General Election, June 8th

[Buce]

11 minutes ago, Webbo said:

Mrs Thatcher never attended Republican rallies.

 

Desperately weak argument.

[Webbo]

3 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Desperately weak argument.

I don't think so, there's a difference between talking to your enemies and cheering them on.

[Nick]

24 minutes ago, Webbo said:

I never said he murdered anyone, just that he was a supporter of the IRA, who are murderers.

 

Yes I know. That's why I didn't write that you said he was a murderer. 

 

If you are just defensive and don't bother reading my posts properly just put me on block as it's clearly a waste of time attempting to have dialogue with you. 

 

Take a a breath and read what everybody's written about your posts early this morning then reply.

 

I'm not covering tired old ground that makes you look more silly than you did earlier today.

[Webbo]

4 minutes ago, Swan Lesta said:

 

Yes I know. That's why I didn't write that you said he was a murderer. 

 

If you are just defensive and don't bother reading my posts properly just put me on block as it's clearly a waste of time attempting to have dialogue with you. 

 

Take a a breath and read what everybody's written about your posts early this morning then reply.

 

I'm not covering tired old ground that makes you look more silly than you did earlier today.

Quote

Something that actually links him to murder before saying he supports murder rather than protesting, attending a rally and being arrested?

If I've misunderstood your point I apologise, but that's what it looks like to me. He shared a platform with a wanted murderer, he protested at the trial of a murderer (innocent until proven guilty, but he was proven guilty). Why would you want to associate yourself with people like that? How did that further the cause of peace?

 

The best you can say about him is that he was a useful idiot for the IRA.

[Webbo]

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

Not on the evidence of social-democratic parties across Europe. The Socialist Party polled 6% in France, Melenchon got 20%. The Labour Party needed to sever Blairism completely to have a hope of surviving because Neo-liberalism is a rotting  corpse now and if you still inhabit it you degrade along with it.

I have wondered for a while if we're witnessing the slow death of neo-liberalism itself.

 

I posted before about how governments lose when they run out of ideas. I feel like this government existed to test out austerity in a time of depression (relative) and that, now it's failed to produce any improvement in anybody lives, they don't really have anything else to say.

 

Perhaps though your point about neo-liberalism is the bigger picture. Over the last 40 years the state has shrunk ever smaller with markets introduced and deregulated more and more. During that time, the state has sold off the family silver but yet ordinary people - despite the fact they probably do have more - don't feel any better off relative to the top end. 

 

It's as if there's hardly anything left to sell off - i mean really, we've sunk to the point of selling off health and education - people's incomes have stagnated, interest rates have hit record lows, personal debt record highs etc and the economic vision of the last few decades has almost eaten itself whole. We're on the precipice of financial oblivion with no interest rate or qe levers left to use.

 

Maybe labour's push to the left is needed precisely because it will reset a number of these issues. No doubt we'll slowly tread our way back into privatisations etc again in the future as governments change but we might learn from the mistakes made in believing that trickle down economics could ever work. 

 

 

[Guest]

This is beautiful btw (the media response not cruella de ville)

 

 

[Sharpe's Fox]

4 minutes ago, toddybad said:

I have wondered for a while if we're witnessing the slow death of neo-liberalism itself.

 

I posted before about how governments lose when they run out of ideas. I feel like this government existed to test out austerity in a time of depression (relative) and that, now it's failed to produce any improvement in anybody lives, they don't really have anything else to say.

 

Perhaps though your point about neo-liberalism is the bigger picture. Over the last 40 years the state has shrunk ever smaller with markets introduced and deregulated more and more. During that time, the state has sold off the family silver but yet ordinary people - despite the fact they probably do have more - don't feel any better off relative to the top end. 

 

It's as if there's hardly anything left to sell off - i mean really, we've sunk to the point of selling off health and education - people's incomes have stagnated, interest rates have hit record lows, personal debt record highs etc and the economic vision of the last few decades has almost eaten itself whole. We're on the precipice of financial oblivion with no interest rate or qe levers left to use.

 

Maybe labour's push to the left is needed precisely because it will reset a number of these issues. No doubt we'll slowly tread our way back into privatisations etc again in the future as governments change but we might learn from the mistakes made in believing that trickle down economics could ever work. 

