Do we tend to ignore the true facts ?

MaizieD Mon 24-Feb-20 11:12:33

Which Jonathan Sumption lecture does your post quote from please.

I watched the Jonathan Sumption series of Ruth Leith Lectures on BBC Parliament, they were repeated several times and I found myself listening to them more than once and your quote rings a bell.

His lectures deserve to have any context behind his words known and understood.

My memory is making me think of his first lecture 'Law's Expanding Empire' where he talks of the law taking over the space once occupied by politics.

I will state my feeling at the risk of somebody reporting my post.

The cheap, crass talk of the UK Government and the UK people becoming a Nazi State is nothing new, it has been a tirade that has expended since the last EU Referendum.

It is pathetic.

@Doodledog
There is a rather sinister movement to stop dissenters happening in this country. BJ is trying to stop any negative press by refusing to let certain reporters in. He is manipulating the press and trying to change the constitution in ways that will make it even harder to get rid of him or his govenrment. It is dividing the country, enouraging a scapegoat mentality, punishing the poor, disabled, foreign and those who are different. There is a definite corrulation between these activities and the rise of facism. I am a proud Brit - but Nationalism to the degree that has been encouraged is detrimental.

You're perfectly entitled to your opinion POGS but I just quoted a string of facts, can you set out similar facts showing how open, democratic and fair to all the UK is and show how the UK government is acting in a clear, honest and consistent way that you might expect in a fair society.

And, btw, don't quote the referendum as an example of democracy because we live in a parliamentary democracy, referendums are advisory.

@GagaJo - are you me? You post word for word what I am thinking. Wondering if I have a Schizophrenic alter ego I am not aware off.

Even allowing for a difference in politics, it’s hard to take any
Comments on ‘Nazi’ or ‘Fascist’ states seriously.
The GE was won fair and square with a massive majority by the Conservatives, people voted for them, Johnson and his Cabinet did not stage a coup.
In the same way, the referendum ( advisory though it may have been) was upheld by just about all the MP’s ( apart from the SNP who are wedded to the EU.)
Any political party with a huge majority can force it’s will in Parliament.
I think that anyone airing extravagant posts about fascism in this country maybe needs to live with it somewhere else first!

Really POGS? We have neo Nazis on the BBC and working for and distributing Britain First and National Front propaganda within the BBC. And you think worrying about right wing extremism is CRASS? One is national security and one is bad manners.

We are headed down a dangerous path. So unless you are a Britain First / National Front / BNP supporter (in which case, I would understand your indignation) you really should get off your Tory supporting xxxx and see this NOT as anti Tory ranting, but a point of national security!

lemongrove, you and I may have disagreed about the election. But this isn't really about the Tories, is it? No, I don't think ol' BJ is a nazi BUT the people behind him with the REAL power are.

As I said earlier, if we had a proper Tory run, Tory powered government it would be distasteful to me, but that would be it. What we are getting into is FAR beyond that.

It was a quote that I found on a blog, POGS. The person who quoted it said that it was from his final lecture.

You can, of course, repeat your opinion re our government as much as you like. A great many people are seeing similarities with the rise of fascism and warning of complacency. Remember the old T S Eliot line; 'This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper'.

I think that calling it 'Nazi' is what stops people actually thinking about what is happening because they associate the label with the appalling atrocities of the Holocaust. But there was a lead up to that which people didn't really recognise until too late.

Turning a blind eye to the 'will of the people' trope, attacks on the judiciary, contempt of parliament, hiding from scrutiny, and 'othering' people, for example, are all erosions of democracy as we have understood it for decades.

And while we are on facts and the state of the UK at present and Tory bias, I just saw this on Twitter (which I hate btw) about the NHS:

Rachel Clarke
@doctor_oxford
·
23 Feb
BREAKING/ Just why exactly has
@NHSEngland
handed £7 million to US private health giant Optum to help identify the most "expensive" NHS patients?

The Tories will never sell off the NHS, surely? Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor before anyone asks.

I put this on here as a thread a couple of days ago and was accused of project fear! You couldn't make it up.

Ooops, I take that back. It was jura2 lightheartedly mocking me!

Nazis at the BBC, working on Question Time? Well I never. We’re all doomed and off to hell in a handcart. As for suppressing dissenters - the so called liberal left with their woke credentials, and intolerance of any challenge to their ideology would give BJ and DC a run for their money. Utter claptrap!

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

The really intersting debate is what is 'truth'. Your truth or mine.

I would say that the political threads are dominated by the Corbyn supporting Labour voters and that the views of any GN'ers who may support the Conservatives is generally missing.

As for all this constantly harping on about class and social mobility. I am the descendant of Irish immigrants of the poorest level, who in one generation, in one case, and two in the other, moved themselves up from extreme poverty to what many people here would describe as 'middle class'. DH's father worked on the assembly line in a car factory. I went to a northern technical university in the 1960s when the majority of my fellow students were 'working class' young men who got to university by passing the 11 plus and going to their local grammar school.

Social immobility only came in with Mrs Thatcher and, most of all, Tony Blair with their obsession with universitys and degrees, so that gradually all those professions . including law, accountancy, who at one point had entry points from entrants with no O levels to those with degrees, inexorably became graduate professions, now nursing is a graduate profession and they want the make the police a graduate profession.

