If you asked the man on the street whether he thinks we should have a “national conversation about the future of money”, he would probably say something like: “Yes, we need to talk about how we can have more of it.”
The Bank of England, however, has a different discussion in mind. It seems to be growing ever fonder of the idea that we should have this ‘national conversation’. But what it wants to talk about is not increasing wealth; it is “the future of payments” (code for introducing a Central Bank Digital Currency or CBDC, the ‘digital pound’). The Bank of England, you see, lives in a rather different country to the rest of us – one in which the pressing economic problems we face are not to do with inflation, interest rates, quantitative easing or overleveraging, but to do with how we pay for things. In the version of Britain which it inhabits, we have the national bandwidth to devote major resources to the designing of a “future payments ecosystem” so that the U.K. can “remain at the forefront of payments technology”, and we also need to do this as a matter of urgency.
This is the conclusion of a recent paper published by the Bank, along with HM Treasury, responding to some 50,000 communications it received after putting out a consultation document on the ‘digital pound’ in February last year. The words “national conversation” appear in it 13 times. We are left in no doubt that this “conversation” is taking place. And the “conversation” mostly seems to be happening with regard to two themes. The first is how we can “help deliver the next generation of world-class retail payments” (to repeat: this is code for introducing a digital pound). And the second is risk: the word “risk” appears 37 times in the document, and refers typically to the “risk” that money will cease to be uniform if unregulated digital currencies take off – although, paradoxically, “risks to competition” also seems to be a topic of great import within this “national conversation” that we are apparently all having.
More on risk in a moment. Let’s deal first with the ‘need’ for this much-vaunted national conversation in respect of “world-class retail payments”.
Indulge me for a moment while I tell you a little story. I used to work in an office in which we all had printers next to our desks. We liked this; our jobs involved doing an awful lot of reading, and reading off a screen is ineffective, headache-inducing and vision-destroying. At a certain point, though, we were all of a sudden told by The Powers That Be that we were going to have to have a ‘conversation’ about printing in the building, because it was jolly expensive and bad for the environment. Sure enough, a few months later, an Excel spreadsheet was circulated by email, in which we could write down our opinions about the matter. Around 95% of us said something to the effect of: we like things the way they are, it helps us do our jobs properly. A few weeks after that, however – to absolutely nobody’s surprise – we were informed that, sure enough, we were shortly going to switch to a system of centralised printing whereby we would lose all of our personal printers, and a few large ones would be installed at various locations in the building. And this would be good for us because the new printers would be whizzo and fab and have all kinds of wonderful bells and whistles. Oh, and it would be good for the environment. Oh, and cheaper.
I often think about this incident when I hear people in positions of authority and decision-making power using words like ‘conversation’ and ‘consultation’. It raises the interesting question as to which is more insulting: to not be consulted about a matter that affects you at all, or to be consulted in such a way that it is made plainly evident your views do not matter. I’ll leave that question to the philosophers. The important point is that whatever is the outcome of this ‘national conversation’ we’re having, it’s going to mean the digital pound will be introduced. Why are they even pretending?
The illustrative thing about the office printer story, though, is that in the end, although the decision was dressed up as being something that would be good for us, the employees (“You’ll be able to print in A3! You’ll be able to make colour posters!” etc.) and good for ‘the planet’, the real reason it was being made was purely to do with the bottom line. It would be cheaper to run, and therefore good for the employer. And, of course, exactly the same kind of a trick is being played by the Bank of England with respect to the digital pound. It is going to be introduced not because the public are clamouring for a “world-class retail payments” system and insisting that the country “remain at the forefront of payments technology”; they aren’t. (Ironically the only times I can remember experiencing a problem making a retail payment in the past five years and felt the system not to be ‘world-class’ have been to do with outlets refusing to accept cash.) It is going to be done because it suits the bank’s needs – not to mention those of the Treasury – and that is really that.
This takes us to what the whole thing is really all about: the second theme which I mentioned, which is this business about risk. The bank is very worried about risk, you see. But you have to be prepared to read between the lines on this. There are the risks which it says it is worried about. And then there are the risks it is really concerned with. These are not the same.
