinkering with social media etc.

You’re not wrong. It absolutely requires government level economic intervention, but I’m very much of the mind that the loss of the labour movement educating people at the grass roots level has also had a detrimental impact on how nuanced people’s ability to critically analyse cause and effect on their circumstances and those of their community. Growing up in the 60s, I spent a lot of Sundays listening to my grandfather and his mates talk politics with a level of sophistication that I rarely  encounter today.
It was also a useful learning experience being allowed to participate, but having my arse ruthlessly handed to me by people with a much better grasp of their subject ?

Preventing this has far more to do with tacking poverty and lack of opportunity in parts of the country than tinkering with social media etc. imo.

Social media is the short term fix, the poverty and lack of opportunity are the longer term solution. Will take two generations. Invest in education, housing, social support now, save on crime, benefits, social services in 20-30 years time.

The vision I wanted to hear offered at the last election. Maybe these consequences of inaction might make it happen, I’m not confident though.

That doesn’t seem particularly likely.

I am curious as to what they meant by that. Are they lined up on the football pitch with riot shields and batons? Sounds far more fun than the cross country run we had to do.

Why are the police not using water cannons, pepper spray, tear gas and other riot controlling methods? This is ongoing and out of control criminal activity, that has many many people terrified in those towns/cities,  they seem to be using traditional riot control methods  in Northern Ireland. Seems here’s no reasoning with the pheasant uprising, so why let it just rumble on.

“I’ve seen Glasgow quoted at 54 and 56 but also seen those figures contested so I assumed  monkeyc is from Glasgow.”

Possilpark is the lowest ranked place in Scotland for health with a life expectancy of 66.2 years (from understanding Glasgow).

The same website also gives a “Healthy Life Expectancy” of 56 years for Glasgow City (which is still appalling even if its not actual life expectancy). Guessing the two measures have been mixed up.

****, 56, I’m still expecting to be climbing and running marathon distances in the highlands at 56.

Heard last night that lots of prison places were rapidly filling up, the Bibby Stockholm is empty. Might be some great ironing.

Heard last night that lots of prison places were rapidly filling up, the Bibby Stockholm is empty. Might be some great ironing.

That really would be fantastic.

The UK’s shit-filled rivers would make a great moat to prevent/hinder escapees.

Apparently the Calton 54 life expectancy was from a very tightly drawn boundary with a population of 2500, too small statistically and containing a couple of hostels with residents in high risk groups.

https://www.gcph.co.uk/latest/news-blogs/570-life-expectancy-in-calton-no-longer-54

Possilpark is the lowest ranked place in Scotland for health with a life expectancy of 66.2 years

In addition to which figure is right people tend to get a bit confused about life expectancy anyway.  Victorians didn’t all die young – just so many died in infancy that the average age was skewed down. Those who survived childhood on average lived good long lives. Same is true today but less extreme. A deprived area will have more than it’s fair share of death by overdose, in cars, undiagnosed health issues and crime related. But if you survive all that and get out of your 20s the difference is significantly reduced between areas. Still a problem obviously but not as stark as on first impression.

Not area specific but age specific. A 52 year old man in the UK has a life expectancy of 84. If you survive another 20 years without dying in a car crash or getting cancer etc, at 72 your life expectancy is 86.  https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07

Means, modes and medians. The ‘average’ person in the UK has less than 2 legs

I am doing the Big Ride for Palestine this coming Saturday. It has been in the planning for a very long time and money raised will go to provide medical aid for Palestine. This morning I received the text below in an email. If it doesn’t go ahead I will be gutted. I am not comfortable with leaving it to the police to decide whether it should go ahead, by far the easiest thing for them is to say cancel, they won’t be bothered about Palestine. The problem for the organisers is that it is one thing to take a risk on behalf of yourself and something quite different taking on behalf of other people.

The text:

As you will probably know there has been a huge growth in extreme right-wing attacks over the last week or so in communities across the country, aimed at immigrants, asylum seekers and people of colour. We join others in expressing our full concern for, and solidarity with, all the communities feeling beleaguered by these terrible events.

In addition to the riots, we have noticed on other rides across the country that there has been an increase in hostile response to riders in a way we have not experienced before, (though all were completed successfully).

