Health Secretary Wes Streeting has criticised Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, over his failure to back military action against Assad in 2013, saying the “hesitation” created a “vacuum” that Russia filled. The Telegraph has more.
Mr. Miliband, the Energy Secretary, was Labour leader when he led efforts to torpedo Lord Cameron’s attempt to launch strikes in Syria to deter the use of chemical weapons.
On Thursday night Mr. Streeting, the Health Secretary, said that “if the West had acted faster, Assad would have been gone”.
But Mr. Miliband rebuked his Cabinet colleague on Friday morning, saying it was “just wrong” to suggest Assad would have been forced from power sooner if the West had acted at the time.
He also said he had no regrets about his decision to vote against the U.K. joining U.S.-led strikes after the House of Commons narrowly rejected the move.
Asked if he regretted voting against proposed missile strikes in 2013, Mr. Miliband told Sky News: “No, I don’t… I welcome the fall of President Assad.
“Back in 2013 we were confronted with whether we should have a one-off, potential one-off, bombing of Syria but there was no plan for what this British involvement would mean, where it would lead and what the consequences would be and I believed that in the light of the Iraq war we could never send British troops back into combat unless we were absolutely clear about what our plan was, including what an exit strategy was.
“To those people who say that president Assad would have fallen if we had bombed him in 2013, that is obviously wrong because President Trump bombed president Assad in 2017 and 2018, so he didn’t fall.
“I welcome the fall of a brutal dictator but I think the view that some people seem to be expressing about history is just wrong.”
Mr. Miliband said the vote against U.K. military action in Syria in 2013 demonstrated that the nation had learnt “the right lessons” from the Iraq War.
It was suggested to the Labour frontbencher that the failure to act had not only given Assad confidence but had also emboldened Russia on the world stage.
He said: “I think it is very easy for people to say that the answer to the problems of the world is British military intervention.
“But as I said earlier, in this case we have a clear understanding of what the consequences might have been because in 2017 and 2018 there was military action against President Assad and it certainly didn’t precipitate the fall of his regime.
“I took the decisions I did because the British involvement in Iraq led to the deaths of our troops and was, rightly in my view, seen as a very serious error and so without re-going over all of that history, I think we drew the right lessons from that.”
His comments stand in stark contrast to those made by Mr. Streeting during an appearance on the BBC Question Time programme.
Mr. Streeting said: “With hindsight, I think we can say, looking back on the events of 2013, that the hesitation of this country and the United States created a vacuum that Russia moved into and kept Assad in power for much longer.”
He added: “I think if the West had acted faster, Assad would have been gone.
“Would that have led to a better Syria? I don’t know. We know from our own foreign policy history that inaction is a choice, but so is action, and we’ve seen in other cases, like Libya, that it did not lead to a better future.”
Worth reading in full.
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I think it all becomes far simpler when you accept that the modern, middle class type Lefty absolutely, despite their monumental virtue-signalling, despises the poor and working class, especially the indigenous, and couldn’t care less what happens to them.
“Virtue signalling”, as opposed to virtuous, would sum it up: these people really don’t give a toss about anyone else, but salve their conscience by squawking a lot. Was never much good at understanding “the left” and “the right”, all these groups seem determined to want to nag, tag and slag off the rest of us.
Extort and Squander Labour
V
Feudal Tories
Money inevitably goes to the same people just via different routes.
This (double plus upvote)
I think they do despise the poor and working class, I also think they don’t know much about them, and have little contact with them. “Trendy Lefties” exist in a bubble of their own, mixing only with others of their kind.
Yes, agreed – they don’t have a clue about the working class, and never meet them as equals any more than medics do, and frankly couldn’t cope with a conversation at a bus stop.
Which is why they lost their ‘red wall’ which bozo is also likely to lose for the same reason.
Goodness knows who they will turn to next. Probably the ‘far right’ which otherwise would not have stood a chance of establishing a foothold in mainstream politics.
At some point genuinely conservative politicians and parties need to rise again, whether rooted in the working classes or the middle and upper. The British people have always been pretty conservative at root, though often more or less manipulated by radicals.
That’s the only hope, politically, imo. There have been signs of it happening to some extent in the US via the renewal of the Republican Party, which was much like our “Conservatives” pre-Trump. But there’s a lot of political fighting still to go, there.
Gosh I hope not, politically I dislike conservatives as much as modern lefties.
“Goodness knows who they will turn to next”
A legitimate worry. If the WEF sponsored parties look to be losing an election something bad will happen. They won’t let go now without huge trauma. What I want to know is who is sponsoring the WEF; the CCP, financiers, who is it really destroying democracy?
The technocrats are anti-democratic. Starmer is in the trilateral commission which is anti-democratic. What they want is a globalist government and have been put in to lose any confidence in any of the current political parties. I would doubt that any of the last decade’s elections have not been manipulated to get their plants in. We stop voting and the electoral system collapses. We’re offered a ‘build back better’ alternative and jump at the chance to restore order from the chaos they have created: a global government with local (not national) representatives. It would sound like a reasonable idea but for the elitists who aim to screw us over behind the scenes. At this point our options may be limited but resistance is never futile!
The mistake is to think in simplistic terms of Red v Blue, Lab v Con, Demorat v Republikunt.
All politicos serve the very same masters GloboCap. Look at Blair FFS a key Gates funded player with BUILD BACK BETTER as is BoJo. See any difference? They all practice do as we say, not as we do – being ruthlessly self-serving.
It’s a distracting smoke screen play to once again divide the ‘undesirables’ into futile energy wasting tribalism.
Only one thing counts right now, standing up against this draconian bio-security tyranny that will be rolled over us, do expect the UK version of Green Pass these coming Dark Winter months.
The polls [PMSL] are allegedly telling you the cowered bedwtters want it, vaxxpassports – so democracy in action – for the greater good. Pull the other one.
We are at the pivotal moment, get off the fucking fence and pick a side.
As was once wisely quipped “If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do It…”
The pushback is finally building momentum…. HOLD THE LINE
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/well-never-give-protests-erupt-across-europe-over-govt-covid-tyranny
Or to put it more simply: Left and Right are two wings of the same bird.
Simplistic, and therefore inevitably tempting, but ultimately nonsense. Left and right are attempts to describe fundamental differences in how people view the world and how it should be run.
What is often true is that parties that claim to have different allegiances in this regard turn out to be fundamentally on the same side.
Politicians lie! Who knew?
“Left and right are attempts to describe fundamental differences”
…and now a totally inadequate and impoverished way of describing differences.
So you say, because the side of that divide you have spent your lifetime pushing has failed utterly, and rather than change to the side that is desperately needed, you prefer to pretend “there’s no difference”. Of course, you are far from alone in that.
Exactly… same shit different colour
“The mistake is to think in simplistic terms of Red v Blue, Lab v Con, Demorat v Republikunt.”
Indeed. It is a shame that so many here have not managed to work that out, and are trapped in the dead end of dead thinking.
I have been utterly ashamed of the lack of resistance from the putative ‘left’ and the surrender of radical thought to conformity. But the hard fact is that this conformity actually bridges the decayed ‘left’ and ‘right’. Amongst the general public, the noticeable fact is the agreement to bow – across the board.
I actually don’t think that, after years of a dominance of right-wing neoliberal policies, it would have made much difference if the establishment-captured Labour Party had been in power. This has been a coup by Very Big Capital, with foundations that go way back, and has finally reached its apotheosis in the capture of supra-national institutions.
Of course, there are two obvious points to be made – the surrender of even the appearance of democracy has emerged, in practice, from the right of British politics (although, as said, this is largely beside the point). Only dictionary (and reality) deniers could argue otherwise, peddling fantastical Ayan Rand worship – like their Covid counterparts who have ‘disappeared’ the meaning of such terms as ‘pandemic’ and ‘case’.
The role of the Labour Party has been secondary – coat-tailing the Tories and, most simplistically, operating on the stupidly narrow – and mistaken -political basis that this was the best way to outdo the Tories – rather than to counter the narrative.
But beneath that and the common brainwashing of right and left – which is obviously the foundation of everything – is the hard fact that the Labour Party under Starmer has become a creature of the establishment – certainly not radical or ‘left’ in any recognizable sense – unless bending it to the will of global capital counts as ‘radical’. Starmer waits in the wings should the Tories fall down on the job.
This has been blindingly obvious ever since the attacks on Corbyn started with extreme falsehoods and the co-option of right-wing interests to the cause. This isn’t about support for Corbyn and/or policies – it’s about the precursor to the Covid propaganda, which made even good right-wing journalists (there remain a few good journalists) blanche at the propaganda assault with lies and fabrications, and the abandonment of reporting. The critically aware have always seen the link with what has now become a central feature of news management.
Since Starmer’s election, the attacks on the real ‘left’ in the Party have intensified, with – ironically – particular venom being directed at non-conforming Jews who threaten the establishment narrative.
(All this is documented)
But, it has to be said, many ordinary members of the hollowed-out Party, if a bit discomfited, are no more aware than they are about the Covid narrative – such is the news blackout.
There are many aspects to this coup – but the key message is that this is far beyond the simplistic shouting matches of the old political playground.
… and much more sinister.
Excellent.
Greed for money, greed for power – coming from all sides.
Robert Kennedy jnr seems to be stepping forward as a leader of dissent.
Robert Kennedy in a speech posted by Anti_socialist and others.
“lockdowns have created five hundred new billionaires”.
This from a man who is inside the magic money circle, or perhaps not so much now.
