Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "Professor Tim Wilson"
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I have always appreciated your authenticity and have never, for a moment, considered that you would speak differently or seem and any different if I were to meet you face to face. Indeed, for me, that is part of your appeal and what keeps me coming back, whether I agree wholeheartedly with you or not on any given topic.
I looked up the video of the Margolyes interview, before finishing this video, to see what you were talking about. And I did feel I understood her point. We all feel genuine, heartfelt anger toward some people, especially politicians. Though we can be happy enough for our feelings to be known about us, by the public at large, we would not necessarily want to spit our bile into the face of that person, simply because the opportunity presents itself.
There are times when I feel I could cheerfully do actual physical harm to at least some of the politicians who literally laughed at us while we lost isolated loved ones during the Covid crisis and they partied on. Especially since I have learned about Boris Johnson’s attitude toward Covid as a natural way of killing off the old to make way for wastrels like himself. Their sheer callous disregard for all decency hurts all the more when I think of my father dying without me by his side.
But it is not just the fear of legal consequences that would restrain me if I were to bump into Johnson in bar. Nor, necessarily, my sense of responsibility to the people around us, just minding their own business and not wishing to witness any violent actions or language. It is merely my fundamental belief that I am better than him in every important respect, more capable of self control and measured language, that I believe would govern my actions overall.
I don’t think Margolyes betrayed any degree of hypocrisy so much as she simply expressed what she was thinking about the man, rather than willing to say to him. Smart people know that simple name calling merely fuels the confirmation bias of your enemies, making it too easy for them to dismiss you as, “just another hater,” or whatever, without ever thinking over what you said to them or why. She doesn’t care that people know (and, by extension, Jeremy Hunt knows) what she really thinks of him, but she is above confrontational abuse and I applaud her self restraint. Especially since it’s her, famous for speaking without apparent restraint.
Simply abusing the man would have done neither party any good, but could have done harm.
As to the BBC Radio 4 headquarters being a, “temple,” I am with you 100%. I see it as a soiled, somewhat sullied temple, badly in need of renovation and restoration to its former independence. But that’s a whole other conversation.
If you read all of this, thank you for your patience. I hope you can see the distinction I was making?
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When I was an older teenager, I attended a residential weekend with my youth club. One of the, “youth workers,” decided that it would be a good, “social experiment,” if he persuaded my two older sisters, the rest of the staff, and all those other young people in attendance to completely ignore me as though I wasn’t there for the first 24 hours. Sounds like a small thing, when I say it in a short sentence like that.
I will never be able to describe the utter psychological harm that did to me. I never spoke of it for more than 20 years, and even then, I told it as an anecdote about something that happened to someone else. The shame and pain of it was so traumatic. To suddenly and inexplicably become completely insignificant to the point of none existence, in a set of new anxiety invoking circumstances was a shock to my system that still, to this day, causes me to catch myself arguing out loud with ghosts of my memories, like a mentally ill person, expressing the rage I want to pour out on the person responsible, who was completely unfit for his position of power.
I couldn’t agree more with your assessment, though I have not seen the show, nor will I. I think it was after the first season of Big Brother that I stopped watching what I called, “Hate TV.” And ever since then I’ve watched the popularity of Hate TV gradually grow. It is the same form of manipulation and deep psychological scarring that people cannot comprehend until it’s already too late, being committed to a public screening, judging from the trailer I just watched for the sake of context.
There is something of the anxiety dream, such as the one you described about the loss of your mother, about this dystopian vision we seem to be sleepwalking into.
I keep thinking of the film, Gladiator, and Derek Jacobi saying, “He will give them blood, and they will love him for it.” The producers will be careful to avoid breaking any laws, but reckless about breaking people’s spirits.
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Absolutely with you on this call to action, sir. Anyone who tells you that writing to your MP is a waste of time is either wholly misguided or speaking in bad faith. And any MP who does not hold surgeries is not an MP, but rather someone exploiting the title and privileges of an MP for their own nefarious means.
As to freedom of speech, I’d put it even more simply: There is a simple difference between expressing your beliefs and opinions, and incitement. And, if you are inciting along with other inciters, you are taking part in a conspiracy. And conspiracies that lead to criminal harm are criminal conspiracies. As these people are beginning to discover, we already have multiple laws on the statute books which cover such instances.
People on the far right, whilst using social media, love to use expressions like, “educate yourself,” and, “echo chamber,” when dealing with anybody who disagrees with their egregious take on the world. Well, now they are having it proved to them that they should have practiced what they preached.
