Comments by "Edward Lindon" (@EdwardLindon) on "Pod Save the World" channel.

  1. Let's make it clear: there is NOTHING wrong with showing support for Palestinians at a moment when they are being bombed into oblivion and blockaded to death by Israel, which is using genocidal rhetoric ("human animals") and killing indiscriminately ("quantity of damage, not accuracy"). BOTH sides in this conflict are currently committing war crimes and the international establishment's universal unwillingness to recognise this will lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.
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  2. Who pays for facial reconstruction for car crash victims? Who pays for mental health care? Who pays for medical care for diseases resulting from smoking, or alcoholism, or drug use?
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  3. It was a last-minute decision. Cameron got called back from his heroic overtures in Albania. There's a whiff of Tory back-stabbing to this decision: Sunak pulled the lever before the party could stick the knife in and chuck him out the clown car.
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  4. ​ @coopsnz1 Home ownership is unnecessary. If protections for renters are adequate, there's no reason not to rent. See Germany and Japan.
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  5. "I definitely would rather they just shut the fuck up" has such an anthemic feel to it. T-shirts and mugs perhaps...
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  6.  @spindizzy64  No-one's asking any politician to refrain from ever offending anyone. What is being suggested is that generalized, ungrounded expressions of contempt should not be aimed at Black women in public, given that they represent two vulnerable demographics. Public figures should make their criticisms based on policy, words and actions, not mere likeability, because women and Black people consistently lose out in popularity contests.
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  7. Unless you're speaking to us from a tiny village 6 weeks in the future, I think you might be alright.
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  8. He's always been a bully. Now he's a rich bully.
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  9. If only someone had seen this coming...
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  10. You're being over-generous to the public. It's not journalists' fault that the general public are uninterested in detail, nuance and complexity. The story was out there and many of us knew about it. It took a TV drama to make it a scandal because people are oblivious and uncurious.
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  11. Unbridled hysteria is a key part of the Nu Right ethos.
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  12. There is so clearly a strong racial dimension to this whole situation. In mainstream discussions, Israelis are being coded as civilised and white, while Palestinians are seen as uncivilised and brown. This can be seen in the abominable abandonment of British nationals in Gaza by the UK govt. Contrast this with the unconditional solidarity for Britons in Ukraine and the generous visa waiver for fleeing Ukrainians. Everyone was busy supporting white Ukrainians, while Black Africans fleeing war were pushed back into Poland. The last decade has seen a reversion to a racist past in Europe, most clearly in Windrush, Brexit, COVID, French islamophobia, Italian neo-fascism etc. The war in Gaza is providing racists with some nice cover for their hatred of brown people (including the UK Prime Minister and Home Secretary). Meanwhile the antisemites are also having a field day. All the worst people win.
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  13. This is incorrect. Some masks helped, but hand washing did little. The main channel of infection is droplets suspended in exhalations. Distancing and ventilation are very effective.
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  14. That's not the point. The general view, which I find plausible, is that Philips was leveraging the widespread and vitriolic hatred suffered by Abbott to gain easy cred. In fact, I'm no Abbott fan, but the level of abuse and groundless attacks she has received constantly for decades is completely bananas. There is no doubt in my mind that a large proportion of it is racially motivated, which is why soft critics/near allies of Abbott should be much more circumspect. The intrinsic and historical failures of feminism vis-a-vis people of colour is very well documented.
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  15. "Lewis Hamilton backs peaceful Just Stop Oil protest at British Grand Prix" in the Guardian today.
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  16. As a POC, I feel that there's no need to jump on a bullying bandwagon for clout. Deriding Abbott for her many failings is perfectly fine. Showing off about a general, unsubstantiated contempt for her suggests Philips has no clue about how bad things can be for Black women in the UK, or perhaps that she just doesn't care. It's graceless and it's bullying.
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  17. That's because you're apparently thinking of whiteness as something substantive or real rather than structural. The point is a system of domination and exploitation, an ordered racial hierarchy and the treating of human beings as instrumental means to an end. Actual skin colour is irrelevant.
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  18. Israel helped create and fund Hamas in the 70s and 80s in order to undermine the PLO, who were too secularist and leftist for their taste. But sure, go off...
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  19. Also, tax rates are marginal. No-one's paying 60% on the entirety of their income.
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  20. It didn't go wrong. It's going just fine as far as Netanyahu's concerned. The only downside for him is the growing criticism from outside.
