UK Politics: Winter of Discontent

[Maltaran]

1 hour ago, Eggegg said:

Is that anything like what Young has done here? 

Yes

[HexMachina]

1 hour ago, Eggegg said:

It’s not rape culture. Stop being silly.

So you don’t think normalising and making acceptable comments which objectify women as commodity’s to be ogled and judged based on appearance, which demean women...you don’t think this contributes to rape culture? You can’t even see a teeny tiny connection there? Well, I am shocked

 

 (only I’m not, because I have seen your other posts in this thread and others)

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Eggegg said:

It’s not rape culture. Stop being silly.

When you meet a jerk in the morning, you simply met a jerk. When you met another in the afternoon, now you've met two. when you met a third in the evening, chances are, you're the jerk. 

Take a hint man. When everyone is telling you it's not humor, it's not.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I know Tony Blair is basically persona non grata in the UK, but does he have a good point about revoting on Brexit after the citizens of the UK know the terms of the deals they're getting in to? 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/04/tony-blair-brexit-labour-theresa-may

[Werthead]

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'Danny Boyle's wife's got huge knockers'.

That was his daughter, who was a minor at the time (IIRC, Boyle was dating Rosario Dawson at the time and they were keeping their relationship on the quiet, so she didn't join him on stage). Young did not acknowledge this or apologise for it.

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And no, accusing someone of paedophilla when they clearly are not interested in prepubescent children is no laughing matter at all, and certainly wasn’t said in the spirit of humour. 

He complimented an underage girl on the size of her breasts in public, which is sketchy and creepy as fuck. Even if genuinely thought she was over the age of consent (and she was still blatantly a teenage girl and he was a middle-aged man), he was educated on the fact afterwards and refused to apologise for it. 

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It’s not rape culture. Stop being silly.

One of the definitions of rape culture is normalising an environment in which women are treated as objects of satisfaction for men, which is 100% what Young has done, repeatedly, over the years.

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I know Tony Blair is basically persona non grata in the UK, but does he have a good point about revoting on Brexit after the citizens of the UK know the terms of the deals they're getting in to? 

There is an angle you can pursue here. You could say that Brexit in its current form is now going to be a bit of a fudge, with us leaving the EU, still having to adhere to a lot of EU rules and regulations but having no say over the formulation of those rules. With that in place, an argument could be made for us remaining in the EU and taking greater control and influence over those rules and regulations. You could even suggest that Britain could remain in the EU and work alongside Eastern European countries on changes to free movement (since the EU could shortly be in the position of having to decide whether to kick out Hungary and Poland for refusing to accept refugees, which would simply drive them into Putin's orbit, so they may decide to compromise), as distasteful as that might be, but advantageous from the view of realpolitick.

The problem with that argument is that it also empowers the opposite position, a hard Brexit and the cutting off of ties with the EU altogether. The calculation would have to be if a second referendum on those terms would drive more people to the hard Brexit option or if it would convince more people to remain within the EU and affect change from within. And this could be far more divisive than the current position.

Or in other words, the "revolt" might not be in the direction you'd expect.

[Eggegg]

11 hours ago, Werthead said:

That was his daughter, who was a minor at the time (IIRC, Boyle was dating Rosario Dawson at the time and they were keeping their relationship on the quiet, so she didn't join him on stage). Young did not acknowledge this or apologise for it.

Mistaking his daughter for his wife presumes he didn't think she was a minor when he wrote it obviously. Plus, a paedophile is someone who finds prepubescent children attractive. So clearly he isn't a paedophile, so I don't know why you are suggesting he is. 

11 hours ago, Werthead said:

One of the definitions of rape culture is normalising an environment in which women are treated as objects of satisfaction for men, which is 100% what Young has done, repeatedly, over the years.

Well I will have different views on this subject than many people here I imagine. I do think that we need to be careful we don't pigeon hole any expression of sexual attraction as 'contributing to rape culture'. I don't think its helpful to the conversation and just comes off as reactionary and puritanical. Young's comments about saying women have great boobs was juvenile and (presumably like most things he says) made to purposely wind up liberals.