These are the lessons that will have a far greater impact on the far right, and will go further toward remedying the hate speech so rampant in modern discourse. It’s not just rounding up a few well photographed, well documented thugs, 70% of whom turned out to have previous convictions for violence and football hooliganism. But getting at the puppeteers and cutting their strings. I applaud the sentencing of this woman, and hope to God she will learn something from her experience.
And I bet there are multiple other online, “activists,” urgently seeking legal advice as we speak. I do hope we jail at least double digits more of them?
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I disagree. Yes, our 1930’s British language was just as bad as 1930’s Germany’s. And that too serves as a reminder that we could have gone down the same road, had our economic situation been as dire as that of 1930’s Germany. But the fact is that there were running battles in the streets of London between Mosely’s Blackshirts and the people who stood against Nazis, whereas in Germany, it was the lies they told themselves about why they lost the First World War that (which had been around for over a decade) that were able to gain traction, because of the language that became commonplace in the street and the media; the othering of the Jews was just the beginning. But, that only means that any country can fall prey to such othering, in the requisite circumstances. When we said, “Never Again,” that was supposed to mean erring on the side of caution, not punishing people for being offended by flagrant hate, perpetrated by hypocrites in government.
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I cannot agree. Yes, we do benefit from the stings of a gadfly. But not an intellectually baron egomaniacal gadfly who stings for attention? Hardly Socratic, is he? Colour for colour’s sake? That’s what got us into this mess we call Britain in the first place.
I’d take a Hitchensesque type of gadfly and tolerate such a form of irritation in politics as something we should protect, despite my abhorrence for the surviving Hitchens. Someone in parliament, continually testing our assumptions, with no other purpose apparent, and constantly pulling out all those rhetorical loose threads, would be healthy for us all, let alone Westminster. But Galloway doesn’t have the intellectual chops, the self discipline or the respect for institutions.
Yet, I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you. He’ll make himself known to us again, soon enough. His ego won’t allow him to ride off into the sunset, even if crowds of people gathered and cried out for him to just follow the light.
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This video is not as advertised. This is not about the Arlington incident at all. It feels like a bait and switch, so that you could get something else (however legitimate your criticisms are) off your chest.
This unedifying coda to the Afghan war at Arlington was just another case of Trump having no respect for tradition, the rules, or the fallen. He and his team knew that the cemetery does not permit pictures of any kind to be taken over or near the graves of the recently deceased and ignored that, so as to get a picture of Trump, family members and his campaign team, grinning with their thumbs up, over the graves of a group of US veterans who were killed in a suicide bombing.
That incident, in isolation, deserves some attention, since we know it was a monstrous act, with no obvious gains to be gleaned from it that I can see. Worse still is the fact that, when the Arlington staff attempted to remind the trump’s of the rules and to prevent them taking pictures, there was a physical altercation (the details of which are sketchy) which is just ghoulish and horrific to contemplate.
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I appreciate you taking a moment to process this moment that so many will either shy away from, or discuss in a sensationalistic, immature manner. Thank you, once again, for being our, “adult in the room.”
We see so many stars abuse their privileges and take their public for granted, only to be like Icarus flying too close to the sun. But in their cases, it’s only their own lives they’re truly ruining, when they crash into the sea, as the splash settles, the waves are restored and the ocean forgets them. Only Daedalus remembers who they really were. With people like Glitter, Saville and Harris, the oily stain remains atop that ocean, keeping the shattered corpse afloat for all to see, having soiled that patch of ocean forever and threatening to stain any who swim too close. Whilst Daedalus looks down and wonders which of his creations was more ill-conceived.
The deepest, longer lasting, unseen tragedy of Rolf Harris is the worry and guilt he infected so many parents, producers, colleagues, and so on, with. The sensation of being the parent of a child who sat in that group of kids on Rolf’s Cartoon Club, unsupervised, or those kids in those Teach Your Kids To Swim public information things and so on. The conversations those situations must have forced people to have with (possibly adult by now?) loved ones; the doubt; the breaking of trust . . . The unforgivable selfishness of the sexual predator who exploits his privileges to gain access to children is more chilling than any horror narrative I could dream up.