 

 

British politics goes through 35 year cycles, 1906 to 1945, 1945 to 1979, 1979 to 2016. If you fail to keep up with the prevailing mood of the electorate you get annilihilated, as the Liberals, Churchill's Tories, Foot's Labour and Blairism did respectively. Both Labour and Theresa May have decisively left neo-liberalism in their manifestos which signals the end of the domination of laissez-fairs economics for now at least

[Webbo]

Quote

 

Diane Abbott explicitly backed victory for the IRA in an interview with a pro-republican journal, The Sunday Times has found.

Abbott, who will become home secretary if Labour wins the election, said in the 1984 interview that Ireland “is our struggle — every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed.”

 

It's mainly behind a paywall but some is visible.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/abbott-declared-support-for-ira-defeat-of-britain-rp79dvvmk

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

British politics goes through 35 year cycles, 1906 to 1945, 1945 to 1979, 1979 to 2016. If you fail to keep up with the prevailing mood of the electorate you get annilihilated, as the Liberals, Churchill's Tories, Foot's Labour and Blairism did respectively. Both Labour and Theresa May have decisively left neo-liberalism in their manifestos which signals the end of the domination of laissez-fairs economics for now at least

So many of the tory promises appear to now be indications of direction to be subject to review that i suppose it depends on whether you believe them. Bearing in mind last time round they promised a cap on social care costs before the election then days after shelved it.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Webbo said:

It's mainly behind a paywall but some is visible.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/abbott-declared-support-for-ira-defeat-of-britain-rp79dvvmk

Come on webbo.

You're not wrong i suppose to highlight these things but it's starting to look like you've run out of any positives for the tories, can't attack the labour manifesto as its policies are generally polling higher than the tories, and so are resorting to picking up 30 year old quotes.

As i say, you might not be entirely wrong to do so but at what point will you sit down and think about whether your vote is really going to the right party?

[Webbo]

I've signed up so you can see the whole article.

 

 

 

Diane Abbott explicitly backed victory for the IRA in an interview with a pro-republican journal, The Sunday Times has found.

Abbott, who will become home secretary if Labour wins the election, said in the 1984 interview that Ireland “is our struggle — every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed.”

The interview was found during research by The Sunday Times in Irish and republican archives.

The same files disclose that the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, personally led or took part in at least 72 separate events or actions with Sinn Fein and pro-republican groups during the years of the IRA’s armed struggle — far more than previously known.

These included a petition to Downing Street on behalf of Hugh Doherty, a member of the IRA’s Balcombe Street gang convicted of killing seven people, and protests against the extradition of Dessie Ellis, a top IRA bomb maker who has denied links to about 50 deaths.

At another event, on March 22, 1991, Corbyn claimed Britain’s breaches of human rights in Northern Ireland were comparable to those in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The archives also show the main IRA-sympathising groups in Britain held private strategy meetings in Corbyn’s former constituency office — owned by the Labour Party and part-funded by taxpayers from his MP’s allowance.

In her interview Abbott, then a Labour councillor, said she did not regard herself as British. “Though I was born here in London, I couldn’t identify as British,” she said.

“Anyone who comes from a former colony knows the troops always have to come out.” She also criticised Northern Ireland as an “enclave of white supremacist ideologies”.

Asked about Labour’s official policy of seeking unionist consent, she replied: “Should we have waited to win the consent of the white racists in Zimbabwe?”

The interview was published in Labour and Ireland, the journal of the Labour committee on Ireland (LCI), a small pro-republican support group in the party that operated at the height of the IRA’s armed struggle in the 1980s and early 1990s.

LCI organised many events with Sinn Fein, including a controversial fringe meeting with party leader Gerry Adams and Corbyn at the 1989 Labour conference in Brighton, near the Grand Hotel, which was bombed by the IRA in 1984, killing five people. The wife of Lord Tebbit, the former Conservative minister, was left paralysed by the attack.

LCI’s journal said it was a “smear” to accuse the IRA of targeting civilians, saying: “Sinn Fein has acknowledged the need for the cutting edge of their military wing, but has been at pains to ensure that it is the security forces and not the general public who are involved in this action.”

The archives disclose that LCI was chaired for some of the period by John McDonnell, now the shadow chancellor. Corbyn and Abbott were also regular speakers.

