Elections and politics

Thanks for the support but more for wading through that horrendously typed post.

here here!

I Sperg said:

"Let he who is wthout sin cast the first stone".

"Before taking the speck out of your brothers eye, it is best remove the plank from your own".

Are you referring to my criticism of the Catholic Church here?

I dearly hope you aren't as I definitely do not have a plank in my eye in comparison to the sins of that institution + that is an insult.

I Sperg said:

If I may observe Debbie..

No, perhaps I'm best keeping my observations about how people conduct themselves here to myself

How do you consider I conduct myself here?

It's much nicer to not insinuate but if you have a criticism to level at me, actually say what that is.

I Sperg said:

we are in the "Best Individual Effort" part

I think this is a sound observation.....we need to be doing the best we can muster....because the collective of result of what we've tried "recently" has really put us ALL in some VERY uncomfortable territory !!

"Let he who is wthout sin cast the first stone".

"Before taking the speck out of your brothers eye, it is best remove the plank from your own".

If I may observe Debbie..

No, perhaps I'm best keeping my observations about how people conduct themselves here to myself, and focussing on the cat pictures. 

Incidentally, given that rather lush cat photo you posted in a thread somewhere else, (presumably your own pussycat)  how come you've never participated in my cat pictures thread?  

Although I believe I know where you are coming from and we see the same things happening out there, that's not the way Jesus would have played it or would have wanted his disciples to believe.

Don't fall into the same moral trap that Mr Putin has, where he claims to be an "orthodox Christian" and fighting the good fight, whilst the death toll in Ukraine keeps rising.. 

Christianity gets a bad rap PRECISELY because of inquisitions and crusades. 

Inquisitions and crusades hapen when peoeple get their Chrisiianity form listening to the men in big hats, rather than going and reading a single gospel for themselves and paying heed to what the Christ in Christianity actually DID and TAUGHT HIMSELF. 

Irish In ManchesterUK, although I've used caps for emphasis and I am making an argument with your proposed strategy, I'm pretty sure we have passed the point where it's possible to ORGANISE strong "Christian" resisitance to the works of satan.

FWIW, I've come to believe we are in the "Best Individual Effort" part where we get tested on whether we got enough of the message Jesus came to impart or not. 

Don't forget the Magdalen Laundries either, all those poor babies buried in septic tanks and the iike and their mothers made to work like slaves too.

IrishInManchesterUK said:

The only antidote to this is if real patriots in the milltary and ex-milltary, police and ex-police, band together and form a Catholic or Christian Millita and Milltary Police, based on the Crusades and the Inqusition and who are prepared to launch a milltary coup in defence of Christianity 

I've said this before but thank goodness these are just empty words and you have zero power. 

It's religious zealots like you with actual power who have caused much of the suffering in the world over the centuries up to the present day.

I am presently reading a novel based on fact about the Catholic church sending orphans to the Scottish Islands to work as slaves to families a few decades ago.

The Catholic Church has a terrible history of abuse especially to children and young mothers.

I dont understand how you have the gall to hold it up as an example of how to live a life.

And you think that’s something Jesus would approve of? Wow. Just wow.

What so you're OK with torture, burning people at the stake, forcing people to worship a god they don't believe in etc? Who exactly will you be aiming this crusade at?

The only antidote to this is if real patriots in the milltary and ex-milltary, police and ex-police, band together and form a Catholic or Christian Millita and Milltary Police, based on the Crusades and the Inqusition and who are prepared to launch a milltary coup in defence of Christianity 

The simple answer is the greed of the 1% - the only way to rectify this situation in the short term is to have a provisional milltary government in power (which should have happened at the start of Covid or perhaps earlier in 2019) and we are already at a situation where the government of the day will soon have no other option but to hand over government power to the Milltary in the U.K. alone involving national state of emergency, police state and martial law, but I suspect that this will happen far sooner in my native Ireland given the already very volatile and unstable situation there - already, I’m very concerned about my family’s safety in Rural Ireland at the hands of our Irish government and police even if they are totally brainwashed and indoctrinated - democracy and the democratic process has been revealed to be based on corruption and deception of all kinds in which leaders are selected not elected and where voting and trying to change an inherently corrupt system from within is totally pointless 

In 1966 we had inch diameter copper piping everywhere, and everone literally owned a few POUNDS of copper if they "saved their change" .

Possession of metal in any form is wealth. Particualrly the metals wthat werre really common like lead coper brass etc. 

Our country systematically removed as much elemental metal from our inventory and exported it as it could, a fact I foudn out in teh nineties in a scapyard that was making a killing exporting containers of old UK built car engines to Germany. "they like our steel" I was told. 

We are as a country very poor now, and shoudl be actively sending out scavenging fleets to go and grab some surplus resources from the developing countries and import us some rw maerial for MANUFACTURING. 