It’s the 58th anniversary of the JFK assassination today. One of Kennedy’s last speeches exposed the threat to our freedom of a cabalistic elite. My question is though – are the Kennedy family controlled opposition given that they are one of the 13 families which apparently run the world? I do hope not as I’d like to believe there are some good people left that have the chance to make a difference. I’m still overdosing on the hopium!
It is & always has been about class. I don’t bat for any side, everyone should be free to make their own way in life, but that’s not possible in an hierarchical collective system.
As someone who has been on the left all my life and brought up in a very left wing household I agree with everything you said.
I am surprised though that noone has brought up the wider political picture over the last decade.
Starting with the financial crash, after 30 years of neo-liberalism and deindustrialisation, the accepted policy was one of austerity, further punishing the already downtrodden working class, leading to radical working class thinking (termed as populism) all over the globe.
The pinch-point for western liberal democracies was, in my opinion the election of Donald Trump, the rise of UKIP and the Brexit vote that followed.
The left and the establishment started to cry fascism when the populist trend hit the USA and the UK (traditionally the bastions of western liberal democracy)
So, by 2020 – with Britain just leaving the EU and Donald Trump in the presidency, looking as popular as ever, covid came along and it became the wet dream the establishment and the left had been longing for. The message became ‘the right cannot save you now – only the left can’
The reason being that covid provided the perfect anti-thesis to everything the right had been gaining traction on.
All of a sudden we needed to trust experts, care about the NHS, come together as a society and community, highlight the disparities of outcomes by race and climate and the importance of a safety net.
In other words, I think the establishment left have participated in overblowing the threat we face from covid to further their political ends, and they think they are morally right in doing so.
I honestly think that commenters on the Guardian are disappointed that we don’t have 500,000 deaths, because the ammunition against Johnson and the Brexiteers does not hold as much weight.
As the author said, people have scurried to adopt their political identity, because their fight isn’t against covid, it’s against the (hard) political right. People need to be scared of Covid for this to work.
That is why no amount of scientific, or other reasoning, will get through. This is about identity, pure and simple.
To be fair the Guardian on YouTube allows contrary comments to stand for far longer than the Telegraph, maybe they just have lazy mods.
They were ripping mine down within a few minutes last year.
Wouldn’t be surprised if they’re starting to realise how badly wrong they’ve been, and are now trying to regain brownie points by at least “allowing” alternative views.
They are heavily funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates of Hell foundation so good luck with looking in the Guardian for impartiality or any pretence at the truth about anything any more.
“The polls [PMSL] are allegedly telling you the cowered bedwtters want it, vaxxpassports – so democracy in action – for the greater good. Pull the other one.”
I think you’re wrong on this point. I think the polls may be correct because people, christ knows why, just believe whatever the BBC tell them to believe. People have stopped looking around and thinking for themselves. They will have a rude awakening.
Vaxxed up bedwetters are all for making it compulsory for everyone else because they think it won’t affect them.
They could not be more wrong.
Indeed, they use “Northern accent” as a proxy for (actual) working class. Very few of them have actually done a day’s honest work in their privileged lives.
Yes they now hate the very group they once advocated for, the working class poor, liberals (leftists) are schizophrenic hypocrites.
Most of the founders of the original Labour party were middle class dropouts who, as Orwell observed,
“do not love the poor they simply hate the rich”.
The Fabians were, and still are, committed globalists seeking an authoritarian One World Government.
Fabians were very for eugenics and when they got too hot for them they switched to dygenics (meddling via welfare state) and social eugenics (nudging)
True enough. And the same is true of the middle class, lower middle class, and upper middle class right wing, and for that matter, also of the working class right wing.
Nope. Obviously all these generalisations are just that- generalisations. And generalisations invariably are true only of the generality – there will always be exceptions, sometimes many exceptions.
But where there is meaningful politically orgnanised resistance, to covid panic and tyranny as to the wider, globalist collectivist radical agenda, it is from the right – usually demonised as “far right”, whether it’s the Trumpist Republicans in the US, or “far right” parties and groups in places like Austria, Germany and Australia.
This is because globally establishments are now mostly leftist throughout the US sphere, and covid panic is fundamentally collectivist and radical in nature.
Yeah, the British royal family, the top figures at the grandes ecoles and Oxford and Cambridge and the Church of England and the BBC, and in the Privy Council Secretariat and SIS, in Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, in the cavalry regiments and at the gentlemen’s clubs, and in the top ranks of literally every western air force – they’re all pinko trans activists who believe the proles were all born with field marshals’ batons in their knapsacks (they were indoctrinated into this view by “Marxists”), and their secret agenda is the complete abolition of inherited wealth. Either that, or you should seek a clue.
Funny how you can trot out a list of supposed establishment figures, some of them outright anachronistic irrelevancies, and ignore the reality that the real powers in the world today – big media, big tech and the money corps, have systematically interfered to promote the Biden presidency over Trump’s Republicans, and actively tried to wipe out conservative speech platforms (Gab and Parler, most egregiously), not the leftist ones that actively censor and suppress dissent against leftist globalist radicalism (and, not coincidentally, covid panic).
Mate, they’re all in the same boat. And I think we should be aware that being anachronistic doesn’t equate to having no power or influence. The players who seek control over us will use whoever it suits them to use. And if we can be riled up against one another with our tribal identities so much the better.
I think it’s correct to be wary of divide and rule tactics and squabbling among ourselves, but equally I think open debate is valuable and if some feel strongly that some of the roots of the current mess lie in a political drift to the “left” then it’s right that those views should be aired.
“Mate, they’re all in the same boat.“
Except they aren’t, are they? That’s why Facebook and Twitter are part of the establishment, and enabled to do things like suppressing any positive comments about the completely innocent Kyle Rittenhouse while pushing outright lies about him, and portraying political protests at the Capitol as “insurrection” but thuggish BLM riots based on a lie as “mostly peaceful protests”, but Gab are denied basic banking services and Parler were shut down by being excluded from big tech’s servers.
They absolutely aren’t “in the same boat”.
“And I think we should be aware that being anachronistic doesn’t equate to having no power or influence.”
That’s true, but the anachronistic figureheads are merely tools in the hands of the real power holders.
“The players who seek control over us will use whoever it suits them to use. And if we can be riled up against one another with our tribal identities so much the better.“
Well yes, and one of the most effective ways to promote such division was pushing mass immigration, and then accusing those who resist it of “riling up” on the basis of “tribal identities”. Or pushing identity politics to radically change societies and cultures, and then blaming those who resisted for “riling up” on the basis of “tribal identities”.
Blame the victim, every time.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/02/thomas-luongo/the-collapse-of-red-vs-blue/
Much truth in the piece. Where it falls down it is because of its author’s own presumed party loyalty – to libertarians.
Trump and Trumpism are not, contra his assertion, finally defeated yet. They are still strongly represented in the Republican Party, by him and by others, and could yet win out. Just as in theory the “Conservative” Party in the UK could be recaptured by actual conservatives (though that process hasn’t even begun here).
The Royal Family will not be held in such high regard once Madge dies of Purple Arm Syndrome and that clown Charlie no-chin takes over.
I think it’s an indisputable fact that what little resistance there has been to the covid narrative in the UK has mainly been from bodies that most would class as “right wing” – some Tory backbenchers, Talk Radio, GB News, the Mail and the Telegraph, the Spectator, various business figures like Simon Dolan, celebrities like Eric Clapton and Laurence Fox, our very own TY.
Actually, if you look at the meagre opposition in parliament, it is split proportionately fairly evenly across ‘right’ and ‘left’.
There’s no sectarian virtue here.
I certainly was not intending to be sectarian, nor to attribute much virtue to mainly half-hearted, too-little too-late opposition to the folly and evil. I thought most the the MPs regularly voting against covid crap were either Tory or DUP – often around 40 or so. Didn’t think there were nearly as many Labour voting against, and often Labour vote against for reasons other than simply opposing covid panic and oppression, but I maybe do not have up to date information.
Most of the opposition seems to be from a small group on the right of the conservative party (Desmond Swayne, etc). So far as I’m aware nobody in the Labour party has really strongly argued against this shitshow (and as a former Labour voter, I wish this wasn’t true!).
In fairness, I think I recall a few coming out against the vaxpass and outright coercion. A day late and a dollar short, but at least they are there for the final line in the sand.
They fill the top end of the militaries and important organisations with deviants who can easily be compromised. Its all done deliberately and has been going on for decades. Kay Griggs is from a military background, the former wife of a senior NATO official and she spilled the beans a few decades back – he used to get drunk and tell her everything (things he wa supposed to keep secret) and she relayed it all in this interview. Brendon O Connell, who had his computer seized and analysed by the Australian authorities, says that of all the stuff he had on his computer, the film that blew the minds of the police and intel people reviewing what he had was the Kay Griggs interview. Here it is, a from the horses mouth description of how this sick world is really controlled:
Kay Griggs Colonel’s Wife Tell All Interview 1 of 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dbXX9VZmdM
Only a thousand views after 7 years. At least YT hasn’t noticed.
Saved for later.
I don’t think they despise them. They simply consider them inferior and too dangerous for everyone else if left to themselves.
See karenovirus’ post just below.
The last time I bought the Daily Telegraph was in April 2020. Apart from being filled with Covid fear porn and lockdown bollocks it did include a very good half page cartoon.
A pair of Islington trendies are on their sunloungers in the spacious garden of their three story townhouse while their offspring play tennis by the pool.
Beyond the high brick back wall are three tower blocks with balconies crowded with young families of various hues.
Mrs. Trendy lowers her sunglasses to comment about a newspaper article
“Oh look James, all those people ignoring lockdown to invade Brockwell park . . .”
James looks up from his pina calada(sp?)
