@RachelMoiselle The alternative to irrelevance is they become an Islamist party. In 2024, there were as many independents whose campaigns focused on Gaza elected as there were Greens elected
Agreed. I live in London and it’s demoralising to see people push through the barriers on the tube every day whilst the TfL staff sit around dumbly and watch.
Depressing how much basic civility and, with it, social trust has been lost in England in the past 60 years or so. Dublin, Belfast and Derry all feel much better in this respect even despite the sectarianism in the latter two but I suspect they will go the same way in next 10-20 years, sadly
Unrelated to organised crime specifically but reading about how bad and deeply interconnected Singapore’s problems were in the mid 1950s and how quickly they progressed is a massive source of optimism about how quickly things could turn around here given competent leadership and the genuine will to change
I lived in Ireland for seven years and I find the lack of perspective here bizarre.
James’s post was clearly a joke, Irish people are well-liked in Britain, and the British don’t want ROI to join the UK. On the other hand, there is a lot of anti-British bigotry in Ireland, and physical force republicanism is a mainstream view.
I love Ireland but it’s bemusing to read someone complain about ‘anti-Irish rhetoric from British people’ in response to an innocuous joke given that anti-British bigotry is so normal in Ireland.
Respectively disagree with a lot of your JA opinions.
The JA scandal is an example of how parts of our individualist culture are being replaced with identity politics. Concerns about this are often dismissed as ‘culture wars’ which trivialises them as merely tribal but the fight against identity politics is actually existential to our civilisation. A lot of people feel this viscerally which explains the reaction to SBC and JA.
SBC dismissed the scrutiny of JA’s pathological lies as bullying. I’m not familiar with SBC like you are but my (and a lot of other people’s) assumption is that he is sympathetic to the identity politics which lead to JA’s appointment at Cambridge and his ostensible concerns about JA’s mental health were a pretence to discourage scrutiny of his appointment.
JA was appointed to a senior role at one of the most prestigious institutions in the world. He got the role despite his incredible lies and likely plagiarism because of his identity, which is naturally offensive to a culture which values individual merit.
His death is tragic and I’ve also lost a close relative to suicide so I know how much more difficult it is for a family to process but it doesn’t vindicate his supporters. Our culture is worth defending and that requires scrutiny, especially of people in prominent, culturally influential positions.
@aswren@commandant64907 If the inquiry gets proper coverage, I think this will play out the same way the debate about whether we pay £200m or £350m every week to the EU did - i.e., one side spends a lot of time criticising the higher figure but the public is shocked by just how high the lower figure is
@peterrhague@btharris93 Not really a fair comparison, Ben didn't inherit an emerald mine to get his rocket, car, brain-computer interface, etc. ideas off the ground
@eyeslasho Harold Shipman killed almost 300 people in the UK and had had (I think) a basically normal marriage for over 30 years by the time he was caught
@christiandean_ @duralexglass I think the influence of education is overestimated. It’s definitely been captured by the virus and plays a role in spreading it but it’s pretty average at imparting its other values. I think there’s something inherent in ‘wokeness’ (like Marxism) that makes it so infectious