Comments by "Billy Liar" (@billyliar1614) on "David Starkey Talks"
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So here we have Starkey not just hiding in plain sight, but playing strip tease. He tells us, directly, that he prefers a society based on greed, irresponsibility, consumption and vanity rather than a moral, well adjusted one run by adults which presumably he finds somewhat dull, preferring instead the excitement of urban spaces wrecked by gangs and the pain of the poor starving on the streets. He tries to put a spin on it, characterising selfish greed as cheeky 'misbehaviour', as though we can all be teenage dropouts in some bastion of privilege. It's the psychology of the adolescent. What he doesn't talk so much about is the conformity of corporate consumerism. You know, the abomination of the high school prom and the vulgar Stepford competition of the Essex WAG pool party, both imported from the US so we may follow their example of grooming the next generation of good little consumers, teaching them to compete for baubles like apes. He doesn't talk so much about the crass vulgarity of the Top Gear culture or gym bunnies primping and preening before the latest iPhone accessory. He is nothing more than a cheap salesman for the corporate state who would have us compete harder and deeper for evermore for more crap that we don't need and which won't make us happy, at the cost of the ecosystem upon which we depend, all to make more profit for The Man. Ultimately, he is of little further interest and has no greater depth than tawdry self-interest .
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This critique, again, shows a complete lack of nuance and, dare I say it, considerable bias, something we ought not to expect from an historian, surely ? Far from being the purveyor of free speech, Musk has shown himself to be quite the reverse : he purchased Twitter and turned it into his personal fiefdom; he's kicked off independent professional fact checkers and replaced them with 'Community Notes', leading to the amplification of misinformation ; he's suspended accounts which challenge or mock him ; he's introduced Algorithmic adjustments which suppress certain viewpoints . Is this what Starkey means by 'anti-authoritarianism ' and free speech ? Funny, seems to me to be the behaviour of your typical US 'Frat Boy' who thinks that money should be able to buy him anything he wants, including influence over the British government. Truth is, he's a foreign national, a carpet-bagger interfering in our domestic affairs - wasn't Brexit supposed to be about sovereignty ?
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Sorry Dr but your attitudes belong on the wrong side of history - ie Victorian times. The Edwardian governess's stiff upper lip started trembling a very long time ago, around the same time in fact that she started to feel uneasy about beating kids for not scrambling quickly enough up the hearth, so much so that it's now positively quivering. I'd have more respect for you Tory types if you just manned up and admitted that the old order lost and we're all of us, including Harry, enjoying giving it a thorough disgracing. The old order was built on certain characteristics - hierarchy, respect for authority, emotional constipation, repression, victim-blaming. All of this finished in Nuremberg and the moral blow was landed in Suez. It achieved some good things but it was oppressive and it ain't coming back. Ever. Now, as is always the case with these sorts of matters, the end can either be quick or agonising, long-drawn out, and I think we all know which direction we're headed. You're an historian, you should know where the stigmatisation of mental health leads. We talk more about it now because the stigmatisation is being undermined - though there's still much more work to do - thank heavens and people feel able to talk. We no longer lock people in the attack or pretend they're fine lest they embarrass their family's good name. It's called Modernity .
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@@bluebellflora2510 ''So in some ways, things have remained the same and yet changed drastically and not for the better'' The majority has a better life now than, say, the Edwardian era no doubt about it. Unless that is you believe that poverty, poor health, industrial slavery and a stunted life-span a good crack ? Hierarchy is inevitable but the type of authoritarianism we saw in the Victorian world has thankfully had it's face rubbed in the proverbial toilet bowl. Thank God. We have lost a certain degree of discipline I would concede but we have gained in other ways, certainly with respect to the topic at hand, mental health. Starkey seems here to be literally denying that poor mental health is a real phenomenon. How backward can one be ? it's like he wants to fetishise Victoriana . We no longer whip children for being left-handed or send them up chimneys, lock wives in the attic or the asylum or regard shell-shock as insubordination. We recognise PTSD as a healthy response to trauma. I'm sorry but conditions such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia do actually exist. The problem with burying yourself too far in the past is that at some point you start to think it's reality. Harry and Meghan may be abusing it for reasons of self-interest, but mental health is I'm afraid a very real phenomenon.
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Ceremony may be how Starkey defines legitimacy, it's not how I would - legitimacy is commanding a numerical majority of public support and reflecting what they want, not a sham public relations exercise. There is a very strong argument that First Past the Post lacks proper legitimacy, unrepresentative as it is, it's a pre-Enlightenment voting system. Warring factions among elites is precisely what we need to firstly, reflect the popular will accurately and secondly, as bulwark against authoritarianism. ''Strong and stable government' is hardly a sound justification for the status quo- one might as well claim the same for North Korea.
His comments about France are ruddy ridiculous - he literally says that France ''doesn't have what we have'' ? What planet is he on ? Has he descended into delusion ffs ? What, so French people don't vote in a booth ? What utter, utter horse pipe.
The working class have always been held in contempt in Britain, a conquered people. This abusive relationship really goes back to the inception of the British state, in my view. France is better governed than we are, they haven't sold off all their industry and utilities or pimped out their housing stock in order to raise a bob. They train their indigenous workers rather than import them to save money, they haven't cut themselves off from the European market, they have better and more affordable public services, their own energy and decent retirement prospects. They don't use their own people as rental cattle in a feudal housing market. Their working class have a better deal and maybe that's because they've learned how to stand up to authority rather than bow and scrape to it.
