leicsmac

Perhaps some greater clarity in that regard would be called for. However, the issue here still is folks looking to browbeat the Beeb into using that term itself to describe Hamas (and thereby violating their ideal of neutrality when it comes to such reporting) rather than reporting it as a descriptor that others have used for Hamas.

Yeah, that's a time-honoured method of waging war. Infidel, heretic, animal, cockroach, terrorist, untermensch...all of these and more have been used to justify mass killing.

....why are people asking that a news organisation created to report neutrally on world events and present reported facts rather than create a narrative (in theory if not necessarily in practice) pick sides in this matter? I can see why John Simpson is pissed off.

I can see where you're coming from here, but the last time such mooted changes went to the polls in 2019 it got massively shot between the eyes. Now, we can argue about exactly why that was til the cows come home but IMO that's irrelevant - quite simply principle doesn't mean much without the power to enact it, and I'm not sure what measures can be taken to get the broad power necessary to enact the principles you speak of in an effective way.

I'd agree that the UK has been much better at keeping such viewpoints away at the ballot box, but I'm entirely unsure if the overall record of treatment of women and various minority groups in everyday life is any better than most of them. You'd need a thesis-level study to prove that one way or the other, though.

I guess such things are very subjective and relative to whatever they are being compared to.

If the Conservatives can really overcome a 17-point poll deficit (that has remained at least around that for over a year) in the next year and a bit, then fair play to them. Can imagine it would take some pretty radical circumstances for it to happen, though.

Right, but every way to change that in short order ("breaking the wheel") usually ends up being worse than what came before. It's certainly a dilemma.

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-global-threatened-droughts-worldwide.html Water is an essential resource. What happens when it becomes scarce for a whole lot of people?

Good grief, Andrew Tate actually said something sensible and vaguely agreeable.

You're assuming that those who advocate for continued use of ICE cars for any length of time are in any way logical. That may be a mistake.

I think it's no worse now than it was in history, tbh - the volume of it all has just increased. William Randolph Hearst: "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war."

Can't say I'm massively surprised by the media misinformation, just saddened, as other people have put. It's been an unwritten law pretty much since the very first war that to better destroy an enemy, first you have to dehumanise them in the eyes of everyone else who may be watching, as well as your own people.

That's right. And apparently, the elite London press gave Attlee a massively rough ride too.

Yep. As other people have put, Attlee is certainly in the top 3 of greatest PMs ever and he was "all substance and no show".

Depends on which England and Fiji turn up tbh given the form of both teams, but for me "bad day" England lose to "good day" Fiji and every other combination of "good and bad day" England win.

Yeah, that was needed and delivered.

Need a crushing victory here to make up for the crushing defeat against NZ. So far so good.

Which may have made the hardliners on both sides so desperate for something like this.

One of the best works I have ever read.

Indeed. Yeah. It's the "cycle of abuse", but on the scale of a people, not individual. And it takes a lot to break that cycle.

I don't think they, or anyone else with such power, really want a solution to the problem and the headache that it would entail to get there tbh. Easier and better for realpolitik for the status quo to continue, as sad as that sounds.

And, if I may be frank, a state with a very strong Jewish history and its representatives really should know where such "othering" ends and so perhaps think twice about using it on others.

How good do you think they are at nuclear brinksmanship, then? They would have to be very good, for their own sake as well as everyone else, because off-record everyone knows what the US response to that must be.

I'm going to repeat a couple of things from the AITN thread as they sum it up for me. "A man once jumped from the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person’s legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. The man who escaped from the blazing house, having recovered, would have tried to help and console the other sufferer; and the latter might have realized that he was the victim of circumstances over which neither of them had control. But look what happens when these people behave irrationally. The injured man blames the other for his misery and swears to make him pay for it. The other, afraid of the crippled man’s revenge, insults him, kicks him, and beats him up whenever they meet. The kicked man again swears revenge and is again punched and punished. The bitter enmity, so fortuitous at first, hardens and comes to overshadow the whole existence of both men and to poison their minds."