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If any population is alive to the possibilities of tactical voting, it’s the Scots. I live just south of the constituency you speak of, with our eldest daughter living there. The vastness of the tactical voting campaign has reached the ears and eyes of everyone up here. And it has provided voters with a rational response to the corruption of both the Tories AND the SNP. Where the Tories are not an issue in Scotland, the SNP is far more vulnerable to Labour. But on the east coast, where the Tories have done pretty well, traditionally, people have never had a stronger reason to vote for the leading opponent, SNP.
I have cast my tactical vote, against the Tories and for a party I do not believe in, but which I do believe will spend the next parliament cleaning out its stalls. They do have many excellent policies, but I am a unionist at heart. Could I be anything other, as an Englishman living in Scotland, with a Scottish wife? We have every reason to expect vast improvements in the probity of the SNP in the future as they have to accept that it is the stink of corruption that has done them the most harm of late.
Yet they remain the main opponent to beat the cons in my constituency.
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@zuluwarrior1648 : Oh, I can answer that. But, if you need this to be explained to you in the first place, you are clearly not qualified for this discussion. The Committee was initially, “accountable,” to the people who created it, which would include Boris Johnson, Mogg and the rest of the entitled blow hards who are complaining about it now. Oh, and the British people, as it is a Parliamentary Committee and, therefore, “accountable,” to us in the same way that ALL of Parliament is. I suggest a little reading on how Parliament works and what it is?
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This is a classic case of being shocked without being at all surprised for me. For my sins, I spent the first 20 years of my career working with family, “at risk,” of breakdown in various roles. And whether the child had a biological factor, behavioural factor, ADHD, or any of the other countless issues going on in their life to account for needing social services in the first place or not, the truly antisocial kids always had an antisocial parent behind them. They were lonely, underachieving, unhappy kids, looking for any group that would accept them. And the far right are so very good at making the antisocial, vulnerable child feel welcome and accepted, for the first time in their lives, usually.
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Well, if anyone knows about, “smug,” it’s Farage. Of course it’s very personal. The whole journey for Farage has been built on, “personality politics,” without any truth or substance to back him up. He reminds me of that oily character (sadly) named Ash in John LeCarré’s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Lemas says of him, “He’s an empty space. There’s nothing there!” And he means a very similar thing. Once you lift the, “performance,” away and ask grownup questions about, “policy,” “foundation,” “facts,” “costs,” “statistics,” there is literally NOTHING there, other than lies.
Cameron is one the Tories’ greatest assets. He still has some credibility with conservative voters. (Lord knows why?)
Farage’s problem is the same as Braverman’s. When the cold, hard facts explode your, “policy,” nonsense, you can’t talk about them. You must redirect public discourse, urgently. And the only reliable way to do that is to get personal.
It worked for Braverman, who dodged all questions at the dispatch box regarding the workability of her plans, the costs, the active harm it was doing to innocent people, by simply spewing out a series of epithets about the, “Soy bean eating, Guardian reading, wokerarty,” etc. which dominated the headlines and became the talking point of all the editorials, opinion pieces and BBC interviews in its wake! We never got ANY direct answers as to the costs (human or otherwise) from parliamentary discussions! Not once! Not from Braverman.
But we did get a dividing line drawn through the metropolitan political landscape, which gave us protest marchers, angry far right activists suddenly back in the headlines and new, apparently equally urgent, discussions about our own personal freedoms and our rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Oh, it worked so beautifully for that twisted little harpy that she decided to make that, “technique,” a lifestyle choice!
And where did this parvenu learn her techniques if not at the feet of the drama QUEEN of harpy’s egg layers himself, Nigel Farage. Who needs facts, accountability or an estimate of the costs when they’ve got personal attacks, personality politics, populism and popular anger to misdirect?
It’s little wonder Braverman wants to get into the harpy’s nest with the harpy queen himself. They’re otherwise idle and superfluous anyway. So they can spend all their time circling the turrets of Westminster, telling all the black crows to, “go back to where they came from,” and choose their targets to swoop down upon, getting all tangled in their hair if they’re lucky, flapping their harpy wings and squawking at the top of their lungs, causing a horrific spectacle that focuses all public discourse on their attacks without them ever having to account for themselves! By the time someone steps up with the appropriate shotgun it’s too late, as they are back up in the battlements, leaving the press circle standing around their victim to ask, “What was it like to be dive bombed by a harpy?” And, “Did that harpy have a point?”
But I still think it won’t be too long before Braverman finds that she is suddenly the cuckoo in Farage’s nest, to be shunned like the Ugly Duckling. And that will serve her right.
