General Politics Thread

[renton]

1 hour ago, MixuFixit said:

I guess that's why folk have issue with overseas aid; its primary purpose is to cultivate a generation of people in each country sympathetic to British interests. The 'aid' bit of it is a side effect.

 

 

I think side effect is a bit of a strong term, if only because you'll only cultivate those sympathies if the 'aid' bit works, but aye it's not entirely altruistic.

[welshbairn]

2 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

I suppose what I mean is, there is desperate poverty in Detroit, but the UK would never dream of making an aid payment there.

I think we should, Trump would be furious.

[D.A.F.C]

All aid is with some sort of agenda if it's coming from the government. Also it's the same government and country that caused the problems in those countries in the first place.
We pick and choose who deserves money and who doesn't.
Let's just leave them alone in the first place.

[D.A.F.C]

If I were to provide a map could you draw a circle to signify where aid should go to? I.e. all those in the circle should get help but those outwith should not.
 
We’ve established that Pakistan is too far, so that’s a start. Will this circle encompass all of the UK? Just Scotland? Just Fife? Just Dunfermline?
 
To be more serious, I understand your view, and it’s quite a common one (help your ‘own’ first), but it’s not one I agree with. People are people, and nationality or proximity to an area doesn’t matter. If someone can be helped then I’m all for it. My ‘own’ are people. The only ones who don’t deserve aid are complete arseholes, and I don’t think some women needing help with education comes under that description. I think it’s quite an insular view, and whilst it was one in past times that was much more reasonable, I think we’ve long since moved beyond it.

They could be arseholes?

[UsedToGoToCentralPark]

Government Aid - just a nice name for bribery IMO.

 

 

[Granny Danger]

Watching Sky News talking about world leaders responding to the NZ attacks and saying that in the U.K. sympathy came from ‘both sides of politics’ before cutting to May and Corbyn.

Yeah, there’s only two sides to politics; what a fucking myopic view from a major news channel.

[Baxter Parp]

https://welfareweekly.com/universal-credit-causing-hardship-and-emotional-distress-says-mental-health-charity/

Universal Credit ‘causing hardship and emotional distress’, says mental health charity

Not really new news but worth remembering.

[SandyCromarty]

On 3/14/2019 at 20:16, NotThePars said:

 

 

Nearly every reply to this is a unionist saying we shouldn’t give money to a country that would rather spend money on nuclear weapons than public services.

 

Having worked in Pakistan's back country I know at first hand how poor the people are, at times it's almost being back in biblical times when you see the tents with the one goat pegged outside and the kids running around in rags, but truth be told they are totally unaware of the poverty they are living with much as we were less than a couple of hundred years ago in rural Scotland.

I honestly do not think much of the money will go to female education given the amount of corruption I encountered 

[Bairnardo]

Watching Sky News talking about world leaders responding to the NZ attacks and saying that in the U.K. sympathy came from ‘both sides of politics’ before cutting to May and Corbyn.
Yeah, there’s only two sides to politics; what a fucking myopic view from a major news channel.

Its what the media and politicians themselves have turned it into. The utterly tribal, partisan America model.

This might be the right thread for such a discussion that I have alluded to on here before.... But the creeping instances of blatant racism, the change in the way people are behaving at football recently various other unsavoury creeping changes in society I personally think are heavily fuelled by the way in which politics has become so openly agressive and confrontational recently.

Whether people are into politics or not everyone is exposed to some extent to their rhetoric and shit rolls downhill.

Think its worth a discussion about the extent to which society is reflecting the antics of our elected representatives.

Am I being dramatic?

[welshbairn]

3 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

Its what the media and politicians themselves have turned it into. The utterly tribal, partisan America model.

This might be the right thread for such a discussion that I have alluded to on here before.... But the creeping instances of blatant racism, the change in the way people are behaving at football recently various other unsavoury creeping changes in society I personally think are heavily fuelled by the way in which politics has become so openly agressive and confrontational recently.

Whether people are into politics or not everyone is exposed to some extent to their rhetoric and shit rolls downhill.

Think its worth a discussion about the extent to which society is reflecting the antics of our elected representatives.

Am I being dramatic?

Anonymous or self appointed internet pundits have taken over the discourse imo, and politicians and journos are forced to respond and amplify it. Maybe the web wasn't such a good idea after all.

[Bairnardo]

I think it's the other way. I think society has always held a large number of people with racist or whatever views, but the consequences of saying that stuff out loud don't act as a deterrent anymore. So when the racist that kept his mouth shut in 2005 sees Boris Johnson saying openly racist things on the telly in 2018, they take it as meaning if he can say that with no repercussions, so can anyone.
 
Shame needs to mean something again.
 

Yeah thats kinda what I was meaning. Idiots in the public have always been there but they are feeling empowered by the rhetoric coming from above

[Benjamin_Nevis]

Social media shoulders a lot of the blame imo and the likes of Facebook, Twitter and youTube are far too slow to act on blatant racism, misogyny and bigotry.

FB and Twitter allowed that little c**t Yaxley-Lennon to spread his bile, unchecked for several years before eventually having the cojones to ban him. These fuckers, together with the likes of  KAtie Hopkins and Anne Coulter and Tomi Lahren in the USA have almost made far-right ideals fashionable to young people. The media classing these people as "Conservative commentators" is unhelpful. They're far-right, racist vermin and should be treated as such. 

[Malcolm Malcolm]

On 15/03/2019 at 18:16, Granny Danger said:

Watching Sky News talking about world leaders responding to the NZ attacks and saying that in the U.K. sympathy came from ‘both sides of politics’ before cutting to May and Corbyn.

Yeah, there’s only two sides to politics; what a fucking myopic view from a major news channel.

Sky News is dreadful

[Bully Wee Villa]

On 15/03/2019 at 14:03, D.A.F.C said:

All aid is with some sort of agenda if it's coming from the government. Also it's the same government and country that caused the problems in those countries in the first place.
We pick and choose who deserves money and who doesn't.
Let's just leave them alone in the first place.

A brilliant idea. The only tiny problem that I can see is that we've yet to invent time travel. 

[Sooky]

This is so embarrassing.

“I should, therefore, be grateful if you would withdraw your nomination publicly”

[Granny Danger]

Names getting kicked about for PM if May goes; apparently Hunt is high on the list.  How is that humanly possible? 

[Jeff Venom]

Names getting kicked about for PM if May goes; apparently Hunt is high on the list.  How is that humanly possible? 

Hunt is as Tory as Tory gets.

[I'm Brian]

Every time I hear his name, I am reminded of this

 

I wonder how many were genuinely mistakes?

 

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

21 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

Names getting kicked about for PM if May goes; apparently Hunt is high on the list.  How is that humanly possible? 

It's him, Boris, Gove or JRM

That's how.

[welshbairn]

31 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

It's him, Boris, Gove or JRM

That's how.

He's been strategically veering towards the ERG recently to keep the Constituency members happy, but he's not as awful as Boris for the MPs. Rudd hasn't a chance. I think it will be him versus Raab when it goes to the members, and Hunt will win because he's not a vacuous fool, whatever you might think of him. At least he's doing better than Boris as Foreign Secretary, despite forgetting what country his wife is from.