Let’s begin with the risks which the bank talks about. These fall into two categories, as I mentioned earlier. The first is the risk to the ‘“uniformity” or “singleness” of money’; the second is the risk to “competition in payments”.
The risk to uniformity first, then. The worry here is simply stated: people are using cryptocurrencies more and more. And there is some likelihood that Big Tech firms like Facebook, Google, Amazon etc. (not to mention smaller operators, like gaming platforms) will at some point issue successful digital currencies for use in online marketplaces, and that these will be usable only behind so-called ‘walled gardens’. The result might be that the way in which we pay for things could become fragmented. At the moment, it is more or less the case that all payments in the economy take place in pounds sterling (whether in the form of commercial bank money or cash). But the Bank of England envisages a world in which this can no longer be said to be true.
In the Bank’s view of things, this would be bad (‘risky’) because it would somehow be destabilising. It would threaten the status of the pound as an ‘anchor’ and undermine trust. I don’t believe for a moment that this is anything to do with the ‘walled gardens’ issue; the idea that firms issuing digital currencies would want to make it difficult to convert them into pounds, or each other, is extremely unlikely for the simple reason that consumers would hate it. The real issue is crypto. And the plan here is stated pretty openly:
[T]he Bank and HM Treasury consider that a digital pound is likely to be needed in the future to safeguard the U.K. economy against risks to uniformity… as a complement to regulation.
Blink and you might miss it, but it’s there, as plain as day: the use of private digital currencies is going to be regulated to within an inch of its life, and the digital pound is the alternative we will be pushed towards. And this is simply because the Bank and HM Treasury hate cryptocurrencies and want to squish them, for reasons that one doesn’t have to be Friedrich Hayek to understand. The thinking has nothing whatsoever to do with the benefits of a digital pound, in other words. It is all about protecting against the downside of increased adoption of private currencies, which threatens ‘stability’ simply because it will make life more difficult for the bank and the Treasury. There is not much more to it than that.
The second category of risk which the bank is worried about is, as we have seen, the “risk to competition”. Here, the reasoning is even more tendentious – indeed, self-contradictory. The worry, at face value, is that privately issued digital money might, due to network effects and economies of scale, lead to “the payments landscape being dominated by a small number of firms”. And this would be bad because it would be anti-competitive and harm consumer choice. So there needs to be a digital pound so as to keep options open.
Why competition and consumer choice are good within this context but bad within the context of ‘uniformity’ of money is not discussed. It doesn’t really seem like a circle that can be squared, and the two sets of arguments sit in odd juxtaposition, the former appearing literally in the next paragraph to the latter in the text (on p16). I suppose if somebody representing the bank or the Treasury were here, they would say something like: “Competition is good in terms of payment technology, but bad in terms of currency, because the latter is inherently more destabilising.” In other words, having network effects and economies of scale is great when it’s a matter of something that is quintessentially within the remit of the bank, because that builds trust and stability, but those same phenomena are anti-competitive when they relate to things being done by firms. Does this distinction make sense? Best not think about it too hard.
In any event, the bank’s own documentation here paints it into a corner. On the one hand, it is keen to trumpet the introduction of the digital pound’s potential to stimulate innovation in the form of smart contracts, atomic swaps and so on. But on the other hand, innovation in the form of private currencies and cryptocurrencies is portrayed relentless as a risk to stability – despite being perfectly compatible (as indeed is humble commercial bank money) with any of the use cases which the bank itself offers as examples of future innovation. This suggest that this risk is in fact not all it is cracked up to be. But it also draws our attention to the risk which is really at the forefront of the bank’s mind, but which is largely unspoken: that it will lose its monopoly power over monetary policy levers in the U.K.
