Current Affairs
-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-45422065
Bike sharing firm Mobike is to pull out of Manchester after losing 10% of its cycles each month to theft and vandalism.
The Chinese firm said too many had been stolen, dumped in canals and bins, had locks hacked off or been set on fire.
I remember reading about this at the time and thinking “well, that’ll be a fucking disaster” and predictably it turned out that way. The British love of mindless vandalism was just too great an obstacle. -
Don’t know if it’s Mobike, but we have one of these schemes in London which just means random, bright yellow bikes littering the landscape. The canal’s the best place for them IMO. -
Same applies to Newcastle. -
Don't think it would fit in a canal. -
Where are you from again? Coventry?
-
Nearby.
Tried to avoid going there as much as possible. -
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1037804427992686593?s=19
Infowars and Alex Jones permanently banned from twitter. -
Corbyn should hire him as a press officer, every time he comes out to denounce the shameful direction Labour is taking he drives up support for them.
The man's utterly loathed and yet he's so divorced from reality he's not even realised. -
https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/antony-lerman/labour-should-ditch-ihra-working-definition-of-antisemitism-altogether
Haven't read all of this, it's a 25 minute read, but seems to me that this current controversy is very similar in structure to all the others and that antisemitism is being used to deflect any criticism, legitimate or not, of Israel.
Let's rinse and repeat this again so that on yeah.
I dunno, not sure what I'm missing.I'm still great and you still love it. -
I can come at this from the perspective of an ignorant voter. Which really is the sort of people they should care about if they even want to win power.
Corbyn does seem harder on Israel than other countries - the stupid criticism of Zionist and their lack of irony and maybe they should study history being the latest example dug up - while he buddies up to fuckers like Castro and some of the worst scum in the middle East and worldwide like his brothers in Hamas.
He (or Labour more widely) have also massively mishandled this, allowing a storm in a teacup to overshadow real issues.
Maybe that's the media twisting things, but that is precisely the game. If they don't get that, they lose.
At this point it's all about perception, not facts, and they seem to be trying too hard to be clever about it, and also failing at that. 99.99% of the electorate won't give a shit about the nuances of the IHRA definitions. -
I think a lot of the controversy around the IHRA definition comes from the line about ‘criticism of a State of Israel’, but the argument being made by many is that this is isn’t about criticism of the State of Israel. Criticising Israel as it stands is not covered by the definition, stating that Jews do not have a right to self-determination through a Jewish State is antisemitic.
-
WorKid wrote:I can come at this from the perspective of an ignorant voter. Which really is the sort of people they should care about if they even want to win power.
Corbyn does seem harder on Israel than other countries - the stupid criticism of Zionist and their lack of irony and maybe they should study history being the latest example dug up - while he buddies up to fuckers like Castro and some of the worst scum in the middle East and worldwide like his brothers in Hamas.
He (or Labour more widely) have also massively mishandled this, allowing a storm in a teacup to overshadow real issues.
Maybe that's the media twisting things, but that is precisely the game. If they don't get that, they lose.
At this point it's all about perception, not facts, and they seem to be trying too hard to be clever about it, and also failing at that. 99.99% of the electorate won't give a shit about the nuances of the IHRA definitions.
Anything Labour gets wrong is amplified and broadcast in every newspaper and news outlet for weeks on end, anything Corbyn does right is simply ignored or brushed of as ‘well, that’s what he should be doing anyway’. Perception is being deliberately managed and manipulated to make Corbyn look bad (and he’s not perfect).
That prick Chukka is all over the BBC bleating about Corbyn calling off his ‘far left attack dogs’. It’s alright for him and his gang to smear others, plot behind their backs and slag them off all day long, but if anything comes back in return it’s all: “Miss, Miss! Corbyn and the left are bullying us! I’m telling the BBC!” -
Rightly or wrongly, most of the electorate don't give a shit about any of this anti-Semitism storm.WorKid wrote:I can come at this from the perspective of an ignorant voter. Which really is the sort of people they should care about if they even want to win power.
Corbyn does seem harder on Israel than other countries - the stupid criticism of Zionist and their lack of irony and maybe they should study history being the latest example dug up - while he buddies up to fuckers like Castro and some of the worst scum in the middle East and worldwide like his brothers in Hamas.
