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UK PoliGAF |OT2| - We Blue Ourselves

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tomtom94

Member
Shah has, unsurprisingly, been suspended pending an investigation, although I don't quite understand how she can be suspended "by agreement with" the respective body.
 
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Uzzy

Member
Frustrated that Corbyn let Cameron off the hook today by not asking questions about the doctors strike. There's even a clear link you can make between academies and the strike, that this government is one which simply imposes it's will, and isn't interested in things like consensus or negotiations. Hell, you could bring in IDS on that point.
 
Jezbollah

Jezbollah

Member
Uzzy said:
Frustrated that Corbyn let Cameron off the hook today by not asking questions about the doctors strike. There's even a clear link you can make between academies and the strike, that this government is one which simply imposes it's will, and isn't interested in things like consensus or negotiations. Hell, you could bring in IDS on that point.
Click to expand...

If Hunt's response to Dennis Skinner is anything to go by, apparently there has been a bunch of negotiations on the current deal. Evidently the last remaining (albeit huge) issue of Weekend pay is something both sides refuse to budge on...

I think this Shah issue has taken some of the heat off the Government in light of the junior doctors strike. God only knows what Ken Livingstone is on. Jesus.
 
E

Empty

Member
when even the daily mail thinks you're so shitty towards migrants that a stand has to be made :/

ChFDpIcWkAAaqZx.jpg:large
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it's a disgrace
 
W

War Peaceman

You're a big guy.
Dan27 said:
If Hunt's response to Dennis Skinner is anything to go by, apparently there has been a bunch of negotiations on the current deal. Evidently the last remaining (albeit huge) issue of Weekend pay is something both sides refuse to budge on...

I think this Shah issue has taken some of the heat off the Government in light of the junior doctors strike. God only knows what Ken Livingstone is on. Jesus.
Click to expand...

Absolutely has. Which I'm guessing was the point. These are old Facebook posts right?

Jeremy Hunt is the absolute worst. Went and supported the QMC docs for a bit today. Lovely people (don't mess up my surgery pls)
 
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tomtom94

Member
Don't know if it'll take off, but seen on Facebook that there's an effort including a couple of petitions for Livingstone to be suspended from the Labour Party after his comments yesterday. Can't say I disagree.
 
M

Mr. Sam

Member
Xun said:
I can't seem to find them anywhere, but what did Shah say that was anti-semitic?
Click to expand...

IIRC, she shared a post on Facebook two years ago that advocated moving all the Israeli Jews to the United States.

Edit: The wording of that article ("backed calls") is putting it a little strongly. It makes it sound like she actively campaigned for it, or that there even was a campaign for it.
 
J

JonathanEx

Member
At the point Ken Livingstone is currently on BBC Two trying to clarify his stance on Hitler, surely the party should just tell him to fuck the fuck off by now
 
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tomtom94

Member
I've decided Livingstone is the left's equivalent of Katie Hopkins in that every time he opens his mouth he says something stupid and he needs to stop being invited on things.
 
J

JonathanEx

Member
As far as I can tell from Twitter:
Ken has been hiding in a disabled loo for 20 minutes while the press shout questions about his views on Hitler
The party want to suspend him, but Milne is arguing internally that Ken has got a point
Corbyn is currently at a memorial service in Grimsby
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
Owen Jones is reporting he's about to be suspended. Sam Coates (of The Times) is claiming that Milne is trying to convince Corbyn not to suspend him and that he should be supported. That latter one sounds too mental to be real though.

Edit: George Galloway and Steve Brookstein are both vociferously supporting Ken, though, so that's good for him.
 
J

JonathanEx

Member
Guardian political editor saying suspension too: https://twitter.com/guardiananushka/status/725661048926298112


Edit:

Did you think suspending him might help? Oh no because Labour are FUCKING STUPID, they're calling John Mann in, who questioned Ken quite strongly, to "discuss his conduct", possibly with view of suspending. https://twitter.com/guardiananushka/status/725662232823140353

I think going after John Mann could massively backfire. I mean I'm all for a Lab leadership challenge but not days before elections ffs.
 
W

War Peaceman

You're a big guy.
what the fuck are these morons doing?