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  21. It comes down to the simple fact that occupation is not sustainable without casualties. Occupiers have to quell every uprising, but rebels only have to pierce the shield once to have an impact. Sooner or later it will happen. The only alternative to constant war is actual peace.
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  22. They're fundamentally unserious and treat the public with utter contempt. They speak as if words meant nothing and they can just bend them to their will.
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  23. Hamas didn't exist when "this" started.
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  24. Learning to be tolerant of other dialects is a great opportunity for personal growth. We put up with your "fanny packs" and "pants".
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  25. Coco is dead right on the Philips-Abbott story. Personal insults should not be thrown against women of colour in public, precisely because they already get a raw deal from open and closet racists. Philips concludes by saying she didn't intentionally do so, and this is credible. Implicitly, she recognises that she stoked an already unfair situation, and this is why she should have apologised as soon as the story came out. She didn't commit a mortal sin, but her comment was graceless, unfair and ignorant.
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  26. ​ @alexharrison2743 Or it was just a mistake. Incompetence is usually a better explanation than nefarious intent.
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  27. ​ @Jay_Johnson Dear random white guy, please stop using the word "slavery" to make an easy rhetorical point.
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  28. Hear, hear.
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  29. Sure, if you don't know anything about British history at all, you might think that. And if you happened to be inordinately "proud" of being "just English", you might well pretend to think that.
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  30. Your blithe assertion leaves me in little doubt about your colour. Amazing how people who never have to experience racism are so sure it doesn't exist.
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  31. Still a Tory. Don't buy it.
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  32. Because they're incredibly rich and powerful and have been sabotaging efforts at both research and regulation for decades? In any case, you seem to be in favour of the goal, so why does this particular method get up your nose?
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  33. The idea that unless you have an alternative tactical suggestion, you aren't allowed to have an opinion on this, is absurd and immoral. We're not military experts, but we're allowed to have opinions on what the professionals are doing. If a dentist f*cked up your teeth, you wouldn't say, "Well, I couldn't do any better, so never mind..."
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  34. And yet here you are, looking for a conversation on precisely that basis... Israel has to date killed three Palestinian children and four adults for every Israeli killed on 7 October. There has to be some sense in which that is clearly wrong, or those words cease to have any meaning.
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  35. It wasn't glib or nonchalant in the slightest, though you might easily consider him naive or uninformed. His point was that (1) US institutions are strong, (2) that policy is largely consistent and (3) that democracies are entitled to freely pick/change their leaders. Bear in mind also that Lammy will in all likelihood have to deal directly with the next White House, so he can hardly come out publicly and call the presumptive Republican candidate a fascist and a criminal.
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  36. ​ @SusanOnTVShows You did because he didn't. He said the mechanisms of government apart from the White House, eg State Department, will keep a broad continuity.
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  37. ​ @antigonemerlin As a resident of Taiwan, I do not find this an agreeable prospect.
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  38. Neither is native to the UK.
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  39. ​ @Nortarachanges I don't think a liberal society should compel anyone to listen to anyone. That's just moral theatre. I know it's hard, but we do actually have to let people be as bad as they want to be. You can't compel people to be decent.
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  40. How TF do you know what's in his head?
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  41. It is true. I can see why that might be inconvenient.
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  42. It's not a black rod. It's Black Rod.
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  43. No, it's like a platter of cookies.
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  44. You spoke to a lot of lovely people there.
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  45. Was Ben calling in from a 1970s episode of Doctor Who?
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  46. What a bizarrely superficial comment. At the very least, it's a serious economic problem: jobs existed, now they don't; money circulated, now it doesn't; a culture thrived, now it doesn't. Personally, I loathe clubbing, but even I can see this is a substantive problem.
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  47. ​ @ghostf6321 That, of course, is a poor argument based on an appeal to authority. Ukraine did this to please its allies and defuse the Russian lies about Nazification.
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  48. If that were true, the Hamas attack would be morally justified then, wouldn't it?
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  49. ​ @sloine-q5l  No, that's whataboutery. It's a preferred disinformation tactic for the Russians.
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  50. I have misophonia and insomnia, so I'm sympathetic to your position, but your comment does not represent the content of this discussion at all. It's very clear that British culture is separated into "high" and "low" and that it's highly politicised in terms of gender, class and race. No-one was "harping on about" anything. They were just talking freely, with very specific references to gentrification.
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