He (or Labour more widely) have also massively mishandled this, allowing a storm in a teacup to overshadow real issues.
Maybe that's the media twisting things, but that is precisely the game. If they don't get that, they lose.
At this point it's all about perception, not facts, and they seem to be trying too hard to be clever about it, and also failing at that. 99.99% of the electorate won't give a shit about the nuances of the IHRA definitions.
The scummy buddies stuff is pretty funny though. Meet with Hamas representatives to try and progress a peace process = being mates with terrorists. Meanwhile, your other squeaky clean political leaders are doing arms deals with the Saudis so they can bomb civilians in Yemen. Or staying silent as Israel guns down some more protesters. Or bowing and scraping before Trump.
So clearly it is all perception, but there's not much point in Corbyn trying to bother winning the tabloids or much of the traditional media round, especially when they're actively ignoring policy announcements. Better to keep plugging away on social media with positive messages about improvements to social standards, which he has been doing, and use the greater exposure that he's guaranteed around election time. -
Media management is something that Corbyn seemed to deliberately eschew early on, but it’s a thing that exists in politics for a reason. I shared a medium piece here from a journo a while back from a speech to momentum describing the chaotic early days of Corbyn’s leadership when statements on important issues would turn up after newspapers have gone to press or not at all, then the press were criticised for not telling Labour’s side of the story (this was a major part of that study into media bias that everyone was talking about).
Corbyn didn’t want to play that game, which is fine, but it does hand over the running of it to others. -
Not sure the vast amounts of anti-Corbyn articles can simply be blamed on him ‘not playing the game’.
Those with power in Britain want him gone, to replace him with another non-threatening suit (Blairbot 2.0) and force us all back into the situation of having two realistic political choices - both practically identical and neither remotely inspiring.
If Corbyn were some political colossus who genuinely did pose some kind of threat I could understand, or if his manifesto were genuine hard left madness, but we’ve already seen he’s simply a vaguely pleasant, if disorganised old bloke with a fairly benign social democratic outlook (except on foreign policy where he’s pretty ‘anti-west’, something no-one but the outliers of political life have been in Britain for years). -
I’m not convinced that there are many more anti-Corbyn articles than there were anti-any-Labour-leader-aside-from-Blair ones, this is just something that most Labour leaders have to deal with, it’s just compounded by him not playing the game.
-
Bullshit. The Mail have been pumping out 4-5 articles per day. It’s relentless and unparalleled
-
I’m sure someone can pull together some stats on this, but look at the treatment Milliband got, that was also relentless.
-
Less people reading the papers has made the smears more shrill and urgent. The tabloids struggle to argue for traditional conservative ideology like strong defence, tough on crime and small government well. Those don't really help the Conservatives.
-
There might have been as much, but it wasn't as outlandish. He's a good argument for not playing the game, he tried and it made things worse.Yossarian wrote:I’m sure someone can pull together some stats on this, but look at the treatment Milliband got, that was also relentless. -
Not as outlandish? Attacking him through his father? Red Ed? The bacon sandwich? The Ed Stone? Some of it was truly mad.
-
The bacon sandwich and the big stone were PR gone wrong though, likewise the anti-immigration mug. The stuff about his dad being a communist was pretty mild compared to accusing Corbyn of being an anti-semite I'd say.
-
The Ed Stone was a fucking massive mistake of The Thick of It proportions though. I mean, fucking hell.Gamertag: gremill -
I_R wrote:The bacon sandwich and the big stone were PR gone wrong though, likewise the anti-immigration mug. The stuff about his dad being a communist was pretty mild compared to accusing Corbyn of being an anti-semite I'd say.
The bacon sandwich wasn’t PR gone wrong, it was the Sun selecting a terrible photo from out of probably dozens and running it relentlessly.
And personally I find the parents thing worse, but YMMV. -
The bacon sandwich was at an event where the press were invited though. Someone probably thought about the whole thing beforehand. There was almost an air of sabotage about it. Given the subsequent attempts to sabotage Corbyn by Labour big names, I'd actually give that serious consideration now.
-
I’ve got to say, I bloody miss Ed Milliband at the moment. Any chance we can get him back?
-
Why? He was demonstrably unelectable too, so what's the point?
-
He was unelectable against Cameron, I expect he’d be running rings around May.
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Categories
- All Discussions2,718
- Games1,881
- Off topic837