This is the real problem that it has to grapple with. And, it is important to emphasise, it is not really a problem for us, the users of money, but rather the bank itself and its status in the U.K.’s framework of governance. This will take us back to a familiar theme of my posts, of course: political reason, of which the bank’s consultation response provides a classic example. A governing framework must always and everywhere justify its ongoing existence to the governed, because without such a justification, it will lose whatever legitimacy it has. In the Bank of England’s case, this means giving us the willies about the terrible consequences that will follow if it is no longer in charge of the money supply. But at the root of this is the risk to its own status (and, needless to say, that of the people who work there) that would follow from a more fragmented monetary landscape in which the pound is just one of many options as a medium of exchange – not whatever risks might be associated with the population having the choice to use private currencies.
The grim irony here, of course, is that while the bank likes to present itself as the guarantor of a risk-free monetary environment, the reality is that we, the people, have much to fear from it. You can all do the basic maths: if inflation is running at 10% for a year, that means that the value of our assets has declined by a tenth (all else being equal) in 12 months. Our recent bout of inflation almost got that high, and has still not abated. A big share of the blame for that has to be taken by the Bank of England – acting in cahoots with the Treasury – which for much of 2021-22 was insisting that inflation would be “transitory” and that the best thing for ordinary people to do was to not ask for pay rises. To be told by the selfsame Bank of England that it would be a dreadful “risk” if its grip over monetary policy was loosened is, in light of all this, more than a little galling. One might indeed be forgiven for asking where the real risk, when it comes to monetary matters, lies.
And one might also be forgiven for speculating about other sources of potential risk associated with the introduction of the digital pound. Of these there are four (though you may be able to think of others):
- The risk to civil liberties associated with the public being nudged, cajoled or coerced into using a digital currency which is not anonymous, and access to which is controlled by intermediaries (PIPs) which are regulated by delegated legislation issued by Government ministers.
- The risk of cyberattack, which could cause a collapse in the monetary system if the digital pound were widely adopted.
- The risk of system/software problems, made much more acute by the fact that the digital pound would essentially in itself constitute a ‘single point of failure’ for the monetary system if widely adopted.
- The risk of sheer mismanagement or incompetence somewhere resulting in a design flaw or operating failure.
These risks in themselves, to my eye, clearly outweigh any risk associated with failing to issue a digital currency at the policy level. In many respects this is a story as old as the hills, of course: too much centralisation of power is always a bad idea, in the same way that one should not carry all of one’s eggs around in one basket. We have never been in the position in which we now find ourselves, where centralised control over all transactions taking place in the economy is so tantalisingly within reach of central banks; the risk of all of our eggs being smashed is therefore growing practically by the day. If a genuine ‘national conversation’ was taking place (and if one of the major political parties were to take up the cause of scepticism) we could perhaps express our reservations about this; as it stands, intolerably, the best we can hope for is that common sense will at some point prevail.
At the personal level, though, there are a few things we can do. The presence of the risks I mentioned clearly reinforces the case for what Nassim Taleb calls “convexity”, meaning availing oneself of options which have little downside but a big potential upside. In this case, having some amount of physical cash (as well as physical assets such as land, gold etc.) somewhere on hand is a no-brainer, because if and when a digital pound is introduced, and if and when there is a catastrophic failure, you will not only then be yourself robust to the consequences; you will also be able to clean up in the aftermath (assuming the result is not complete financial, and societal, collapse, in which case we’re all screwed anyway). This is an important idea to bear in mind for when the “national conversation” comes to an end and we are finally told what is going to happen to “the future of money”: sometimes the old-fashioned way of doing things has much to recommend it.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. He is the author of the News From Uncibal Substack where this article first appeared.
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And the anti protest regulations get made progressively tighter. Pretty certain, some people predicted this. Who would be a policeman today?
Of course they should be banned. Be like Germany ( new rules ) and Singapore. Or do people want to live in a society where dressing up as a terrorist and maximizing your right to genocidal free speech is to be tolerated and become the new norm? Let’s take a poll within the Jewish community shall we? Oops, forgot…their feelings and basic right to feel safe in their daily lives are completely irrelevant these days apparently.
Can I ask, apart from a few hurt feeling and some people feeling intimidated for a bit, what exactly happened on the weekend that was so terrible?
Did our society collapse? No.