DOCTORS STRIKE
EU REFERENDUM

Stop fucking about. Just suspend Livingstone, he's gone mad and nobody cares about him anymore.
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
glad that the labour party is taking a hardline approach to these kinds of comments

in any case...aren't there more important things on the agenda right now...?
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
I know this is painfully obvious to everyone, but times like these really make me remember how absolutely barmy George Galloway is. He's simultaneously blaming Blairites, Cameron and Israel for Ken's downfall.
 
A

Arnie7

Banned
It genuinely pains me to have to defend a man as crass and foolish as Ken Livingstone, but in this case I think his remarks were just Ken being his normal pompous windbag self. I don't think expelling him from the party would do Labour any lasting harm, but I'm uneasy about a man being roundly ganged-up upon for remarks that - however tactless - don't meet any reasonable definition of antisemitism.

More importantly, it worries me that political debate in this country has progressively been reduced to twitter-led mobs shouting down opponents with accusations of bigotry, racism, misogyny, antisemitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and so on. This is no way to have an intelligent argument. It doesn't challenge or refute the views expressed. It doesn't lead anyone to change their minds. It simply leads to the political rhetoric of the pantomime, with competing choruses of "oh yes he is!" and "oh no he isn't!"
Click to expand...

Saw this comment and I agree. A storm in a teacup. Just a distraction from more important issues.
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
Arnie7 said:
Saw this comment and I agree. A storm in a teacup. Just a distraction from more important issues.
Click to expand...

It's a bit disingenuous to say he's just being a "pompous windbag" - he's a member of the NEC, whose responsibility it is to actually stop people with anti-semitic views (and all the rest) representing the Labour party. So to have him say that Hitler supported Zionism (on the grounds of his wanting to forcibly deport Germany's Jewish population), to think this is the definition of anti-semitism ("If you are antisemitic you hate Jews, not just the ones in Israel, you hate your neighbour in Golders Green, or your neighbour in Stoke Newington. It’s a deep personal loathing like racism."), not to mention the various things he did whilst Mayor of London, the way he spoke to the Jewish Standard reporter, his comments regarding mental health etc. This is the latest in an enormously long list of things he's done which suggest he should be about as far away from Labour's exec committee as possible, so I don't think it's reasonable to consider it a storm in a teacup.
 
X

Xun

Member
Moosichu said:
See the post I've quoted above.
Click to expand...

Mr. Sam said:
IIRC, she shared a post on Facebook two years ago that advocated moving all the Israeli Jews to the United States.

Edit: The wording of that article ("backed calls") is putting it a little strongly. It makes it sound like she actively campaigned for it, or that there even was a campaign for it.
Click to expand...
Unless I'm mistaken, surely this is more anti-Israel instead of anti-Semite?

I think it's perfectly justified to dislike the actions of Israel.
 
P

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
In a week where history was made in a bad way for the NHS, here the media is hounding a known idiot outside of a toilet about his thoughts on Hitler.

I mean jesus fucking christ. Godwins law and general internet and twitter bullshit is the norm now. Theres not a scrap of intelligent fucking debate left because thats not clickbait.
 
J

JonathanEx

Member
For context, full exchange, as transcribed by the Standard. http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/ken-livingstone-hitler-was-supporting-zionism-a3235796.html

Vanessa Feltz: “You will have seen yourself written about in the Telegraph today. It says others are furious about the conduct of Mr Corbyn’s friend and allie Ken Livingstone who said Naz Shah’s comments were not anti-semitic. Now she’s profusely apologised for them, said she made a mistake. If she has apologised for them, presumably she acknowledges that they were anti-semitic. Do you still maintain they were not?”

Ken Livingstone: “She’s a deep critic of Israel and its policies and her remarks were over the top but she’s not anti-semitic. I’ve been in the Labour Party for 47 years and I have never heard anyone say anything anti-semitic. I have heard a lot of criticism of the state of Israel but I have never heard someone be anti-semitic.”

VF: “She talked about relocating Israel to America, she talked about what Hitler did being legal and she talked about the Jews rallying, and she used the word Jews not Israelis or Israel. You didn’t find that to be anti-semitic?”

KL: “It’s completely over the top. It’s not anti-semitic. Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews. But the simple fact in all of this is that Naz made those comments at a time when there is brutal Israeli attack on the Palestinians and there is one stark fact that no one in the British media ever reports. In almost all these conflicts, the death toll is usually between 60 to 100 Palestians killed for every Israeli. Any other country doing that would be accused of war crimes but it is like we have a double standard about the policy of the Israeli Government.”

