Comments by "Billy Liar" (@billyliar1614) on "David Starkey Talks" channel.

  1. Starkey is no Libertarian. Social Conservatism is not Libertarianism.
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  2. Agree with the point about the rule of lawyers. This reflects a very disturbing trend of what feels like the presumption of guilt, whether it be smoking outdoors, driving above the ridiculously low limits, triggering someone with the expression of art or literature, not being sufficiently vigilant of micro aggressions and 'unconscious bias'. With the concepts of 'offence' and 'incitement', we are held responsible for the actions and reactions of others, which in practical effect runs the danger of placing us all under suspicion under the law. It is ironic that at the very point we place the law as the supreme moral benchmark, it would seem that the law itself is losing it's impartiality. If we can't recognise all this for what it is, an attack on liberty, then we are truly lost
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  3. 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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  4.  @Bringontheasteroid  I thought you Neoliberals all believed in free speech as an article of faith ? I'll say what I like, thank you. Why do you types always resort to bitchy, personal attacks as a substitute for real facts and argument ? ''Starmer's dull and got a C grade'' ''Rachel Reeves only got a lower class'' ''they speak funny'' ''they have a bad haircut'' That really is the level of Starkey's attack on Labour, when you strip down all that rhetorical crap. What relevance has that got ? Are we 'mean girls' at a high school or can we think critically ? Starkey may have ranted, he may have chanted, but what he certainly didn't do was engage with Labour's economic policies or demonstrate why they are wrong, no matter how many invitations he's received - I could care less about power or status
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  5. 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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  6. No, he's the perfect example of the callousness of the self-made
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  7. Tories represent the 19th century yesterday, they'll be out for a generation. The only thing they'll be repealing is their smug self-satisfaction. Badenoch ? Yup, I can really see mean old duffers voting for her rather than, say, Farage (If you're going to go nasty, may as well go full nasty) Jenrick ? He's about as charming as a particularly vampiric toad who's just drank some of his own poison and is now feeling a bit queasy . Nope, you guys are stuffed and thank God for it. Starmer may have less personality than a formation of Toby Carvery mashed potato, but at least he isn't ..drum roll....the NASTY PARTY !
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  8. He is not a maverick but a reactionary Tory - this is the great conceit of the populist rebranding of Neoliberalism we have seen in recent times
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  9. ''Cutting people off from their root (history) leads to the horrors of revolution". Yes David. As opposed to, say, the horrors of the workhouse, child/female/black slavery, colonialism, being forced to write with your right hand or burned for witchcraft, Henry the aith boiling his cook alive in water and of course the criminalisation of homosexuality.
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  10. Typical of the sort of personalised hatchet job I'd expect. Starmer is the elected PM - if he plays his cards right, he could be in for a couple more terms. He got more support than Thatcher did in her prime, it's called First Past the Post and it's not just about putting in governments which are biased towards your politics. All you wannabe fascists are just throwing your toys out of the pram because you lost.
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  11.  @ColonelMuppet  OK so it's fact check time again is it ? 62.3% of the total debt in the UK is private, while 37.7% is public. We haven't had a truly '' Left Wing'' government since the 70s, y'know when the poor had social housing security, jobs and lower energy bills etc. The financial crisis of 2008 significantly increased public debt due to bailouts of the financial sector and stimulus measures to mitigate the recession. Under Cameron, May et al public debt increased significantly, due to austerity measures that aimed to reduce the budget deficit as well as borrowing during Covid 19 to support businesses. The Thatcher government in the 1980s saw an increase in public debt due to recession and restructuring of the economy. It's time people put these reactionary myths to bed
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  12.  @ColonelMuppet  OK so it's fact check time again is it ? 62.3% of the total debt in the UK is private, while 37.7% is public. We haven't had a truly '' Left Wing'' government since the 70s, y'know when the poor had social housing security, jobs and lower energy bills etc. The financial crisis of 2008 significantly increased public debt due to bailouts of the financial sector and stimulus measures to mitigate the recession. Under Cameron, May et al public debt increased significantly, due to austerity measures that aimed to reduce the budget deficit as well as borrowing during Covid 19 to support businesses. The Thatcher government in the 1980s saw an increase in public debt due to recession and restructuring of the economy. It's time people put these reactionary myths to bed
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  13. 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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  14. OK so Dr Starkey asserts that inflation is a consequence of Lockdown . He might be right but, I would suggest, not for the reasons he offers. What happened during Lockdown ? Yes, that's right, the energy companies lost profits big time (because people weren't travelling, using their cars and offices turned off the lights etc.) So is it too much of an imaginative leap to suggest that now they're simply trying to claw back their lost profits by over-charging ? The state needs to intervene in the market and cap energy prices, end of. We need a government in place which believes in looking after its own people, restraining market forces and which will nationalise sections of the economy. Aside from 3 terms of Labour during the post-war consensus of the last century - Atlee, Wilson and Callaghan - to which we owe practically all our social infrastructure, we've only ever had governments which look after the well-off. Dr David Starkey - the nation's lovable apologist for being ripped off and over-worked
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  15. Are you a complete idiot ? We don't live in a dictatorship and all this bile from the right wing gutter press doesn't change that. If the king did that, it would cause a constitutional crisis. Read some freakin' history FFS !