13 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Take a hint man. When everyone is telling you it's not humor, it's not.

And here's the thing, just because you and a bunch of people on this board (which is, as many people have commented, pretty homogenous in its thinking and doesn't do well with diversity of thought on many issues) don't find it funny, that doesn't mean that the comments were not humorous, or even more importantly, were not made to with the intention of humour.

Intention and context are hugely important when judging the value of what someone has said, except that instead the Twitter Mob will focus on 'the words' and jump on the outrage bandwagon. We are living in sad times right now where the mob is so eager to jump down everyone's throats and dredge up every word someone has said in order to vilify them for their own political ends. And make no mistake, much of the motivation for this witch hunt is political, Young is a liberal bating, Brexit loving, laddish Tory, with connections to other hated Tories. There is a level of joy in taking people like him down. 

 

[Werthead]

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Mistaking his daughter for his wife presumes he didn't think she was a minor when he wrote it obviously. Plus, a paedophile is someone who finds prepubescent children attractive. So clearly he isn't a paedophile, so I don't know why you are suggesting he is. 

 

Hint: trying to engage in definition pedantry to defend someone's views on finding an underage youngster sexually attractive is really, really not a good idea.

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Well I will have different views on this subject than many people here I imagine. I do think that we need to be careful we don't pigeon hole any expression of sexual attraction as 'contributing to rape culture'. I don't think its helpful to the conversation and just comes off as reactionary and puritanical. Young's comments about saying women have great boobs was juvenile and (presumably like most things he says) made to purposely wind up liberals.

 

Except that Young expressed his opinion of women as sex objects put there for his and other men's gratification thousands of times in a public forum. It is very clearly his firmly-held opinion of the subject, repeated numerous times over many years.

I agree that sometimes the witch-hunt mentality can take hold too easily. For a recent example, Lewis Hamilton (who is very much not a bigoted arsehole, as his decade or more in the spotlight and making public comments show) made an off-the-cuff, without-thinking joke on social media which he very quickly apologised for. People still hounding him for it weeks after he did that are definitely in that witch-hunt frame of mind and need to get a grip.

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And here's the thing, just because you and a bunch of people on this board (which is, as many people have commented, pretty homogenous in its thinking and doesn't do well with diversity of thought on many issues) don't find it funny, that doesn't mean that the comments were not humorous, or even more importantly, were not made to with the intention of humour.

 

If someone says something that is sexist, ableist and bigoted, refuses to apologise for it and in fact doubles down on it, then they are a sexist, ableist and bigoted arsehole, by their own behaviour. If they'd meant it in humour for a one-off gag ten years ago that's one thing, but not when it's said repeatedly over the course of many years. The fact they then refuse to stand by what they said and try to delete the evidence also makes them a hypocritical coward, but there you go.

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Intention and context are hugely important when judging the value of what someone has said, except that instead the Twitter Mob will focus on 'the words' and jump on the outrage bandwagon. We are living in sad times right now where the mob is so eager to jump down everyone's throats and dredge up every word someone has said in order to vilify them for their own political ends. And make no mistake, much of the motivation for this witch hunt is political, Young is a liberal bating, Brexit loving, laddish Tory, with connections to other hated Tories. There is a level of joy in taking people like him down. 

What is meant is what is said. If you don't mean it, do not say it. Most of us learn this in primary school. Alas, some people never do and get very angry when they are held to account for it and realise that there are consequences for this behaviour.

Again, you use the term "witch hunt" and imply that Young said one or two things that might be slightly objectionable many years ago. This is a blatantly false misrepresentation of the situation. Young has publicly flaunted his misogynistic, slut-shaming, creepy persona in public for many, many years and glorified in his own "edginess". This was not a problem until he realised it might cost him a job, at which point he wet himself and tried to start covering his tracks. It is pathetic behaviour and your defence of it is reprehensible.