As organisers of the Big Ride we are concerned first and foremost with the safety of our riders. We are having discussions with the police and other partner organisations about the risks to the ride and the riders. At this stage we are planning to continue with the rides, but this may change if the situation in London deteriorates and the police advise very strongly that we should cancel the rides this weekend. We will let you know by Friday morning at the latest. We are really hoping we can go ahead with the rides but we wanted you to be aware that there may be some risk in taking part in the ride.

We will understand if you decide not to join the ride this year, although we hope you will

I am curious as to what they meant by that. Are they lined up on the football pitch with riot shields and batons? Sounds far more fun than the cross country run we had to do.

I think they mean the school is a ‘holding operation’ rather than the school is “holding lessons on how to do crowd control”. They aren’t planning or expecting to deliver a high quality education and have the pupils all leave with 5+ GCSEs at C and above.  Instead they’re just keeping the kids from killing themselves or the teachers aka ‘crowd control’.

Whoops I’ve been kicked out of another Facebook group.

This time they were encouraging people to go to Plymouth and hold a vigil alongside Stop the boats and anti immigration ‘protest’ not sure they liked me calling them a ghoul.

I have a few people on Friendface who I went to school with who weren’t exactly the sharpest tools in the box. It lets me know what’s going on outside my own Guardianista echo chamber.

A lot of them regularly have St George’s crosses as their profile pictures and other such nationalist gubbins and all were obviously Brexit enthusiasts. They were anti-vaxers during covid and a couple now just post mad conspiracy theory nonsense

Since last week everything seems to have amped up quite considerably and now it’s just the kind of outright unashamed racism that I thought we’d seen the back of. We seem to be heading back to the 1970’s and the National Front in a lot of peoples minds

Hang on, back up a minute. Was there someone back there suggesting that the reason behind the rioting is a lack of shrooms?

the pheasant uprising

If any group would have a problem with the aristocracy, it’s them ;-)

the pheasant uprising

Fair game

What is the deal with this list of towns/cities. Seems like a very large number of places to organise “action” simultaneously. How credible is it? A city near me features… is it all going to kick off later?!

@ossify, I think so, and that wasn’t even the most convoluted part of the post.

The ‘average’ person in the UK has less than 2 legs

Interestingly (or not), there is no “average” person due to correlations.

With regards to poverty, there was a shocking statistic regarding University applications this week; you are at least four times more likely to go to University if you live in Wimbledon (77%), compared with Barrow and Furness (17%). Students in London are no more or less intelligent than those elsewhere. That’s not how genetics in large populations works.

I have a question that is likely to get me into a whole world of hurt on here, but I really need it answered…

A meme site I visit has a number of videos claiming to show gangs of armed Muslims including one where it’s claimed that a community support officer is telling them to hide the weapons in a Mosque. Are these fakes or is this really happening?

I know the simple answer is to stop visiting the site, but immersing myself in the echo chamber doesn’t educate me.

Probably taken wildly out of context, or out of date, or in a different country, or just fake, etc etc…

Is anyone here saying there are no Muslims or [insert other forriners here] who are wrong’uns? No.

Is anyone here saying they are representative of all Muslims? No.

Maybe there are some videos of tooled up Muslims looking for trouble, who knows. This is no reason for… well, anything, really, except action against those individuals.

I can show you a lot more videos of white British folk causing trouble!

As for the police officer, already explained, see Scapegoats post on page 22 of this thread.

@doomanic, even if some of those pictures turned out to be true, they have a right to self defense if a gang of angry racist thugs (also with weapons) is planning to attack them at their place of worship, and the police can’t control the situation.

A few people on this thread have been warning about how much this could escalate if the rioters start attacking places with large populations of young non-white men.

Apparently the silent majority are fed up of champagne socialists?

This on Facebook from a well off elderly relative living in a leafy bit of Hampshire, when I asked what the sudden right wing posts were about.

I thought we’d just had an election?

They seem quite noisy and even have a comedy news channel.

There’s a lot of rumours that there will be a far-right protest in Sheffield this afternoon, and because of this a number of events are being cancelled, and some businesses closing for the afternoon.

Could this just be a rumour that results in disruption, i.e. the protests don’t happen, but the impact on the city is big, causes fear and uncertainty about other events?

