Comments by "iggle" (@iggle6448) on "The New Culture Forum" channel.

  1. ​ @telephassarose3501  Quite. I have to hope that the original concept was good and beautiful. Though the execution was utterly abominable. IMHO, it's not about romanticising Diana but simply about presenting her as she actually was. Queen Victoria's statues, without variance as far as I'm aware, look just like her photos. How did the Victorian sculptors manage that? And, as you say, how did this present sculptor, with myriad forms of technology available to him, go so badly wrong? I can think of three deliberate reasons: 1. The RF didn't want such a beautiful, alluring statue that would become a Diana shrine, which I think is still a possibility, given her enduring popularity. 2. Diana's sons, remembering her with childish memories only saw Diana as 'mumsie' and not the extraordinarily attractive, feminine, elegant and captivating woman that she was. Thus, they approved all the sculptor's drawings and photos as he progressed his work, and perhaps made suggestions for tweaks to make it more mumsie according to their memories of her. 3. The sculptor is simply not into women. His male forms are striking and beautiful. Maybe he's gay and Diana's beauty and allure simply didn't touch him - this is, after all, a depiction of her that reduces her to that of an almost comedic weekend M>F crossdresser with bad wigs and a penchant for Primark end of line bargains. Perhaps he's had more practice at creating male art forms. Perhaps he's not all that good at sculpture.And perhaps those who were in charge of selecting sculptors deliberately bore all this in mind. Whatever, this piece is a total travesty and nothing like it could very easily have been if done by a sympathetic sculptor. (What also bothers me is all the many people trying to turn themselves inside out and upside down, trying to wipe the evidence of their own eyes and cognition, to find something good, something of Diana in this leaden scowling, lumpen hausfrau.)
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  2.  @ameliarannestiggins2345  Eeeuggh. these people are all so scratch-my-back users.
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  3. I completely agree too. A tree is known by the fruit it bears. What has 'wokeness' grown? To me, it all looks like a mess of cancelling, humiliating and crushing people who don't agree, violence, riots, thoughtlessly smashing things up, overwrought emotionalism and sensationalism, absence of logic and respectful dialogue....it's faux individualism taken to the extremes and encouraged by those who puppet their programmed foot soldiers. Show me the soup kitchens, the creches, the homes for homeless people, the money they've raised and donated to projects to directly help disadvantaged people, show me the good of 93 different sexualities, the knee-bowing to criminals and overwrought mobs, the dictatorial imposition of redefinitions and the prohibition of a whole range of adequate words...where is the love? And let's emphasise: in the whole history of the world, no such totalitarian counter-culture movement/revolution has ever ended well.
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  4. The Nudge office....forever spinning.
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  5. I'm tempted to think that this wokery is really only happening amongst some members of the richer classes in metro/city areas. In the smaller communities and out in the far less fevered areas no one gives a flying fig. Everyone's busy trying to earn a living and simply enjoying real life.
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  6.  @jjs3287  Oh yes! I can't tell you how an gry I've been, as a parent and educator, at successive governments for ransacking and wrecking young people's hopes, dreams and futures. I have every sympathy for them, if they choose not to participate in glorified slavery, then well...that's their prerogative, and perhaps it would be sensible to withdraw from and top supporting the sheer mess that our governments have made. It's so unlike my younger days - and yours by the sound of it: we had a wide choice of interesting and exciting things to work at and create the futures we wanted.
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  7. Just to note that 'we' didn't let them in. Whilst we have done a very good job of welcoming immigrants, it was Bliar and his agenda to undermine, de-nation and regionalise the UK, thus currying favour with the EU to fulfill his overarching ambition to become EU president. The task to be generous was imposed on us by stealth.
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  8. As a parent and former educator, I am convinced that there is some paedophilic taint to all this. To my mind, it's unequivocally child abuse. It's not as if gender confusion and dysphoria affect a significant minority, say, 5% of the population. The actual numbers are far, far lower than that. And of those, a very large percentage come to regret their 'transition'. I will bet that in the next couple of decades there will be an epidemic of litigation against 'experts' and parents from those who, as children, were driven along this re-gendering road to perdition.
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  9.  @Thorsted67  As a very peace-loving, anti-violence anywhere sort of a woman, I can't see a way out of the horrendous mess that politicians have made - except by violent anarchic means. We have anarchy popping up in our cities already. This all seems rather pre-cromwellian.
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  10.  @annetteannette9205  Yes, I can only agree with you. We've had enough of these 'nudgers' (the UK gvt actually has a unit informally called 'the nudge office'. It's where they cook up all the manipulative spin and memes advantageous to themselves. No doubt with a lot of help from cynical users with God complexes like Mr Luntz.)
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  11.  @supersonicsid5930  Harry's wife... serial marriages to rich white men, now a $multi-millionaire via her white Prince spouse, with 13 bathrooms and who is so fair-skinned that she used to write 'caucasian' on her cv.