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  16. Is there anyone out there who hasn't actually fully quit on England yet ? Well I admire your tenacity, that's all I can say really. Anyone who hasn't quit on the UK is in a Brief Encounter style love affair with a zombified corpse, the England of Yester-century, that of Twinings, Bully Beef and Bisto. Well let me tell you, time to let her go pal, she's gawn and she ain't coming back ! Time to take stock, dust yourself down and plan for life beyond .
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  17.  @goodyeoman4534  Try to focus on what she is saying and why it is wrong, not tin foil nonsense about the 'Woke agenda'
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  18.  @goodyeoman4534  Nope, I think the comment 'being guilty of an ism to scare them back into compliance' fits quite squarely into tin foil, Woke agenda conspiracy territory. If you want to see a Straw Man argument, look no further than Doctor David's character assassination of Rachel Reeves, in which he manifestly fails to address Labour's actual economic policy plans.
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  19.  @goodyeoman4534  I think the comment 'if they show any sign of dissent they can be accused of being guilty of an ism to scare them back into compliance' fits quite squarely into tin foil, ''Woke agenda'' conspiracy territory. If you are offensive, discriminatory or bigoted towards other people on the basis of protected characteristics such as race, gender, sexuality or disability, the law will call you out on that and rightly so. Granted arguably there is scope for reform of how the law is interpreted, but it's not ruddy rocket science. The whole 'they're curtailing my liberties' shtick is actually a Straw Man argument, if ever there was one. If you want to see another example, look no further than Doctor David's character assassination of Rachel Reeves, in which he spends a good half an hour manifestly failing to address Labour's actual economic policy plans
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  20.  @goodyeoman4534  I think the comment 'if they show any sign of dissent they can be accused of being guilty of an ism to scare them back into compliance' fits quite squarely into tin foil, ''Woke agenda'' conspiracy territory. If you are offensive, discriminatory or bigoted towards other people on the basis of protected characteristics such as race, gender, sexuality or disability, the law will call you out on that and rightly so. Granted arguably there is scope for reform of how the law is interpreted, but it's not ruddy rocket science. The whole 'they're curtailing my liberties' shtick is actually a Straw Man argument, if ever there was one. If you want to see another example, look no further than Doctor David's character assassination of Rachel Reeves, in which he spends a good half an hour manifestly failing to address Labour's actual economic policy plans
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  21. I disagree. He tells it how it is but shouldn't be, or rather how it would have been back in the 19th century.
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  22. And think of England ?
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  23. What, are you talking about people like Robert Jendrick ?
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  24. Reform is merely reheated Thatcherism, very lukewarm and starting to go a bit rubbery. They can't do anything about mass immigration because they believe in unregulated global markets, low wages, high rents and mobile skivvies.
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  25. 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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  26. No you're quite wrong there. Our real catastrophe was in the 5th century. You know, when we turned our back on the Roman Empire. Whatever were we thinking ?
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  27. The Human Rights Act protects the vulnerable in society, which is an inconvenience to some employers and other assorted fascists - call it what it is. Jendrick, Starkey and their fellow travellers want to get rid of it because they despise the weak .With Starkey it's likely a case it seems to me of 'I climbed to the top from the bottom, why should I respect you who can't or didn't' who remind me of what I used to be and now now I'm above you ? ' Nothing signifies humble origins more than contempt for the poor , WW2 taught us that. Thus we have the spectacle of the heir to the throne trying to alleviate homelessness and then grammar school boy Starkey wanting to grind the poor into the dirt under his heel (he supports the repeal of the Equalities Act and opposes the welfare state). Typical. People who hate the weak are generally cowards and bullies, they are pro power and pro-authority, they'd rather a system of abuse where the powerless have no voice.
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  28. Smart enough to win a scholarship to a top selective school at a time when that actually meant something.
