Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "Professor Tim Wilson"
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But surely, of all people, a UN ambassador understands that recognition of the State of Palestine is the recognition of a peoples and a country, NOT the terrorists within it? In the face of Israeli history, such gesture politics come off as shrill and hysterical. And such gestures have a way of backfiring. The next allegation his country makes of unfair treatment can be answered with, “But you shredded the UN charter, publicly and cannot invoke its protections now.” If not by UN politicians themselves, certainly by other hostile politicos and radicals.
This ratification is simply a step (a rather small one in reality) in the direction of preventing further genocide. We can debate how intentional this genocide is, but not that it is occurring.
On the first day, when we all heard about the Hamas attack and saw the appalling footage, I told my wife that Netanyahu would seize upon this as his lifeline and that Israel’s response would be disproportionate and will be seen, even by Israel’s allies, as a massive overreaction. My wife was sceptical, asking, “How can you overreact to that?” She pointed to a thumbnail of horror which I won’t describe on YouTube. My response was, “Give it a week, and you’ll see. Just remember I said this.”
We simply cannot afford to lose sight of the fact that this is what is keeping Netanyahu a free man, and free of public shaming, opprobrium and the disgrace of a series of trial after being voted out of office in a probable landslide. The theatrics are a necessary part of his survival plan. So long as the war rages, he remains untouchable, and he knows from experience that he can keep this war raging for decades.
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Do you remember the good ole’ days, when the Tories at least had the decency to stand at the podium and make a speech when they lost an election? Even the execrable Michael Portillo took his lumps like a good ‘un. This lot don’t even hang around for the count to finish, let alone THANK all those people who went door to door in the rain for them, hung on the phones and worked so hard in other ways in closely contested seats. They flee as soon as they know they’ve lost because they are the lowest caliber of people, who cannot bear losing and worse still, being seen to lose.
Leadsom is just tired and it’s etched into every line of her face. She can see that there’s nothing to look forward to for an ambitious politician. She knows that the first few years of opposition promise nothing but the bloodiest, most unedifying, cruelest civil war the Tories have ever seen, and potentially all whilst being in Third Party status.
Andrea Leadsom didn’t get to where she is today by, “listening,” to people. She has convictions, for sure. But they are misguided and come with all the usual baggage of a Tory, arrogance and overweening self interest which they persuade themselves is, “self belief.”
I believe you encountered some of that in her surgery. When she was tired, defences down a little, and she showed you something of her true, unvarnished character. We have a Prime Minister who has never heard the views of a working person, let alone, “listened,” to anybody who wasn’t promising him lots of money. People are a bit curt when under pressure and I cut them slack for that, but when they flatly refuse to listen, that tends to be because they’re afraid of what you have to say.
A tearful Leadsom is about as plausible to me as a weeping crocodile. I just hope you don’t let it put you off spending time in your representative’s surgeries in the future.
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Imagine showing up to a casualty department, horribly wounded and a crash team of doctors rushes out to treat you, but just before they start life saving treatment they say, “This was a road traffic accident, right? If it was anything else, we’re not treating you. In fact, if it was any other form of incident we’re calling the police and having you locked up indefinitely in a special prison in which the conditions are of a notably lower standard than regular prison.” Does that sound hyperbolic, arbitrary and extreme to you? I hope so.
But, to anyone arguing that the way Tory policies and attitudes treat asylum seekers is any different from the above analogy, I defy you to explain to me, how so?
Deeming an asylum seeker as, “illegal,” on the basis of the mode of transport they used is comprehensively ludicrous, arbitrary and wilfully cruel.
I would argue that even attempting to do so should be outlawed, as it flies in the face of international and domestic laws in both spirit and letter, and is simply vindictive. Labour has always made this argument, if somewhat weakly, which is why they say they should target the traffickers and NOT the trafficked.
It is also illogical, since our country actually NEEDS MORE migrants, not fewer!
This vile woman should be vilified for her article, as should the rag that published it.
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If any company MUST be re-nationalised, it IS THE POST OFFICE. The current arrangement is the same as nationalisation anyway, in terms of financing, but the, “privatisation,” aspect has afforded these government jobsworths all the protections of legally protected cloaks and daggers, which are finally being exposed. The British people are entitled full accountability and to get their money’s worth from an organisation that THEY OWN and upon which THEY RELY!