Did people die? No
If what we expect is to have a society in which nothing unpleasant ever goes on, and nothing that feels like things getting a bit out of control momentarily is allowed, then we can prepare ourselves for the most oppressive of tyrannies.
FFS, we are becoming so bloody soft.
No, only hundreds of masked members of an Islamic death cult who wholeheartedly support beheading, raping, torture and mass murder and whose ultimate dream is the complete annihilation of all Jews. On a day mainly commemorating the sacrifice of those who fought a sadistic Austrian who had that exact same dream but was around 6 million Jews more successful. Nothing to worry about though.
But that doesn’t mean I support more protest laws. I think this ‘light touch’ policing is a ruse to nudge them in by stealth.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-blm-and-the-remembrance-day-protests-had-in-common/
No, only hundreds of masked members of an Islamic death cult who wholeheartedly support beheading, raping, torture and mass murder and whose ultimate dream is the complete annihilation of all Jews.
Apart from the intentional misrepresentation – a desire to eliminate the state of Israel and drive the jews out of Palestine in order to free it is something very much different from complete annihilation of all Jews – what precisely happened? People wearing clothes marching in the streets and chanting slogans, when neutrally worded. They’re also marching in Reading and I consider them pretty annoying. But no amount of shouting in English pedestrian zones is going to have any material effect on the military situation in the middle east, where Israel is the Goliath armed to the teeth and in no risk whatsever save occasional outbursts of so-called terrorism, something that’s periodically happening all over the so-called West.
Comparing this disorganized rabble of losers with something even remotely resembling disciplined bodies of troops capable of directed violent action – like what the Nazis used to employ for street marches – is completely off base. These guys are Arabs. And your government allowed them to immigrate. Unsurprisingly, this means they’re now here with all of their habits and customs.
I’m not remotely defending our government or any of our mainstream politicians. They’re the biggest puppet shit-show in political history.
The indisputable fact remains though that if Hamas put down their weapons and started spending their billions in Arab aid money on their people instead, there would be peace.
If Israel put down their weapons they would be annihilated. From the river to the sea.
If the rules or laws are not applied evenhandedly none of this matters. And we know for a fact that ethnic minority populations are handled with kid gloves because “racism”.
It will be used against us in the end, that is why I’m an absolutist when it comes to free speech.
Excellent news. There needs to be a boundary. Peaceful protest is fine, but rioting and incitement masquerading as peaceful is not ok. Too many protests that claim to be peaceful but are actually intended to be entirely aggravating. Looking at you, JSO.
There was a time when we had violent miners strikes, a very raucous poll tax protest.
And no one thought for a minute people should be muzzled.
We’re losing our way because we’re a bit afraid of a few muslims.
Hardly a few – multiplying like rabbits and effectively given a free pass when it comes to British law, policing and “justice.”
“a few” ???? ——Wait till it becomes 15% then 25% then 48% and your daughter will have to have extra layers of cloth to go into the street. ——Miners striking and Poll Tax protests were British people complaining about British Policies in Britain. —-What we have now is the importing of all manner of sectarian hate and clutter and turning the country into a middle east battle ground.
More protest laws won’t change that. Other things will.
Just stop for a moment to think what the bargain is.
Extra laws will get you, maybe, once in a blue moon a protest you find incredibly distasteful and threatening will not be allowed.
What it costs you is new laws and powers for the police, FOR EVER, because once they get the powers they never give them up, to put limits on protests that one day you might agree with and want to take part in.
What a great bargain…
Britain is broken and no laws or bans will fix it now! Last out, switch off the lights
If Labour win the next election and implement their insane green energy policies the lights will go out long before everyone leaves.
🤣🤣so true
Exactly.
It’s the nomalisation of banning things and a large state that is worrying. What happened to principles.
They don’t want to ban protests. They want to ban breaking the law which is what support or approval of terrorist groups are. ——We don’t need new laws we just need to enforce existing ones. —–Equally.