“Yes, it’s so irresponsible but what do you expect from people like that . . .?”
gesturing towards the denizens confined to their tower blocks.
Yes, such a recognisable scenario and if that isn’t despising then I don’t know what is.
Bob was sacked from the DT
Was it his? No surprises there then.
Oikophobia is by far the biggest form of racism in this country.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10724833/white-van-man-snob-emily-thornberry-wrong/
Absolutely this. Blair and Brown started it by fucking up social cohesion with politically motivated mass migration.
They extended the scope and reach of an authorisation state. Then with their luvvy establishment cohorts set about designing ‘narratives’ to demonise and marginalise the very people the party was created to represent. While charging into foreign wars.
We are seeing the results which will speak to us for generations.
What’s surprising is the free pass they get in the press. Except that the establishment is packed with their fellow travellers.
They are deeply and unpleasantly and authoritarian.
I want to chuck their pumpkin seed latte all over their white Birkenstocks.
The joke has always been that the lefties will do anything for the working class except live next door to them
One reason is that the Left are out of touch with ordinary people. They are no more representative of the working class than Boris Johnson and the Bullingdon Club.
But how in touch are other parties like Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymur, DUP, Greens and Sinn Fein?
We are living in a situation akin to East Germany with a multiplicity of parties differing slightly on stuff that doesn’t matter but in all other respects exactly the same.
Yes absolutely, we live in a one party state disguised as a democracy and because of clever marketing, particularly around election time, not more than one in a thousand realise it.
I’m puzzled about the political scene in the USA where for years the divide between Democrats and Republicans was entirely phoney, ‘two sides of the same coin’ yet just a few years later they are apparently divided to the point of mayhem and murder not seen since the dying days of the Roman Republic.
The Tea Party movement was an early manifestation that certain people on the right were fed up with the phoney two party system as you refer to it.]
In fact, the Ross Perot candidacy in 1992 capitalised on that too.
As did the Ralph Nader candidacy in 2000 for those lefties who felt the same way from the other side.
The irony is that in both those cases what the dissatisfied right wingers and left wingers achieved was to split the vote on “their side” and make the opposite party win.
Ross Perot gave us Clinton.
Nader gave us Bush.
“The irony is that in both those cases what the dissatisfied right wingers and left wingers achieved was to split the vote on “their side” and make the opposite party win.“
But the whole point is that it made actually relatively little difference anyway which of the wings of the globalist political duopoly got in, anyway. Gore would probably have been worse than Bush II anyway. Granted Bush II’s invasions were egregiously moronic and damaging, but Gore would have been faced with similar pressures, and would probably have responded similarly in the end, just with slightly more “humanitarian intervention” rather than US-uber-alles mood music.
Tea Party was originally a followup to Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign but it was hijacked very quickly by the establishment. The BBC airbrushed Ron out of their reporting of a lot of the Republican primaries, leaving in much more minor candidates. They only interviewed him after he was safely excluded from the running.
Because of the conservative insurgency within the Republican Party, which Trump adopted. The left elite (in both the Demiocrat and Republican parties) hated Trump so viciously precisely because he refused to stay within the widow of faux respectability which they thought they had nailed shut forever, with dissent from their globalist, socially radical ideology firmly on the outside.
Hasn’t this got to do with Trump? He wasn’t meant to happen, so the establishment had to throw as much triggering of limbic systems at the country as possible, to get rid of him and get control again. Hence the massive polarisation.
Of course Trump was meant to happen. He was groomed and funded by the same cabal that funds ALL political movements in the US.
The “Party of Davos” sums it up.
Vote for any of them, and you’ll get exactly the same globalist, big-State, centrally planned policies.
What they all have in common is they’re psychopaths but quite frankly why else would anyone become a politician?
Champagne socialists hate the poor. The poor exist to reinforce a champagne socialists worldview that they are rich and the therefore better than the poor working class. The rest is virtue signalling to make it look like they care.
The problem aren’t the psychos you refer to.
The problem are the far larger number of well meaning but misguided people who want what is best for everyone and think the way to achieve it is to have the “best and brightest” decide for everyone, not realising that the “best and brightest” are often psychos exploiting every situation for their own benefit.
Because the left are liberal middle-class trots! They always need a cause to virtue signal away their own guilt, poverty is so old normal, the new normal is identity politics. Which suits sex obsessed deviant liberals perfectly.
Most leading Bolsheviks were middle class intellectuals (except for Stalin who curiously won out in the end).
They did not describe themselves as being ‘of the proletariat’ but as their Vanguard, only they were able to lead the workers and peasants because they were too stupid to do it for themselves.
The first politburo was made up of J ew s. Solzhenitsyn said they hated Russians. They duly went on to murder tens of millions of them.
Liberal Trotskyists? I wonder how they manage that! Does their hypersexed lifestyle feature contortion training?
It’s a conundrum, but is anything about the modern liberal, liberal?
When you say “liberal” are you using the modern US meaning of the term (basically, leftist or socialist), or the British meaning, namely resistant to authoritarianism?
That, I think, is perhaps at the root of your disagreement with Star here.
It isn’t me who labelled them liberal, they do that themselves, I just go with their desired pigeonhole. Once upon a time I would have described myself a conservative liberal (classic liberal) star may feel butt hurt because (s)he consider itself a liberal.
You may have guessed by now, I don’t care if people are offended by anything I say. Though I don’t do so intentionally.
I had an iteresting conversation with a very left wing colleague last year. He is a card carrying member of the Labour Party.
He was talking about the decline of the use of cash, and how, since covid, almost everything was paid for by card, and how convenient it was. Laughing, he said he had kept a £20 note in his wallet for many months, but never had to break into it.
I pointed out that for many people, most notably the poorer sections of society, it was decidedly inconvenient. Even today, not everyone has a bank account and not everyone can pay by card. Not everyone wants to, many people, especially the elderly, still prefer to use cash. Some people don’t have much cash to spend, and they have to spend it carefully; not everyone has a choice of cards that they can whip out to pay for things. What about small events, often for local charities, that rely on cash? And small traders or fund raisers at these events? Not everyone can be set up to take cards.
I could tell by the look on his face that none of this had occurred to him. He at least looked a bit shame faced, and admitted he’d never thought of that. He’s never mentioned it since, mind you.
For all their talk, many left wing people are completely disconnected from the people they purport to represent. I don’t say that they are all bad, but many are simply ignorant of the way in which many people live. Left wing middle class people, getting a glow of virtue from their left-wingness, because in their eyes, that makes them good people.
Fake news, misinformation, this sounds incredibly implausible.
Nah, seriously I am one of those digital refuseniks, beware crypto it is a deep state psyop.
Oh such negativity, but crypto is the new smartphone, it’s Mr globals covert strategy to get the masses to adopt digital currency the minute a large minority are hooked (just like mobile phones) it will become regulated & taxed!
Here is something few people I speak to have noticed.
There are now a set of corporate products without which it is becoming literally impossible to conduct a normal life without:
And soon coming to you a ‘vaccine’ courtesy of the pharma industry.
If you think back perhaps 20 years, none of those things were the case. You could be paid in cash or a cheque which you could cash in a bank, you could certainly live your life without a phone and you it goes without saying that no one forced any medical treatments on you.
We are living in a world in which corporations are using the state to mandate their products.
What is a ‘telecoms service’?🤔
an oxymoron like public servant.
using the state to mandate PAYING FOR their products.
Is the very definition of rent-seeking.
Anyone who ‘invests’ in crypto is just trying to make money out of nothing and can expect to get burned (financially).
You can make money from crypto, you just can’t hold on to it, the time will come when a lot of people will lose everything they have playing with crypto.
Is it possible to get into crypto, make money and then get out?
Yeah, it’s called gambling.
I dont use crypto, but if i was really worried about inflation I would dabble.
Probably the most telling sentence I’ve read on this page (including in the article). Most people seem to ‘get on with things’ without recourse to much deep thinking on a regular basis. That their freedoms have disappeared gradually seems not to have been noticed, and, rather than worry, ‘let’s just check what’s on the telly tonight’ is the watchword.
Bread and circuses for a digital age.
Liberals in California thought it a good idea to stop prosecuting for theft. This encouraged a spate of store looting and the removal of key shops from working class neighbourhoods.
Those that survive rioters burning down their own neighbourhood mini marts.
I feel sorry for buskers. We have quite a few very talented buskers round here, I’d be interested to know how much the demise of cash has impacted on them. Also, waiters, I always used to tip in cash. I’m sure I tip less often now using a card.
Are we not told that buskers are issued with card readers? Only the acceptable ones of course
Social Services/Universal Credit can only be accessed by a bank card which those at the bottom of the heap cannot have. I gather that they have to identify themselves at a specific Post Office to withdraw their funds in cash (via a Post Office card).
There are many different reasons why this agenda is charging full steam ahead and every player has a different reason. The hidden cabal want to possess and control everything. Their agendas are facilitated by their craven political commissars who are, for the moment at least, a privileged, even protected, species. But this small band of despots would get nowhere without tens of millions of Leftist ‘useful idiot’ footsoldiers. So why are the Left cheering on a corporate tyranny that is facilitating the largest transfer of wealth to global elites in recorded history? Although they hate Big Capital, they love the authoritarianism which is collectivising the whole of society – and that’s just too good to resist. This is why billionaires have always funded communist movements. Its a symbiotic relationship. There is also the Lefts obsession with climate, which, like covid, is being used by Big Capital to funnel wealth to itself – and just like covid, they use ‘corporate science’ to achieve that goal. For the Left, covid/climate Lockdown degrowth is the pathway to Net Zero full economic collapse. You have to remember that destruction of the West is ingrained into Marxists at an early age and Marxist theory is all about creating ‘communist’ order out of chaos.
