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A serial lawbreaking liar - Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson scandal thread 2

Started by Fambo Number Mive, April 19, 2022, 01:46:53 PM

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Famous Mortimer

Quote from: TrenterPercenter on May 26, 2022, 01:27:03 PMBecause it's stupid.  Devolving people down to some fabled archetypal tory even within tory voters is problematic, there is obviously a spectrum for baby eaters to free market I'm alright jacks to law and order traditionalists.  There is this childlike view that people that don't support Corbyn (and we've even seen people that do/did support him but not enough) being called tories.  It's less about giving leeway and credit but having a more nuanced view on the world, mainly for purposes of progressing leftwing views.

Centrism isn't really a thing there is no "centrist party" they tried it and it failed remember, what you have is a lot of well off commentators on twitter, that because their feet are further away from the fire don't have the same focus of mind as those that do.  Likewise those with their feet closest to the fire invariably also make reactive, poor decisions and all too often cannibalise their own.  Just another one of the divisions the ultimately powerful people benefit from.  In reality the centrists many people obsess about on here (and I understand why, better the devil you know, but this again is just another helpful division) are just politically naive and are lacking in ideology, but have a platform (something we learnt about JOB for example from his interview with Owen Jones, he is an idiot, likely formed from years at boarding school where he learnt the pitfalls of ideology from elite theory and from the outside, but never understood it's necessitating role in survival for those less privileged - also see his inability to empathises with those people ideologically driven by things like Brexit).  Normally in politics you earn platforms from ideology but this is the world now of Twitter where anyone with something to flog that will get them followers can tell us all their political insights.

I'd say centrism is a lack of ideology above all else.  Also twitter is a magnifying glass for these people, I mean shock horror that a load of comedian, actors and musicians turned out to be narcissists on twitter with crap politics, perhaps artists shouldn't always be held in such esteem (celebritised) in the first place? Over people that humbly go about their business actually making sure the country doesn't collapse in on itself.


If we, the people having this discussion, understand what's meant by the terms (as do you, obviously) why bother trying so intently to muddy the waters?

TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Blumf on May 26, 2022, 01:52:32 PMHow are you defining centrism then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

I think if you want to apply the No true Scotsman rhetoric here then you are going to need to at least apply it fairly.  No true labour/tory supporter would agree with centrist politics right? Also no true socialist would agree with anything a centrist said?

I'm defining centrism as it is being used currently which is nebulously to define a group of generally well off non-radicals. Aside from the fact "Labour", and, "Tories" are both parties you can vote for The Lib Dems actually do have a much more formed politic.  The poster boy for "centrism" is Blair yet he was the leader of the Labour Party and was/is loathed by the Lib Dems which was one of the reasons they gave (Iraq) for joining the Tories in the coalition.

Matthew D'Ancona is another fabled centrist but is by nature a Tory, he was a wet writing against Corbyn and is now a wet writing against Johnson.  It's a nebulous term that doesn't really equate to how internal political spectrums work (if taken to levels people seem to insist on doing so).

TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on May 26, 2022, 02:34:49 PMIf we, the people having this discussion, understand what's meant by the terms (as do you, obviously) why bother trying so intently to muddy the waters?

You the guy that was telling people to fuck off talking about being Jewish again?  I'd perhaps stop being so presumptuous on peoples intentions.

Everyone is trying get one over on you aren't they? You're desperately caught up in a conspiracy to keep leftists down, someone can't just be looking at things differently, there needs be an underhand conscious betrayal, muddying waters and the stealing of socialism.

This is what Twitter and feasting on anger does to you it's fucking melted your mind.  Switch it off.

Blumf

Quote from: TrenterPercenter on May 26, 2022, 02:35:22 PMI'm defining centrism as it is being used currently which is nebulously to define a group of generally well off non-radicals. Aside from the fact "Labour", and, "Tories" are both parties you can vote for The Lib Dems actually do have a much more formed politic.  The poster boy for "centrism" is Blair yet he was the leader of the Labour Party and was/is loathed by the Lib Dems which was one of the reasons they gave (Iraq) for joining the Tories in the coalition.