Just wait until there are situations where a peaceful protest is entirely ineffective. I’m no fan of violence in any shape or form but if the authorities are coming to jab me or my loved ones against my will, if they intend to cause me to lose my freedoms and rights, segregate me and cause me to suffer then it’s a whole different ball game. If on the other hand it is between groups of human beings, being cynically divided along spurious claims by both sides of being in the right, then I agree.
Common sense 👏
They said that about Lockdown protestors when Police intentionally Kettled them and the media egging them on calling them “far right”….Sound familiar since yesterday?
300.000 of the Jihadis in London screaming hate and Jihad and the useless Plod do nothing and blame the laws….flock off. They had no trouble clubbing, beating, terrorising and arresting LD protestors. The law was pretty clear then.
Muslims. Yeah say it again. Not Hamas or the fake Palestinians. They are MOSLEMS. MOSLEMS. MOSLEMS. JIHAD. JIHAD. AND MORE JIHAD. By 2040 most major UK urban centres will be Moslemified. The Jihad centres called mosques being built every month. Well done multi kulti self hating anti-English racists. But please do get your booster morons. Scariant season coming.
The mistake isn’t shutting muslims up. The mistake is beating up lockdown protestors.
Asking for stricter protest laws is cutting your nose off to spite your face.
The mistake was letting them in, in the first place!
Spot on!
Seconded.
Welcomed-in by successive governments that have brought us other divisive narratives ably supported by the mainstream media yet the government is not overwhelmingly Islamic. It could be a means to an end but who’s to say the end is an Islamic one?
When talking of Muslims, are we supposed to envisage someone who looks like an Arab or is it more varied and includes, for example, Indonesians? Are we also supposed to think Islam is a single homogenous entity with no persecution of groups due to variations in practice?
Or should we just be concerned with a subset of extremists like the ones Western governments use as assets when it suits their purpose?
As someone said on the Radio….Lockdown protestors didn’t have the back of the MSM or MPs. apart from Chope or Swaine.
The left would call you an Islamophobe. But the alternative is Islamification.
Ha, there’s evidently a fair few of them on here as well. Once again, throwing the illogical and fascist pretend word, ”Islamophobe” at people you disagree with puts you on a par with those who eagerly hurl the ridiculous term, ”anti-vaxxer” around. Basically you sound like a right ignorant tit and you demonstrate how unworthy and incapable you are of intelligent and reasoned debate.
Wholly in agreement Mogs.
Battle lines are being drawn between the British people which is incredibly sad but we either end the islamification of our country or accept a brutal future for the generations coming through. And the yoof had better wake up and realise they have a fight on their hands.
Mogs, I think you might have misunderstood Varmint.
Just making general comment about the ridiculous term/slur that’s banded about nowadays, not just by Leftists, but I’ve seen it used by posters on here who are completely inept when it comes to intelligent debate, therefore they must resort to ad hominem and infantile name-calling. Cue my favourite Watts quote again. 🙂
I agree with Varmint’s post though.
Al Murry calls them ‘muslamics’ 😆
LOL, well that’s a new addition to my vocabulary! 😉
My apologies 😕
No need. 🙂
Basically if you disagree with the Progessive Left you are to be name called. Which only reveals how weak all their arguments are
Let’s remember that Islam is a religion not a race! to not agree with someone else’s beliefs is not racism, although, some do try to push it that way!
Islam is NOT just a religion. ————-It is a political system as well. In western religions we have a separation of Church and state. Not so with Islam.
If you look at the pictures of the march were white and therefore probably not Muslim
The problem isn’t just Muslims it’s some British people who are blind to what’s happening, and even worse side with the enemy to appear virtuous.
The irony is not lost on me that these idiots are marching in opposition to a supposed ‘genocide’ but are showing support to a terrorist organization/ideology which is extremely vocal about genocide being their actual aim and what seems to be their reason for getting up in the morning. I’m just full of contempt for them all by now.
The intimidatory behaviour on display was fascist in nature and, no doubt, funded directly or indirectly by overseas enemies of the British State.
Consideration of action against fascist organisations is, of course, not unprecedented:
‘”Lord Swinton and his executive [of the Special Warfare Executive] are very anxious if possible to deport overseas certain leaders of the British Union of Fascists, including Mosley and his wife.
