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They seem troublingly comfortable with the idea that stoking public anger is justifiable and, indeed, with using the public's anger to try to intimidate MPs into supporting Brexit at any cost. These are dark times. Meanwhile, having behaved unlawfully once, they are openly plotting to ignore another act of Parliament so as not to ask for an extension from the EU. Have any of you sleepwalkers woken up yet?
Johnson and Cummings on 10:48 - Sep 27 by tabletopjoe
From the underhand footage of the Labour MP Karl Turner trying to provoke Cummings into something he could publish on the internet against him, it seems like the ‘intimidation’ is coming from the other direction.
Johnson and Cummings on 09:56 - Sep 27 by StokieBlue
The problem is that the subject is just too complicated for detailed analysis on TV at the level that is required to make an informed decision. There is then the further point that the vast majority of the population aren't economists or lawyers so a detailed analysis wouldn't be understood by many anyway. That's not their fault by the way, just the reality of the situation.
Given the above we are reduced to simplified soundbites which convey the overall message without conveying the minutiae. This leads to division, tribalism and ultimately where we are now.
Thus we can only conclude that the decision was too complicated to be made in the way it was and thus we have come full circle.
SB
Well said.
And in the situation you describe of complicated, often very technical matters needing to be simplified, we needed politicians (and failing that the media) who were up to the task of representing the wider public's interests in that process rather than exploiting it. There should have been (self-)censorship to avoid a too black and white, oversimplified reading of technical details, and willful misrepresentation and lies should have been nipped in the bud far earlier. But when we don't do that then standards get even lower as seen by these latest appeals to raw, violent emotion instead of anything even vaguely factual or indeed helpful.
Never going to be perfect but seems that we've been particularly bad at this throughout the Brexit discussion. But I suppose the tone and the direction were set by a binary referendum question that was clear and simple only very superficially.
Pronouns: He/Him
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Johnson and Cummings on 10:50 - Sep 27 with 3562 views
Johnson and Cummings on 10:48 - Sep 27 by tabletopjoe
From the underhand footage of the Labour MP Karl Turner trying to provoke Cummings into something he could publish on the internet against him, it seems like the ‘intimidation’ is coming from the other direction.
Against what will no doubt be stiff competition you've managed to seal stupidest post of the day nice and early.
SB
Avatar - IC410 - Tadpoles Nebula
6
Johnson and Cummings on 10:52 - Sep 27 with 3550 views
Johnson and Cummings on 10:50 - Sep 27 by leitrimblue
Another good reason to vote for Boris then?
Absolutely. That and he's funny and uses long words and that makes me smile :) Haven't got a clue what he's on about most of the time but I believe him 100% on whatever it is
footers KC - Prosecution Barrister - Friend to all
The noise they are creating is diverting attention away from the chaos of brexit, Peston on ITV thinks Boris will not ignore the act of Parliament to ask for an extension to article 50, he will send that letter to the EU, but then send another straight after with conditions in it that he knows will ensure the EU will not grant the extension. Ports and the NHS will not cope with brexit according to R4 this morning.
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Johnson and Cummings on 10:57 - Sep 27 with 3526 views
Absolutely. That and he's funny and uses long words and that makes me smile :) Haven't got a clue what he's on about most of the time but I believe him 100% on whatever it is
Same here, he,s so funny an charming and i find it slightly arousing when he quotes the classics. Had my vote long before i realized he had accidentlly legalized weed.
1
Johnson and Cummings on 10:59 - Sep 27 with 3524 views
The noise they are creating is diverting attention away from the chaos of brexit, Peston on ITV thinks Boris will not ignore the act of Parliament to ask for an extension to article 50, he will send that letter to the EU, but then send another straight after with conditions in it that he knows will ensure the EU will not grant the extension. Ports and the NHS will not cope with brexit according to R4 this morning.
I'm curious as to how Boris thinks he's going to unilaterally dictate conditions to the EU when he can't even get parliament to agree to him having a recess for conference. The man is deluded.
The noise they are creating is diverting attention away from the chaos of brexit, Peston on ITV thinks Boris will not ignore the act of Parliament to ask for an extension to article 50, he will send that letter to the EU, but then send another straight after with conditions in it that he knows will ensure the EU will not grant the extension. Ports and the NHS will not cope with brexit according to R4 this morning.
I made that comment that while people focus on Boris being a naughty boy he is able to grow his support and push on with his naughtiness. For some reason it was decided by many on here including the likes of Steve M that that means i am supporting Boris. It is quite the contrary.