The existing system has FAILED in every important respect and every measurable metric. The competition has outstripped them on reliability and public confidence; major businesses (such as Amazon and Argos) do not use them for the above stated reason; the left hand clearly doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, showing a fundamental breakdown in organisation, as so clearly illustrated by the excerpts you played us; and countless lives have been destroyed by what was a flat out culture of denial around the Fujitsu Scandal, AT BEST, and systematic conspiracy of silence and criminal profiteering at worst (we still do not know!).
Obviously, the people put in charge were incapable of fulfilling their remit, yet they were ostentatiously rewarded for many years of abject failure in a culture with ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY! “Culpable Negligence,” doesn’t even cover it!
These people belong behind bars, not getting gongs from his majesty! And the public deserves an open service, fully accountable to them at every level, since they are PAYING for it!
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While I see the convergence between Putin’s opportunism and Britain’s withdrawal from Europe, I think it is a step too far to say his invasion of Ukraine could not have happened but for Brexit. It, “helped,” certainly. But there are so many moving parts to that diagram it would be impossible for me to martial an argument against the idea without writing an essay. An essay, using your five steps, I hasten to add.
But, to your point, you touch it with a needle once again. At the very moment of the Brexit referendum result, the British government, “should,” have had a prepared plan of action, ready to go, comprising of diplomatic efforts to ensure strengthening bonds between ourselves and all other nations in Europe, as well as assurances to the wider world.
We, “should,” have had state visits by every available member of the Royal Family, our diplomats all singing from a single, unified hymn sheet, and politicians from the Foreign Office and Cabinet, all busy out in Europe, making clear our intentions to maintain and strengthen our relationships with all countries inside the European project. We should have never allowed any breast beating and victory laps, and assured the Europeans that our withdrawal would be handled with discretion and minimum fanfare. Even if the vote had been 100% in favour we should have seen to that.
Now, we’re naval gazing and waving our shrinking little union flags in the faces of those from whom we most the most help, in the belligerent manner of a toxic teen, incapable of respecting the adults in the room and bent on showing them so at every opportunity.
It’s time we ALL collectively faced up to the fact that the remainers had a point, and even the pro-Brexiteers did NOT get the Brexit they were promised. It failed and is still failing. We must STOP all this backward, past-focussed thinking, all this insularism and, “little Englander,” mindset, stuff. We need to grow up and accept we have been conned, instead of squandering increasing amounts of hard cash and soft power on the very mob who lead us down this dark alley only to get mugged.
And we must accept that these people in charge are not just squalid, self interested con artists, like so many politicians before them, but they represent a new class of politico: The incomparably THICK. In the last ten years, I have never seen a more STUPID collection of people in one room as I have in the Cabinet Office of Number 10 Downing Street. They must be replaced as a matter of national security.
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Well, we do know indisputably that two of the complaints against Raab were upheld. Given the extraordinarily high bar that needs to be proved beyond doubt, we can be certain that there was at least substance to the other claims. What I noted was that Raab’s resignation letter demonstrated the obtuseness and passive aggression that shows he’s unfit for high stress working environments.
I find the specious, “argument,” that he and Jacob Rees Mogg (among others) put forward in Raab’s defence particularly obtuse and galling. They keep saying, “It’s right to get angry with people who get it wrong or do their job badly,” and I haven’t yet heard a journalist return with the obvious riposte, “The complaints are not about Raab’s internal emotional state. They are about his behaviour.” Literally everyone in a high stress job gets angry with their colleagues from time to time. But there’s a world of difference between using the supervision procedure to identify mistakes and learn from them, setting goals for improvement and deciding on what to do differently in the future, and calling someone personal names and attacking the way they look, sound or behave in front of their colleagues. The defence being used misses that point and only serves to demonstrate that he either simply doesn’t get it (and therefore was unfit for his post) or he lacks the humility and wisdom to apologise and constructively move forward, which would improve the odds of him saving what looks to be an increasingly unsafe seat at the next election.