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  12.  @ericboxer3053  Seems to me that white people are quietly retrenching and self-segregating anyway. Qv. the white flight from urban areas. To my mind, cities are quite disturbing, lawless places nowadays.
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  13.  @catrionagordon9563  I'm genuinely interested to know how you came to this view. Would you care to say more?
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  14. Very well said and spot on, Caroline. Thank you.
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  15. Nail on the head. Bliar did this.
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  16.  @imo1751  Bullseye, Mo! I've been saying this for years, having worked with some key players. After 40-odd years of being told what to do, Parliament had lost its intellectual rigour, its responsible, competent leaders/statesmen/women who could make balanced decisions and stick to them and, like the undemocratic EU, its respect for constituency voters - that is citizens like you and me. That was all immediately proven by CallMeDave's hubris and complete failure to plan for all contingencies. It left us with an overwhelmed, incompetent parliament. It's been flailing around ever since.
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  17. As a woman also, I've much preferred working with men. Get a woman in charge of a public service department or a position of higher authority and too often the place goes to shit. All the gossipy chats behind people's backs, the passive aggression, all the touchy feely personalisation - whataboutmeism about plans and policies that don't materially affect them. It's not 'what do I think about this plan?' but 'I'll have to go away and see how I feel about it'. Too often women are their own enemies in the workplace. I could go on and on.
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  18. Oh yes! I've had that sort of experience - the woman's knowledge of English/American vernacular was wonderful. My son so appreciated knowing Russian teen slang! (It also happens in the UK too. They're all at this 'soft' and very polite interrogation).
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  19.  @tiggtiggs  Ah! Just so! But the rest of us do. So there's hope yet!
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  20.  @mehcol  These are the people who've been corrupted, had their moral compasses irretrievably distorted by empty, shallow and tawdry luxury. This woman's got too much time on her hands, probably because she never does anything with them.
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  21. Calvin FTW!
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  22.  @bradleyeric14  Indeed, the aristos and titled simply cloaked themselves in bourgeois appearance in order to preserve their positions, wealth and power. Recently, I heard a member of the royal family chatting to some ordinary folks. It was illuminating to hear this person using glottal stops, dropping aitches, employing common vernacular and even a smidge of estuary English.
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  23. Yes, they've run rampant through Canada, Australia, New Zealand too. Disgraceful.
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  24. It was lovely to see Peter so relaxed.
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  25. Wouldn't we have to find some actual Tories first? For there are none in the corridors of government.
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  26. Why does she keep being invited on to these interviews? Is it because it just makes for sparky TV? In other words, the TV people are exploiting her.
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  27. Yay, KK! Scrubs up well, doesn't he! Nothing raw about that...superb presentation 👏👏👏❤‍🔥
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  28.  @mikeoglen6848 Though aren't those dwellings more likely to be repurposed shipping containers, thrown together with no thought for the people who'll have to live in them at extortionate rents?
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  29. Trouble is, our elected politicians had 40-odd years of being told what to think and do by an undemocratic blob. They forgot how to do governing. Parliament lost its institutional memory and thus its power.
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  30. Certainly agree. Though I'd say that these power/money hungry agencies have been hard at work for decades now. They are often quite useless... Parasites on people's confusion and misery. None of this huge helping industry would have been called into existence if governments had treated people fairly from the off. Governments will never allow people to become strong, resilient, independent, in charge of their own lives and money.
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  31.  @rogerwoodhouse7945  Yes, I can see that's one layer of joining the dots though it looks to me that there are other layers. Like very limited voting choices - now it's very clear that we have a uniparty which means no choice at all. They've been converging for decades and leaving behind their original bases. Not being contentious, I just don't remember the last 4 decades anyone in Westminster seriously saying that we deserve more. My recollections are more like 'the country needs austerity', 'we need to reduce welfare spending', 'we need to get people back to work'.... Another layer is that wages have been declining in real terms since the early 70s. We never had food banks until Osborne's austerity and now they've exploded so many working people live in poverty, 1 child in 3 lives in a poor family. This are all direct results of gov fiscal strategy. Such poverty isn't just about money - it brings a shedload of other problems with it. What are people to do if their wages are low and taxes are rising? We know that now the tax burden is the highest it's been in 60-70 years! So it's fuelled a need for all sorts of 'helping agencies' that are a huge draw on the public purse with little to benefit to people. A couple of years back I was doing a piece of research that brought me into contact with some of these agencies. One manager told me, in a head-in-his-hands sort of way 'I don't know why the government just doesn't give money direct to low income people instead of contracting organisations like ours to try and help....mostly all the problems start from too little income. People need money to sort out their problems, we're the middleman that top slices most of the available funding...and there's not much that we can really do under our contract for a lot of people that need help.'
