Oh, Elgar? Why do you always find me at my lowest points, Elgar? is a very underrated peep show quote.
Westminster Politics
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
Oh, Elgar? Why do you always find me at my lowest points, Elgar? is a very underrated peep show quote.
This, sums it well.
It's just typical British crappy attempts to mirror the Yanks and failing miserably. They have the shameless bluster to carry stuff off but Brits are always half-hearted and a tad embarrassed about showing off and always look daft. I think Trump had about fifty yank flags in some of his briefings and all kinds of gold and frilly shit, this Tory Travelodge effort just looks pitiful.
Brilliant article.
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Director of Communications now gone after 3 months. Only appointed in January
Prior to this he was at the Daily Mail, as Home Affairs editor
It is a good start. Meanwhile, the narcissist strikes again...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...ice-stop-people-gathering-sarah-everard-vigil
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Absolutely disgraceful scenes in Bristol.
Yeah, it seems the police are using old tricks to turn protests violent again. More disgraceful because the protests are against a bill which comes close to police state territory.
I'm against the bill but I'm more against the rioters. The worst of it is they're playing right into the Tories' hands. Boris will be counting the votes coming in by the bucketload.
Yes that's what's disgraceful
...and the 80s and early 90s are fully back.
I have no idea what happened here and, having been in protests in the time periods I mention above and seen the narrative spin in the media (very much including the BBC), I rather suspect I never will. I have seen clearly aggressive and violent protesters actively trying to start trouble and I have seen the Police initiate conflict in what often appeared to be a co-ordinated and pre-meditated manner (and in a frankly terrifying manner on one notable occasion).
However, this is the consequences that inevitably come from the a lack of social equality, disenfranchisement and a Government that is hostile to sections of it's own people. I also note the recently passed draconian bill regarding protests and do not consider these facts a coincidence.
This does not end well.
It’s a minority of dickheads but that will be the headline now. So dumb. Undermines the whole point of the protest.
Own goal.
Very stupid indeed and you are exactly right. The rest of the crowds would be better placed turning on these "activists" mind and totally disassociating themselves by handing them to the police.
That's never going to happen for a whole variety of reasons.
This sort of incident is going to become increasingly common: people are angry and disenfranchised and this Government will use your fellow officers to drive home their political sledgehammer. Incidents like this will give them the justification to do so and allow them to argue that the recently passed bill is proportionate and needed. We've seen this before. We know how it goes. They won't let movements like BLM take hold again.
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You don't have to weigh one against the other. You can still say you're against the bill.
As for the supposed rioters, if you push people hard enough they'll push back.
Also bear in mind that rioting and looting is already illegal and always had been. The bill seeks to make peaceful protest punishable by up to ten years in prison. That's something else.
Read it again please, I did say I'm against the bill.
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Can’t say I’m surprised it escalated there’s always been a crowd in Bristol that love any excuse to leave turbo island in their birkenstocks and fight the power, half of them probably didn’t even know what they were protesting and were up for a scrap
regardless of what they were protesting about and how these protests ended up where they did ... there is a global pandemic FFS... people shouldn't be congregating in large groups risking the spread of a deadly disease ... ultimately any reasons behind the protests will get lost in that fact and they will have ultimately done a lot more harm to their cause from that than anything else I think
Do any Tories really care about these protests? Everyone here saying they didn't help the cause... Was there actually any way their cause could be helped? Wouldn't the tories just have gone along anyway? Even if they had sat there quiet and socially distanced...
Saying they haven't helped themselves is like telling the beaten wife that she isn't helping herself by putting up resistance.
Saying they haven't helped themselves is like telling the beaten wife that she isn't helping herself by putting up resistance.
The problem has arisen because the government have been trying to pass legislation to make all peaceful protest illegal if it causes an annoyance. Permanently. Even after the pandemic.
If you understand history, you can imagine the urgency.
Yes... but perhaps smashing things up isn't the best way of preserving the rights of peaceful protests as they currently stand
Though it will be framed as something that in the midst of a global death lurgy was a bad idea ... that will overshadow even the irony of a violent protest about peaceful protests
20 officers injured last night, two quite seriously.
One with a broken arm and another with a collapsed lung from being stamped on.
Absolutely disgusting and anyone who condones that needs to have a long hard look at themselves.