You probably think Karl Marx would have supported George Soros, believed in anthropogenic climate change, and cheered on the Pyongyangisation of Leatherhead.
Why would anyone think what Karl Marx – one of the most foolish, misguided and harmful individuals in history – would think about events today matters a jot? “Marxism” acquired a life of its own before he was even in the grave.
Fwiw, he’d probably have embraced all the foolish nonsense around today, because he was a fool, and fools gonna fool.
A racist fool as well, his writings were awash with disparaging remarks using the ‘N’ word, as were those of Che Guevara.
Being Jewish himself Marx left the anti-semitism to Engles.
“Being Jewish himself Marx left the anti-semitism to Engles.”
Not really:
Karl Marx’s Radical Antisemitism
Quite right, I’d forgotten his Huckstering tract.
Just another self hater then.
I understand that promotion of genetic absorption (as happened with the 19thC Mullato community in Tiger Bay) is an absolute no no among BLM and their ilk.
Soros would have supported Marx because that has been the pattern throughout history. Where do you think Trotsky got his millions from? These people funded a man who openlly stated that he wanted to turn Russia “into a desert inhabited by white negroes”.
Trotsky spent months in New York before travelling to join the revolution, financed by Wall Street in the same way that Britain paid for Lenin to travel from Switzerland to the Finland Station with bags of gold Sovereigns.
The lefts obsession with climate is a very recent phenomenon, they merely use it as a vehicle to pursue their long term ends.
If you agree that the Soviet States and Mao’s China were pre Communist Socialist regimes, how does that square with their headlong dash to industrialisation with no thought whatever to the negative impact on the environment or climate?
Communism’s main product is an unsurprisingly vast amount of pollution and waste of all kinds.
I’m a leftie and I never agreed with this, but the vast majority if my leftie friends have gone along with it blindly.
I had a long conversation with a radiographer friend at the end of lockdown 1 and asked her how she felt about millions of people no doubt starving as a result of our actions. (note the lack of reporting from any media on Burma, Bangladesh, Northern Thailand etc where no doubt people will be suffering terribly as a result of the death of tourism)
I explained it was clear this was not the plague and people were not dying in the street, she said and I quote ‘but that’s a political matter!’ namely that politics has everything between who lives and who dies. If people die that’s their politics that kills them not our actions. I was fuming.
The irony is she could not see that lockdown was political at all, especially now its continued on and on, and now we have mandates in some countries for jabs that kids don’t need and are more of a risk to them than the virus. But that’s OK it’s not political, right?
The more this ‘all lefties think x and all righties think y’ continues the more we will be divided. I have a lot of socialist and even anarchist friends who are so against all this.
My radiographer (now former) friend has gone to NZ to ‘help out’, she’s so vocally pro lockdown and pro jab the blinders are fully on. My husband says she’s got’main character syndrome ‘.
I now consider myself politically atheist.
I think these last 18 months have been really interesting for many leftist who were leftists not because they liked bossing people around but because they wanted the best for everyone and thought left wing policies would help.
Many I’ve spoken to have suddenly realised the danger of collectivism and like you seem to indicate feel politically homeless.
It’s a big shift to go all the way, but maybe, just maybe you might consider that the best thing is if people are left as much as possible to themselves, allowed to engage in free exchange and take personal responsibility for their lives.
The key is not to expect perfection but the best possible outcome given the alternatives.
Count me (and the wife also) as one of those. I still believe that the state should provide certain social services, such as a social safety net and good free-at-point-of-delivery health care (and as such, the current NHS does not count).
Even before Covid came along, I was coming to the conclusion that the current political left was no longer interested in the people it was supposed to support; the last 18 months have just confirmed that both on account of the response to Covid and the lunatic woke agenda.
So now, I find myself politically homeless; come the next General Election I may well, for the first time in 45 years of voting, vote for the Tories on the grounds that they are the least worst option. And, while I still have the same left-ish position (or what I consider to be left), I find myself wondering whether such a position can ever be politically stable.
That sounds just like the voter base bozo is aiming for.
I’m in a similar situation with regard to no longer having any trust in the Labour party – but the same applies to all parties. Unless there have been major changes by the the next general election and there is a credible party (unlikely), or there is a decent independent candidate (again, unlikely) I will most probably spoil the ballot paper for the first time. There is no way I would vote for any of the current shower.
The rise of the Covidian Cult has demonstrated that the current left/right model no longer works: the majority from both sides slavishly worship the cult, with the dissenters also coming from both factions (albeit a larger proportion of them from the right).
Indeed. The thing to realize about libertarianism is that it doesn’t stop you caring about the poor, nor advocating for them. It’s actually the opposite – when the state steps aside it forces people to really focus on whether they are, in fact, charitable people, and to choose their charitable giving wisely, whether that’s money or time.
I’m fortunate that I happen to enjoy and be good at a job that’s well paid. This has enabled me to make big donations to different charities and movements in the past (5 figure sums). Those decisions don’t come about easily at all, but I was heavily influenced by a friend at Google many years ago, who was big into what they call “effective altruism”.
There are a couple of ideas here. One is that rich people are better off giving money than time, because their time is better spent earning money that they can then give away to people who prefer to work in low paid but ‘altruistic’ jobs. This is a perfectly ethical arrangement because it makes the resulting charitable work more effective. The second is that charities/non-profit organizations are basically the same thing as companies, they just don’t bother to work out how much money they really need (“need” = profit = income-necessary expenditure). Like companies, some are very effective and efficient, and others are just totally hopeless. Think “WWF spending millions on fund raising balls” or think about Wikipedia, which keeps fundraising without telling readers that it long ago raised far more than it can possibly spend on Wikipedia itself.
So if you’re going to donate then it makes sense to do it rarely, properly research the organization you’re donating to in order to convince yourself that the money will be used well, and only select organizations that actually expect such questions and work hard to prove they’re deploying money efficiently. They do exist but they’re rare – the culture works against it, so sometimes you just have to give up on effective altruism and take a leap of faith. Nonetheless, it does at least motivate you to ask difficult questions before donating.
The left wing alternative is basically to demand the state do everything. This is a very ineffective form of altruism because even though the state may force rich people to give some money to the poor in the form of welfare, the state also does things like lockdowns or running up massive unpayable pension deficits, that ultimately hurt the poor far more. You can’t have one without the other.
At any rate, this “I’m on the left but don’t recognize what the left has become” sentiment is a very common one. It’s not specific to COVID. People leave the left all the time as they come to realize that collectivism generates harm faster than it reduces it, which is why the idea of a left wing demographic destiny (“young people vote left/remain/etc so we just have to wait”) is constantly being proven wrong. In contrast it seems to be very rare that people go in the opposite direction. Once these things are seen, they can’t ever be unseen.
People struggle to understand the difference between the genuine charity you describe and the theft that is the coerced “charity” in state welfare spending.
It’s very noticeable that leftists generally refuse to spend their own money to help the supposedly morally vital causes they espouse until everyone else has been forced to do likewise via taxation (open or concealed).
Which is why Blair invented the Third Way whereby ‘charities’ could recieve government funding to promote government policy while still splurging cash on operations that the taxpayer would find unacceptable if financed directly.
And those charities were expected to lobby the government, demanding that the government pursue policies that the government wanted to implement anyway.
Does charity still exist? I agree with the premise of your post, but most if not all charities are just corporate entities in it for their own prosperity. I.e. WWF, is really just for virtual signalling vanity project of people who don’t know the first thing about charity or poverty. Even the red cross just seems to function as sex addicts jolly around the globe. Then there’s the fraud of the likes of Syria’s white helmets, where NGOs are an oxymoron. The days when retired old ladies volunteered to benefit their community have long gone.
I have many socialist sympathies e.g. housing, food, health care, I just can not accept the inevitable authoritarianism that comes with it. So that leaves us with a dilemma in a world where charity is almost extinct & we are forced to rely on corporatism, look where that’s led us. I have unorthodox libertarian principles but really, like many now, I’m politically homeless, I don’t belong on any side.
The idea that you can do everything with charity is very popular amongst libertarians. That’s precisely the same fiction as the value signally ‘do gooders’ on the left who think everything has to come top down.
We tried it in the Victorian period. It doesn’t work, because it can’t work. The system doesn’t clear automatically.
That which needs to be done has to be state organised and staffed using its coercive power. That’s why we form a collective state.
That which is nice to have, does not need to be done by the state. And shouldn’t be.
Excessive individualism is just as corrosive as excessive collectivism. Humans are a tribal species. Trying to pretend we’re cats doesn’t work.
“The idea that you can do everything with charity is very popular amongst libertarians. That’s precisely the same fiction as the value signally ‘do gooders’ on the left who think everything has to come top down.
We tried it in the Victorian period. It doesn’t work, because it can’t work. The system doesn’t clear automatically.”
This is making the perfect the enemy of the good. The reality is that the state can no more eliminate suffering than can private charity.
In fact, Victorian Britain made a pretty damned good fist of it compared with the vast majority of other substantial societies in history, allowing for the challenges of industrialisation and relative lack of resources (compared to today, after many decades of building on the wealth and advances they generated).
“Excessive individualism is just as corrosive as excessive collectivism. Humans are a tribal species. Trying to pretend we’re cats doesn’t work.”
Perhaps, but we live in a grossly collectivist society, in which a shift towards greater individual responsibility and liberty can only be a good thing, in most areas.
If nothing else the Victorians left us with a substantial legacy of public parks as this was seen as a way of improving the health of slum dwelling factory workers.
“the Victorians left us with a substantial legacy of public parks as this was seen as a way of improving the health of slum dwelling factory workers“
And were they wrong?