There were close links between LCI and the Troops Out Movement [Tom], another IRA-sympathising body with which Corbyn was closely associated. He spoke at more than 20 Troops Out events or meetings.

The former chairman of Troops Out, Richard Stanton, described the Brighton bombing as a “justifiable act of political warfare” and said “the Republican movement is entitled to use force against the British state as part of the war we started”. Its journal printed the birthdays of IRA “prisoners of war”, inviting readers to send them cards.

Internal documents show Troops Out held meetings with other republican groups at Corbyn’s then constituency office in Finsbury Park, north London, to organise demonstrations and events to plot a “broad front” of pro-IRA organisations.

That building belonged to Islington Labour Party and included a function hall downstairs, but many of the documents specify that the meetings took place “upstairs” in the office area.

Not all Corbyn’s Troops Out activities were publicly identified as such.

Internal documents about one visit to parliament state it was organised by Troops Out but was “formally invited and therefore fronted by a group of Labour MPs” including Corbyn, which “means the Tom profile [can be] hazy”.

Corbyn has claimed he was seeking peace. However, Seamus Mallon, deputy to John Hume, the former Social Democratic and Labour Party leader and the architect of the peace process, told The Sunday Times: “I never heard anyone mention Corbyn at all.

“He very clearly took the side of the IRA and that was incompatible, in my opinion, with working for peace.”

Lord Maginnis, the former Ulster Unionist MP, said: “I was central to the peace process and Corbyn had no participation in it that I was aware of.”

A spokesman for Corbyn said: “Jeremy campaigned for peace in Northern Ireland. He campaigned for the rights of all to be respected and spoke to people on all sides of the conflict.” A spokesman for Abbott declined to comment.

[Webbo]

1 minute ago, toddybad said:

Come on webbo.

You're not wrong i suppose to highlight these things but it's starting to look like you've run out of any positives for the tories, can't attack the labour manifesto as its policies are generally polling higher than the tories, and so are resorting to picking up 30 year old quotes.

As i say, you might not be entirely wrong to do so but at what point will you sit down and think about whether your vote is really going to the right party?

Anyone who can keep Labour out is the right party.

[Lionator]

28 minutes ago, Webbo said:

 

And yet only a year later a peace deal which has lasted for 20 years was struck. Maybe that was his aim as clearly everything else wasnt working?

[Webbo]

1 minute ago, Lionator said:

And yet only a year later a peace deal which has lasted for 20 years was struck. Maybe that was his aim as clearly everything else wasnt working?

Read the Times article above, especially this bit.

 

Quote

 

Corbyn has claimed he was seeking peace. However, Seamus Mallon, deputy to John Hume, the former Social Democratic and Labour Party leader and the architect of the peace process, told The Sunday Times: “I never heard anyone mention Corbyn at all.

“He very clearly took the side of the IRA and that was incompatible, in my opinion, with working for peace.”

Lord Maginnis, the former Ulster Unionist MP, said: “I was central to the peace process and Corbyn had no participation in it that I was aware of.”

A spokesman for Corbyn said: “Jeremy campaigned for peace in Northern Ireland. He campaigned for the rights of all to be respected and spoke to people on all sides of the conflict.” A spokesman for Abbott declined to comment.

 

 

[Sharpe's Fox]

Since it's a football forum

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

Further credence to my end of neo-liberalism argument. We need change. 

 

Record 60% of Britons in poverty are in working families – study

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/22/record-britons-in-work-poverty-families-study-private-rented-housing

[Alf Bentley]

50 minutes ago, Webbo said:

 

 

 

As regards "guilt by association", that's an odd choice for at least 3 reasons:

1) At any time 1983-92 and 1997-2011 Adams could have been sitting on the green benches at Westminster, needing no invitation from Corbyn as he'd been "invited" by the electorate (lost his seat 1992-97).

2) Well before 1996, the Tory Government was in secret negotiations with the IRA, never mind Sinn Fein - and rightly so, as it contributed to peace.

3) Within a year of this meeting, the IRA was on permanent ceasefire and Sinn Fein was a party to the formal talks that yielded the Peace Process under the Blair Govt (though I'm not suggesting Corbyn influenced this!)

 

Given that, for understandable reasons, you prefer to talk about past politics and not current politics, how about another issue:

When is Theresa May going to apologise for her consistent support for the Blair Government's involvement in the murderous Iraq War?