One with a broken arm and another with a collapsed lung from being stamped on.
Absolutely disgusting and anyone who condones that needs to have a long hard look at themselves.
After all the shit the police get up to I’m finding it hard to care.
They look like a bunch of young middle class wannabe anarchists with a number of older more hardcore anarchist types. Most of the younger ones will be teachers or work in insurance in 10 years time. The dedicated youngsters can look forward to a life of moving from squat to squat and excreting in buckets when times are good.
Was there a mix of these protests and anti lockdown protests too?
Ugly scenes, not what you want to see.
Ugly scenes, not what you want to see.
I've long resigned to the idea that, generally, Britain and British people are destined to continue to suffer due to this continued preference of peace over progress, and the misconception that topics of discussion or changes to law can only be done as part of a 'civil' debate or actions that don't disrupt society, without realising that the idea of 'peace' is a key pillar in upholding inequality.
Violent and/or inconvenient political dissent will shock, upset and bother you only if you truly believe we live in a fair democracy, trimmings of meritocracy and non existence of miscarriages of justice included.
And if we're going to discuss violence, then let's discuss all the violence that the state gets up to.
Violent and/or inconvenient political dissent will shock, upset and bother you only if you truly believe we live in a fair democracy, trimmings of meritocracy and non existence of miscarriages of justice included.
And if we're going to discuss violence, then let's discuss all the violence that the state gets up to.
Sadly that says alot about you.
I'm of this mind as well but at the same time you know who these folk are and they're not the politically motivated lot they're just wannabe anarchists.
I'd go further than your post though, any kind of disruption is too much for the British mindset as we've seen with climate protests. Keep Apathetic and Carry On is more appropriate.
I don't really care if they're politically motivated or not, and it's not for me to judge - and honestly a protest needs a mix of people because the whole point is to educate and bring awareness.
I don't even think it's apathy - it's either ignorance or delusion at this point, and we're destined to continue on this cycle.
I think it's more decades of conditioning to believe that only protests that are massively ineffectual are morally defensible. The government know peaceful protest acts as a pressure valve, so (unless they're really thick like Patel) are largely happy to allow it out of fear that if they don't more effective methods might be adopted. I can name several large scale, peaceful demos which attracted upwards of a million people; I can't name you a single thing any of them achieved.
I think it's very narrow minded to suggest that that only way of achieving anything is to try and seriously injure/kill people.
For all the criticism of XR by the wider public by using tactics to cause maximum disruption they have had much more of an impact on climate change than anticipated. Both amongst the public and internationally.
For all the criticism of XR by the wider public by using tactics to cause maximum disruption they have had much more of an impact on climate change than anticipated. Both amongst the public and internationally.
Exactly this, like I said earlier 'peace is a pillar in upholding inequality' - you are unlikely to achieve anything with a polite demonstration. But British people gasp at the sight of any type of violence they can see, but are so normalised to violence when it comes to economics, race, gender etc due to institutions like the media upholding the status quo (as well as their own delusions about everything being equal), that we are just going to continue in this cycle.
Well, for a start, I'm not sure XR have achieved any tangible success. Secondly, what success XR have achieved has largely been a result of adopting much more disruptive methods than is normally considered defensible - in fact it's largely them that has caused this bill. They generated a plethora of headlines along the lines of 'XR are right, but how dare they sit on a bridge or stand on a train' and as a result achieved massively disproportionate coverage and attention than if they'd peacefully marched towards Westminster and shouted some witty slogans for a bit.
I'm also not making any moral judgement here or endorsing violent protest; I just think it's an indisputable fact when you look at the history of protest that violent movements are significantly more likely to achieve their aims.
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Whether XR have or haven't achieved a meaningful impact or not, it is precisely the sort of action taken by XR that the recent bill will target with significant punitive sentences. Violence is, I fully agree, never a good thing but if the right to legitimate protest is taken away then this will inevitably lead to violent confrontation between the people and the state. The coppers are, unfortunately, the state's frontline in this situation.
This bill must be reversed - but it won't be and the weekend's incidents will be used as collateral to justify the bill's existence.
You're jumping from one extreme to the next with no in-between. What happened last night is totally different to the tactics used by XR. They aim to cause maximum disruption in many different ways but none of them result in violence and serious assault.
Whilst I get your point, surely a wannabe anarchist is by definition politically motivated?