VF: “Some people will say that there is a double standard operating in the Labour Party and what’s really a flagrant kind of anti-semitism, a deeply embedded systemic anti-semitism, is hidden behind a mask of anti-zionism or criticism of Israeli foreign policy, but that’s not what it really is. Its really as John Rentoul said, using a phrase that I would hesitate to use but he used this morning. He said: “There are Jew haters, long-term Jew haters and they can use criticism of Israel as a cloak behind which to mask that sentiment.”

KL: “There has been a very well orchestrated campaign by the Israel Lobby to smear anybody who criticises Israeli policy as anti-Semitic.

“I had to put up with 35 years of this, being denounced because back in 1981 we were campaigning to say the Labour Party should recognise the Palestine Liberation Organisation.”

VF: “What do you think over the top really means? When I say was it anti-semitic and you say no it wasn’t categorically no, anyone who says it was is a liar but it was over the top, over the top of what?”

KL: “If you think of anti-semitism and racism as exactly the same thing and criticising e.g the government of South Africa, which is pretty unpleasant and corrupt, it doesn’t make me a racist and it doesn’t make me anti-semitic.”
Click to expand...
 
Jezbollah

Jezbollah

Member
Arnie7 said:
Saw this comment and I agree. A storm in a teacup. Just a distraction from more important issues.
Click to expand...

While the current situation is most certainly distracting somewhat from the issues of the EU Referendum and the NHS Contract, the narrative of anti-semitism in the Labour party is something that has been brewing for quite a while. I think a lot of people have been expecting this to erupt at some stage..
 
P

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Trying to paint some majority of the Labour party as anti-semetic when its just a couple of nutters saying on the edge things is the most appalled I've been with politics in a while.

This country deserves becoming some sort of fucking Mad Max wasteland at this point.

It just illustrates how thick everyone has become on the topic of politics. Things like 7-day contracts stretching workforces too thin, making schools "academies" and what does the EU actually do are all topics that require 5 minutes of thinking but "HE HATES JEWS" is just bang on easy huddle round the fire shit.

Its just cretinous and I'm so done even trying to pretend 85% of people in this country arent drooling Cro-Magnons that could be manipulated into eating their own shit out of the toilet if it had a flashy and nefarious enough amount of media money campaign behind it.
 
U

Uzzy

Member
War Peaceman said:
what the fuck are these morons doing?

DOCTORS STRIKE
EU REFERENDUM

Stop fucking about. Just suspend Livingstone, he's gone mad and nobody cares about him anymore.
Click to expand...

Yup. It's truly pathetic and quite saddening to see such amateur politics. Every Labour MP should be hammering home the doctors strike. But instead Ken's gone and said something really stupid and handed the Tories an out. Now all the discussion in the media will be about anti-Semitism, rather than Hunt.

How hard is it to stop fucking up like this? You're letting the Tories get away with everything.
 
C

Coriolanus

Banned
Not really, no. The antisemitism thing is short-lived and will quickly go away, even if it might flare up again later in the future, like herpes. The doctor's strike isn't going anywhere and will continue to be a constant issue fore the foreseeable future.

Press is just having its fun while it can, is all.

Feel free to have a short-lived period of fretting if you want. Will hardly matter. No different from "corbyn had a super seekrit labour list".
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
Pie and Beans, what articles would you expect to be seeing in the media that you aren't seeing? The major story of the last several weeks has been the junior doctors contract and subsequent strike action. A day of talking about something else and suddenly everyone's devolved into cavemen?
 
T

tomtom94

Member
Corbyn denies there is a crisis. I don't need to make the Callaghan jokes, do I?

Storm in a teacup, though if it affects the council seats, then there might be a problem. I'm still sticking with a putsch shortly after the referendum even if we stay in.
 
L

Lirlond

Member
So what do you think will push the government to act? Mass resignation or neverending strikes?

I've seen a few articles now with quotes from Doctors who are ready to just leave for Australia or even Scotland, so I doubt they're gonna just roll over and take the new contract.
 