I mention steve because I expecting better from him, most of the others it is understandable
Johnson and Cummings on 10:38 - Sep 27 by Bluedandy
Welcome to another day of hyberbolic self-righteousness from TWTD's Remainiac bores ...
Oh it's fine when Lammy says Tory Brexiteers are worse than Nazis or Lib Dem Ed Davey calls for the decapitation of the blond one...
Yeah it's a right old hoot when an anti-Brexit rapper goes on stage holding the axed head of the PM ... creative license innit ...
Never mind the Remoaners who protest in London holding placards depicting Johnson as Adolf Hitler ... well he's got Teutonic blond hair and blue-ish eyes so the guy's obviously a nailed on Nazi.
Oh then there's Jess Philips happily talking about knifing her own leader in the front of the chest ...
But it's only a metaphor .... whereas the phrase to die in ditch is clearly an inflammatory statement of literal intent.
Not forgetting lovely John McDonnell who delights in repeating the comment lynch the bitch in reference to Tory MP Esther McVey to giggles from fellow Marxist dimwits ....
And then the master of toxic virtue signalling Jezza Corbyn cashes in on the Cox furore with a political ad calling on everyone to vote Labour ... well classy.
On the face of it, you have a point, but I think the key difference is in who's making actual threats. I haven't read about many brexit-supporting MPs getting death threats from crazed remainers... the brexit side just seems more combustible, volatile and potentially violent and therefore far more easily stoked.
Incidentally, this is also why I think us remainers may have to just suck it up in the end - we're more able to cope - the adults in the room.
(sorry)
[Post edited 27 Sep 2019 11:29]
Has anyone ever looked at their own postings for last day or so? Oh my... so sorry. Was Ullaa
Politicians have been invoking emotional responses for a while now.
It has been a sad progression from sound-bites, to divisive language, to simply just provoking emotional re-actions.
Sometimes society benefits from advances and innovation in industry, that leads to wealthy entrepreneurs, not Toffs.
A hand out or a hand up, to a deserving or underwing poor person, is a number.
Taking back control, is a UK civil servant writing a regulation on the size of pillow covers, rather than a EU civil servant that could be a British citizen, writing it.
The latter is a strange thing to get emotional about.
1
Johnson and Cummings on 11:52 - Sep 27 with 3429 views
Johnson and Cummings on 10:59 - Sep 27 by Herbivore
I'm curious as to how Boris thinks he's going to unilaterally dictate conditions to the EU when he can't even get parliament to agree to him having a recess for conference. The man is deluded.
Corbyn is going to get a deal within three months of forming a government and put to the people within another three months when he will no doubt say vote against it.
I'm not comfortable with Cummings being in a position of influence,nor with the blonde one.
They shouldn't be stiring up the anger that already exists towards MPs who are determined to remain despite their constituents voting to leave.. the root cause is however the stance taken by MPs
You made a comment earlier in the thread about Labour showing there true colours.Had they done so in 2017 they would have lost many seats.
Johnson and Cummings on 10:11 - Sep 27 by Herbivore
Just ignore them. They want to distract from the thread because it is uncomfortable for them and they would much rather make this about Labour. Don't give them the oxygen to do so. A cursory down arrow for attempting to derail the thread and then move on.
'Both sides'. It's one of the most pernicious phrases in modern politics. It sounds so reasonable. But what it does is not reasonable. It aims to prevent the allocation of blame and the diagnosis of problems.
Since Boris Johnson waded into the Commons on Wednesday and promoted a nightmare agenda of division and hatred, we've heard a lot about 'both sides'. "There are members on both sides of the House and both sides of the Brexit argument who have been personally threatened and whose families have been threatened," Speaker John Bercow said.
That's been eagerly taken up. Every time a Brexiter touches on this subject, they never fail to point out that 'both sides' are responsible for abuse. There are "serious threats" of violence against both sides, Dominic Cummings, the mastermind behind Johnson's bullying strategy, insisted yesterday,
The problem with 'both sides ' is not that it is completely false. There is some truth to it. Jacob Rees-Mogg has had his private home targeted by activists, for instance. Brexiters MPs are sometimes shouted at when they walk from parliament to College Green to do TV interviews.
Admittedly, it is occasionally flagrant nonsensical. On Newsnight on Wednesday night, Tory MP Bernard Jenkins tried to compare the death threats MPs receive to the strain Boris Johnson is under. Brexit campaigner Isabel Oakshott asked why it was OK to be outraged by abuse but still call Johnson a "liar" or a "racist".