Blair was a centrists, or at least claimed to be with his Third Way posturing (a centrist position). In action he was mostly right-wing, from his continuation of privatisation through to his war mongering. Even on social policies he struggled, with a very conservative right wing view on drugs and a lukewarm treatment of gay rights. And this is the current criticism of centrists, they claim not to be right wing, but when given the chance always falling to the right.

So, I'd say a working definition of centrist could well be 'embarrassed right winger'. The Lib Dems fit this, with their actual support of a right wing government in the 2010s, back tracking on their stated positions before the election. Blair fits this, as we've already seen. Sir Keith fits this with a purge of left wing members and promoting right wing policies and sexual relations with Union Flags. Dog botherers do this!

So the question is, why are so many people claiming to be centre left or centrist, when in fact they are, by their very actions, right wingers? Why are so many people joining a Socialist party who clearly do not believe in left wing politics?

Maybe we shouldn't call them 'centrists', but it seems like a consistent behaviour and that's the name that we have for them now. Liars who support right wing polices.

Sebastian Cobb

Steadfastly rejecting 'ideology' is an ideology of sorts. It's not a very good or coherent one; centrism is relies on affirmative statements of what it isn't, and vague nebulous word-salads when attempting to define what it is.

Cerys

Quote from: pigamus on May 26, 2022, 12:52:40 PMDifferent film I think

I see what you did there.  Mind you, if Boris got impaled by a falling lightning rod it'd make a hell of a front page.

Fambo Number Mive

QuoteA Conservative MP has defended Boris Johnson and suggested it was likely NHS staff had also been "letting their hair down" during the Covid pandemic.

Richard Bacon was speaking after Sue Gray's report highlighted the extent of lockdown parties at Downing Street.

Mr Bacon, who represents South Norfolk, said the prime minister should not be "condemned".

Quote"You haven't gone and investigated it but there are one and a half million people who work in the NHS. I bet if you tried hard enough you could find some people letting their hair down who were working 24/7 in the NHS as well.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-61587994

Not quite sure how Bacon expects the BBC to investigate whether anyone in the NHS broke covid rules.

Fambo Number Mive

Tory MP Steven Hammond has submitted a letter of no confidence in Johnson.

TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Blumf on May 26, 2022, 03:19:43 PMSo the question is, why are so many people claiming to be centre left or centrist, when in fact they are, by their very actions, right wingers? Why are so many people joining a Socialist party who clearly do not believe in left wing politics?

As you outlined it's complicated isn't it people don't always politically coalesce around a coherent narrative - as mentioned it's ideology that does this (for better and for worse).  If you created a massive bit of paper with left and right poles and fired political opinions at it we would see groups of hits around the middle (I suspect it would be darker towards the centre-left and tail off towards the poles), we tend to aggregate political opinions and assign them a label i.e. Tory, Labour etc or Leftwing, Rightwing on the sum of this aggregation but in reality this is clunky what you really need to do it look at spread of opinion across individuals and then look at the interference pattern, it will still be in the middle but you'll see like an interference pattern some opinions are popular and some aren't, and that lots of individuals hold different polar opinions.

outside of the politically motivated most people think they are aligned to rightwing policies but in fact tend to support more leftwing policies (certainly economics ones, they still generally live progressive leftwing politics on identity as well in the main).  We've become much more progressive in our views on identity, certainly for these mainstream "centrists" you are talking about,  but as I'm trying to point out they are affluent, unaffected individuals and therefore have little need or interest in ideological reasoning around leftwing economics.  They simple haven't lived it, I know some comics etc...have lived in run down places, just like well off kids live in shitty accommodation when they go to university, this is very different and it is quite hard for people of a certain background to truly understand the fundamental ideological necessity for socialism and barbarism of poverty (a few affluent people can do this Tony Benn being a great example).