 

Here is May's record on the Iraq War:

Consistently voted for the Iraq warShow votes5 votes for, 0 votes against, 1 absence, between 2002–2003

 

By contrast, here is Corbyn's record on the Iraq War:

Consistently voted against the Iraq warShow votes0 votes for, 6 votes against, between 2002–2003

 

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10426/theresa_may/maidenhead/votes

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10133/jeremy_corbyn/islington_north/votes

[Strokes]

34 minutes ago, toddybad said:

Further credence to my end of neo-liberalism argument. We need change. 

 

Record 60% of Britons in poverty are in working families – study

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/22/record-britons-in-work-poverty-families-study-private-rented-housing

Poverty pfff, come on! I've never seen children walking to the river with buckets on their heads. We will always have high poverty because we keep changing what the definition is.

[Buce]

1 minute ago, Strokes said:

Poverty pfff, come on! I've never seen children walking to the river with buckets on their heads. We will always have high poverty because we keep changing what the definition is.

 

Yes, poverty is a relative term; indeed, our children don't carry river water on their heads. But kids missing meals, being priced out of university education, parents forced to use food banks, families without even crisis savings (I could go on, but you know what I'm talking about) are just as relatively poor when this is happening in one of the richest economies in the world.

 

And the definition of poverty has been consistently downgraded by the last two Tory govts.

[Webbo]

19 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

 

As regards "guilt by association", that's an odd choice for at least 3 reasons:

1) At any time 1983-92 and 1997-2011 Adams could have been sitting on the green benches at Westminster, needing no invitation from Corbyn as he'd been "invited" by the electorate (lost his seat 1992-97).

2) Well before 1996, the Tory Government was in secret negotiations with the IRA, never mind Sinn Fein - and rightly so, as it contributed to peace.

3) Within a year of this meeting, the IRA was on permanent ceasefire and Sinn Fein was a party to the formal talks that yielded the Peace Process under the Blair Govt (though I'm not suggesting Corbyn influenced this!)

 

Given that, for understandable reasons, you prefer to talk about past politics and not current politics, how about another issue:

When is Theresa May going to apologise for her consistent support for the Blair Government's involvement in the murderous Iraq War?

 

Here is May's record on the Iraq War:

Consistently voted for the Iraq warShow votes5 votes for, 0 votes against, 1 absence, between 2002–2003

 

By contrast, here is Corbyn's record on the Iraq War:

Consistently voted against the Iraq warShow votes0 votes for, 6 votes against, between 2002–2003

 

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10426/theresa_may/maidenhead/votes

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10133/jeremy_corbyn/islington_north/votes

Did you read the Times article? 

 

Quote

 

Corbyn has claimed he was seeking peace. However, Seamus Mallon, deputy to John Hume, the former Social Democratic and Labour Party leader and the architect of the peace process, told The Sunday Times: “I never heard anyone mention Corbyn at all.

“He very clearly took the side of the IRA and that was incompatible, in my opinion, with working for peace.”

Lord Maginnis, the former Ulster Unionist MP, said: “I was central to the peace process and Corbyn had no participation in it that I was aware of.”

 

We're not talking about the Iraq War and this attempt to excuse his behaviour by some sort of moral equivalence is beneath you Alf.

 

 

We've got The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Times saying he wasn't trying to bring about peace. We only need toddybads mate off twitter to agree and we've got every heavyweight commentator going

[Webbo]

21 minutes ago, Strokes said:

Poverty pfff, come on! I've never seen children walking to the river with buckets on their heads. We will always have high poverty because we keep changing what the definition is.

Come back prodigal son, you can't seriously be considering voting for these loons?

[EnderbyFox]

This interview is difficult to watch, Andrew Neil ruthless, May struggling big time. 

[Strokes]

10 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Yes, poverty is a relative term; indeed, our children don't carry river water on their heads. But kids missing meals, being priced out of university education, parents forced to use food banks, families without even crisis savings (I could go on, but you know what I'm talking about) are just as relatively poor when this is happening in one of the richest economies in the world.

 

And the definition of poverty has been consistently downgraded by the last two Tory govts.

But we will always have poverty if it is a relative term. I'm not saying there arent people struggling but to couple it with a term that is also given to people without water or absolute basics is bullshit imo.

[theessexfox]

She's absolutely shocking.