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  29.  @northernlights8126  I would agree he's not very interesting, but that doesn't mean he isn't intelligent. There are so many preconceptions about intelligence and there is no direct correlation between it and anything else - height, looks, personality, class etc. Confusing personal presentation with intelligence is a modern malady it would seem of the celebrity age. If he won a scholarship, that would suggest that in terms of formal abstract reasoning skills he would be in the top range of the population in terms of raw IQ. But to be honest I'm sick of all these ad hominem, personal attacks from people like Starkey, which lowers the tone of the debate and is unworthy of him. He shouldn't be attacking Starmer's personal presentation or character really, it's irrelevant
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  30. Conservatism only really benefits the top 10 per cent of the population who have enough money to avoid the economic and social problems caused by savage inequality. Basically it's a club where the top 10 per cent and their dupes can talk to one another politely to promote abstract theoretical apologies for the regime. Not a great ideology to base a society on then is it really ? Starkey is right, we need to grab hold of the levers of power and turn the clock back to 1965. Conservatism is nothing more than re-heated Victoriana fetishism with added salmonella. Why do these guys labour under the mental delusion that ripping off the poor is somehow the secret sauce for a happy, stable society ? We can afford a higher level of public spending if we put to bed all the lies regarding ''wealth creation'' and ''trickledown'' etc, which have all been proven completely false and tax the rich more, end of story. The problem is, turkeys - by which I mean the beneficiaries of the regime which our distorted electoral system advantages - don't vote for Christmas (well, maybe that doesn't quite stand true these days, what with the cash tills ringing etc., but anyway) Hence why every so often we have a revolution, guillotine etc.
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  31.  @KnellofPartingDay  Yes because of course I was the one who deindustrialised the nation, sold off the utilities to my mates, killed off the National Front by stealing their rhetoric (while presiding over pro-immigration policies which benefit business) deregulated the market so foreigners could buy up the housing stock and smashed worker protections was I ? Who's the traitor to the British people again ?
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  32.  @KnellofPartingDay  Thatcher betrayed the working class of this country big time so don't talk to me about treachery
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  33. You are economically illiterate. Do you know what the majority of state expenditure goes on ? The NHS ? Benefits ? It goes on state pensions by a country mile. We have inflation due to a number of factors - unrestrained (by government) profiteering from the big corporations to recoup lost Lockdown profits and then of course Brexit, which has led to higher wages due to worker shortages and thus higher prices for consumers.
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  34.  @sirrodneyffing1  Thanks for the clarification and expansion on your original point about benefits. You seem to be suggesting that people being paid a decent wage and benefits/state spending are the causes of our current spike in inflation in the UK ? (You're the one that bought up benefits, not me.) So I guess if we cut back on state pensions etc we could ''rebalance'' the economy that way ?(pensions being the main supply of ''money'' into the economy to use your rather convoluted , unwieldy and, dare I say it, implausible concept) An interesting theory but I'm not sure how grounded in reality it actually is. Wages increased for a while but actually have now lowered . Low wages are actually a sign that the economy is shrinking, not 'balanced'. Prices are increasing in part due to a lack of state intervention in the market to restrict corporate profits. We also lack workers and the economy has taken a hit due to the loss of trade with Europe, all of which affects prices. Our inflation is nothing to do with Brexit though eh? Despite the fact that, y'know, it's the big disruption we're going through right now...
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  35.  @Candolad  This is utter nostalgic delusionism led by the over 65s and is likely to end in tears before bedtime. Britain was finished after Suez and only clung on in the 80s 'cause Thatcher sold off the family silver to raise a few quid. Most of our utilities now are in foreign hands, leaving us vulnerable to the likes of Putin. It is absolutely outrageous to deliberately put the country into economic collapse for an imagined and yet to exist sunlit upland. The masses were sold Brexit as being about sovereignty and were promised gold or ''levelling up'', not high inflation and economic collapse. This is no ordinary recession but a seismic shock to the economy whose weasel architects haven't the courage or decency to admit. Perfidiousness, a vice on which a certain type of Englishman prides himself, is not I'm afraid a commendable trait. Neither is ignorance, which can I'm afraid look very much like bravery until you move the camera a little closer. The masses were deceived as usual by their whip-cracking overlords and Brexit was about elite tax avoidance and deregulation (profit), not Sovereignty. The masses are not free in any meaningful sense - ''they've taken back control '', to use Dom Cummings crass campaign slogan, and given it back to their feudal masters. At least Farage's ''faceless bureaucrats'' believed in food safety standards and spending on the infrastructure.