“The chief reason is that it has come to their certain knowledge that Mosley and these leaders fear deportation to quite an inexplicable degree, unless they believe there to be some plot on hand to liberate them from jail for the purpose of starting serious trouble.’
“At present 400 of these fascist organisers are held together in two jails where the warders and police are understood to be unarmed. It has already been represented to the Home Office that this seems an undue risk to be run. These people are just nasty gangsters who will stick at nothing and who, if they were arrested by gangster methods, would doubtless be rounded up in due course. They might do a great deal of damage and would certainly cause a grave scandal in the meantime.’
“It is hoped that the War Office will shortly arrange to take these persons over and keep them under strong military armed care. Even so, it would be better to remove them from the country, especially as this is clearly the last thing they want to happen.’
“The trouble is that the law of the land as it stands prohibits the forcible deportation of any British subject. The Home Office have been invited to examine the legal position and put forward a recommendation…’
Security memorandum, Whitehall 10 July, 1940
All sound like a brilliant idea, until one realises that it will just be a matter of time before someone who objects to the WHO is considered a terrorist.
We just never learn.
My personal take was that this weekend was less about the right to protest, and more about respect for your adopted country – a litmus test for how well integration has worked. I think a very good case could be made for restriction of protest on the tiny handful of days that are still seen as sacred to this country. That would be a very clear, reasonable (in my mind) policy, that could not be easily abused.
I agree with you here entirely though, everyone that’s supporting these generic type anti-protest laws are being incredibly naïve, and seem to have ignored how these laws will be used against any dissenting voices. This was what I always believed this weekend was about – strengthening the surveillance and security state. I thought they’d missed their opportunity because of the lack of trouble, but it looks like they’re pressing ahead anyway.
I predicted last week that the headlines would be “far right causes violent scenes” well slapper my thigh!
Even Julia Hartley Brewer on TTV was referring to the counter protest as “far right thugs”….I was tempted to phone up and ask if wearing a poppy is now the new “far right”.
I can imagine this being misused to ban marches that don’t suit TPTB
This all needs to be dealt with in the same way that violence was dealt with in football grounds in the 90s.
They realised very quickly that violence and disorder was sparked off by a few individuals. So they targeted the main trouble makers and dealt with them. It was surgical. They didn’t punish everyone. They dealt with the worst elements.
They don’t need more laws. What the plod need to do is some proper policing, put the work in and stop asking for more power. They should use the power they have now better.
I can’t help thinking the police might do a deliberately shitty job because they see it as an opportunity to get more powers – which it seems they are going to get.
Why are we so f**king naive as a society. We just never never learn
Which is why the masses are manipulated and used by those who consider themselves entitled to do so and have the power to do it.
Answer:-
sheep🐑 🐏 🐑 🐏 🐑 🐏Le
Braverman will probably be moved on (sacked) but she is really the only one not scared to upset people with the obvious truth that people who pretend to be just protesting but actually support and give approval to terrorism, which is against the law and absurd people who block traffic and smash hammers into works of art because of irrational fears of an imaginary climate crisis need to be policed more firmly and dealt with harshly because I know for sure that I would not get away with any of that stuff, and just because you have a T shirt with “Just Stop oil” on it should not be a free pass to disrupt.
Is the law also to include a requirement for the police to be even handed in their treatment of different types of protestors.
For example the reports of kettling of anti-protestors whereas the main protest march was given free rein are worrying examples of unevenhandedness.
Glad you choose the picture with the “ultra far-right” protestors in it, but none of the Peaceful Tribe.
Perpetuate the narrative.
Copied from The Sun, presumably. Whether it’s actually worth reviewing that paper and commenting on it, I’ll leave that to others. But you made a good point. Perhaps a review of how many arrests there actually were, and how many of them are charged and turn up at the Magistrates might be worthwhile, but the media will have moved on to next business in a couple of days.
A review of how many arrests were made as a percentage of the number of people on each demo will end up showing a much higher percentage of people on the counter demo were arrested.