I don’t think so, myself.
Nothing wrong with self serving philanthropy.
I don’t think Cecil Rhodes made much out of his scholarships though.
The state doing it doesn’t work either, as we’ve seen from the highly counterproductive reponse to COVID, in particular the £37bn spent on track and trace. Victorian society was much poorer, more like sub Saharan Africa today; it “worked” at the level of a poor agrarian society.
It’s generally forgotten that the Labour Party did not create the NHS out of thin air.
Most of the physical infrastructure already existed paid for municipalities, insurance companies, Union dues but especially substantial bequests and charitable fund raising.
When I were a lad every Saturday was a ‘flag day’ when allotted charitable trusts sold lapel flags on the High Street in support of their preferred hospital or orphanage.
A practical problem with charity (not an insurmountable one, I think) is that there is far greater variation in impact between charities than between for-profit organisations, because typically the beneficiary doesn’t pay; I can think of examples of 20 to 1 difference between the best and the worst in terms of impact per pound donated although I have heard 100 to 1 does happen.
Ecohealth Alliance (of Wuhan lab fame) is a US charity, originally founded under another name by the naturalist Gerald Durrell, who must be turning in his grave.
You don’t need to be specifically philanthropic to improve the lot of the working class.
I think it was the founder of Standard Oil who made his first fortune by developing and marketing kerosene lamps for midwestern prairie farmers. This allowed them to use the dark winter evenings to read and educate themselves so improving their prospects.
I’m looking for a few of those for this winter’s energy crisis.
My experience of charities is that the smaller ones with a clear purpose tend to be the most effective. As charities get bigger, they grow layers of management which ape all the bullshit found in many larger businesses (and even more so in government bodies).
My experience of billionaires setting up charitable foundations is that the more they allegedly give away, the richer they become.
Very happy to see that you are still with us;
Stewart replies to you saying that you have found yourself politically homeless as a result of lockdown.
So have I who regard myself as conservative anarchist by which I mean I like things as they were and prefer to take responsibility for myself rather than have government thrust their notions onto me. Bozo&co are the antithesis of both those aspirations.
I can speak about Thailand as I live here.
It is not just northern Thailand that is suffering it is the whole of Thailand that is suffering due to the lack of the tourist baht. The suicide rate has increased and many who were just above the poverty line have slipped below it.
Also the Thais that work in the west have often lost their jobs and are unable to send money back to support their relatives. All of this coupled with a depressed Thai baht has put many of the Thais into penury.
There are a number of ex-pats(myself included) who do what we can but in reality we are barely scratching the surface.
There have been some government handouts to the very poor but they are not on a consistent basis.
From the forums I am on a similar situation is apparent in Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia and the Phillipines. I have not read any news from Laos but I would think they are in the same position as the rest of SE Asia.
I think I might find myself windmilling with rage at anyone who starts talking about the terrible blight of people out there in SE Asia who were barking on about lockdowns when this is all over, knowing they brayed for it and chose to ignore it for the last two years. I’ve had the argument so many times pointing out ‘saving lives’ is causing the death of many, many more others – who are we to say whose lives are more important than others?
Lockdowns are a rich western ideology at the cost to the poorest in the world and should cause those who support it to hang their heads in shame. And I speak from someone with a father with ALL the hallmarks of someone who COVID would (possibly) severely damage if he caught it (my mum had it, he’s likely immune but we aren’t allowed to talk about THAT are we?!) Is my father’s life worth a thousand poor people on the edge of survival just because he’s British? Is someone who died after having the jab at 40 worth less than my aunt who died ‘with’ covid (and stage 4 bone cancer, given a week to live, but that statistic gets ignored typically when she’s on the tragic ‘preventable’ death stats). Who are we to stamp on people with decades left to live and families to support on a borderline of starvation to save our oldest another precious year of life?
I’m so done with political opinions. I’m so done with the TV. I’m so done with the news. I’m so done with what people think of me. I’ve never been at a more confident and ‘don’t care’ stage of my life. Time to just take care of me and mine now, and stay sane, keep my eyes wide open and when this is done make sure I travel a lot. I think I might never actually come ‘home’….
Without wishing to get embroiled in a Brexit debate, I used to enjoy explaining to liberal Remainers that the EU Common Agricultural Policy is just a giant cartel designed to prevent developing countries from capitalising on their homegrown produce.
A good example is West African palm oil which they are permitted to export raw in bulk to the EU but processed goods (found in a vast range of supermarket foods) face outrageous tariffs.
The processing is where the money is so the European multinationals want that for themselves.
Yet not so long ago Western tourists were being castigated for destroying local culture and self reliance
How do you balance the poverty caused by its absence against the, presumed, reduction in sexual exploitation?
Very good. You should offer Toby an article on that.
FDA Produces the First 91+ pages of Documents from Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine File
“Two months and one day after it was sued, and close to 3 months since it licensed Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, the FDA released the first round of documents it reviewed before licensing this product. The production consisted of 91 pdf pages, one xpt file, and one txt file. You can download them here.
While it is for the scientists to properly analyze, let me share one observation. One of the documents produced is a Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports of [the Vaccine] Received Through 28-Feb-2021, which is a mere 2 ½ months after the vaccine received emergency use authorization (EUA). This document reflects adverse events following vaccination that have completed Pfizer’s “workflow cycle,” both in and outside the U.S., up to February 28, 2021.
Pfizer explains, on page 6, that “Due to the large numbers of spontaneous adverse event reports received for the product, [Pfizer] has prioritised the processing of serious cases…” and that Pfizer “has also taken a [sic] multiple actions to help alleviate the large increase of adverse event reports” including “increasing the number of data entry and case processing colleagues” and “has onboarded approximately [REDACTED] additional fulltime employees (FTEs).” Query why it is proprietary to share how many people Pfizer had to hire to track all of the adverse events being reported shortly after launching its product.
As for the volume of reports, in the 2 ½ months following EUA, Pfizer received a total of 42,086 reports containing 158,893 “events.” Most of these reports were from the U.S. and disproportionately involved women (29,914 vs. 9,182 provided by men) and those between 31 and 50 years old (13,886 vs 21,325 for all other age groups combined, with another 6,876 whose ages were unknown). Also, 25,957 of the events were classified as “Nervous system disorders”
https://aaronsiri.substack.com/p/fda-produces-the-first-91-pages-of
Hells teeth – that brief synopsis is VERY scary.
Because it perpetuates and increases Communism.
What’s not to like for them and their Fifth Columnists in other parties?
This crisis quickly morphed from what seemed like a battle against a new disease back into the political battle that is at the heart of practically every political battle: the fight between individuality and collectivism.
One part of society want to tell everyone else what to do, another part of society doesn’t want to be bossed around.
The left know what’s best for everyone and insist on telling them what to do. COVID has turned into a busybody’s wet dream.
Damn, I wanted to say that.
It is a good one…
For the same reason they cheered on Tony Blair and Obama. I’ve come to the conclusion over the past 20 months that my predominantly left wing, highly educated friends and colleagues are utterly ignorant, don’t even try to scratch below the surface, just believe whatever they read in the Guardian. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in them, who are all proud to be fully vaxed. I used to think of myself as left wing. Now I see that the so-called choice between political parties is an illusion.
There is no contradiction at all between being affluent and well educated and left wing. On the contrary. Those kinds of people typically have supreme confidence in other well educated people deciding what is best for everyone.
One wonders how they hid their true nature from you in the period before ‘the past 20 months’?
I know lots of leftward leaning people just as you describe. However, their one unifying characteristic is a loathing of working class people when/if they ever have to meet them.
Which is why Filmfour and other lefty media just love making ‘socially aware’ movies about football hooliganism. It allows them to portray white working class men as right wing thugs.
I think because so many on the left believe the lockdowns will lead to the ‘promised land’ of centralised control of every aspect of peoples lives – when in reality it is leading us to corporate technocratic fascism – where major corporations, with no democratic accountability can dictate the lives of millions under the guise of the three tyrannies; Covid, climate and wokery.
The liberal left are useful idiots for this fascism.
Leftists are collectivists who think that people are too stupid and too self destructive to be left to themselves. They think that a few clever people should decide things for everyone.
They refuse to accept the danger of giving that sort of power to a few clever people and deny the self regulating effect of free exchange between individuals.
Throw in their flawed judgement of who are “clever people” – midwits at best or psychopaths at worst.
Well, they have been highly conditioned for the first 20 years of their lives to view academic achievement and conforming to preset rules as the measure of a person’s worth.
The only counterpoint one gets to that is whatever alternative values one gets at home.
Once upon a time a set of Christian values might also have had an influence, but that’s long gone.
The clever people who formed the Vanguard of the Bolshevik revolution were turned over by Stalin who was neither clever nor a genuine Communist. He overthrew their revolution from within and killed off all the old Bolsheviks along the way, not least Trotsky.
He was, of course, succeded by Kruschev who was equally not clever despite being lauded by the likes of Malcolm Mugaridge(sp?) and fellow travellers on the BBC.
Because:
This verbose effort misses the real answer by about a million miles: it’s because the organised political left has no real critique of the caste system and of the parts of the social hierarchy that directly confront the working class – the bullshitting dimwitted schoolteacher and medical priesthoods. Don’t expect any rich self-credentialising medical w*****’s “leftwing socialist”, Pinter-watching dinner-party “friends” to have an inkling about any of this.
You are right. They have no self doubt in that respect. But can you blame them? We have an education system (everyone does really) that for 15 out of the first 18 years of one’s life one’s worth is constantly being assessed on the basis of a narrow set of parameters (academic achievement). So of course those who rise to “the top” have a profound sense of their own value and wisdom and an equally profound sense of the uselessness of those who don’t succeed in their way.
