Fun and games with ballot papers

[eighthobstruction]

....I don't know about his minders....but an immediate attack on the BBC via decriminalisation of failure to have an annual TV license is very worrying....so perhaps not minders more like hawks/vultures....

....so how does that work : you only need to get a license if your morals tell you to....

[LMcD]

Weren't they actually his minders - desperate not to actually let him out or say anything? I think Dead Ringers got it pretty much right recently.

Minders in public, advisors off-camera.... Perhaps people are amused or even excited by the thought that 'Bad Boris' might escape at any time, which makes him (a) much more fascinating than Theresa, who had nothing naughty or silly struggling to get out, and (b) less predictable than Jeremy, whose apparent sincerity proved to be something of an electoral handicap. We don't SERIOUSLY expect our politicians to be that truthful, do we?

[Serial_Apologist]

Minders in public, advisors off-camera.... Perhaps people are amused or even excited by the thought that 'Bad Boris' might escape at any time, which makes him (a) much more fascinating than Theresa, who had nothing naughty or silly struggling to get out, and (b) less predictable than Jeremy, whose apparent sincerity proved to be something of an electoral handicap. We don't SERIOUSLY expect our politicians to be that truthful, do we?

Naïvety - or call it what you will - is a deliberately falsifying way of looking at authority figures, because (as I said above) it deflects from squarely putting the blame where it really belongs, namely on systematic malfunctioning - which, before we confront the problem of conferred power and privilege, is the one property of capitalism that makes it the most wasteful system of production and distribution devised by humankind, for all its latent potential to rid humankind of misery at a certain stage in history.

By looking at the problem systemically you could implicitly remove or at least reduce the issue of blame, which I have equally pinned on the rich and powerful, and turn it into a problem to be solved, systemically. It's one way that presently comes to mind as a way out of perpetually laying the blame on someone from which socialists could regain credibility. This was to some extent Keynes's thinking.

(We seem to be going around in circles - I'm trying to re-define the problem by re-framing it, since we appear to have five years at our disposal! )

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

(We seem to be going around in circles -

You think?

I'm trying to re-define the problem by re-framing it, since we appear to have five years at our disposal! )

The period of reflection will have to be at least two years less than that!

[oddoneout]

That if I may say so is the Judaeo-Christian conscience speaking. Surely it is more constructive, and has some empirical back-up, to see humans as innately social beings, doing our bit in our place in nature's balance to fit in, using faulty tools handed down by history and culture?

I'm afraid you've lost me there(which is not unusual with your posts - your intellect is way ahead of mine). I agree with your second sentence, but it wasn't my intention to be unconstructive I was just making an observation about how things seem to me at the moment, based in part on the stray conversations and other exchanges I have with those I encounter.
Regarding the conscience you could well be right; my godmother was originally Jewish and the reasons for her move to C of E did rather colour her view of things! But I imagine that isn't what you meant.

[Andy Freude]

That if I may say so is the Judaeo-Christian conscience speaking. Surely it is more constructive, and has some empirical back-up, to see humans as innately social beings, doing our bit in our place in nature's balance to fit in, using faulty tools handed down by history and culture?

I'm not convinced that is so distinctly one or the other, or one rather than the other. I would suggest that human beings are more diverse than that - and no doubt have been for millennia. The Labour movement itself is hardly a model of cooperation, except in certain areas, notably trade unionism. Its present political ethos seems disconcertingly to be for a lack of compromise and unwillingness to cooperate with those who are of a different stripe, even when this is aimed at taking on a common adversary. Conviction that one has all the political answers (which is not an accusation against socialists in general) seems little different from religious conviction.

[Serial_Apologist]

You think?


The period of reflection will have to be at least two years less than that!

Do you think the Tories will be out in 3 years then? Or just Boris? With their comfortable majority, I wouldn't think his usefulness as an acceptable face of Toryism will have been exhausted by then.

[muzzer]

He’s been waiting for this job all his life, he’ll have to be levered out with who knows what. It’s still sinking in, clearly.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm afraid you've lost me there(which is not unusual with your posts - your intellect is way ahead of mine). I agree with your second sentence, but it wasn't my intention to be unconstructive I was just making an observation about how things seem to me at the moment, based in part on the stray conversations and other exchanges I have with those I encounter.
Regarding the conscience you could well be right; my godmother was originally Jewish and the reasons for her move to C of E did rather colour her view of things! But I imagine that isn't what you meant.

I was using "Judaeo-Christian conscience" in terms of one thing that unites all the religions within that bracket, namely a view of a fallen human nature that was not as I understand present in pre-Westernised civilisations, and is often questioned by humanists. So I apologise for any misunderstanding or offense I may have caused.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Do you think the Tories will be out in 3 years then?

Oh no - but the Labour party will have to sort out a wide-ranging political "presence" that they'll have to start presenting to the public well before the year of a General Election.

[oddoneout]

I was using "Judaeo-Christian conscience" in terms of one thing that unites all the religions within that bracket, namely a view of a fallen human nature that was not as I understand present in pre-Westernised civilisations, and is often questioned by humanists. So I apologise for any misunderstanding or offense I may have caused.

No offence given or taken. A major part of my pleasure in this forum is the chance to expand my knowledge by coming across topics or subjects that are either new or about which I haven't had occasion to find out more.

[greenilex]

Well before the Judaeo-Christians, a recently-deceased soul in ancient Egypt was weighed to establish righteousness...I wonder how the weighing would go with Trump and BoJo and Putin and the rest of them...

[MrGongGong]

You think?


The period of reflection will have to be at least two years less than that!

Sadly, there is considerable denial

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/14/corbyn-takes-share-responsibility-defeat

you didn't win the "arguments" at all


BUT, there is hope for the future

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/new-maps-show-staggering-political-divide-between-generations-in-britain-a3930341.html

though I think the Labour party are likely to make the big mistake of thinking that those young folks who voted AGAINST the Tories were voting FOR Labour.

[Dave2002]

BUT, there is hope for the future

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/new-maps-show-staggering-political-divide-between-generations-in-britain-a3930341.html

though I think the Labour party are likely to make the big mistake of thinking that those young folks who voted AGAINST the Tories were voting FOR Labour.

The hope may be there, but your "evidence" is based on a now somewhat outdated article.

[MrGongGong]

The hope may be there, but your "evidence" is based on a now somewhat outdated article.

aaah that's a different map to the one I saw on FB
will dig a bit