This is how it always goes with the subject of abuse. For a few fleeting moments you feel a sense of hope, like the spotlight being shone on it might actually lead to change. But then things start to dribble away. It begins with the comments about 'both sides', then it moves on to straight-up whataboutery. And before you know it, the whole thing has been neutralised. Nothing can be changed, because everyone is culpable. It becomes a failure of the human condition rather than a kind of political behaviour footed in specific circumstances and the actions of individuals.
The whataboutery is not worth considering. It is OK to call people racist when they make racist comments and liars when they lie. That is a critical description, not abuse. Only a fool would conflate them.
The 'both sides' argument is stronger. It has a kind of colouring-in quality. It takes lots of different comments in different contexts and makes them appear the same.
But they are not the same. They are distinct. And it is by spotting what makes them distinct that you might possibly come to a way of minimising them.
Remainers are responsible for some abuse, there's no doubt about it. It's much parroted but true that they can instinctively think of all Leavers as racists. And the frustration over watching intellectual arguments about trade or security be ignored means they very often treat all Leavers as stupid. Sometimes the online Remain movement targets Brexit supporters with the grim dehumanising tactic of pile-ons. It's grim and it shouldn't happen.
Labour have a significant problems with abuse too. It's online presence is a nest of angry entitled horrors, full of people who see any deviation from the true path as heresy.
The powerful moral argument of the left, particularly since the 2008 crash, has created a kind of justificatory instinct for abuse. Have people died as a result of austerity? Yes. Was it necessary? No. These facts activate a sense of moral fury. And they allow some parts of the Labour movement to treat any opponent as a kind of murderous, cold-hearted monster.
The Corbynites' emphasis on media control and 'dark money' - both arguments have a strain of truth in them, but are massively overstated - means they treat opponents not as people who think differently but as agents of a hostile political camp operating under a cloak of deception: liars with bad motives.
Brexit abuse comes from a completely different place. It was there right from the beginning. The public were split into two groups: the people and the elite. Neither of these categories exist in real life. You might as well call them goodies and baddies. They were then set to war with one another. Cummings was the chief orchestrator of this in the campaign and he is the chief orchestrator of it now.
It didn't need to be this way. Brexit could have been discussed, and even implemented, as a fundamentally logistical exercise. But once that happened, the case grew weak. So instead it was turned into culture war. It was about out-of-touch metropolitan elites and the left-behind real people, even though most of its advocates were wealthy and made these comments from London. Those who opposed it were treated as traitors. Immigrants were treated as a threat. The core functions of a liberal society, including the judiciary and parliament, were treated as sabotage agents.
Almost as soon as it came into existence, it showed how dangerous it was. Jo Cox was stabbed to death during the campaign by a man chanting "Britain first". Yesterday, a man tried to break into the constituency office of the Labour MP Jo Phillips. Jolyon Maughn, who helped bring the case against the government's suspension of parliament, confirmed he now has extra security around his home and was advised to wear a stab vest.
No.10 threatens it for the future. Yesterday, an unnamed source - presumably Cummings - revelled in the fact a second referendum would be "one massive campaign of total abuse".
The links are clear and uncontroversial. As Phillips said, the abuse often uses the exact same language the prime minister uses: Surrender, betrayal, and the rest of his nakedly cynical lexicon. As Lib Dem MP Luciana Berger pointed out, Johnson's comments in parliament are often clipped and then put online on far-right Brexiter networks.
The Brexiter abuse is not just different by quality. It is different by severity. It rides roughshod over everything. No matter what you might think of Corbynism, it is not trying to attack the institution of parliament.
The Brexit movement daily attacks parliament with the illogical and degenerate slur that it is somehow against the people who elected it. It attacks the judiciary for ruling that parliament must be protected, with Brexit commentators in politics and the media demanding to know the voting record of judges, branding it a "coup" or threatening to publish the addresses of those involved in the Supreme Court case.
'Both sides' are not doing this. Could we really credibly claim that, if the result had gone the other way, Remainers would have spent this week attacking the independence of the judiciary? It's absurd. We need to be honest about what different groups are doing if we want to address what is happening.
The Brexiter abuse is also different by status. It comes from the very top, from the highest position in the land. Vote Leave unleashed the most poisonous rhetoric seen in British politics in our lifetime. And now it has been installed at the heart of government, with all the validation and respectability that affords.