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  36. And Thatcher wasn't ?
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  37. Whoever said that masochism was dead ?
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  38. Starkey looks in danger here of turning Fuddiness (or should that be Duddiness?) into an Olympic event. He's wrong on so many counts one struggles to know where to start. Firstly, that much abused word 'creativity' is a fundamental feature of human nature and there are countless creatives doing boring jobs which don't stretch their capabilities fully in order to stop themselves and their families from starving. Whattya know. Secondly, a good portion of the time spent in most office jobs is wasted - doesn't he know that ? One can just as easily switch on a computer, send an email and fiddle with a spreadsheet in the back room as in one hundreds of miles away. It is a colossal waste of time, fuel and expense for employers - it's this last reason WFH has been permitted rather than the preceding two. If sandwich shops and garages go out of business tough, that's the market in action.  RE Lockdown measures the gov made a cynical cost calculation that if they'd just let Covid work itself out the economy would've taken a bigger hit through sickness and the NHS being overwhelmed. They correctly assessed that most paper-shuffling roles aren't ''essential'', in that the economy doesn't grind to a halt if the labour avails itself of technological advance and people aren't strictly adhering to a Victorian regimen. And I'm sorry but we all know the real reason for the UK's nose-dive into economic oblivion (I'm sorry but the US economy and that of Europe isn't in as bad a shape as ours) but he 'aint gonna like it - Brexit (sshhhhh) Don't worry, I'm sure you can scapegoat the pandemic for a while longer yet ...
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  39. ​ @mcihs2  I'm sorry but the reason we are so badly affected by inflation in comparison with other countries (yes they have it but not as bad as us) can be laid squarely at the foot of nothing other than Brexit. David Starkey was/is a loud advocate for Brexit so like all the others - city boys, Farage, Martin et al - he must find a convenient scapegoat for the extreme folly and disastrous impact of this policy, in this case the Lockdown. Not that I'm suggesting the stringent Lockdown measures were advisable, just that it isn't the main reason for our current woes. 'Cost Vs Benefit' analysis ? What, like the one they did for Brexit ? Don't make me laugh. It's the elephant in the room that the cheerleaders for Leave would prefer was an emperor without any clothes . The economy has run off a cliff because the shortage of workers has led to higher wages and thus a spike in prices for consumers. Any British business exporting to the EU has died overnight and we've been unable to introduce controls at our end due to our dependence on imports of food and medicine. We've lost a third of our trade and have yet to replace it with the much-vaunted free-trade deals. The whole thing is a very bad joke. I would like to think that the cheerleaders would at least have the decency and self-respect to admit their folly, but I'm not holding my breath.
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  40. Why is Starkey pretending that we haven't had 4 decades of economic Neoliberalism and excessive market forces, leading to the current housing crisis, underfunded prisons, roads, healthcare and military ? Is that what he means by the market always working ? I assume when he talks of repeal, he means scrapping the welfare safety net and public infrastructure such as exists. And they always say that new money is the worst, the most pitiless don't they. But really, how can you repeal a state which isn't there ?
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  41. Isn't this what we always do ? Isn't that what the electoral system is designed to achieve ?
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  42. Please, please vote Reform !
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  43. 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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  44. I didn't know he'd done that but thanks for letting on. Dutton is an unrepentant eugenicist and from what I can understand, pretty much a Far Right fellow traveller. That Starkey is keeping company with such types is illuminating.
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  45. "Multipolarity'. Ok so we're not living in Lennon's imagined brotherhood or global village but we're in competition with 2 alien powers. What should we do ? 1) Stop trading with China and make our own stuff (or stop buying crap we don't need) 2) produce our own energy 3) invest in military R&D to give ourselves a military advantage. But mainly, get some freakin' leadership worthy of the name !
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  46. What the f.f.f.frogarts are you talking about ? Are you perhaps unwell ?
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  47. Spot on. People go to substantial lengths to deny, ignore, dismiss or excuse a self-evident truth. The Right loves to scapegoat immigrants for the result of Neoliberal economic policy which is the cause of the high levels of immigration in the first place. And then they go and vote Reform UK, a party whose leadership's main priority is deregulation and freeing up markets. Personally, I think mince would be more capable of exercising it's vote
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  48. You have my sympathies
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  49. If Charles did that, it would lead to a constitutional crisis and could be considered an act of treason against the British people. We have a constitutional monarchy with clearly defined limitations.
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  50. Now don't be a silly billy and do calm down dear. Nobody is going to be hung for 'treason', you're not Rob Roy.
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