Schools are indoctrination centres, they’re about everything else other than achievement or thinking.
I diverge from conservatives here, school isn’t for everyone, I’d say for a large minority it’s a waste of 15 years of life.
You’re not alone in thinking that.
Bryan Caplan’s book “The Case Against Education” argues pretty convincingly that most people spend far too much time in formal education.
I completely agree. I never forgot hearing Professor Julius Sumner Miller (if you’re an Australian of a certain age you know who I’m talking about) being asked by an interviewer, if you were made Minister of Education tomorrow, what is the first thing you would do: and he replied, ‘Close all the schools’.
Exactly. Free the children.
That narrow form of education was entrenched by the left in the 1970s not least by Jeremy Corbyn who was personally responsible for robbing me of my Grammar School education in his manic race to the bottom.
Hammer – nail.
Just look how the unions have reacted to covid mitigation measures, absolutely shameful, union leaders showing their true colours, ‘liberals’ !
Unions long since ceased to represent the working class.
They now exist to entrench the privileges of public sector white collar ‘workers’.
My experience of Unite (I was a member for a number of years) was that their main interest was pursuing the pet political causes of the leadership, and trying to flog stuff to their members (PPI claims and other things similarly unrelated to the purpose of a union).
Because they are human and therefore more self-interested than not. If we are honest, we all are to a greater or lesser degree. Which is why there aren’t millions of us protesting outside the Chinese embassy for the Uighur people day in day out.
Who has the time?
11:13 am, since you ask. I have it written down of a piece of paper somewhere….
As Sidley is a psychologist, is he ‘nudging’ towards
anti-labour,
pro-tory,
anti-affluence,
pro-owning nothing,
divide and conquer,
a smoke-screen,
and/or
diverting our attention away from global issues far more serious than party politics?
What is his personal agenda?
Perhaps his personal agenda (in this instance, at least) was to pose what he thought was an interesting question, based on his own observations, in order to stimulate debate.
That debate being precisely what the government’s ‘nudging’ efforts are aimed at avoiding.
Yes, that’s agenda he presents, but how far did he think?
Government stirs up strong feelings, making it difficult to remain rational and more vulnerable to being manipulated.
Politics also stirs up strong feelings, is divisive and can lead to hatred and violence.
Either way can result in loss of self-control. If we lose that we lose everything.
In ordinary times, question he raises is relatively innocuous but as all are under pressure it wouldn’t take much to push all ‘over the edge’.
Debate would then become less rational, more aggressively violent and off-target. If ‘powers that be’ are a World government, Britain’s is its minion; all MPs, majority and opposition. Sniping at foot-soldiers won’t impact on the controllers.
At the moment, we do not need blame, hatred, class or any other prejudice war. We need more understanding and tolerance of and sympathy and consideration for each other, even if humans really are no longer capable of love.
Once battle against the global controllers is won, we can indulge in lesser wars if we want to, but unless global battle is won, we’ll get no chance to do anything
I don’t know anything about Dr Sidley’s politics, but I have seen that he was one of the earliest, most outspoken and most active opponents of the covid panic in all its early manifestations, drawing attention especially to the outright evil abuse of psychological manipulation by the regime.
He deserves full credit for that, imo, not insinuations of collaboration merely because you might not like something you infer and don’t like about his politics or his wider views on the situation.
“global issues far more serious than party politics“
Confusing left/right with “party politics” is a fundamental error. They interact, but are by no means the same thing.
Yes, his opposition to psychological abuse by the regime is to be applauded.
Since then though, blame has crept into what he says. It’s blame that I do not like because it’s divisive and divide and conquer is what the regime is doing.
I doubt he is intentionally doing that but question how much thought he gave to possible results of raising his question before he did so.
As earlier comments seemed to be heading for multiple divisions, I tried to calm that and stay focussed on battle against the global regime.
My apologies for having failed so completely. Please rest assured I shall not reply to any other objections. Please do continue without my view
“It’s blame that I do not like because it’s divisive and divide and conquer is what the regime is doing.”
Surely blame should go where it is due? Deciding where it is due is what discussion, debate and even argument are for.
This hippyish notion that if only we wouldn’t argue we would all magically agree where the blame should go and march united into a glorious future seems a bit…hippyish…for my liking.
And all too often the ones getting blamed for “dividing” are the ones fighting back against previous division or aggression inflicted upon them. Calling for unity becomes blaming the victims.
“As earlier comments seemed to be heading for multiple divisions, I tried to calm that and stay focussed on battle against the global regime.
My apologies for having failed so completely. Please rest assured I shall not reply to any other objections. Please do continue without my view”
Your prerogative and choice, obviously.
I’d suggest a thicker skin might be useful though, and a refusal to take disagreement too personally.
I’m a lefty in the sense I’m all for equality and a decent pay with good working conditions. But I’ve never been comfortable with restrictions. I guess the reason why the left are more in favour of restrictions is because they think they’re putting health before the economy. When in reality restrictions have created a whole lot more problems than they could ever hope to solve.
God save me from moneygrabbing medics who think they understand politics or society, can’t write for toffees, have pocketed hundreds of thousands from the state even if they mostly work privately, and who bullshittingly marshal their superficial “reasons” for the “conclusions” they’d already made before they started, exactly as they do at work all day – especially when they think they’ve got “very left wing” friends who aren’t as intellectually honest as their self-loving pragmatic oh so public-spirited rightist, centrist, or apolitical technocratic selves. A pox on all of your houses.
Here’s my take on it. All left wing politics is what happens when you remove God from the picture and construct your own morality. So, now, you’re a good person. There are only two ways to become even more moral: one is to be better yourself, and the other is to point out how bad other people are. So once you’ve gone vegan or whatever, the only thing left to do is point and hate. So leftism has devolved if that’s the word into coming up with a string of labels by which to demonise a mythical opponent: here we go. Racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, fascist, climate change denier, white supremacist, toxic, scum, islamophobe, TERF etc etc etc. This process came to a giddy climax in 2016 with the arrival of their ultimate nemesis: Donald Trump. Now there was a crowning term you could add to the above list: Trump supporter. So they let themselves go absolutely nuts over this, working themselves into a lather of self-righteous insane fury over the existence of these ‘Trump supporters’. Then along came COVID, and Trump exited stage left. The scene was set, a perfect storm of blind hatred of anyone who doesn’t read the Guardian basically. The idea of muzzling everyone else, locking them up, and injecting them with a bio-weapon is exactly the fantasy of the left. And it appeals to them so strongly that they’re even willing to undergo it themselves, just as long as everyone else does to. So leftie embraced lockdown masks, and vaccines, the end. Thanks for listening.
An example was given in an earlier thread this morning.
For declining to police vaxport regulations the Cinema Company of Swansea has not only been closed down by Trading Standards (note, not under Covid laws of doubtful legality) but have drawn the wrath of Swansea BLM who accuse the organisers of a crowdfunding support campaign of being ‘far right’.
This, it is claimed, means that the operators of that independent cinema are racist, homophobic transphobes or it is up to them to prove otherwise.
In my experience operators and workers at independent cinemas are invariably lefty liberal luvvies as far from right wing as could be.
As posted by Mark in todays Roundup comments.
Because in the Oppression Olympics poor people are not at the top, and there can be only 1 most oppressed!
Besides, poor people can change their lot, pan sexual trans less abled adhd wifwaffs cannot.
This is not a surprise to anyone who has looked at the results of collectivism and central planning everywhere that it’s been tried. The instant that you punish productivity, it plummets, and those who have least suffer the first and most.
I fear that we’re now circling the drain of making working a mug’s game. “Furlough” was a terrifying experiment in explicitly paying people for not making or doing anything. That’s as distinct from paying them (notionally) to seek work, or because they’re unable to produce.
It’s a perverse policy which could only ever be inflationary – more fiat chasing fewer tangible goods and real services – and as always, those with the shallowest pockets are the ones who will go without first.
Those who were rewarded least, if at all, for lockdown inactivity being small independent people in business or artistic endeavors not on a salary or a paying directorship.
Who knows what they might have achieved to the greater good. Not only have those endeavours been destroyed the individuals have been reduced to penury and food banks.
I’m guided only by the science – the pre covid era of immunology, what I’ve learnt in 30 years of bigpharma/vaccinology propaganda, so this nightmare is no surprise to me save as to how politics/bigpharma has so easily created so many sheep in the face of reality.
So we have politics bending science and the public to their whim.
I think the left believe the right are just selfish so it’s easy for them to portray others as simply uncaring ie aghast at letting covid rip so as to preserve the economy. This is perhaps why they deny Sweden, an erstwhile socialist country in their eyes.
FWIW I’m probably left of left but I don’t give a dam about the left/right in this nightmare.
Science has to prevail or we as an original species are f****d.
Why is the Left So Enthusiastic About Covid Restrictions, Given that the People they Harm the Most are the Poor and Vulnerable?
Because the Left are NOT interested in helping people, they are interested in control.
IF they were really worried about slavery, they would be addressing exising slavery. But instead they prefer trying to force museums to return their collections.
IF they were interested in trans issues they would be funding research into the rare problem. Instead, they prefer to force companies to comply with idiotic quotas.
IF they were interested in the plight of impoverished minority non-western persons, they would be setting up hostels or other support services. Instead, they prefer rioting in the streets.
All the arguments the Left present are not true concerns of theirs. So it is pointless to try to address them – they don’t WANT them addressed. They just want to use them as a justification for grabing power. Which is why they appear to hold frankly illogical views, and don’t care when this is pointed out. These ‘views’ are just ‘held’ for the purposes of shouting at people and for no other purpose…..