So of course many people are attracted to the "vibes" of socialism because there are inherent advantages to proclaiming a group identity (economic and social) and being seen to be part of the good fight.  It's a low cost, high gain approach that suits a whole manner of environments with Twitter being almost custom made for it all. For a lot of other people being socialist or "left-wing" is  being pro-identity politics and anti-isms, I'm not sure that is something I would cast on centrists, there are a startling amount of non-centrist populist lefties that have no idea about socialism, it's history, you wouldn't even be having this economic vs identity debate if they did. 

I've not said don't call them centrists, I said calling all centrists tories is lazy, either they are tories or centrists, centrists is by and large a negative term used by non-centrists (usually on the left) to refer non-radicals, I've not really heard many people describe themselves un-ironically as centrist.

My main point btw is that these people shouldn't be the focus but are constantly the obsession, the metaphorical fist shaking "if it wasn't for you pesky centrists we would have a leftwing government" that isn't a correct assessment the "left" has lost directly to the right, Blairism (which you correctly identified as being rightwing) is not the centrism of today, ahas a lot to do with the fundamentals of this but even that isn't the whole story and isn't relevant now.  The country (and world for that matter) is kept going largely by leftists sacrificing themselves so that ignorant people don't suffer the brunt of terrible governments, its sucks, you don't need to tell me about.  They way back for the left right now is to stop looking inwards and start appealing to the mainstream again, that means working with centrists (and right-wingers for that matter) and shaping their views to the left, if you are in anyway comfortable and dedicated to your personal ideology there is nothing to fear about this, it's what you do to gain power, power that you can then use for socialism.

TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on May 26, 2022, 03:26:57 PMSteadfastly rejecting 'ideology' is an ideology of sorts. It's not a very good or coherent one; centrism is relies on affirmative statements of what it isn't, and vague nebulous word-salads when attempting to define what it is.

"Centrists" don't steadfastly reject ideology, I said it is a lack of, not a rejection of.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: TrenterPercenter on May 26, 2022, 04:58:05 PM"Centrists" don't steadfastly reject ideology, I said it is a lack of, not a rejection of.
I think many do. And spare me the semantic pedantry, I didn't quote you, so what makes you think I was basing my claim they reject ideology entirely on all the shit you typed?


TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on May 26, 2022, 05:03:27 PMI think many do. And spare me the semantic pedantry, I didn't quote you, so what makes you think I was basing my claim they reject ideology entirely on all the shit you typed?

Sorry to pedant you semantically but I thought you were referring to what I said and misread it - I'm not sure that is worth getting too upset about though.

I kind of agree with you, some centrists do steadfastly disagree with ideology the problem is they never really explain or understand what "ideologies" enmasse are, they can point to ideologies of the right saying I can see how fascism is bad but they nearly always struggle explaining why socialism is bad, reverting to Stalinism and 20th century Communism in it's place.  So they don't really understand leftwing ideology from a bottom up situation, they study it in their public schools which tells them how leftwing ideology is a threat to how the country is run.  Well they are right, but they don't seem to understand why that is a good thing for the majority of people.


Johnny Yesno

Quote from: TrenterPercenter on May 26, 2022, 04:58:05 PM"Centrists" don't steadfastly reject ideology, I said it is a lack of, not a rejection of.

That the so-called 'centrists' are seen to have no ideology is their most successful con.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: Beagle 2 on May 26, 2022, 06:46:35 AMhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61584546

The cynicism of the timing of this announcement. So blatant.

Oh, look, here's a no ideology so-called 'centrist':

QuotePaul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said offering a universal payment would mean a lot of the money would go to households who "don't desperately need it".

He also warned putting billions of pounds into the economy at a time when prices were rising quickly "could stoke additional demand and make inflation much more permanent".