C

Coriolanus

Banned
Mass resignations would allow the government to carry the argument that they will need help from the private sector to cover the medic deficit with greater ease, thus, strikes are preferable. You still fighting against the lazy docs narrative, but at least you still around, riling up people by sheer force of presence. With resignations you're gone so who cares about what you have to say? All that's left is to patch up a hole

Both paths can move the government. Just a matter of how fast one wants it to move, and in which direction.

Does the UK legal system allow courts to deem strikes illegal?
 
T

travisbickle

Member
The part I can't stand about the Ken Livingstone story, is a load of press and politicians are pretending they've never heard people make the same argument before and they're pretending to be shocked.

It's a typical view that leaders of the Zionists will put the wider Jewish community into precarious situations if it will aid the creation of a Jewish state in Israel. They will literally sign a policy agreement with Hitler.

People disagree with it, but it's not a shocking statement and definitely not something politicians/press haven't heard before.

(I don't agree with it, it's un-nuanced. But when has a politician having an un-nuanced opinion on something been shocking?)
 
D

Ding-Ding

Member
travisbickle said:
The part I can't stand about the Ken Livingstone story, is a load of press and politicians are pretending they've never heard people make the same argument before and they're pretending to be shocked.

It's a typical view that leaders of the Zionists will put the wider Jewish community into precarious situations if it will aid the creation of a Jewish state in Israel. They will literally sign a policy agreement with Hitler.

People disagree with it, but it's not a shocking statement and definitely not something politicians/press haven't heard before.

(I don't agree with it, it's un-nuanced. But when has a politician having an un-nuanced opinion on something been shocking?)
Click to expand...

Its not shocking to them, after all it is Ken. No matter what though they have got to at least look shocked as its what is required in the eyes of the public as a means of saying "we are against this"

That said, there is some fishing going on. Labours hard left has always been know to have a very nasty side to them. A small part of that has been anti-Israeli views which somehow fester into anti-semitic views and comments. Westminster and the media all knows who these people are and all are affiliated with Corbyn. So this is them gunning for him (he has skated quite close to anti-semitism before but not crossed the line as far as I know)

Also, just to be clear that this fishing is all part of Labours civil war, and the Tories are just pissing themselves laughing with all of this.
 
F

Fernando Fernandez

Member
The Jewish Socialists think it's a combo of

• The Conservative Party

• Conservative-supporting media in Britain and pro-Zionist Israeli media sources

• Right-wing and pro-Zionist elements claiming to speak on behalf of the Jewish community

• Opponents of Jeremy Corbyn within the Labour party.

Brewing this up and have defended Labour - From their blog yesterday evening.

http://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/n...ith-antisemitism-from-the-jewish-socialists-g
 
T

tomtom94

Member
George Galloway is going to be talking about the whole thing on Channel 4 News, apparently. This should help prolong the calm and rational debate.
 
Jezbollah

Jezbollah

Member
I don't know the full details of the nature of their connection to the UK Labour Party, but I saw this today from the Young Labour Israel movement:

ChNr16tWwAASRMH.jpg
 
T

tomtom94

Member
Corbyn being Corbyn he's announced an independent inquiry into anti-Semitism within the Labour party. Presumably this one won't be overseen by Ken Livingstone. Taken from the BBC article:

The inquiry, led by Shami Chakrabarti, former head of campaign group Liberty, will consult with the Jewish community and other minority groups, Labour said.

Mr Corbyn will also propose a new "code of conduct" on racism at Labour's national executive committee in May.

[...]

The code of conduct will include guidance on "acceptable behaviour and use of language", Labour said.

It will make "explicitly clear for the first time that Labour will not tolerate any form of racism, including anti-Semitism, in the party", a statement said.

The inquiry's vice-chairman will be Professor David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism.
Click to expand...

EDIT: Reminds me that last term I wrote an article for a student satire paper (headline: LABOUR PARTY AT ODDS WITH LEADERSHIP OVER DESIRE TO KILL LEADER WITH SCYTHE). One of my jokes the editor cut out was that Corbyn was launching an internal review into the party's killing-the-leader-with-scythes policy...
 
P

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
So thats how we end this week. Front pages awash with this actual Godwins law bullshit for days on end and the doctors strike a distant memory.

I'd like to shoot John Mann and co into the fucking sun.
 
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