As to Sunack’s response to all this, he has done a classic Sunack: tried to avoid upsetting either side, merely serving to upset both sides further with his obvious pusillanimity. He allowed Raab to, “get his retaliation in first,” with a resignation letter that stopped just short of calling his victims, “snowflakes,” instead of sacking him immediately. And we all know he will have spoken to Raab on the phone, letting him know he will have to sack him but asking him how he would like to handle it.
At a time when Britain has never needed firm decisive leadership more, since WWII, we’re being lead by a flaccid vacillator who seems to want to demonstrate his own indecision and weakness at every opportunity.
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The Tories survived after the ‘97 wipeout because they remained the opposition, still had clients in the press and, as the opposition, were able to control the narrative. The opposition still gets all the same invites to all the same panel shows, public events and functions, Royal protocols and diplomatic events, et. And they get to set the agenda for the manner in which the government of the day is held to account.
I hope and pray that this time we get a different opposition. The Lib Dems would ask good, appropriate questions, hold the governments feet to the fire and avoid all of the, “personality politics,” and craven appeals to, “culture wars,” and other vacuous attempts at misdirection from issues that matter.
Just last night we had Jacob Reese Mog bleating on his private TV show about, “free speech,” whilst forgetting to mention that his party is the ONLY party that has introduced laws designed to curb free speech and the right to protest. I cannot see how losing that level of craven hypocrisy would do our country any harm?
Let us all vote for Tory annihilation so that we can have a responsible government, doing its job in an honest and boring manner whilst being challenged by responsible adults, not just out to make money for themselves and their friends and their families, holding them to account.
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The Lords were nothing short of ingenious in this vote! They have not voted for or against the bill, nor even asked for any amendments, at least yet. They have simply said, “If Rwanda is a, ‘safe,’ place to send asylum seekers, please prove that to us?” A very reasonable sounding request on the face of it. There are contesting opinions as to the safety of Rwanda. We have been accepting refugees FROM Rwanda, even since this whole, “stop the boats,” nonsense began!
So, all the government needs to do is prove that Rwanda is as safe as they claim and not the danger hotspot that opponents claim. And how do you do that, when there are opposing opinions on a crucial aspect of a bill? You get a court ruling, right? And, oh dear . . . Seems the courts have already ruled on this, so the government will need to persuade them to take up the case again. And to do that, they would need to persuade them that there is new evidence to look at. Now, given that the court’s ruling sited UN, NATO and EU laws and treaties to which we are committed (certainly NOT just the EU legislation the Tories keep banging on about!) where will they find any new evidence that would so much as challenge all three bodies enough to persuade them that there is even any reason to take up the case a second time, let alone actually find in their favour?
In short, it was a stroke of sheer, artful genius! And, incidentally, coming back to an earlier discussion you raised, one of the best arguments for keeping a second chamber in the first place.
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It’s a difficult one to speculate about. If the Duchess was approached by a representative of Big Brother and didn’t give a flat, “no,” immediately, anyone can stretch a point and call that, “negotiations.” But, what I remember about her, most of all, was an interview she gave not long after divorcing the Prince. She ended the interview abruptly, when questioned about her corrupt financial dealings and has never answered for any of that as far as I know. Seems she was cut from a similar cloth to Edward?
EDIT: I should qualify that. I’m referring to the 60 Minutes interview, in which they discussed a News Of The World sting operation (footage still available on YouTube) in which the Duchess was selling access to Prince Andrew to business representatives, while Andrew was still the Business Ambassador. She destroyed the world’s trust in the idea of the Brits as fair dealing, as well as a good deal of trust in the Royal family.
Andrew claimed no knowledge of her dealings, which only begs the question. If you look at the footage, she is as brazen and blatant as they come, putting a $50,000 dollar price on, “Doors opened, full access,” to Andrew for trade discussions and, presumably, preferential treatment over others who just go through legitimate channels. So, if he really didn’t know, that makes her twice the con artist she already appears to be.
Yes, she said she had a, “wake up call,” and claims she was only ever corrupted that one time. But it is obvious that she had been running this scam for a long time, with price points for each level of her shady dealing. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she’d had booklets published, to save time with the patter.