[Eggegg]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

Hint: trying to engage in definition pedantry to defend someone's views on finding an underage youngster sexually attractive is really, really not a good idea.

I'm not being pedantic. Its incredibly important that you back up statements like calling someone paedophile, and someone mistakenly assuming a girl is overage is really a very different situation. 

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

Except that Young expressed his opinion of women as sex objects put there for his and other men's gratification thousands of times in a public forum. It is very clearly his firmly-held opinion of the subject, repeated numerous times over many years.

Well I can tell from his tweets that he's a fan of breasts, and finds certain women attractive. The rest of it. No. Again, going back to my previous point, we can't just say something is 'rape culture' when a man says he finds a woman attractive. Maybe he should have said ' Helen Mirren has great breasts, and I also admire her sterling work as an actress in numerous movies over the years' in order to avoid censure?

Anyway, I'll move off this topic now, otherwise I'm just repeating myself. I didn't really want to have to be someone who is defending Toby Young, more that some of the comments thrown at him are really over the top and I'm sure are partly motivated out of pure dislike for the man.

21 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I know Tony Blair is basically persona non grata in the UK, but does he have a good point about revoting on Brexit after the citizens of the UK know the terms of the deals they're getting in to? 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/04/tony-blair-brexit-labour-theresa-may

Talking about dislike, Blair should keep his mouth zipped on Brexit, seeing as he has to take a portion of the blame for it. His decisions regarding immigration have caused much of the resentment of the British population. Had he not taken the decisions he did then maybe Brexit wouldn't have come close to happening.

Honestly though, referendums on issues this big are utterly idiotic. The general public can never really understand how to run a country, they can only express their personal gripes and feelings, which is probably what would happen in a second referendum too. I doubt most people really understand the real differences between Hard and Soft Brexit or what the actual outcomes of any deal will really be.

[Lord Mord]

Eggegg,

2 hours ago, Eggegg said:

Talking about dislike, Blair should keep his mouth zipped on Brexit, seeing as he has to take a portion of the blame for it. His decisions regarding immigration have caused much of the resentment of the British population. Had he not taken the decisions he did then maybe Brexit wouldn't have come close to happening.

Which immigration decisions did he make which enticed the peoples' resentment?

[Eggegg]

6 minutes ago, Lord Mord said:

Eggegg,

Which decisions did he make which enticed the peoples' resentment?

Pushing for expansion of the EU to include Eastern European countries, allowing unrestrained immigration of people from those countries before he even had to. 

[Lord Mord]

Eggegg,

18 minutes ago, Eggegg said:

Pushing for expansion of the EU to include Eastern European countries, allowing unrestrained immigration of people from those countries before he even had to. 

Okay, so he permitted easier immigration, and the presence of these outsiders led to Brexit.  Does that not underscore that the vote in favor was substantially xenophobic in origin?

[Eggegg]

7 minutes ago, Lord Mord said:

Eggegg,

Okay, so he permitted easier immigration, and the presence of these outsiders led to Brexit.  Does that not underscore that the vote in favor was substantially xenophobic in origin?

It underscores that excessively rapid levels of immigration were a major factor in the vote yes.

[Lord Mord]

Eggegg,

Isn't there an argument to be made that he was counting on the better nature of the people and they disappointed?  Are you saying he should have known they weren't ready to get over their prejudice?

[Eggegg]

40 minutes ago, Lord Mord said:

Eggegg,

Isn't there an argument to be made that he was counting on the better nature of the people and they disappointed?  Are you saying he should have known they weren't ready to get over their prejudice?

I think Blair is an idealist and has shown himself to be out of touch with the thoughts of the population on a number of occasions.

It would be extremely naive of any politician to suppose that you can allow large scale immigration into a country in a very small amount of time and not expect that the native population would feel disgruntled and uneasy about it. 

It was made worse by instead of listening to people’s fears , anyone complaining was labelled a racist or xenophobic, only adding to the sense of injustice and lack of control. 

It all could easily have been avoided had there been some sort of control on the influx of people, limits on numbers or at the very least not allowing people in at the earliest opportunity. But that is where we are now, and the labour gov has to take its share of the blame.