Yes, “Thank God for Cameron,” indeed! Hold the line!
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johnslavin2270 : As to the morality of my view, that can only be judged by every individual for themself. But, for me, exploitation of this type is unconscionable. As to the legality of what these, “employers,” are doing, that is all on the statute books of national and international law, for you to read at your leisure.
As to statistics of the finances, there are two answers to that, which I offer in lieu of having any figures to offer you: 1) There is the common sense conclusion that an employer who does not pay tax or insurance for their, “employees,” is robbing the state of income. And employees who do not pay income tax are also robbing the state of income. Three sources of income absent from the economy, which yet must provide services, education, healthcare, street maintenance, policing, etc for these people, whether they show up on the books or not.
2) You will not find any of the five major parties in Parliament who disagree with this obvious (not received) common sense conclusion. Therefore, to deny it would be to contradict all parties simultaneously. I say this because, if you take a look at the manifestos of each party, and particularly the one you support, (or at least voted for) you will find in that section, the same conclusions I have just laid out for you, but with their unique take on that; especially when it comes to the best course of action.
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If a trial is politically motivated, especially by those in power, one should attend the trial and expose that fact in hopes of correcting the laws. If one shows repeated contempt of court, we should not be angry that the individual gets punished by that court, we should be angry that so many get away with it. Paula Vennels committed perjury yet no one wants to even address that. Why? No one has even appeared in court over the Grenfell tower mass corporate manslaughter. Why? I could go on.
Yes, this could just be a Tory hoping to appeal to the centrists by saying, “Look how we don’t support Nazis,” whilst simultaneously courting the very man who is robbing them of their votes and who poses the most serious threat to their future.
But if Robinson can prove he had no involvement in this leak; or, more importantly (since this is how our legal system works) if the prosecution cannot prove that he was directly responsible in some way for the leaked video, then he will walk free and have been handed even more ammunition to claim state persecution. I would assume that an attorney general would not be stupid enough to chance his arm on a gamble unless he had some sort of evidence?
But it is the Tories we’re talking about, who have long since abandoned rationality and logic, so who knows? Maybe Mr Robinson hurt the feelings of a Tory, or a Tory family member? That would be as plausible a rationale for their behaviour in any given circumstance.
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My best guess is that Prigozhin was after a settlement and forcing the issue, all dressed up to look like he would take Putin’s throne. Shoigu is in as much trouble as Prigozhin now, being under virtual house (or office) arrest, while a video was released of him inspecting troops (probably weeks ago) without any write up, context or voice over on Russian Telegram, apparently. That’s a very Russian thing, like playing Swan Lake to accompany a test card, while there’s an upset, noises off, throughout the country and no one wants to get arrested for showing literally anything on TV. A meaningless place filler video, for people to speculate about while all the internal power plays and reshuffling are settled.
No one even knows where Putin is! Last seen fleeing Moscow two nights ago! He could quite literally be anywhere from a bunker in Syria, the top office of the Kremlin or in his grave and I would not be shocked at any of those outcomes!
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Now that we have reasonably reliable records on demographics, we have learned that there is a simple equation that never fails: The nations with a young and growing population will succeed as economic blocks. Those with large ageing populations face economic ruin. China has slowly come to recognise this, but has been able to slow their crisis using their one and only advantage, state control over generations.
The fear mongering around, “illegal immigration,” seems to me to be just one more attempt by Britain’s hard right to, “Americanise,” our politics and turn migration into a hot button issue. Yet the fact is that we actually NEED to grow our population and we should be admitting as many young families as possible.
If I were to be ruthless about it, in the interests of simply growing our nation’s power and economic influence on the globe, I would push for only one level of, “discrimination,” and incentivise the young adult populations of other lands to migrate to us, favouring them over anyone aged 50 or above. I am 56 btw, so I am speaking from a merely logical point of view, without compassion.
The incentives should be sweetened for 20 somethings, especially those with children.
While they seem to have forgotten it now, this has been the very model that America’s enormous economic success was built upon. We should be welcoming refugees and providing work permits to as many young families as possible, so the country can benefit from their economic activity and taxable incomes.
The utter bogusness of the Tories, attempting to appeal to the lowest common denominator by inspiring panic, literally results in self harm as far as the country is concerned.