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  32.  @loubieloujones5698  Well said. We need our national identity and our uniting values now more than ever, given the global onslaught against them.
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  33. The irony is that most of the wokester leaders are effete bourgeois types, just playing around with safe versions of insurrection, revolution. For them it's a power-trip, an ego thing, and wokesterism earns brownie points in some quarters. Come a real revolution and these types will be hiding in their cosy middle-class, all mod cons, bunkers. Meanwhile, what they don't get is that we normal people out here know that they're idiots. And we do outnumber them. I am heartened by such as the recent judgment in [2020] EWHC34121 (Admin): SCOTTOW v CPS and its firm renewal of the principle and practice of freedom of speech.
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  34. That would have been a while after politicians, public servants, industry CEOs, et al stopped being accountable, responsible. Not an excuse of course. But it is very difficult to function truthfully and responsibly in a society where so many are irresponsible and deluded.
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  35. I'd forgotten all about that book. A biggie, as you say, at universities 30-40 odd years ago.I just pulled my university text copy out of a forgotten bookcase in the spare room, I flicked through the pages and speed-read a few of them. Its pages are unsullied by pencilled notes, or bookmarks. I realised that I'd never even read this thing. Though I probably lifted one or two juicy looking quotes from it to stick in essays that would please the prof. Because that's what we did in those days. We didn't bother with the pre-wokeist preoccupations of ivory tower professors. We just chucked in a bit of the bilge they craved. We played them. I got a jolly good degree out of it. The profs thought they'd won. We students moved on, they didn't. (Anyone after an as-new copy of this early wokeist word salad...?)
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  36.  @markkavanagh7377  This is so true. Though for how much longer? I heard a despicable statistic yesterday: a third of the UK population lives in poverty (about half and half absolute and relative). We are not an affluent society any longer. How many young people will want to saddle themselves with £30K loans starting out in life? In a reduced economy people make do and mend. I'm thinking that there could well be a resurgence of FE and apprenticeships.
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  37. Well said on all counts, thank you.
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  38. Sadly, I believe that you're not wrong, Elizabeth.
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  39. 👏👏👏👏👏 My spontaneous first thought on waking this morning was 'I am so lucky'. I am so lucky to have cupboards and refrigerators full of a large choice of whatever I fancy to breakfast on... Lucky to have been born in this place, in this time. In an era when new discoveries and new technologies have sprung out of the West with frequent abundance. Their benefits to the world are incalculable. I applaud your lack of shame, as a white person I have none either....just profound gratitude that we can all share our treasures.
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  40. I tend to agree. The lack of motivation, as if this is all happening in a petri dish that is observable from the comfort of a studio is palpable and ultimately useless in the real world.
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  41. Thank you. A big picture, long view that you've put well.
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  42. Equal opportunity has been replaced by equity of outcome. An impossibility. So the brighter folks and the most able are excluded, marginalised in order to level down.
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  43. 'Equality' was always a fantasy, as you rightly say. However, it's always had excellent and persistent PR. This 'equality' notion has actually obstructed most real efforts to 'level up' and treat people fairly.
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  44.  @oscarslife5497  Hungary.
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  45.  @johnwade1095  Aye, and not to mention leading the world with the oldest continuous representative Parliament in the world, hence democracy which billions in other countries have subsequently enjoyed...
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  46. It could be that people are worn out with being terrorised and then with all sorts of other crises coming at them following the pandemic? Perhaps their anger is not so vocal as it otherwise would have been at unlawful lockdowns. But, since the pandemic and anecdotally, no one across a range of people I've chatted with, discussed things with has any scrap of respect, trust, support for government and politicians - or our institutions. We can see it's all a mess.
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  47.  @purpuradraco3747  Having worked with and for several major charities, I can certainly vouch for all you say. I became so disturbed by various attitudes and activities that I now only contribute goods to my local Food Bank because I know that they will actually be directly distributed to those who need them. (Though I'm even sceptical about how the foodbank industry is supporting the gvt to minimise wages and benefits in addition to enabling big food retailers to qualify for substantial tax rebates on the back of their 'donations'.)
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  48.  @uxb1112  Hahaha! Amazing how others can read into comments things that just aren't there... I have no ire whatsoever, so I'm calling out your projection! Indeed, I'm rather amazed and even perhaps a little proud that the Norman French influence has been so continuously robust in Britain. I confess, I don't know what a 'Norman French household' is, but I'd bet that you've not spent the years that I have in UK genealogical research (and with direct lines to the original Norman French - 1066 and all that!).
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  49. Rancid hypocrisy, thy name is Rachel Meghan Markle.
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  50. It's not just freedoms either, it's our rights too that are being flagrantly swept aside. Seems to me that politicians of all stripes have been caught with their pants down vis a vis covid. They'll do anything to cover up and negate their monumental incompetence and negligence.
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