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Starkey reveals himself here at his most catty by questioning Starmer's intelligence and personality, which is basically an abusive personal attack. We've had enough clowns now both with and without fun personality, doesn't he think it's time now for a sober statesman ? The only way you can measure a person's intelligence is by asking them to complete an IQ test, and even that only reveals one particular form of it. I think Starkey is confusing intelligence with theatricality. But seriously, who gives a damn ? As long as he taxes the rich before they leave the country, regulates the market, confiscates the second home stock for repurposing as social housing, introduces rent controls, abolishes private education, smashes up the constitution, replaces the voting system with PR, mandates doctors to stay in the NHS, mandates employers to pay for training, uses the army to smash the criminal gangs and sends immigrants back to France, prevents universities from charging fees, brings in assisted dying, gives legal rights to cats, deepens the permissive society and exiles Rees Mogg to the Cayman islands, all should be dandy.
PS Oh, and incarcerates anyone with even the faintest whiff of political ambition before they can do any damage where appropriate treatment can be administered to them to assist with their recovery - we don't need them anymore for their solutions, we've got Ai which, unclouded by the human ego, is likely to do a better job.
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I didn't vote and I'm unreasonably proud of that fact. We have this fab, quirky system called First Past the Post which distorts the vote of the winning party, ignores all the other votes and where only one party can rule, there are no prizes for second and there is no compromise - which do you want ? As I consider the Tories who basically trashed the country as 6th Formers might trash a communal TV room, I look at the Greens who would leave us vulnerable to economic/infrastructural collapse and nuclear blackmail, I consider the Lib Dems who have few actual policies but perhaps the safest, most secure jobs in the country, I consider the geriatric braying knuckle-draggers voting Reform not understanding that it's politics of the unregulated market would actually stop it from doing anything about mass immigration, and then last but not least I reflect upon Comrade 2 Tier Kier's 'landslide' achieved under FPTP on 20 per cent support and a 60 per cent turnout, as he seems to be getting excited about making criticising Islam a crime and locking people up for angry Twitter posts, I think I've been vindicated
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He talks about the exceptionalism of British liberty like many on the right-wing , the freedom of the individual and rolling back the state etc., but that conservative definition of individual liberty only seems to apply to the market, basically. The liberty for the powerful elites to take as much of the pie as they possibly can. For instance, reactionary conservatives don't really want people to decide for themselves whether they stay married, have unwanted children, to be gay or to have control over their own bodies in their hour of need. They're quite happy for the state to interfere in the private realm there. It's incoherent and it's rooted in medieval church dogma.
Similarly, the electoral system is not fit for purpose and it too belongs in the dustbin of the middle ages. It's a system which basically is analogous to requiring a condemned man to choose whether he wants to be drowned by the ducking stool for witchcraft or shot for stealing a loaf of bread, then to shake hands with the executioner. We have a choice between two identical options - in this case two unappealing middle aged men - and if we vote for anything else it will be ignored. It is not a true, fair democratic system but a sham, again belonging in the middle ages. It's a binary choice between greed and greed plus revolutionary zeal and a race to the bottom to vote against that which is most feared.
Not everything old or inherited is golden I'm afraid.
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Free market economics is what's buggering us up. If there is no restraint on the market, you end up with the destruction of the natural world, a housing crisis and a low birthrate. Perhaps that's what Starkey wants, for the poor anyway ? Thatcher represented a generation who were defined by nothing really other than predatory self-interest - it's not insignificant that she smashed more grammars than any other politician , being herself the archetypal grammar school girl. What you saw in the 80s was an entire generation who benefitted from the post-war consensus (as did Starkey) coming of age, surrendering to greed and pulling up the drawbridge of opportunity behind them. Who wouldn't ? But, like Saturn devouring his son, it was at the expense of the nation's future. We need a radical vision moving forward, one which combines elements of market regulation while retaining our traditions of social permissiveness, something from which we all benefit. Far from living in a Progressive society, we've had to endure 4 uninterrupted decades of a smelly counter revolution, and, as with Dracula, it's time to ensure the predatory old world is put back in the grave beyond any prospect of revival . The 20th Century can only really be understood as a power struggle between privilege and social progress with each side advancing and retreating, and the war isn't won yet. Reform is just more of the same reheated Thatcherite crap which is so appetising for people like Starkey, but we need something different, something...new .
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@70AD-user45 My, that's quite a long list. I don't know about any of the others but I can accept that he may despise conservative values but then isn't that reasonable of him being, y'know, a man of the Left ? Conservative values are not compulsory, we do still live in a free society. But then, what are those values? They mean different things to different people, it's really important to describe what, exactly, you're advocating for and why, if you believe such values are axiomatically superior. Personally, I'm with Starmer, as a Libertarian on social matters I detest conservative values - we don't need the state to tell us whether we can divorce, who we can sleep with, whether we can take drugs, have an abortion or access assisted dying in our hour of need. We don't have a right to control or exploit other peoples and it's ridiculous that in this day and age we go through a pantomime of royal pageantry, surrendering to the divine authority of the king. It's about time we accepted We're not living in the middle ages - we have bots FFS! This is why Starkey is, intellectually, incoherent, advocating as he does for Libertarianism and social conservatism at the same time. Is actually more coherent to argue against economic liberalism on Libertarian grounds RE the market being a form of social control than the other way around
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