IN 1980 I was 20 and the then prime minister (A woman If I recollect correctly) announced that we were going to transition from a manufacturing economy to a "service economy". At the time a Hitachi service manual cost about 25 quid but we had amstrad and sinclair a a whoel HOST of emerging high end electronics companies in the U.K. The twenty year old me said "If we don't make it, then how will we know how to "service" it? That's stupid! 

And we are actually very good at engineering (barring some spectactacualr debacles like the square windows in the DH Comet airliner which gave Dehavillands technical lead to bloody Boeing whilst we faffed about figuring out why the aerplanes kept breaking up in midair... 

The americans got their asses kicked HARD in the east by korean Mig 15 jets all powered (IIRC) by a knock off of the Rolls Royce "nene" axial flow gas turbine (jet engine!) whiich we sold them. We pioneered a lot of technologies, (But Boy did we lose the plot with motroccyles in the sixties and seventies...)

AND THAT brings in money that can pay for the foreign stuff. BUT if your stuff is the best made then really all you need to buy of Johhny Foreigner is raw materiasl and you sell them product. AND because we INVENTED IT, "service".

Other nations have better engineers, but here in England we are (or were) innovators in engineering, law, social practice, social health care, it's a long list of things that the world now uses and benefits from were pinoneered or invented HERE. Matthew Boulton and James Watt and the other guy whose name I can never remember, changed the world in arguably a GOOD way!

And their statue gave me one of my personal favourite photos in my soon to be thrown away portfolio...

The point being, that this country has fallen very, very far indeed. 

When I got here, I really, really hoped, I'd find a bunch of misfits like myself who just can't help noticing "that the emperor has no clothes". 

Then I realised, just how deluded I really can be on occasion. Reality and Truth are painful medicines sometimes for me... 

You make important observations.....well!

I'm not sure that we are, in actuality, a wealthy nation anymore.  All the "official" metrics categorically affirm that we are a wealthy nation........but the metrics are (perhaps) now just nonsense! 

I look, and listen, to our people, in the round.  The people CLEARLY have doubts about ourselves.  I find myself (unusually) WITH the/our people on this.  My preferred metrics for indicating wealth, or otherwise (..notably productivity) in this country, are down the toilet!

[Disambiguation = the/our people relates to our generality in this country, NOT specific sub-categories based upon culture nor wealth nor any other 

We are wealthy in terms of fiscal numbers, but in terms of actual material or human resources we are stuffed, in a prcess that was well underway when I was a kid.

People confuse money with wealth, all the time. They also conflate status with power, and once something is a bit older it has no value. 

I think I'm going to start a new thread about tribes so as we can stick to politics on this one and hopefully include those who might be put off by the thread title.

I agree that parties change under different leaders, it's one of the reasons why I think there should be an general election when PM's change. What people voted for with Boris Johnson is totally different to what we had with Liz Truss and now with Rishi Sunak.

Number said:

 I presume that "people" find tribalism comforting and inclusive.....whereas I think it is blinkered and dangerous

I think you're right. 

There is so much, so badly wrong here now. Yet people cling to their political tribe. 

3 Questions - are things better now than in 2010? What's worse? Why? Trying to encourage people to ask questions is no easy task, when they've been encouraged to take no interest in politics for so long - even though it affects all of our lives. 

I could go on at length, being painfully aware of how much trouble we're in. But just one thing, for now.

Food Poverty. 11m people, including 3m children. Government refuses to allow UN Inspector on food poverty to visit until after the election. Last visit, the UK was condemned for instructing the DWP to create a virtual workhouse, based on the Victorian model. We know it as Universal Credit, although the premise is clearly up for expansion at the moment.

The idea of a new workhouse was suggested in Britannia Unchained, I believe, which is some time ago now.

Why are we in food poverty? There's a question. We're still a wealthy nation. 

Why?

So have I! I can really relate to that. Ive never felt particularly afriad to challenge authority in the way many people seem to, especially at work. Probably part of the reason Ive never done very well in a job

TheCatWoman said:

I've got into so much trouble for it over the years.

A few interesting points in your post TheCatWoman.

I have never understood why and how people identify with a single political party across their whole life. Parties change. Policies change. Membership changes. Leaders change. The Labour party under Callaghan, Blair and Corbyn for example - utterly different beasts. I have always looked at what each party is saying and voted accordingly. I've voted for many different parties.

Since the referendum in Scotland we've essentially split into two tribes - nationalists and everyone else. The SNP have objectively demonstrated that they are profoundly incompetent and corrupt and have multiple legal cases running against them, but people keep voting for them because essentially, that's their identity now. Democracy cannot function when people ignore the policies parties are actually proposing.

The second point is about autistics distrusting tribes. I think so. I have always been deeply sceptical about everything. Before I make a decision about anything - politics, religion, a TV programme, what brand of coffee to buy - I research it. Concepts like emotion and identity don't enter into it. I want hard facts. Being accepted into a "gang" will not make a patent untruth become acceptable.