You can't take money from rich fossil fuel corporations and give it to ordinary people to help towards the real terms decline in their incomes. We'll end up in an economic death spiral caused by people turning on more and more lights and heaters. That's just a fact and BBC news are doing well not to challenge it otherwise everyone will laugh at them.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Johnny Yesno on May 26, 2022, 08:40:01 PMOh, look, here's a no ideology so-called 'centrist':

You can't take money from rich fossil fuel corporations and give it to ordinary people to help towards the real terms decline in their incomes. We'll end up in an economic death spiral caused by people turning on more and more lights and heaters. That's just a fact and BBC news are doing well not to challenge it otherwise everyone will laugh at them.

Anything to hide the small print I suppose.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on May 26, 2022, 09:38:09 PMAnything to hide the small print I suppose.


'Sensible middle ground' lol.

Where is that small print from, btw?


Johnny Yesno

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on May 26, 2022, 11:53:44 PMBBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61590957

Better info here:
https://twitter.com/chappersmk/status/1529838700795936769

Cheers.

QuoteMr Sunak said: "We should not be ideological about this, we should be pragmatic.

And all the so-called 'centrists', who had no ideology, applauded his pragmatism while seeing the value of their investments increase.

Johnny Yesno

QuoteHe added: "There is nothing noble in burdening future generations with ever more debt today because politicians of the day were too weak to make the tough decisions."

This was bollocks the first time round and it killed a lot of people, but BBC news still publish this crap unchallenged.

Austerity 2.0.

Sebastian Cobb

it's probably easier for future generations to deal with a bit of debt than climate bombs and shit.

Pink Gregory

Quote from: Blumf on May 26, 2022, 01:37:35 PMUm.. the Liberal Democrats? (itself formed from the Liberal Party and the centrist Labour breakaway Social Democratic Party). Remember how it was the party to happily cosy up to the Tories back in 2010.

Arguably the combination of the liberal party and the SDP form a centre-right party - as far as I'm concerned, liberalism as a political project *is* a right wing ideology, as it is ultimately more concerned with the individual than the collective, and is very compatible with privatisation and the free market.


olliebean

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on May 26, 2022, 09:38:09 PMAnything to hide the small print I suppose.


No such incentives for investing in green energy? So they are essentially being massively incentivised to keep destroying the planet?


Who saw this coming then? I sure as hell didn't.

Boris Johnson changes ministerial code to avoid need to resign over breaches

There's yer totalitarian regime right there. Just a step away from abolishing regular elections. They just do what they want now.

frajer

Ffffffuck. Imagine a chinless blonde toff stamping on a human face forever. Oh no need, here he is.

GoblinAhFuckScary



Zero Gravitas

Quote from: TrenterPercenter on May 27, 2022, 09:04:03 PMhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/2687692/Tory-MP-Michael-Fabricant-forced-to-eat-coffee-whitener-at-gunpoint.html

has someone told Peter Kay?

QuoteMr Fabricant, 58, was trekking in the Santa Marta region of northern Columbia when, last Saturday, he and his travelling companion were approached by the armed soldiers, wearing full combat gear and carrying M-16 assault rifles and machine guns.

He said: "They started talking to us but they were speaking in Spanish and I don't speak Spanish so things didn't go too well.

"Then they started looking in my backpack and came across a small jar of Coffeemate. They started to say something about raw cocaine.

"I was saying Coffeemate over and over and they were holding the jar up and shouting 'cocaine, cocaine'. It was extremely frightening.

"I asked them to try it but apparently I have learned since that raw cocaine is pretty poisonous so they made me eat it instead. I had to eat about three tablespoons of it while they watched intently to see if I was going to go loopy.

"It was quite vomit-inducing and I was trying not to be sick, but when they saw I wasn't going to die they relaxed a bit and let me on my way."

"I'm glad I wasn't sick because that would have heightened their suspicions and who knows what would have happened."

Why lie like that? Worst google obfuscation ploy yet!