[SeanF]

18 hours ago, Eggegg said:

 

Talking about dislike, Blair should keep his mouth zipped on Brexit, seeing as he has to take a portion of the blame for it. His decisions regarding immigration have caused much of the resentment of the British population. Had he not taken the decisions he did then maybe Brexit wouldn't have come close to happening.

Honestly though, referendums on issues this big are utterly idiotic. The general public can never really understand how to run a country, they can only express their personal gripes and feelings, which is probably what would happen in a second referendum too. I doubt most people really understand the real differences between Hard and Soft Brexit or what the actual outcomes of any deal will really be.

A bigger error was reneging on his promise to grant a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.  It seemed like a clever move at the time, but simply fuelled resentment towards the EU.

Continuing the theme of idiots on twitter, here's the MP for West Tyrone.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-42590874

[Werthead]

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Which immigration decisions did he make which enticed the peoples' resentment?

 

Blair and New Labour also identified a major ticking time bomb that we have - the same as the United States - about what happens when the Boomers start retiring in vast numbers and they require medical care and support in unprecedented numbers at exactly the moment that the number of people in work was going to fall off a cliff (as the post-Boomer generations are smaller than that one), along with tax income.

The simplest solution to this is immigration: bring in large numbers of people to replace the depleting workforce and increase tax income, as well as helping fill jobs in industries that native British people pointblank refuse to do.

The problem underlying this is that western capitalism is hierarchical in a pyramidal structure: it can only be maintained by increasingly large numbers of people at each tier as it descends. To have 17 million extra people in retirement - which is what we'll see over the next twenty years - requires a correspondingly massive increase in the working age population to pay for their pensions and healthcare and, by preference, this will be a young working age population who after a certain period of time may leave again for their home countries (and thus avoid the problem expanding explosively in later generations until Britain has 5 million people living in Basingstoke alone).

Mysteriously, Brexit supporters have not provided any solution to this problem. They also tend to be the people opposed to doing other things we need to grow the economy (like having anyone involved with economics who knows anything about economics). Since we're now not allowed to bring in the people we need, this means that either:

1. The living conditions and standards of retirees will fall dramatically and unstoppably.
2. The boomers should self-euthanise immediately on retirement.
3. Rich people and companies currently getting away with tax avoidance need to be brought to heel.
4. We need to completely reorganise the structure of the British economy and essentially stop being a western capitalist country and adopt another form of redistributive governance.

At the moment the British government's position is to pursue option 1. with gusto and enthusiasm, since the rest seem currently unacceptable (2. would be more popular except that demographic tends to Tory, so thus can't be pursued).

When I've tried discussing this with Brexit-voters, they generally react with confused looks and ask what "Boomers" are and what the Great Pyramid has to do with anything.

[Eggegg]

... I’m not sure I’ve read anyone say they want to stop immigration? Even the most hard line Brexit supporter seems to understand that some level of immigration into the country is necessary and also healthy.

However, that doesn’t mean that it needs to be completely uncontrolled, or that the huge numbers that arrived in the last decade were the best way to solve the issue. 

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Eggegg said:

... I’m not sure I’ve read anyone say they want to stop immigration? Even the most hard line Brexit supporter seems to understand that some level of immigration into the country is necessary and also healthy.

I would not say 'even the most hardline Brexit supporter' understands this, but most do, yes. Or at least say they do.

The problem is that they:

- believe that the level of immigration is higher than it actually is.

- do not have any real basis to understand what a 'manageable' level of immigration is, in economic or other terms.

- have unrealistic and inaccurate views about how the economy functions (eg that cutting immigration will reduce unemployment).

- are poorly informed on how the current immigration rules work.

- and consequently to all of these things, have only the vaguest notion of what level of immigration they would be willing to accept, except that it should be 'less'.

If all you know is that there should be 'less' immigration, the people who actually do favour zero immigration can sell you any scale of reduction as a reasonable position and tell you that anyone who disagrees is just a liberal elitist.