The 'both sides' talk is not reasonable. The reasonable thing is to stop abuse before it turns into violence. That's what reasonable looks like: identifying the potential for trouble and acting to prevent it. By reverting to this 'both sides' argument, we are preventing targeted action against abuse and therefore making it more likely that violence will follow.
It is the Brexit movement which is challenging the fundamental underpinnings of liberal democracy. It is the prime minister who is actively whipping up hatred because he thinks it might win him an election. He is doing that. He is responsible.
'Both sides'. It's one of the most pernicious phrases in modern politics. It sounds so reasonable. But what it does is not reasonable. It aims to prevent the allocation of blame and the diagnosis of problems.
Since Boris Johnson waded into the Commons on Wednesday and promoted a nightmare agenda of division and hatred, we've heard a lot about 'both sides'. "There are members on both sides of the House and both sides of the Brexit argument who have been personally threatened and whose families have been threatened," Speaker John Bercow said.
That's been eagerly taken up. Every time a Brexiter touches on this subject, they never fail to point out that 'both sides' are responsible for abuse. There are "serious threats" of violence against both sides, Dominic Cummings, the mastermind behind Johnson's bullying strategy, insisted yesterday,
The problem with 'both sides ' is not that it is completely false. There is some truth to it. Jacob Rees-Mogg has had his private home targeted by activists, for instance. Brexiters MPs are sometimes shouted at when they walk from parliament to College Green to do TV interviews.
Admittedly, it is occasionally flagrant nonsensical. On Newsnight on Wednesday night, Tory MP Bernard Jenkins tried to compare the death threats MPs receive to the strain Boris Johnson is under. Brexit campaigner Isabel Oakshott asked why it was OK to be outraged by abuse but still call Johnson a "liar" or a "racist".
This is how it always goes with the subject of abuse. For a few fleeting moments you feel a sense of hope, like the spotlight being shone on it might actually lead to change. But then things start to dribble away. It begins with the comments about 'both sides', then it moves on to straight-up whataboutery. And before you know it, the whole thing has been neutralised. Nothing can be changed, because everyone is culpable. It becomes a failure of the human condition rather than a kind of political behaviour footed in specific circumstances and the actions of individuals.
The whataboutery is not worth considering. It is OK to call people racist when they make racist comments and liars when they lie. That is a critical description, not abuse. Only a fool would conflate them.
The 'both sides' argument is stronger. It has a kind of colouring-in quality. It takes lots of different comments in different contexts and makes them appear the same.
But they are not the same. They are distinct. And it is by spotting what makes them distinct that you might possibly come to a way of minimising them.
Remainers are responsible for some abuse, there's no doubt about it. It's much parroted but true that they can instinctively think of all Leavers as racists. And the frustration over watching intellectual arguments about trade or security be ignored means they very often treat all Leavers as stupid. Sometimes the online Remain movement targets Brexit supporters with the grim dehumanising tactic of pile-ons. It's grim and it shouldn't happen.
Labour have a significant problems with abuse too. It's online presence is a nest of angry entitled horrors, full of people who see any deviation from the true path as heresy.
The powerful moral argument of the left, particularly since the 2008 crash, has created a kind of justificatory instinct for abuse. Have people died as a result of austerity? Yes. Was it necessary? No. These facts activate a sense of moral fury. And they allow some parts of the Labour movement to treat any opponent as a kind of murderous, cold-hearted monster.
The Corbynites' emphasis on media control and 'dark money' - both arguments have a strain of truth in them, but are massively overstated - means they treat opponents not as people who think differently but as agents of a hostile political camp operating under a cloak of deception: liars with bad motives.
Brexit abuse comes from a completely different place. It was there right from the beginning. The public were split into two groups: the people and the elite. Neither of these categories exist in real life. You might as well call them goodies and baddies. They were then set to war with one another. Cummings was the chief orchestrator of this in the campaign and he is the chief orchestrator of it now.
It didn't need to be this way. Brexit could have been discussed, and even implemented, as a fundamentally logistical exercise. But once that happened, the case grew weak. So instead it was turned into culture war. It was about out-of-touch metropolitan elites and the left-behind real people, even though most of its advocates were wealthy and made these comments from London. Those who opposed it were treated as traitors. Immigrants were treated as a threat. The core functions of a liberal society, including the judiciary and parliament, were treated as sabotage agents.