This could be because the main demo was peaceful and free from antisemitic chants, calls for jihad etc and the counter demo was a bunch of nasty thugs and football hooligans.
It could be because the police weren’t anything like even handed.
Guess which explanation the MSM would choose.
Francis Aaron was down at the protests and has done a long thread, complete with many videos, about what he saw. I think it comes across as very impartial and balanced reporting. The amount of police required though was just crazy. Imagine if there’d been no pro-Hamas protest going on, what those officers could have been better off doing instead;
”I spent my birthday yesterday traipsing about the streets of London recording the events of Remembrance Day and the Palestine March. I witnessed many proceedings first hand.”
https://twitter.com/FrancisAaronUK/status/1723786107584704607
I don’t think the Daily Sceptic perpetuates narratives. It gives us all the opportunity to question them, which you will not see in mainstream publications. Here is a little experiment for you—–Go to Mailonline and try to pass comment on the current situation with Suella Braverman or anything to do with the “river to the sea” sectarianism and see how successful you are at getting your comment accepted. I can save you the time and trouble by telling you now that you won’t succeed. Mailonline will allow 2 or 3 comments then close it down. You will then see thousands of green and red arrows next to the 3 comments that were allowed. —-On Daily Sceptic every comment I have made over the last year or so has been accepted.
Stable door. Horse. Field.
Better late than never.
Here’s how the BBC is cheerleading the Israel hate fest.
https://camera-uk.org/2023/11/13/bbc-impartiality-compromised-by-reporting-on-uk-demonstrations/
I feel we are being slowly led towards a situation where valid ‘angry’ protest is outlawed and then where are we? Imagine a peaceful protest about not being forced to accept a jab for instance, it ain’t going to happen. People will be righteously angry. However, violence by particular groups against other particular groups is unacceptable. Tjis is simply divide and conquer tactics and the media oh so love to stir the pot. However, we’ve had violent protests in the past and I believe the cause of the violence is also by agents provocateur who smash the windows and burn police vans creating the precedent to outlaw protest. In those situations, it is almost impossible to stop them and so here we are with an unelected PM calling for tighter restrictions. Remember problem – reaction – solution, the old three step towards totalitarianism. They have ignored us, silenced us and now they want to make us impotent. If your MP doesn’t take any of your concerns seriously and you are censored and now have no right to legitimate ‘angry’ protest, which can contain some scuffles and smashing up of things because these events always attract idiots and thugs, then where are you? It isn’t democracy that’s for sure.
“unelected PM”?——No. We don’t vote for people we vote for parties. It was the same when Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair when he stepped down and there was no election.
Not quite. The Conservative party membership votes for a party leader and if the party is in office then the leader gets the PM job. Fishy got to be PM because the leadership vote was rigged.
You will find many unelected Prime Ministers, including Gordon Brown John Major, James Callaghan, and even ——–Winston Churchill. ——–I tend to be more concerned with what these people do once they are in office rather than how they got there. Today they are mostly doing NOTHING. The boats keep coming, the Net Zero keeps impoverishing us, the wokery and gender nonsense keeps persecuting real women and on and on and on.
Although it should be obvious to the intelligent, only the constituents of the Party leader at the time of an election actually vote for the likely PM (assuming that the elected one is appointed by the King). However, there is a kind of pseudo-presidential attitude with many people at General Elections. Years ago, when I was a member of the Labour Party, when I was knocking on doors etc, there were lots of those who were normal supporters who didn’t like Gordon taking over, e.g. and thus wouldn’t vote for the local candidate.
Most people will vote for a candidate on the basis of the party they represent therefore the vast majority of people who voted for a Conservative candidate in 2019 voted for Boris to be PM, although obviously none of them voted for Fishy or Liz the Lettuce to be PM.
I mean a PM who was elected as part of an election campaign obviously, no need to be so pedantic. As such, this guy was just installed like an air-conditioner.
I’ve posted this elsewhere:
In other news, Home Secretary Suella Braverman is sacked, thereby confirming the mandate for two tier policing. We are living in an ant-white apartheid state.