1 hour ago, Eggegg said:

However, that doesn’t mean that it needs to be completely uncontrolled, or that the huge numbers that arrived in the last decade were the best way to solve the issue. 

Case in point.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Eggegg said:

... I’m not sure I’ve read anyone say they want to stop immigration? Even the most hard line Brexit supporter seems to understand that some level of immigration into the country is necessary and also healthy.

Well, apart from those Brexit supporters who gleefully ran around telling people who were third-generation British but had dark skin "they'd all have to go back home" and announcing that people from India and the United States would have to go home as well, despite originating from the wrong continent.

Immigration was either the most important or second-most important reason people voted for Brexit either just in front of or just behind "sovereignty". Although there's a lot of crossover there: many people voted for "sovereignty" to "get control of their borders and stop immigration", so much the same thing.

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However, that doesn’t mean that it needs to be completely uncontrolled, or that the huge numbers that arrived in the last decade were the best way to solve the issue. 

 

Well, the demographic time bomb we are sitting on actually does require "huge numbers" to provided the urgently-needed extra tax income to sustain our current and future population of retirees and elderly people.

If we have 17 million people retiring over the next twenty years - a huge number - plus millions more living to extreme old age beyond that, then we need several tens of millions of people in work to sustain them. The 30 million odd who will be in work (although six million plus of them will be in very low-paid gig economy, zero-hours or minimum wage jobs and won't be contributing much to alleviate that) during that time will not remotely cut it. Since the birthrate has not provided a "native" solution and since the economy is likely to produce fewer and fewer jobs with each successive generation over the next decades, mass immigration was one of the few working solutions, despite the problems that raised with infrastructure and the long-term problems it would run into with a declining job production rate.

If Brexiteers want to square this circle, it would require a radical and dramatic shift in Britain's economic structure. But for some reason they have not addressed this problem and how it will affect future prosperity.

[Eggegg]

12 minutes ago, mormont said:

I would not say 'even the most hardline Brexit supporter' understands this, but most do, yes. Or at least say they do.

The problem is that they:

- believe that the level of immigration is higher than it actually is.

- do not have any real basis to understand what a 'manageable' level of immigration is, in economic or other terms.

- have unrealistic and inaccurate views about how the economy functions (eg that cutting immigration will reduce unemployment).

- are poorly informed on how the current immigration rules work.

- and consequently to all of these things, have only the vaguest notion of what level of immigration they would be willing to accept, except that it should be 'less'.

If all you know is that there should be 'less' immigration, the people who actually do favour zero immigration can sell you any scale of reduction as a reasonable position and tell you that anyone who disagrees is just a liberal elitist.

Case in point.

I think that the population has a good idea of the level of immigration to the country. Do you deny that the levels of immigration to the UK since 2001 were massively above anything Britain had seen for decades? 

In 2001 the population was 59 million. The population in 2017 was 65 million people. 

 It is estimated that net migration plus births to foreign-born parents has accounted for 85% of population growth between 2000 and 2014.

To turn around to the native population of the UK and say 'you don't know what you are talking about, immigration levels are fine' is only adding to the problem, and I'd suggest your attitude is highly illustrative of the the problem. Clearly immigration levels were extraordinarily high, with enormous demographic change in certain areas in a very small amount of time. Add to that a problem where the British government had seemingly no plan on how to integrate those people who arrived, leading to huge clustering and areas of the country made up predominantly of non-native immigrants and I think it is totally understandable that the native population would be worried by this change.

----

I will note that pre-Brexit I probably would have agreed with everything you just said, as it was the standard argument I would use against the Daily Mail reading morons I assumed voted for Brexit. My dad being one of these people. However since that time I've made a serious effort to re-examine my beliefs and try to understand why Brexit happened and whether it was pure ignorance that caused it or was it in fact a very human natural reaction to rapid demographic change. I think now I am much more aware of the liberal bias and closed mindedness when dealing with these issues, a problem I myself was very guilty of in the past.