Almost as soon as it came into existence, it showed how dangerous it was. Jo Cox was stabbed to death during the campaign by a man chanting "Britain first". Yesterday, a man tried to break into the constituency office of the Labour MP Jo Phillips. Jolyon Maughn, who helped bring the case against the government's suspension of parliament, confirmed he now has extra security around his home and was advised to wear a stab vest.
No.10 threatens it for the future. Yesterday, an unnamed source - presumably Cummings - revelled in the fact a second referendum would be "one massive campaign of total abuse".
The links are clear and uncontroversial. As Phillips said, the abuse often uses the exact same language the prime minister uses: Surrender, betrayal, and the rest of his nakedly cynical lexicon. As Lib Dem MP Luciana Berger pointed out, Johnson's comments in parliament are often clipped and then put online on far-right Brexiter networks.
The Brexiter abuse is not just different by quality. It is different by severity. It rides roughshod over everything. No matter what you might think of Corbynism, it is not trying to attack the institution of parliament.
The Brexit movement daily attacks parliament with the illogical and degenerate slur that it is somehow against the people who elected it. It attacks the judiciary for ruling that parliament must be protected, with Brexit commentators in politics and the media demanding to know the voting record of judges, branding it a "coup" or threatening to publish the addresses of those involved in the Supreme Court case.
'Both sides' are not doing this. Could we really credibly claim that, if the result had gone the other way, Remainers would have spent this week attacking the independence of the judiciary? It's absurd. We need to be honest about what different groups are doing if we want to address what is happening.
The Brexiter abuse is also different by status. It comes from the very top, from the highest position in the land. Vote Leave unleashed the most poisonous rhetoric seen in British politics in our lifetime. And now it has been installed at the heart of government, with all the validation and respectability that affords.
The 'both sides' talk is not reasonable. The reasonable thing is to stop abuse before it turns into violence. That's what reasonable looks like: identifying the potential for trouble and acting to prevent it. By reverting to this 'both sides' argument, we are preventing targeted action against abuse and therefore making it more likely that violence will follow.
It is the Brexit movement which is challenging the fundamental underpinnings of liberal democracy. It is the prime minister who is actively whipping up hatred because he thinks it might win him an election. He is doing that. He is responsible.
Johnson and Cummings on 10:15 - Sep 27 by Bluefish
Fishers, I don't know why lately you've seemed to want to lash out at everyone one on here or what people have done to deserve your scorn.
It wasn't so long a go that everyone here was rightly rallying round you in support though. Maybe your board experience would be more enjoyable if you focused on remembering that side of many of the posters on here, rather than the side you've been trolling nonstop for the last month x
[Post edited 27 Sep 2019 13:34]
Pronouns: He/Him/His.
"Imagine being a heterosexual white male in Britain at this moment. How bad is that. Everything you say is racist, everything you say is homophobic. The Woke community have really f****d this country."
Johnson and Cummings on 13:25 - Sep 27 by SpruceMoose
Fishers, I don't know why lately you've seemed to want to lash out at everyone one on here or what people have done to deserve your scorn.
It wasn't so long a go that everyone here was rightly rallying round you in support though. Maybe your board experience would be more enjoyable if you focused on remembering that side of many of the posters on here, rather than the side you've been trolling nonstop for the last month x
Johnson and Cummings on 13:26 - Sep 27 by Bluefish
Cheers
I like your posts btw! And obviously the main arseholey part of me REALLY enjoys the response you get to your posts!
I just would like you to stick around, that's all x
Pronouns: He/Him/His.
"Imagine being a heterosexual white male in Britain at this moment. How bad is that. Everything you say is racist, everything you say is homophobic. The Woke community have really f****d this country."
I don't think your endorsement is going to help his public image spruce, I predict quite the opposite.
I quite like your posts too btw.
Pronouns: He/Him/His.
"Imagine being a heterosexual white male in Britain at this moment. How bad is that. Everything you say is racist, everything you say is homophobic. The Woke community have really f****d this country."
Johnson and Cummings on 13:40 - Sep 27 by SpruceMoose
I quite like your posts too btw.
I see a parrern of behavior emerging here. First you dumped me for footers, and now you're dumping footers for Truce. Be warned Michael, you're on the way out.
I have got over the heart break now, even if it means J2 is the closest thing to a BFF I have on here.
I see a parrern of behavior emerging here. First you dumped me for footers, and now you're dumping footers for Truce. Be warned Michael, you're on the way out.
I have got over the heart break now, even if it means J2 is the closest thing to a BFF I have on here.
I'll be your best friend :)
Former leader of the Labour Party / Newsround Editor
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