Would love to see some footage of this right wing thuggery but all I’ve seen is Mahyar Tousi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6BC7E4biPs
According to Mahyar Tommy Robinson was with him all day and when Tommy left it was via taxi to a hotel. Tommy subsequently posted on Twitter lambasting those who accused him of causing trouble.
There was footage on MSN showing a bit of pushing and shoving between a few people on the demo and the police. It then looked like someone threw the contents of a can of beer at the back of a police office, this was then reported as people throwing bottles and beer cans. A few of the metal barriers were knocked over, this was then reported as the “mob” throwing the barriers at the police.
It seems like the demo was far more peaceful than a Saturday evening in any large town centre, but was reported as being pretty much a full on riot.
More laws and bans won’t stop what’s happening to society at this time! Britain has changed beyond all recognition and is quickly becoming a lost cause, thankyou for all the years of multiculturalism, its made the place so much better!
Agree Dinger. Corrupt governments have let too many of them in now ( and it’s still continuing on a daily basis, obv ) then they obviously send for the rest of their family and have loads of kids, spawning second and third generations of West/freedom/democracy-haters, many not integrating and forming their own communities that the law inevitably gives up on and can’t touch. Sweden, Germany and France are ahead of us but the UK isn’t far behind. It’s slo-mo colonization, just without any big battles and bloodshed, like centuries gone by. The difference is now, of course, these ”invaders” are welcomed in, whereas before, when the West had more of an identity and strong sense of culture, they would be refused entry and fought off. Everybody, including all of the leaders, are bending over for Islam these days it seems.
“Tightening of protest laws”?—-So will we soon be allowed to drive down the street without brainwashed climate dreamers blocking our path? Or visit the art gallery without the same imbeciles chucking paint over our favourite Van Gogh?——-Or will it be the case that Braverman is correct that it depends on who you are and what you are protesting about that decides on how you are policed? ——–
The tightening of protest laws will be overseen by the Davos Deviants as will the interpretation and implementation of same.
Fishy must be fuming that there wasn’t a blood bath this weekend which would have provided the perfect excuse for draconian banning orders akin to lockdown. Anyway, any excuse to bring in new laws. Just how they expect to police thousand strong mobs chanting “from the river to the sea,” …
Of course the correct course of action would have been to ban the pro-Palestine marches over this weekend but that would be too obvious.
The removing of freedoms continues as some of us knew it would.
On 12 October, the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union lamented that “Psychological Safety Trumps Free Speech”.
What a difference a month of the Daily Sceptic makes.
“Britain’s beleaguered Jews” (16 October), “small and marginalised Jewish community” (17 October,) “how little some people care” (23 October), “Children were too scared to go to school” (23 October), “unheard and a little frightened” (24 October), “too intimidated” (12 November), “the Jewish community is terrified” (12 November), “the future of Jews in the UK” (13 November).
Terrified of what? “A sea of green, red, black and white Palestinian flags” (15 October), “Hamas-style headbands”, “the atmosphere that’s grown in London”, “green smoke” (12 November). The “far-right” (12 November) defending the Cenotaph from a concocted Palestinian threat.
Which leaves the chant “from the River to the Sea”. It is “code for wanting to wipe Israel from the face of the earth” (12 October), “a racially aggravated public order offence” (15 October) “which Ms. Braverman has condemned as an antisemitic staple” (23 October), “the plainly genocidal chant” (26 October), “the controversial phrase” (12 November), “shout, chant or shriek” (13 November).
Now “Ministers are also looking at ways to restrict certain chants like ‘From the river to the sea’”.
Perhaps the Free Speech Union should change its name to the Psychological Safety Union.
Toby, well done, an editorial triumph!
Your ‘Useful Idiot’ badge is in the post.
DS positions on Ukraine and Gaza make it impossible for me to continue support. I will not be renewing my annual donation.
Excuse me can anyone here give any concrete evidence of any violence being committed or anyone being hurt? I haven’t seen one report in the MSM showing any crime being committed. Correct me if I’m wrong.
PS Football chants don’t count.