The best way back to social mobility is to make it possible for anyone to join almost any profession from any level of education, for it to be possible to learn on the job and be paid while studying. For example go back to when a school dropout could become a solicitor, by starting in a solicitors office and by working and studying take, probably, 5-7 years to qualify, about as long as a graduate to achieve the same result in the same time span. I had several friends who did this in the 1960s. They could not do it now.

Perhaps the Labour Party could try doing that now. Back in the 1950s, 60s, possibly 70s, many of its MPS came from factory and mine backgrounds through the union movement. In the last three or four decades, the number of Labour MPS with experience of working on the factory or shop floor, or sweeping streets or driving buses has reduced considerably to be replaced by graduate HQ union www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/parliament-and-elections/representatives-of-society/

‘I would say that the political threads are dominated by the Corbyn supporting Labour voters and that the views of any GN'ers who may support the Conservatives is generally missing.’

And you’d be wrong MOnica Are you serious ? ??????

MOnica, you have forgotten the Lib Dem, faint but pursuing, who still calls in about the fraudulent referendum.

tickingbird Many of us read the Guardian in preference to the other newspapers, whether red tops or former broadsheets, because it is usually in sympathy with our views. But we do occasionally read some of the others. There are also several online journals that we can read.

You say that you prefer to observe and think for yourself but where does your information come from? If you are writing about current affairs it has to be the news whether on radio, tv or paper. The journalists on the serious papers spend a lot of time researching their subject before writing about it and they have access to people that we don't, especially the politicians and their advisers.

It is possible that Guardian readers are more concerned about current events which is why more of us are posting on here and other forums.

When will we get the true facts about Russian interference in the fraudulent referendum of 2016?

The Guardian publishes columns from contributors with a wide range of opinions in addition to its staff writers.

Lemongrove once again we are told that the Tories won by a large majority but they gained 43.6% of the vote whilst Labour and the Lib Dems gained also gained 43.6%. This means that a further 12.8 of the popular vote went elsewhere. doesn't strike me as fair that a minority percentage of the vote should result in such a large majority of seats in the H of C.

The UK is not a true democracy. It is a sham democracy where a party elected by a minority can gain a huge majority of MPs and do what it likes unopposed for five years.

I am a Lib Dem and have never given a toss about the fraudulent referendum. Yes it was, but there was never anything we could do about it, so forget it. There is nothing sadder than seeing someone chasing some obscure cause and completely failing to deal with the problems in front of them.

The same applies to all these arguments about votes and seats. Stop arguing about past and existing results, there is nothing you can do to change them. Get to work on getting the system changed for the future.

In the meanwhile we have the Brexit negotiations ahead. We do not know wexactly what they will include, but we need to be ready to respond as soon as any inkling of what concessions or otherwise (on either side) may conspire, so that we can chase our MPs about what response we want and why. Now the Conservatives have a large majority, there are signs of revolt by some Conservative MPs to much of what Boris plans. It up to us to do something to support them and MPs in other parties with similar opions on specific subjects.

When dead horses are dead, you might as well stop flogging them.

Gagajo

'Really POGS? We have neo Nazis on the BBC and working for and distributing Britain First and National Front propaganda within the BBC. And you think worrying about right wing extremism is CRASS. One is national security and one is bad manners.
'

We are headed down a dangerous path. So unless you are a Britain First / National Front / BNP supporter (in which case, I would understand your indignation) you really should get off your Tory supporting xxxx and see this NOT as anti Tory ranting, but a point of national security!
----

'We have neo Nazis on the BBC and working for and distributing Britain First and National Front propaganda within the BBC.'

What is your proof of the BBC having neo Nazis employees?
Question Time, interviewing Nigel Forage, interviewing or simply mentioning the Conservative Party you consider neo Nazi/Far Right b*****ds.
---

' And you think worrying about right wing extremism is CRASS'.

Stop twisting my words!!!! What I inferred was it is crass to generalise saying the Government and the UK population are all turning into some sort of a Nazi State. Of course we should all be concerned about ' far right ' extremism and in my opinion ' far left ' extremism.
--

'One is national security and one is bad manners.'

True if you hold the same opinion as you. To others one is a load of tosh and one is spouting rubbish.
---

' So unless you are a Britain First / National Front / BNP supporter (in which case, I would understand your indignation) you really should get off your Tory supporting xxxx and see this NOT as anti Tory ranting, but a point of national security!'

Of course it is Tory / BBC included ranting! As for your comment :-

' you really should get off your Tory supporting xxxx and see this NOT as anti Tory ranting, but a point of national security!'

You prove the point it is anti Tory ranting, you can' t stop yourself can you.

As for National Security that is a concern for everybody left/right of politics but nobody, nobody has said they do not have a concern over ' far right ' extremism. BUT only some think anybody who does not agree with them is therefore by default a neo Natzi / Far right extremist that works for the BBC, is in government or voted Leave in the EU Referendum.

Dinah....it’s the political system we have here, and the way things work.It’s not a matter of ‘being told’ that they have a large majority, they really do have it, in the number of seats won, which is all that matters to a political party.