In the end, she got to reframe the whole thing, used super injunctions to silence the press, told a pack of lies in her book about it, and got away with the whole thing. She disgusts me.
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I was struck by Johnson’s unapologetic and vehement performance in that enquiry hearing. He appeared to dig his own grave by stating that he thought he got advice from all of the right people, took the right steps, etc, even knowing what he knows now; meaning that he would do it all again, in the same way! Note: the very final question from the chair, who seemed to read him so well, all but walked him into a trap of his own making, by simply asking, “Well, is there anything you’d like to add?” But the way she framed it so cleverly, making it clear that this was his the opportunity to say, “If I had known then what I know now, here’s what I would have done differently.” By then, she had seen him sticking so vehemently to this, “I believe I did the right thing,” rhetoric, that she rightly surmised that the real meaning of the question would pass over his head. And he duly obliged the committee by stating that he had learned NOTHING from his experience and is a liability who would repeat all of the same mistakes; not change who advised him, not change his actions, not take better care of the health and safety of his own people, etc, not do ANYTHING differently, regardless.
And I think that will be the key line the findings of this enquiry will take: That even though we cannot read minds and establish what is truly in Mr Johnson’s, “heart,” as he would have do, Boris Johnson has stated in his own words that he has not learned anything from his own failings and stated unequivocally that he would not do anything differently, even if he had full knowledge of the potential harm he could have caused, or the harm he was doing politically to his party.
In short, they gave him enough rope and he hung himself. That would be the headline of my findings if I served on that committee, at any rate. And I would not fail to mention his pusillanimous response to outside influence and intimidation of committee members either. He reminded me of Donald Trump when he told them he would, essentially, be against the mob if he was exonerated, but for the mob should he be found guilty. That was a dark moment that I won’t be forgetting.
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What Starky, once again, wilfully overlooks is the fact that everyone voted AGAINST the Tories, which is why Labour won by default. People weren’t voting FOR Labour so much as blocking the Tories because they were wrecking Britain.
Starky has always enjoyed being venomous and spiteful, indeed tried to build a career out of it, playing the, “bad guy,” on BBC Radio 4 for several years, treating guests with contempt and being an exemplar of the specious argument. Always the classic appeals to authority, precedent, commonality and every other rhetorical trick in the book.
A dim person who thinks they’re clever is often more damaging than an actually clever person and Starky proves that point. He has extremist Tory written through him like a stick of Blackpool Rock.
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You look a little out of sorts in this video. Probably the weather? I do hope you are looking after yourself?
As to the rebellion discussion I simply say this: I find I can agree with neither side on this debate. Thatcher was paraphrasing Lincoln’s, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” As I argued months ago, the Tories are paralysed by indecision, delaying an election in the vane hope that things might just get better, despite the fact that, as I predicted, things have gotten far worse for them.
To put it as succinctly as possible, in the hope that we do not lose sight of the main issues here: When your, “flagship legislation,” is a bill to illegally persecute THE most vulnerable people on Earth, you have a problem with morality and are simply unfit for office.
Neither side in this debate represents the views of the majority of the British people. The, “manner,” in which an asylum seeker reaches the country should be irrelevant to their legal status AS an asylum seeker. They either are asylum seekers or they are not. What’s next? Rejecting claims on the basis of the colour of shirt they wear?
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I’m glad, personally, that you are sticking with this coverage. I too would love to hear a solicitor’s views on this. I wonder if the popular YouTuber and barrister, The Black Belt Barrister, would be willing to share an opinion with you?
Any other government, including previous conservative governments, would have kicked her out of their party by now and removed the whip. She should be stripped of her title. Her best, “defence,” so far has been, “Let me remind you, lying to the media is not a crime.” I only wish that journalist had had the presence of mind to respond, “Can you see how that will make no difference to the people who lost loved ones?”
Indeed, I would have asked her what she hoped to achieve at all, by appealing to the public and doing this interview in the first place? In the last few years I have been genuinely shaken by the moral degeneracy pervading public life. Not just appalled by the government’s criminality and callous disregard for human life, but chilled to the bone that such people have power over us, when they are so clearly unfit to run a summer fait, let alone any organisation with the power to alter the lives of others.
Our country is out of control. And it’s frightening.
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