It also prevents us from building a coherent system of the type we will need in the near future, when there actually is a genuine crisis of being overwhelmed, in the wake of a war or natural disaster. But currently, we are literally being offered one of the most precious resources and refusing it. Not just refusing it, but viciously rejecting it. The resource of humanity is incalculable. That’s just hard science.
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I know very little about the Philip Schofield of these times. As a 55 year old, all of my memories of him are fond, as a dark haired young man with Gordon The Gopher as his side kick, revolutionising the presentation style of children’s television with a model that would be copied by other channels and then morning television. There would have been no Roland Rat (who appealed to adults mainly) without the Schofield-as-anchorman-between-children’s-shows innovation, for which I remain eternally grateful.
Though I was aware of the, “Cue-Gate,” ahem, “scandal,” which looked to me like it was simply more of a general misunderstanding of how television works, I was not aware of his brother’s issues (indeed, I still have no idea of the details) until the last few days. The same is true of the apparent strain in his professional relationship between him and Holly Willoughby.
When two popular presenters were meant to shoot footage of themselves passing the Queen’s coffin, which effectively meant that their producers, camera operators, sound engineers, etc, would also have had to cue with them, that would have been an unreasonable demand to make on their team, surely? If their job was to help the nation process a sad but inevitable event, that was a professional undertaking, of which they were one part, and I simply saw the whole misunderstanding as risible, rather than career shattering.
Obviously, I can understand how the public becomes attached to daytime TV presenters, feeling like they have shared so much history with them as they did their housework, or studies with these people in their background. They become a part of the set dressing on the stage of people’s personal history plays. But, I was never a fan of couch based daytime television and I have to admit to being somewhat bemused by all the attention this is getting? Will Rishi Sunack be answering questions in The House about this soon? It almost feels like this couple have become more than icons, but a literal cultural identity in themselves? And it is as though it’s as painful for some commentators as a divorce?
I hope to be understood that I am not asking these questions in an, “ironical,” tone, nor do I in the least bit wish to belittle a matter which is of great cultural importance to so many. But, I would like to understand it better? What is actually going on here? Why has he really quit? And why is the entire nation so fixed on this drama right now?
Schofield always struck me as a good and decent man, to whom British television owes a debt. It is becoming clear to me that he has faced some truly unpleasant domestic issues around his brother, and struggles with his work place. But, were they so insoluble? Are we going to lose Schofield forever? That would be a bad thing. Like the C of E, though I never paid him much mind, it was always reassuring to know he was there. His influence on the British public has always been one of kindness, sincerity, humour and depth of feeling: all qualities we would do well to foster in our society. So I just hope I am not missing something of greater importance, by not having followed his day to day dramas more closely?
I wish him well, from my less well informed position, and hope very much to see him return to television or the web in some other way.
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It is wise of you and appropriate that you reflect on the fact that other countries are having this discussion at this time, with political division being evident as other countries seek their own solutions. I would add that it is time that we stopped being so parochial in our thinking and started talking to other countries (especially European ones) about a uniformed approach. Not just on the legalities and technicalities of implementing the laws and addressing issues of human rights, but serious diplomatic attempts need to be made at uniting a, “spirit,” by which attitudes and approaches of governments take on what is certain to be a growing issue.
We know there will be further environmental change, probable disasters, and wars. And all governments are bracing themselves for the potential of massive influxes of asylum seekers for a range of reasons. It’s surely time that the west got its act together and started talking about, “International,” “Unified,” responses to the issue?
I would have thought that most, “genuine,” asylum seekers would jump at the chance to do some work and earn some money (and studies show they are almost all genuinely fleeing some form or other of oppression) which is eminently logical. It’s not just economic activity being generated but taxable incomes, which in turn contribute to the cost of dealing with asylum seekers in the first place.
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There will always be the moneyed class, and people with money who believe they are inherently superior than others. Such a society is not based on the amount of money you, “earn,” but that which you have, whether by inheritance, hard work, crime, corruption, or sheer luck. America has a very distinct class system, which is most keenly observed whenever you see criminals face the justice system. Poor people do jail time for none violent offences and have their labour exploited for a pittance, even for highly hazardous tasks, like fire fighting as we’ve recently witnessed, with no insurance cover for life changing injury or death. Rich people don’t do prison time, usually. Not unless there is public outrage at their offences and, even then, sentences will watered down by expensive lawyers. They pay fines that barely register in their bank accounts; indeed, are worth paying instead of upholding the law, as a kind of entitlement tax.
That is the class system of America, and increasingly of the rest of the developed, “free,” world.
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