We need to move away from party politics completely. All MPs should be independent and be based in the constituency they represent, the HOL should go and have a ‘peoples parliament’ drawn from the electoral register, two for each constituency to serve a fixed number of years with either their jobs being guaranteed on return or only serving part time so they can carry on working….
Something like that anyway…
Worth a try. National parties have definitely been a big part of the problem.
I suspect there would be unintended consequences, though. There usually are…
Quite possibly but that shouldn’t stop us from trying something different. Look where sticking with what we know has got us!
Indeed. As I said, worth a try….
How about the Arhenian model where legislators where selected by lottery for one year terms but who could be punished if their efforts proved to be unsatisfactory?
Seems outlandish but it’s not much different to Jury selection.
It’s not a ‘left wing’ view. It’s the view of the Golgafrinchan Ark Ship B class that has taken over the membership of the myriad ‘liberal democrat’ parties that exist – including Labour.
The characteristic of these people is that there are neither liberal, nor democrats.
The actual left wing is politically homeless. Nobody speaks for the ordinary working class any more – largely because it is near impossible to fund such a voice.
I agree. the guardian reading class would describe themselves as left wing but are in reality slavers who love nothing more than looking down on the poor and watching foreigners clean their toilets for a pittance
their pathetic virtue signalling is just to make themselves feel better about being well off, propertied and not having proper jobs
“I agree. the guardian reading class would describe themselves as left wing but are in reality slavers who love nothing more than looking down on the poor and watching foreigners clean their toilets for a pittance”
You seem to feel a need to define left-wing in such a way as to incorporate niceness within it. Easier surely just to recognise that leftist is not necessarily inherently nice or nasty, but that its adherents (in general) today at least are very much on the wrong side.
There isn’t much of an Industrial working class left either, just lots of poor people.
Starmer is a member of the globalist Trilateral Commission
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission
The Labour party are Tories who wave a red flag.
“The Labour party are Tories who wave a red flag.”
What, this Labour Party?
“The truth about the Labour Party and its ferociously radical leader Sir Keir Starmer is so obvious that nobody sees it. This is why the recent revelation that the Blair creature himself was once a Trotskyist came and went without any response at all.
Nobody in the media wants to believe it, so they simply ignore it. Since the days of the Blairites, Labour has been a revolutionary party, crammed with people who long to get rid of the Monarchy but have more sense than to say so in public.
An astonishing number of Blair’s Cabinet colleagues had deep past links with revolutionary sects. Now such ideas are embedded in a party that used to be based on working-class trade unionism and Methodist Christianity.
My advice is to take note of this now, rather than waiting to find out that it is true, just as it is true that Labour’s present leader, Keir Starmer was – as an adult – connected to a Marxist sect and its deeply radical magazine.”
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2021/02/peter-hitchens-sir-keir-starmer-used-to-demand-we-get-rid-of-the-queen-do-you-really-think-hes-chang.html
“Your leading article (‘Comfort spending’, 28 November) makes the classic mistake about modern politics which prevents so many from grasping what is going on. You refer to Sir Keir Starmer as the leader of a battle against Labour’s left by its ‘centre’. Since Neil Kinnock’s pantomime battle with Militant in 1985, political journalists have been beguiled by a fantasy. They think that Labour leaders who attack villainous leftist factions do so in the cause of moderation. But this is in fact a battle by the sophisticated left — of post-1968 cultural revolutionaries — against the crude and embarrassing steam-powered left of Militant or Jeremy Corbyn. Each thinks the other is the wrong kind of socialist. Keir Starmer, like Anthony Blair himself, is a former Trotskyist who may not be that former. He recently told an interviewer who explored his dalliance with the fascinating tendency known as ‘Socialist Alternatives’: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind.’ And why should he? The group’s preoccupation with sexual politics and green issues has since then become the ideology of all the major parties. But the old Labour right of anti-Communist trade union patriots and Christians was hunted down and wiped out almost 40 years ago, and can barely be found any more. Labour’s struggle, like so much British politics, is a left vs left combat. If you want anything else, good luck. But you won’t get it from Sir Keir.”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/letters-labours-left-vs-left-struggle
Far more accurate to say that the NHS-worshipping, mass immigration and social radicalism loving, tax and spend “Conservative” Party are leftists conning conservative voters every few years.
Many mainstream Labour politicians began in one or other splinter factions either because they preferred to be a big fish in a small pond or because Labour student politics was just plain boring.
Most of them probably grew out of it.
When you realise that modern Leftism is a morality play rather than the politico-economic movement it used to be, you can understand why the Left takes up stances that damage the poor and underprivileged within society. The Left’s view is that the poor ‘deserve’ whatever detriment their receive, because they hold such immoral views (and practise such immoral behaviours) on things like Brexit, immigration, patriotism and conspicuous consumption. The Left see themselves as morally superior beings, as they hold the ‘correct’ views, such as globalisation, unfettered mass immigration, supranationalism and ‘Green’ matters. They can thus square the circle in their heads as to their incredibly privileged position within society, both in economic terms and also in their control of the levers of power. Without the moral superiority ‘get out of jail free card’ they would face a massive cognitive dissonance between their stated desire to help the poor and underprivileged and their actual actions.
Thus Leftism is now a religion – one that determines your admission to the ruling classes, or whether you deserve their protection. Have the ‘correct’ views and you can join the elite or gain their protection, have the wrong views and you are condemned to the outer darkness, and no-one in power will care about you at all, rich or poor alike. Stanley Johnson allegedly puts his hand on an elite class woman’s knee 40 years ago, front page news. Working class girls get raped and abused en masse in grotty Northern towns, who cares, they are untermenschen anyway.
In my view Labour Party are finished. Who do they represent? Not working people whose aspirations they seem to stand against. I am certain their stance over covid has done them irreparable damage. I certainly am completely through with them.
‘The Labour party are finished’, not if bozo can help it.
Shouting “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” & singing the anti-fascist song “Bella Ciao,” protesters lined up behind a huge banner saying “Together for Freedom” & marched to the EU headquarters…
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-business-brussels-europe-8b2fb4eb4992b54cd544fc8fa5e19f26
Bella Ciao – La Casa de Papel
an anti-fascist hymn of freedom and resistance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ao4FEaDGhQ
…
“The song was modified and adopted as an anthem of the anti-fascist resistance by the Italian partisans between 1943 and 1945 during the Italian Resistance against the Nazi German forces occupying Italy,”
…
“and, during the Italian Civil War, the Italian partisan struggle against the fascist Italian Social Republic and its Nazi German allies. Versions of “Bella ciao” continue to be sung worldwide as an anti-fascist hymn of freedom and resistance.”
Using the words ‘the left’ in combination with a picture of Kneel Shmarmer is a graphical oxymoron.
“Using the words ‘the left’ in combination with a picture of Kneel Shmarmer is a graphical oxymoron.”
This Keir Starmer?
“Labour’s present leader, Keir Starmer was – as an adult – connected to a Marxist sect and its deeply radical magazine. “
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2021/02/peter-hitchens-sir-keir-starmer-used-to-demand-we-get-rid-of-the-queen-do-you-really-think-hes-chang.html
“Keir Starmer, like Anthony Blair himself, is a former Trotskyist who may not be that former. He recently told an interviewer who explored his dalliance with the fascinating tendency known as ‘Socialist Alternatives’: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind.’ And why should he? The group’s preoccupation with sexual politics and green issues has since then become the ideology of all the major parties. But the old Labour right of anti-Communist trade union patriots and Christians was hunted down and wiped out almost 40 years ago, and can barely be found any more. Labour’s struggle, like so much British politics, is a left vs left combat. If you want anything else, good luck. But you won’t get it from Sir Keir.”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/letters-labours-left-vs-left-struggle
Hardly an oxymoron! A pleonasm perhaps.
I’d be surprised if anyone finds this surprising … the left have always been power freaks … they absolutely love to have power over everyone – they are not happy unless they are ordering other people around – scratch the surface of any leftist and you will find a tyrant screaming to be let out – any opportunity to obtain power over the individual and they will seize it.
This …
Can we please stop this left v right nonsense. It doesn’t matter to which particular party a politician belongs – they are clearly now all singing off the same globalist song sheet.
If nothing else, events of the last two years have exposed world leaders across the “democratic” West as little more than forelock-tugging line managers for the stinking rich corporate/philanthropist elite who really run the world.
The job of Boris and the rest of the traitorous “Build Back Better” brigade is to use the pseudo pandemic to force our submission to the WEF/UN/World Bank-backed Great Reset of the world economy and all our lives.
There is no prospect of champagne socialist Starmer, the remarkably supine multi-millionaire leader of Her Majesty’s Non-Opposition, riding to the rescue. He is a loyal member of the Trilateral Commission, set up 47 years ago by the late David Rockerfeller to ensure the wealthy would always run the planet.
They say the evil old bugger never made a bad investment. And the way things are going, it’s difficult to disagree!
“Can we please stop this left v right nonsense. It doesn’t matter to which particular party a politician belongs – they are clearly now all singing off the same globalist song sheet.”
Yes. The quality of political awareness here is very low – too much just banging tattered drums that have passed there sell-by date. Essentially, superficial denial of the gravity of what is going on.
There is a debate to be had, but it isn’t this mickey-mouse left/right stuff.
Translation from RickH-speak:
“The quality of political awareness here is very low” = Lots of people here don’t agree with me about politics!
“too much just banging tattered drums that have passed there sell-by date” = People here keep writing things I don’t understand and refuse to accept.