Obviously no protest taking place would be great, but putting around false rumours could be a clever twist to their tactics.

It does good to remind yourself occasionally that the average reading age in the UK is that of a nine year old. Articles in The Guardian are generally pitched at about fourteen and The Sun about eight

Huge swathes of the population that are not literate enough to critically analysis the information that they’re given or exposed to. If you want an answer to the likes of the Farages or Robinsons of the world it is education.

Obviously no protest taking place would be great, but putting around false rumours could be a clever twist to their tactics.

I’m not sure they’re that clever.

If you want an answer to the likes of the Farages or Robinsons of the world it is education

Agree, might take a while though and you know, we haven’t got enough money to do anything about it.

If you want an answer to the likes of the Farages or Robinsons of the world it is education.

I think this is the most important and insightful thing said on this thread so far.

Education is the key to combatting ignorance which leads to fear and hatred. That’s obvious. Yet education in the UK has been systematically eroded and degraded for decades now. There is virtually no provision left for local adult education, certainly nothing that is free to access for those from economically deprived circumstances. And whilst some might argue that all kids get primary and secondary education, the reality is that there is massive disparity between areas and regions, even within the same boroughs. A high performing school in a wealthier area is going to be far more successful at churning out good students than a poor school in a poor area. Statistics prove this fact. There will be a direct correlation in the areas most affected by rioting to poor educational attainment and resources. The semi-privatisation of secondary schools via the ‘academy’ system sees poorer areas neglected yet further. Add in Ofsted and the picture gets even worse. What is really needed, is a Uk-wide program of weighted resource allocation, with poorer areas getting proportionally more per pupil, to address the imbalance, until we are at a point where there is genuine equality of education and opportunity across the board. I can’t see that happening, sadly.

Blair’s cry of ‘Education Education Education’ simply heralded the monetising of the university system, which has impacted on those from poorer backgrounds.

This in turn has impacted on what courses people choose; with huge debts facing them, students are choosing paths with greater economic benefits promised at the end. So we are now seeing a sharp decline in fields such as Arts, Languages and Philosophy. All of which are as important to society as any other. We need teachers, artists, thinkers as much as we need engineers and scientists.

If you want an answer to the likes of the Farages or Robinsons of the world it is education.

.. and travel, beyond package holiday destinations that have Irish bars and offers on pitchers.

We need teachers, artists, thinkers as much as we need engineers and scientists.

100%. The way the Tories treated culture and the arts was standard fascist policy.

There’s a lot of rumours that there will be a far-right protest in Sheffield this afternoon, and because of this a number of events are being cancelled, and some businesses closing for the afternoon.

Could this just be a rumour that results in disruption, i.e. the protests don’t happen, but the impact on the city is big, causes fear and uncertainty about other events?

Obviously no protest taking place would be great, but putting around false rumours could be a clever twist to their tactics.

There’s definitely something going on. I’ve heard lots of chatter through the official security channels at work and from mates who are planning to be part of the resistance. I’ve got a list of possible times and locations and we’ve seen people in masks scouting around on bikes at 1-2am in places which are not usual scrote hotspots.

We’ve got lots of premises closed and people working from home. I’m stuck in the office so I can’t tell you what’s actually happening.

including one where it’s claimed that a community support officer is telling them to hide the weapons in a Mosque.

I heard that it was a senior police officer. And what he was actually saying was basically “if you are thinking of going on a counter demonstration tooled up don’t. So if you have any weapons on you leave them at the mosque before setting off on your counter demo”

Karma

#lifecomesatyouquickly #effaboutandfindout

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-councillors-wife-arrested-over-33410117

I’m not sure they’re that clever.

But the folk manipulating them are.

And us.

Remember it goes both ways, why have one rabble when you can have two with only marginally more effort?

Divide and conquer. As long as you only look at it through as lens of them and us then it’s easy to other them the way they do. Scummy shits for sure and acting from completely different motivations but still “us”. That these people have ended up where they are is a failing on everyone.

If you want an answer to the likes of the Farages or Robinsons of the world it is education.

Yes. But what do you do if the scrotes don’t turn up because they’re 3rd/4th generation scrotes and none of their forebears never went to school either?