“superficial denial of the gravity of what is going on” = People don’t get that the only really important thing here is to make sure the Tories and “right-wing capitalists” get all the blame and the Labour Party get elected, and hopefully by then my faction will be back in charge of it.
“mickey-mouse left/right stuff” = Look, if I can’t defend the left because it has become indefensible, we’re damned well going to pretend “left/right doesn’t matter after all”, ok? [foot-stamp]
All Blairites
Keir Starmer is a stooge for Israel.
https://www.bing.com/search?form=MOZLBR&pc=MOZI&q=keri+starmer+israel+security
Boris Conson is a stooge for Israel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuXwyO7XmNU
Please can we have some leaders who are not stooges for Israel.
Keir Starmer is just Tony Blair’s representative up here on Earth. He is just pursuing whatever policies his globalist bosses tell him to pursue. This explains the complete lack of opposition by Labour to the government. Why would they oppose the government when they can get the Conservative Party to enact Blair’s policies and take all the flak for them?
Furthermore, Labour only likes working class people who are happy to remain poor, working class, dependent on the State and who will therefore continue voting Labour.
There was an indignant article in the Guardian recently bemoaning the fact that Indians in Britain were abandoning Labour for other parties. As if any one ethnic group should vote en bloc for one particular political party. Isn’t that a bit, well, racist?
The comments below the line overwhelmingly pointed to the fact that many Indian families value the nuclear family, hard work, individual responsibility and socially conservative principles, all of which Labour seems to be opposed to.
Labour has lost Scotland, much of the North and Midlands and most rural England. It will therefore not win an election outright for a generation (although it might sneak into coalition government if the Lib Dems capture enough Tory seats in the south).
Of course all of this talk of party politics is irrelevant now that we’ve been taken over by the unelected globalist technocrat elites.
Easy, because most of the left gave up thinking about, or even debating, issues over twenty years ago. The left has been so completely consumed by group think and tokenism, that a single fascist flag, at an anti lockdown rally, probably carried by an agent of the state, meant that no one on the left dare question lockdown because only “fascists” do that.
“a single fascist flag, at an anti lockdown rally, probably carried by an agent of the state, meant that no one on the left dare question lockdown because only “fascists” do that.”
The left were screeching about resistance to covid panic being “right wing”, “eugenic”, “putting money ahead of lives” long before there was even a lockdown to protest against:
“The government had a “herd immunity” strategy at the start of the coronavirus pandemic to tackle the outbreak, Jeremy Corbyn has claimed.
The former Labour leader said he had a briefing at the Cabinet Office and was given a “lecture” about the plan.
Mr Corbyn claimed “allowing people to die” was the “absurd” official policy at the time.
….
It was absurd, that you’d build up herd immunity by allowing people to die.
And so, while the government was going into eugenic formulas of discussing all this stuff, they were not making adequate preparations.”
Jeremy Corbyn: Ministers had herd immunity strategy for coronavirus
A “herd immunity” strategy, Corbyn? Yes – the correct strategy, you leftist panicker buffoon!
The left have always found the poor and vulnerable easy to control under the guise of ‘care’
The left have always liked the number of poor, vulnerable and especially dependent to increase thinking that this automatically increases their voter base.
Didn’t work in Scotland, after a while, and they came unstuck with the Red Wall.
Just like my Labour voting friends, gay couple with £80k or so a year coming in. Working from home during lockdown, ordering everything online and then when deliveries came having driver place packages just inside front door then retreating swiftly to back of house and hiding for half an hour – incase driver might come back and ask to use toilet or for hot water for a drink.
This fascinates me. I consider myself left of Corbyn but am a daily reader of this website, I don’t feel so alone knowing there are people on both sides of the political spectrum who don’t accept the narrative. I also read Left Lockdown Sceptics. I think human beings struggle to grapple with complexity and putting one’s head above the parapet is incredibly hard. Narratives do change in time but this one isn’t yet.
Why? Your question must be rhetorical because lockdown is communist.
And since when do socialists and communists care about helping the poor?
I’m not saying the right are better but at least we know and acknowledge their flaws. Although one might suggest there is no longer right or left just a bunch of deluded facists or communists, both resulting in the same outcome from different starting points.
The left in office. Labour Chief Minister of the Northern Territory in Australia Michael Gunner – sheer ignorant, bigoted zealotry:
‘Stuff it, shove it’: a furious Michael Gunner calls out those against vaccine mandates – video
Northern Territory chief minister Michael Gunner has blasted those who have been campaigning against vaccine mandates in the Northern Territory. ‘If you are anti-mandate, you are absolutely anti-vax’, Gunner said during a Covid-19 press conference. ‘People are actually supporting the idea of a teacher being unvaccinated in a remote community classroom, with kids who cannot be vaccinated,’ Gunner said. ‘I reject that utterly … Stuff it, shove it’
It’s easy-peasy why they support such policies – because it means they subsidise and control the living of the less well-off, who then and locked into welfare dependency for life, and thus will gratefully vote Labour again and again.
If you have no incentive to work, be thrifty, save, etc (e.g. via ‘universal income’, which will be touted again soon), then why would anyone receiving it care about ‘restrictions’, as long as they get all their ‘free’ stuff paid for by everyone else?
I’ve been called a lunatic for predicting a civil war in this country over the past couple of years, I believe it is getting ever closer. There will be a straw that breaks the camel’s back and an outpouring of rage against the left will occur. Sooner the better for me, and get this country back to a normal Western meritocracy.
Its very simple. They liked getting paid to stay at home and have the grubby ‘workers’ carry on delivering them stuff, making sure food was in the shops and keeping the lights and gas on etc. 50% or so of the population are ‘further educated’ beyond their capabilities, have key tapping jobs and are about as far from the ‘old’ working class in their motivations as you can get. A majority of them are self serving hypocritical virtue signalling morons.
Attention tin foil hat brigade! Toad has provided another opportunity to slag off the “evil left”. Cos you all know, don’t you, that what the ample evidence of corrupt tory waste and incompetence actually means is that the left despise the working class and would be the same except far worse. That’s septic confirmation bias for you.
Whatever you do don’t think about how the interests of capital have been protected during a once in a century event. After all if the Earth don’t provide a fit place for capitalism to continuously make the rich richer then what’s the use of it?
Bloody lefties!
Prime Minister Kim Jong Johnson is a great fat communist fraud who implemented the agenda of Jeremy Corbyn for him.
Lockdown is communist, a policy imported from a communist dictatorship that has concentration camps.
Marxism is the very definition of evil.
no that’s “Capitalism” – silly TFH
Since when did the Left care a hoot about the poor and vulnerable?
Serious question for the day. Does Sir Kneeler look a bigger twat with or without a mask?
Neither.
Who is more septic: A QC or a man who names himself after a decomposing jazz musician?
The latter two are my two goto articles on the left in English. The former two are more recent ones in German.
“The left thinks man is fundamentally good. He just needs to be reeducated, primarily by prohibitions, and without exceptions (see mask/vaxx mandates…).”
Der gesunde Menschenverstand ist der natürliche Feind der Linken. Sie hat ihm den Krieg erklärt.
“Common sense is the natural enemy of the left. It has declared war on it.”
Die vorgespielte Menschlichkeit bricht zusammen. Übrig bleibt die Heuchelei, die man immer geahnt hat, aber nie beweisen konnte. Aber oft ahnt der Menschenverstand Dinge, bevor andere sie wissen.
“The faked humanity crashes. Only the hypocrisy, which one always presumed but could never prive, remains. But often common sense anticipates things before others recognize them.”
https://www.achgut.com/artikel/der_mensch_ist_gut._das_kommende_regierungsprogramm
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/meinungen/der-absolute-feind-steht-tief-im-eigenen-land/
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/05/lk-samuels/the-fascist-left-myth-or-reality/
https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class
Joe Rogan said his doctor, Pierre Kory, is part of a group that has used Ivermectin to quietly treat 200 Members of U.S. Congress for COVID19. Dr Simone Gold, from America’s Frontline Doctors, told that she has prescribed treatments for Congress. She still believes in her oath, but she is vocal saying she has been contacted by many in DC. Can you believe these demons? Healing for them are OK but not for us. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
Because this whole shitstorm is about having power over us. It has nothing to do with public health whatsoever. Labour are as desperate as any political party to have that power and influence. They love all of this pantomime.
I think it is a bit more complicated. The sharp political divide over lockdowns and the left’s almost universal lust for draconian restrictons surprised me too. Even during the Brexit campaign we had the so called Lexiteers. Except that the divide is not that sharp really. At the start of the crisis opposition to lockdown was limited to the libertarian wing of the Conservative Party. Liberals and many Conservatives were and remain just as belligient on the issue as Starmer and his crew. We have been undergoing a social and cultural revolution since the 1960s. Woke is the predominant narrative of the ruling elites. As Peter Hitchens often points out. Cameron was the true heir to Blair and his experiment in EuroCommunism. Yes we enjoy a few more freedoms under Boris but if there is another Covid surge in the UK we too will be back in lockdown before you know it.
Basically the Labour party sees the working class as an embarrassing old relative. If we’d only get an education, if we’d only listen to Labour and stop trying to think for ourselves the world would now be a workers paradise. What the pandemic as shown is that Labour believe only the state can solve all our problems and anything that undermines that belief must be crushed. The problem which Labour can’t seem to get their heads round is that covid is nature it can’t be bargained with or told what to do and will not show any mercy. This is why I believe only by working with nature can we defeat covid, this is what they did in Sweden and what we’ve been doing since July.
Some of us have left the Party, largely on account of their attitude. So, their cash income has gone down along with the loss of face (to use the Chinese saying).